Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

plumbing fiction was simply better than saying, “My cousin’s a fairy, and he needs the company of other fairies, since he’s in exile. Also, my half-fairy great-uncle Dermot, a carbon copy of my brother, came along for the heck of it.” The fae, unlike the vampires and the werewolves, wanted to keep their existence a deep secret.
    Also, Michele’s assumption that I’d never seen Claude naked was incorrect. Though the spectacularly handsome Claude was my cousin—and I certainly kept my clothes on around the house—the fairy attitude about nudity was totally casual. Claude, with his long black hair,brooding face, and rippling abs, was absolutely mouthwatering … until he opened his mouth. Dermot lived with me, too, but Dermot was more modest in his habits …maybe because I’d told him how I felt about bare-assed relatives.
    I liked Dermot a lot better than I liked Claude. I had mixed feelings about Claude. None of those feelings were sexual. I’d very recently and reluctantly allowed him back into my house after we’d had an argument, in fact.
    “I don’t mind having him and Dermot around the house. They’ve helped me out a lot,” I said weakly.
    “What about Dermot? Does Dermot strip, too?” Kennedy asked hopefully.
    “He does managerial stuff here. Him stripping would be weird for you, huh, Michele?” I said. Dermot’s a ringer for my brother, who’d been tight with Michele for a long time—a long time in Jason terms.
    “Yeah, I couldn’t watch that,” she said. “Except maybe for comparison purposes!” We all laughed.
    While they continued to talk about men, I looked around the club. I’d never been in Hooligans when it was this busy, and I’d never been to a Ladies Only night. There was a lot to think about—the staff, for example.
    We’d paid our cover charge to a very buxom young woman with webs between her fingers. She’d flashed me a smile when she caught me staring, but my friends hadn’t given her a second glance. After we’d passed through the inner door, we were ushered to our seats by an elf named Bellenos, whom I’d last seen offering me the head of my enemy. Literally.
    None of my friends seemed to notice anything different about Bellenos, either—but he didn’t look like a regular man to me. His headof auburn hair was smooth and peltlike, his far-apart eyes were slanting and dark, his freckles were larger than human freckles, and the points of his needle-sharp inch-long teeth gleamed in the dim house lights. When I’d first met Bellenos, he’d been unable to mask himself as human. Now he could.
    “Enjoy, ladies,” Bellenos had told us in his deep voice. “We’ve had this table reserved for you.” He’d given me a particular smile as he turned to go back to the entrance.
    We were seated right by the stage. A hand-lettered sign in the middle of the tablecloth read, “Bon Temps Party.”
    “I hope I get to thank Claude real personally,” Kennedy said, with a sultry leer. She was definitely fighting with Danny; I could tell. Michele giggled and poked Tara’s shoulder.
    Finally, knowing Claude was a perk.
    “That redhead who showed us to the table thought you were cute, Sookie,” Tara said uneasily. I could tell she was thinking of my full-time boyfriend and vampire husband, Eric Northman. She figured he wouldn’t be too happy about a stranger ogling me.
    “He was just being polite because I’m Claude’s cousin,” I said.
    “Like hell! He was looking at you like you were chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream,” she said. “He wanted to eat you up.”
    I was pretty sure she was right, but maybe not in the sense she meant; not that I could read Bellenos’s mind, any more than that of any other supernatural creature …but elves are what you’d call unrestricted in their diet. I hoped Claude was keeping a close watch on the mixed bag of fae he’d accumulated here at Hooligans.
    Meanwhile, Tara was complaining that her hair had lost all its body during her pregnancy, and Kennedy said, “Have a conditioning session at Death by Fashion in Shreveport. Immanuel’s the best.”
    “He cut my hair once,” I said, and they all looked at me in astonishment. “You remember? When my hair got singed?”
    “When the bar was bombed,” Kennedy said. “That was Immanuel? Wow, Sookie, I didn’t know you knew him.”
    “A little,” I said. “I thought about getting some highlights, but he left town. The shop’s still open.” I shrugged.
    “All the