Dead and Gone Page 0,51

he'd discovered I was a hermaphrodite or a fruitarian.

"I'm a real bad one," I said hurriedly. His lips compressed, and I could see he was trying hard not to laugh. I'd never felt less like mirth, with the man I'd killed lying a few feet away. I wondered how many years Murry had walked this earth, and now he was crumpled in a lifeless heap, his blood staining my gravel. Wait a minute! He wasn't anymore. He was turning to ... dust. It wasn't anything like the gradual flaking away of a vampire; it was more like someone was erasing Murry.

"Are you cold?" Niall asked. He didn't seem to think the disappearance of bits of the body was anything unusual.

"No, sir. I'm just all upset. I mean, I was sunbathing and then I went to see Claude and Claudine, and now here I am." I couldn't take my eyes off the body's incremental disappearance.

"You've been lying in the sun and gardening.We like the sun and sky," he said, as if that was proof positive I had a special relationship with the fairy branch of my family. He smiled at me. He was so beautiful. I felt like an adolescent when I was around him, an adolescent with acne and baby fat. Now I felt like amurderous adolescent.

"Are you going to gather up his ... ashes?" I asked. I rose, trying to look brisk and purposeful. Action would make me feel less miserable.

Two pairs of alien eyes stared at me blankly.

"Why?" Dillon asked.

"To bury them."

They looked horrified.

"No, not in the ground ," Niall said, trying to sound less revolted than he was. "That isn't our way."

"Then what are you going to do with them?" There was quite a heap of glittering powder on my driveway and in my flower bed, and there was still his torso remaining. "I don't mean to be pushy, but Amelia might come home anytime. I don't get a lot of other visitors, but there's the odd UPS delivery person and the meter reader."

Dillon looked at my great-grandfather as if I'd suddenly begun speaking Japanese. Niall said, "Sookie shares her house with another woman, and this woman may return at any moment."

"Is anyone else going to come after me?" I asked, diverted from my question.

"Possibly," Niall said. "Fintan did a better job of protecting you than I am doing, Sookie. He even protected you from me, and I only want to love you. But he wouldn't tell me where you were." Niall looked sad, and harried, and tired for the first time since I'd met him. "I've tried to keep you out of it. I imagined I only wanted to meet you before they succeeded in killing me, and I arranged it through the vampire to make my movements less noticeable, but in arranging that meeting I've drawn you into danger. You can trust my son Dillon." He put his hand on the younger fairy's shoulder. "If he brings you a message, it's really from me." Dillon smiled charmingly, displaying super-naturally white and sharp teeth. Okay, he was scary, even if he was Claude and Claudine's dad.

"I'll talk to you soon," Niall said, bending over to give me a kiss. The fine, gleaming pale hair fell against my cheek. He smelled so good; fairies do. "I'm sorry, Sookie," he said. "I thought I could force them all to accept ... Well, I couldn't." His green eyes glowed with intensity and regret. "Do you have - yes, a garden hose! We could gather up most of the dust, but I think it more practical if you simply ... distribute it."

He put his arms around me and hugged me, and Dillon gave me a mocking salute. The two took a few steps to the trees, and then they simply vanished into the undergrowth as deer do when you encounter them in the woods.

So that was that. I was left in my sunny yard, all by myself, with a sizeable pile of glittering powdery dust in a body-shaped heap on the gravel.

I added to my mental list of the odd things I'd done that day. I'd entertained the police, sunbathed, visited at a mall with some fairies, weeded, and killed someone. Now it was powdered corpse removal time. And the day wasn't over yet.

I turned on the faucet, unwound the hose enough so the flow would reach the right area, and compressed the spray head to aim the water at the fairy dust.

I had a weird, out-of-body feeling. "You'd think