Touch of Dead, A - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,21

for once—though the great recommendation of Bill as a lover had been that I couldn’t. Telepaths don’t have an easy time of it when it comes to love affairs. In fact, Mr. Cataliades was the only one on the scene who had a brain I could scan, and he was none too human.

I thought about asking him what he was, but that seemed kind of tacky. Instead, I asked Bubba if he’d round up some folding yard chairs so we could all sit down, and while that was being arranged, I went in the house and heated up some TrueBlood for the three vampires and iced some Mountain Dew for Mr. Cataliades, who professed himself to be delighted with the offer.

While I was in the house, standing in front of the microwave and staring at it like it was some kind of oracle, I thought of just locking the door and letting them all do what they would. I had an ominous sense of the way the night was going, and I was tempted to let it take its course without me. But Hadley had been my cousin. On a whim, I took her picture down from the wall to give it a closer look.

All the pictures my grandmother had hung were still up; despite her death, I continued to think of the house as hers. The first picture was of Hadley at age six, with one front tooth. She was holding a big drawing of a dragon. I hung it back beside the picture of Hadley at ten, skinny and pigtailed, her arms around Jason and me. Next to it was the picture taken by the reporter for the parish paper, when Hadley had been crowned Miss Teen Bon Temps. At fifteen, she’d been radiantly happy in her rented white sequined gown, glittering crown on her head, flowers in her arms. The last picture had been taken during Hadley’s junior year. By then, Hadley had begun using drugs, and she was all Goth: heavy eye makeup, black hair, crimson lips. Uncle Carey had left Aunt Linda some years before this incarnation, moved back to his proud New Orleans family; and by the time Hadley left, too, Aunt Linda had begun feeling bad. A few months after Hadley ran away, we’d finally gotten my father’s sister to go to a doctor, and he’d found the cancer.

In the years since then, I’d often wondered if Hadley had ever found out her mother was sick. It made a difference to me. If she’d known but hadn’t come home, that was a horse of one color. If she’d never known, that was a horse of a different one. Now that I knew she had crossed over and become the living dead, I had a new option. Maybe Hadley had known, but she just hadn’t cared.

I wondered who had told Hadley she might be descended from Marie Laveau. It must have been someone who’d done enough research to sound convincing, someone who’d studied Hadley enough to know how much she’d enjoy the piquancy of being related to such a notorious woman.

I carried the drinks outside on a tray, and we all sat in a circle on my old lawn furniture. It was a bizarre gathering: the strange Mr. Cataliades, a telepath, and three vampires—though one of those was as addled as a vampire can be and still call himself undead.

When I was seated, Mr. Cataliades passed me a sheaf of papers, and I peered at them. The outside light was good enough for raking but not really good for reading. Bill’s eyes were twenty times stronger than mine, so I passed the papers over to him.

“Your cousin left you some money and the contents of her apartment,” Bill said. “You’re her executor, too.”

I shrugged. “Okay,” I said. I knew Hadley couldn’t have had much. Vampires are pretty good at amassing nest eggs, but Hadley could only have been a vampire for a very few years.

Mr. Cataliades raised his nearly invisible brows. “You don’t seem excited.”

“I’m a little more interested in how Hadley met her death.”

Waldo looked offended. “I’ve described the circumstances to you. Do you want a blow-by-blow account of the fight? It was unpleasant, I assure you.”

I looked at him for a few moments. “What happened to you?” I asked. This was very rude, to ask someone what on earth had made him so weird-looking, but common sense told me that there was more to learn. I had an obligation to my cousin,