Sookie 10 Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris Page B

he opened his mouth. Plus, he no longer had to share the club income with his sister.
    “I’m busy. And I don’t lack for money. But without the company of my own kind. I feel I’m starving.”
    “Are you
serious
?” I said without thinking, and then I could have kicked myself. But Claude needing me (or anyone, for that matter) seemed so unlikely. His request to stay with me was wholly unexpected and unwelcome.
    But my gran chided me mentally. I was looking at a member of my family, one of the few still living and/or accessible to me. My relationship with my great-grandfather Niall had ended when he’d retreated into Faery and pulled the door shut behind him. Though Jason and I had mended our fences, my brother very much led his own life. My mom, my dad, and my grandmother were dead, my aunt Linda and my cousin Hadley were dead, and I rarely saw Hadley’s little son.
    I had depressed the hell out of myself in the space of a minute.
    “Do I have enough fairy in me to be any help to you?” That was all I could think of to say.
    “Yes,” he said very simply. “I already feel better.” This seemed a weird echo of my conversation with Bill. Claude halfway smiled. If Claude looked incredible when he was unhappy, he looked divine when he smiled. “Since you’ve been in the company of fairies, it’s accentuated your streak of fairy essence. By the way, I have a letter for you.”
    “Who from?”
    “Niall.”
    “How’s that possible? I understood the fae world was shut off now.”
    “He has his ways,” Claude said evasively. “He’s the only prince now, and very powerful.”
    He has his ways.
“Humph,” I said. “Okay, let’s see it.”
    Claude pulled an envelope out of his overnight bag. It was buff-colored and sealed with a blue blob of wax. In the wax was imprinted a bird, its wings spread in flight.
    “So there’s a fairy mailbox,” I said. “And you can send and receive letters?”
    “This letter, anyway.”
    Fae were very good at evasion. I huffed out a breath of exasperation.
    I got a knife and slid it under the seal. The paper I extracted from the envelope had a very curious texture.
    “Dearest great-granddaughter,” it began. “There are things I didn’t get to say to you and many things I didn’t get to do for you before my plans collapsed in the war.”
    Okay.
    “This letter is written on the skin of one of the water sprites who drowned your parents.”
    “Ick!” I cried, and dropped the letter on the kitchen table.
    Claude was by my side in a flash. “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking around the kitchen as if he expected to see a troll pop up.
    “This is skin! Skin!”
    “What else would Niall write on?” He looked genuinely taken aback.
    “Ewww!” Even to myself, I sounded a little too girly-girly. But honestly. skin?
    “It’s clean,” Claude said, clearly hoping that would solve my problem. “It’s been processed.”
    I gritted my teeth and reached down for my great-grandfather’s letter. I took a deep, steadying breath. Actually, the. material hardly smelled at all. Smothering a desire to put on oven mitts, I made myself focus on reading.
    “Before I left your world, I made sure one of my human agents talked to several people who can help you evade the scrutiny of the human government. When I sold the pharmaceutical company we owned, I used much of my profit to ensure your freedom.”
    I blinked, because my eyes were tearing up a little. He might not be a typical great-grandfather, but by golly, he’d done something wonderful for me.
    “He’s bribed some government officials to call off the FBI? Is that what he’s done?”
    “I have no idea,” Claude said, shrugging. “He wrote me, too, to let me know that I had an extra three hundred thousand dollars in my bank account. Also, Claudine hadn’t made a will, since she didn’t. ”
    Expect to die. She had expected to raise a child with a fairy lover I’d never met. Claude shook himself and said in a cracked