Dead Reckoning - Charlaine Harris [55]
Please be careful. I hope you’re not mad at me, or think the worse of me. All God’s children are sinners. At least my sinning led to life for you and Jason and Hadley.
Adele Hale Stackhouse (Grandmother)
There was so much to think about that I didn’t know where to start.
I was simultaneously stunned, startled, curious, and confused. Before I could stop myself, I picked up my other relic, the worn velvet bag. I loosened the drawstring, which crumbled in my fingers. I opened the bag and let the hard thing inside—the cluviel dor, the gift from my fairy grandfather—fall into my palm.
I loved it instantly.
It was a creamy light green, trimmed in gold. It was like one of the snuffboxes at the antiques store, but nothing in Splendide had been this beautiful. I could see no catch, no hinge, nothing; it didn’t pop open when I gently pressed and twisted the lid—and there was definitely a lid, trimmed in gold. Hmmm. The round box wasn’t ready to yield its secret.
Okeydokey. Maybe I had to do some research. I put the object to one side and sat with my hands folded on the table, staring into space. My head was crowded with thoughts.
Gran had obviously been very emotional when she wrote the letter. If our “godfather” had given Gran more information about this gift, either she’d neglected to mention it or she simply hadn’t remembered anything else. I wondered when she’d forced herself to set down this confession. Obviously, it had been written after Aunt Linda died, which had happened when Gran was in her seventies. My birth grandfather’s friend—I was pretty sure I recognized the description. Surely the “godfather” was Mr. Cataliades, demon lawyer. I knew it must have cost her plenty to say—on paper—that she’d had sex with someone other than her husband. My grandmother had been a strong individual, and she’d also been a devout Christian. Such an admission must have haunted her.
She might have judged herself, but now that I’d gotten over the shock of seeing my grandmother as a woman, I didn’t judge her. Who was I to throw stones? The preacher had told me that all sins were equal in the eyes of God, but I couldn’t help but feel (for example) that a child molester was worse than a person who cheated on his income tax or a lonely woman who’d had unsanctioned sex because she wanted a baby. I was probably wrong, because we also weren’t supposed to pick and choose which rules we obeyed, but that was the way I felt.
I shoved my confused thoughts back into a corner of my head and picked up the cluviel dor again. Touching its smoothness was pure pleasure, like the happiness I’d felt when I’d hugged my great-grandfather—but times about two hundred. The cluviel dor was about the size of two stacked Oreo cookies. I rubbed it against my cheek and felt like purring.
Did you have to have a magic word to open it?
“Abracadabra,” I said. “Please and thank you.”
Nope, didn’t work, plus I felt like an idiot. “Open sesame,” I whispered. “Presto change-o.” Nope.
But thinking of magic gave me an idea. I e-mailed Amelia, and it was a difficult message to phrase. I know e-mail isn’t totally secure, but I also had no reason to think anyone considered my few messages of any importance. I wrote, “I hate to ask, but besides doing that research on the blood bond for me, can you find out something about a fae thing? Initials c.d.?” That was as subtle as I could get.
Then I returned to my admiration of the cluviel dor. Did you have to be pure fairy to open it? No, that couldn’t be the case. It had been a gift to my grandmother, presumably to use in case of dire need, and she had been completely human.
I wished it hadn’t been far away in the attic when she’d been attacked. Whenever I remembered how she’d been discarded on