Dead Reckoning - Charlaine Harris [72]
“So, the work on the wards is all done?” I asked anxiously, trying to sound casual about the change of topic.
“You bet,” Amelia said, looking proud. She cut another bite of steak. “They’re even better now. A dragon couldn’t get through ’em. No one who means you harm will make it.”
“So if a dragon was friendly . . .” I said, half teasing, and she swatted me with her fork.
“No such thing, the way I hear tell,” Amelia said. “Of course, I’ve never seen one.”
“Of course.” I didn’t know whether to feel curious or relieved.
Bob said, “Amelia’s got a surprise for you.”
“Oh?” I tried to sound more relaxed than I felt.
“I found the cure,” she said, half-proudly and half-shyly. “I mean, you did ask me to when I left. I kept looking for a way to break the blood bond. I found it.”
“How?” I scrambled to conceal how flustered I was.
“First I asked Octavia. She didn’t know, because she doesn’t specialize in vampire magic, but she e-mailed a couple of her older friends in other covens, and they scouted around. It all took time, and there were some dead ends, but eventually I came up with a spell that doesn’t end in the death of one of the . . . bondees.”
“I’m stunned,” I said, which was the absolute truth.
“Shall I cast it tonight?”
“You mean . . . right now?”
“Yes, after supper.” Amelia looked slightly less happy because she wasn’t getting the response she’d anticipated. Bob was looking from Amelia to me, and he, too, looked doubtful. He’d assumed I’d be both delighted and effusive, and that wasn’t the reaction he was seeing.
“I don’t know.” I put my fork down. “It wouldn’t hurt Eric?”
“As if anything can hurt a vampire that old,” she said. “Honestly, Sook, why you’re worrying about him . . .”
“I love him,” I said. They both stared at me.
“For real?” Amelia said in a small voice.
“I told you that before you left, Amelia.”
“I guess I just didn’t want to believe you. You sure you’ll feel that way when the bond is dissolved?”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
She nodded. “You need to know. And you need to be free of him.”
The sun had just set, and I could feel Eric rising. His presence was with me like a shadow: familiar, irritating, reassuring, intrusive. All those things at once.
“If you’re ready, do it now,” I said. “Before I lose all courage.”
“This is actually a good time of day to do it,” she said. “Sunset. End of the day. Endings, in general. It makes sense.” Amelia hurried to the bedroom. She returned in a couple of minutes with an envelope and three little jars: jelly jars in a chrome rack, like the kind a waitress in a diner puts on the table at breakfast. The jars were half-full of a mixture of herbs. Amelia was now wearing an apron. I could see that there were objects in one of the pockets.
“All right,” she said, and handed the envelope to Bob, who extracted the paper and scanned it quickly, a frown on his narrow face.
“Out in the yard,” he suggested, and we three left the kitchen, crossed the back porch, and went down into the yard, smelling the steak all over again as we passed my old grill. Amelia positioned me in one spot, Bob in another, and then positioned the jelly jars, too. Bob and I each had one on the ground behind us, and there was one at the spot where she would stand. We’d form a triangle. I didn’t ask any questions. I probably wouldn’t have believed the answers, anyway.
She gave me a book of matches and handed one to Bob, too. She kept a third for herself. “When I tell you, set fire to your herbs. Then walk counterclockwise around your jar three times,” she said. “Stop at your station again after the third time. Then we’ll say some words—Bob, you got ’em in your head? Sookie’ll need the paper.”
Bob looked at the words again, nodded, and passed me the paper. I could just read the script by the security light, because the evening was closing in fast now that the sun was down.
“Ready?” Amelia asked sharply. She looked older and colder in the twilight.
I nodded, wondering if I was being truthful.
Bob said, “Yes.”
“Then turn and light your