Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [657]
Oblivious to the presence of anyone else in the room, the reconstruction went over to the loveseat, picked up a phantom remote control, and turned on the television. I actually glanced at the screen to see if it would show anything, but of course, it didn’t.
I felt a movement beside me and I glanced at the queen. If I had been shocked, she was electrified. I had never really thought the queen could have truly loved Hadley, but I saw now that she had, as much as she was able.
We watched Hadley glance at the television from time to time while she painted her toenails, drank a phantom glass of blood, and made a phone call. We couldn’t hear her. We could only see, and that within a limited range. The object she reached for would appear the minute her hand touched it, but not before, so you could be sure of what she had only when she began to use it. When she leaned forward to replace the glass of blood on the table, and her hand was still holding the glass, we’d see the glass, the table with its other objects, and Hadley, all at once, all with that glistening patina. The ghost table was imposed over the real table, which was still in almost exactly the same space as it had been that night, just to make it weirder. When Hadley let go of the glass, both glass and table winked out of existence.
Andre’s eyes were wide and staring when I glanced back at him, and it was the most expression I’d seen on his face. If the queen was grieving and I was fascinated and sad, Andre was simply freaked out.
We stood through a few more minutes of this until Hadley evidently heard a knock at the door. (Her head turned toward the door, and she looked surprised.) She rose (the phantom loveseat, perhaps two inches to the right of the real one, became nonexistent) and padded across the floor. She stepped through my sneakers, which were sitting side by side next to the loveseat.
Okay, that was weird. This whole thing was weird, but fascinating.
Presumably the people in the courtyard had watched the caller come up the outside stairs, since I heard a loud curse from one of the Berts—Wybert, I thought. When Hadley opened a phantom door, Patsy, who’d been stationed outside on the gallery, pushed open the real door so we could see. From Amelia’s chagrined face, I could tell she hadn’t thought that one through ahead of time.
Standing at the door was (phantom) Waldo, a vampire who had been with the queen for years. He had been much punished in the years before his death, and it had left him with permanently wrinkled skin. Since Waldo had been an ultrathin albino before this punishment, he’d looked awful the one and only night I’d known him. As a watery ghost creature, he looked better, actually.
Hadley looked surprised to see him. That expression was strong enough to be easily recognizable. Then she looked disgusted. But she stepped back to let him in.
When she strolled back to the table to pick up her glass, Waldo glanced around him, as if to see if anyone else was there. The temptation to warn Hadley was so strong it was almost irresistible.
After some conversation, which of course we couldn’t understand, Hadley shrugged and seemed to agree to some plan. Presumably, this was the idea Waldo had told me about the night he’d confessed to killing my cousin. He’d said it had been Hadley’s idea to go to St. Louis Cemetery Number One to raise the ghost of voodooienne Marie Laveau, but from this evidence it seemed Waldo was the one who had suggested the excursion.
“What’s that in his hand?” Amelia said, as quietly as she could, and Patsy stepped in from the gallery to check.
“Brochure,” she called to Amelia, trying to use equally hushed tones. “About Marie Laveau.”
Hadley looked at the watch on her wrist and said something to Waldo. It was something unkind, judging by Hadley’s expression and the jerk of her head as she indicated the door. She was saying “No,” as clearly