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“You taking that as a yes?” I said. “If so, remember . . . I just do guys, so don’t go looking my way.”

“Oh, I probably wouldn’t try to hook up with you anyway,” Amelia said.

Did I mention Amelia is a little tactless? “Why not?” I asked, insulted.

“I didn’t pick Bob at random,” Amelia said, looking as embarrassed as it is possible for Amelia to look. “I like ’em skinny and dark.”

“I’ll just have to live with that,” I said, trying to look deeply disappointed. Amelia threw a tea ball at me, and I caught it in midair.

“Good reflexes,” she said, startled.

I shrugged. Though it had been ages since I’d had vampire blood, a trace seemed to linger on in my system. I’d always been healthy, but now I seldom even got a headache. And I moved a little quicker than most people. I wasn’t the only person to enjoy the side effects of vamp blood ingestion. Now that the effects have become common knowledge, vampires have become prey themselves. Harvesting that blood to sell on the black market is a lucrative and highly perilous profession. I’d heard on the radio that morning that a drainer had disappeared from his Texarkana apartment after he’d gotten out on parole. If you make an enemy of a vamp, he can wait it out a lot longer than you can.

“Maybe it’s the fairy blood,” Amelia said, staring at me thoughtfully.

I shrugged again, this time with a definite drop-this-subject air. I’d learned I had a trace of fairy in my lineage only recently, and I wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t even know which side of my family had bequeathed me this legacy, much less which individual. All I knew was that at some time in the past, someone in my family had gotten up close and personal with a fairy. I’d spent a couple of hours poring over the yellowing family trees and the family history my grandmother had worked so hard to compile, and I hadn’t found a clue.

As if she’d been summoned by the thought, Claudine knocked at the back door. She hadn’t flown on gossamer wings; she’d arrived in her car. Claudine is a full-blooded fairy, and she has other ways of getting places, but she uses those ways only in emergencies. Claudine is very tall, with a thick fall of dark hair and big, slanted dark eyes. She has to cover her ears with her hair, since unlike her twin, Claude, she hasn’t had the pointy parts surgically altered.

Claudine hugged me enthusiastically but gave Amelia a distant wave. They are not nuts about each other. Amelia has acquired magic, but Claudine is magic to the bone. Neither quite trusts the other.

Claudine is normally the sunniest creature I ever met. She is very kind, and sweet, and helpful, like a supernatural Girl Scout, because it’s her nature and because she’s trying to work her way up the magical ladder to become an angel. Tonight, Claudine’s face was unusually serious. My heart sank. I wanted to go to bed, and I wanted to miss Quinn in private, and I wanted to get over the jangling my nerves had taken at Merlotte’s. I didn’t want bad news.

Claudine settled at the kitchen table across from me and held my hands. She spared a look for Amelia. “Take a hike, witch,” she said, and I was shocked.

“Pointy-eared bitch,” muttered Amelia, getting up with her mug of tea.

“Mate killer,” responded Claudine.

“He’s not dead!” shrieked Amelia. “He’s just—different!”

Claudine snorted, and actually that was an adequate response.

I was too tired to scold Claudine for her unprecedented rudeness, and she was holding my hands too tight for me to be pleased about her comforting presence. “What’s up?” I asked. Amelia stomped out of the room, and I heard her shoes on the stairs up to the second floor.

“No vampires here?” Claudine said, her voice anxious. You know how a chocoholic feels about chunky fudge ice cream, double dipped in dark chocolate? That’s how vamps feel about fairies.

“Yeah, the house is empty except for me, you, Amelia, and Bob,” I said. I was not going to deny Bob his person-hood, though sometimes it was pretty hard to recall, especially when his litter box needed cleaning.

“You’re going to this summit?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

That