Chapter 3

3- Off to See the Wizard, Revelations aside, Rocket Science it ain’t

Eric and I had been walking the seemingly endless hallways of Coffin Bait Productions for near on 10 minutes.  I was starting to wish I’d brought along a bag of bread crumbs, or maybe a giant ball of string.  When 10 minutes edged into 15 with us still not having reached Godric, I started to hum “Follow the yellow brick road” under my breath.

“Perhaps the score from a John Carpenter film would be more appropriate.”

Eric had been so quiet since our little exchange that I jumped on hearing his voice.  When I flicked my eyes sideways, I saw he was grinning, though whether that was on account of my humming or my overreaction I couldn’t be too sure.

“More like The Labyrinth,” I muttered sarcastically as we turned down yet another hallway.

“I once enjoyed one of David Bowie’s ex-girlfriends at a party in Reno,” Eric commented with perverse good cheer.

“And how was she?” I inquired on a sarcastic bit of sweetness.

“A little sick off the almost-famous bug, but she had some pleasant citrus notes off the grapefruit diet she was starving herself on.”

“Hmm,” was I all I could say to that.

“I much prefer a woman in happy possession of her curves,” he lilted, sliding his gaze over and down me on a lazy bout of visual devouring.

“So how come y’all’s skin glows like it does?” I asked on a deliberate denial of the tension ricocheting between us.

“Does it?” Eric murmured mildly on a deeply considering Look.

“Yup.  Kind of pearlescent like.  And it gets brighter when you…” I trailed off abruptly and slapped a mega-watt smile on over my almost-faux pas.

“When we…?” he prodded with evil curiosity.

I just beamed all the brighter.

“Have I mentioned how much I love y’all’s wallpaper?  Tiny little stakes.  Kinda macabre considering, but clever all the same.”

Eric came to a stop in the hallway and took me by the wrist.  His big hand dwarfed my tiny arm, his cool touch supersized my lust.  I swallowed hard and smiled blindly up into his fallen angel face.

“Come Miss Stackhouse.  Wasn’t it just minutes ago you were so boldly proclaiming your lack of fear?”

“You were very convincing,” I reminded him with chipper cheer.

“And shall I convince you again?” he leered on inching closer.

“When you’re excited,” I blurted desperately.  “Y’all glow brighter when you’re excited.”

“Excited,” he drawled sensually enough to have my skin exploding in goose pimples.

“Quit it,” I insisted on yanking myself free, glaring at him something fierce as I ran my hands up and down over my bumpy arms.

“Cold, Miss Stackhouse?” he inquired innocently.

“Not enough to need an offer of warming,” I shot back.

“I am a vampire, Miss Stackhouse.  We’re cool to the touch,” he all but purred, running a hand provocatively over his flat abdomen.

“I think you could heat up geriatric nuns in Antarctica,” I muttered with my desperate eyes focused determinedly on the ground.

Eric was still laughing when he opened the door into Godric’s outer office.

The vampire behind the desk looked like a poster ad for farm fresh milk maids.  Her long blond hair was halved precisely down her scalp and neatly braided on both sides.  Little jeweled flowers were woven in at strategic points, and she was wearing a bright blue terry cloth jumper with a platinum and rhinestone belt to match.  Her bare feet were propped on the corner of a desk littered with dog eared scripts and an uncapped bottle of electric blue nail polish.

“’Bout time y’all got here,” she drawled, not bothering to look up from a downward stroke of polish on her index finger.

“We got held up by the flying monkeys,” I quipped with an eyebrow slant towards Eric.

Her head flashed up at that, and I found myself pierced by a set of world famous baby blues.

“You’re Pamela De Beaufort,” I breathed, feeling more than a little awed on the recognition.  My reading material ran mostly to paperback novels, but even I had been following the stories on Hollywood’s re-up and coming ‘It Girl.’  She’d starred in about a dozen or so movies in the so called Golden Age of film before succumbing to a tragic early death.

Turned out that tragedy had come equipped with a pair of fangs and a morning-after promise of forever nights.

“That’s the rumor, sugar.”  She drew her electric gaze from the top of my head down to my toes in a searing Look that had crippled men on big screens the world over.

“An’ you must be Sookie Stackhouse, foolhardy wielder of vengeful serving trays.”

“That’d be me,” I admitted a bit bashfully.  “Though really, it was only an almost vengeance.”

“Mott’s a twerp.  All bullshit, no backbone.  Though I can certainly understand his taste for you.”

Her fangs popped a bit on her continued Look, and Eric shot her a glance that all but shouted ‘Dibs!’  I watched her leer transform into a powerhouse pout with a growing sense of surreality.

“Where is Isabella?” Eric inquired with a lazy authority no less demanding for its apparent calm.  Pam didn’t seem impressed in the least, though she was quick enough on a response.

“Talent juggling.  Apparently Lorena fucked the new lighting director in Soundstage 2 and they ended up damaging Traci’s favorite soundboard.  Cracked it on a down stroke, or so Traci came storming in to say.”

“Compton?”

Pam gave an eye roll for the ages.

“Hasn’t given a shit about her since Prohibition.”

“As long as I’ve got the revised script by the 8^th.”

“I’m sure he’ll have you a nice thick wad so you can wipe your eyes of all the tears you’re not gonna cry over his boo-hoo drivel.”

She leapt to her feet and slapped a theatrical hand to her forehead.  Her pale skin glowed, her full lips trembled, her blue eyes bottomed out with grief.

“Oh, woe is my eternity of endless nights!  That I shall be forever denied the innocent breath of mortality, and be forever possessed by this most devilish of thirsts!”

She ended on a full body crumple, covering her beautiful face with her pale hands as she let out a last desperate wail.  I was laughing even as I clapped my enthusiasm.  Eric was looking decidedly bemused.

“Thank you, thank you,” Pam preened happily on flashing to her bare feet.  “I’m here all night.  Every night.  Forever.”

She gave me an exaggerated wink on forever.

“Now, I really must be getting over to my required performance for the evening.”  She ducked under the desk and emerged with a pair of rhinestone studded spiked blue heels I’d have caught a nosebleed off of.

She flashed to a stop in front of me fast enough to blow my hair back.  I held real still as she leaned in to air kiss both sides of my face, pulling in an audible breath of air on the last motion.

“A wholesome bit of sweetness,” she sighed with a parting bit of longing.

“It was real nice meetin’ you,” I called after her, and she gave a backwards finger wave as she slinked her way out of the office.

“She sure is something,” I murmured as I watched the door drift shut behind her.

“She is certainly among my favorites,” Eric claimed proudly.

“She seems so much bigger in real life.”

“That kind of sentiment won’t go over too favorably around here, Miss Stackhouse.”

I flushed straight to my homespun roots.

“Oh, no.  I didn’t mean…  It’s just she’s got such a sparkle.”

“Officially, we at Coffin Bait Productions do not approve of vampires that sparkle-“

-I scowled venomously-

“-but we are gratefully conscious of Twilight as a transitional medium that effectively serves in cultivating our more adult audiences.”

I stared at his too perfectly serious face for several moments even after gaining on the joke.

“Would you get real for like two seconds please?”

He batted seemingly innocent blue eyes at me in attentive silence.

“What I was trying to say before you overran me with your perverse PR humor-“

-Eric grinned wildly at that-

“-is she’s got a brightness about her.  A kind of oomph! that makes you feel like she holds all the secrets in the universe worth knowing, and that if you could only just get a handle on her, maybe you could, too.”

“Well, she is a vampire,” he dismissed haughtily.

“Nope,” I insisted cheerfully over his disdain.

“Nope,” he repeated on a doubter’s drawl.

“It’s got nothing at all to do with her being a vampire.  Or a movie star,” I added on a preemptive afterthought.  “You could take either away, and it’d still be there.  I’d lay bets on it.  All that self-assured energy, all that self-satisfied vitality, it’s just her.  It’s just her…  Pamness.”

Eric was staring at me now as if I’d open-handed slapped him with a palm full of sunlight.  His power shimmered on the air around me, brushing over my skin like an absentminded kiss.  My body tightened on the sensation, my eyes widened uncertainly under his consuming gaze.  He wasn’t even trying to influence me now, and my reaction was all the more disturbing for the fact.

I swallowed hard and slid my left foot nervously in and out of my ballet flat.

“Perhaps we should send you over to the PR department, Miss Stackhouse,” he said eventually in a perfectly dead deadpan.

“Oh, no,” I cheered, beyond grateful for the return to speech.  “I’m real bad at heads-on lying, and I’m sure I’d be even worse at fancy exaggerating.”

He gave a ghost of smile at that, but continued to stare at me with an expression of peculiar lifelessness.  It was a little bit like being visually stalked by a possessed statue.

“So, um, about my meetin’ with Godric…”

Godric’s name seemed to flip some sort of dead-to-life switch.  He woke in a lazy motion of power, gesturing down what was (I hoped) the final hallway of my journey.

“The Wizard awaits,” he said with a snickering flourish.

“And me without my ruby slippers,” I smirked back.

His eyes flickered at that, but his lips curved humorously.

“Home is as subjective as hell, Miss Stackhouse.”

And with that last bit of odd ball wisdom, he pushed open the door to Godric’s office.

I had to blink about a dozen times before my eyes adjusted to the abrupt décor change.  It was like walking into a winter whiteout.  White Berber carpet, white leather couch, white natural wood bookshelves and desk.  Even the artwork was monochromatic.  A hundred different shades of white layered and centered around the palest point of the room: Godric himself.

Eric looked like a gilded tower of night with his blond hair brushing the broad shoulders of his black t-shirt, his long legs encased in dark wash jeans.  The contrast between the two men was as strangely compelling as the organic intimacy I sensed between them.

“Godric,” Eric murmured respectfully.

“Eric.”

I shivered again on hearing Godric voice his name in his thick accent.

“They broke mould on making this one.”

“Ja.”

“I’ve brought your new human,” Eric said on returning to English.

“Miss Stackhouse is to be my new assistant, Eric,” Godric corrected mildly.  “We are sorting out the details tonight.”

Eric didn’t even so much as flicker at that announcement.  After a lifetime of being written off as kooky, crazy Sookie, I had sort of expected his disapproval by default.  I mean, here I was, some unknown ingénue line jumping from backwater to front-and-center.  Whatever sort of relationship these two men had, it was clearly deeply rooted in trust.

“I will leave you to it, then,” Eric said, casting an (almost) wholesome smile in my direction before turning to leave.

“And Eric?”

Eric turned mid-step and inclined his head respectfully.

“Should the others ask, Miss Stackhouse is exclusively mine.”

They were having some kind of conversation here that was -almost- going over my head.

“Yes, Godric,” Eric murmured happily.  There was no missing the escalated glow he’d gotten off Godric’s last words.  He kept a ‘Be seeing you’ visual pin on me until the very last possible second.

I rounded on Godric immediately on the door clicking shut.

“What did you mean by what you just said to Eric?  ‘Miss Stackhouse is exclusively mine?’”

Godric was watching me with calm satisfaction.

“I was instructing him to inform the others you are off the public menu.”

“But not Eric’s,” I insisted.  I was pretty darn sure about what I’d just witnessed not being said.

“That, Miss Stackhouse, is entirely up to you.  But there is little of mine that I don’t share with Eric.”

I gave that statement and their visibly understated affection a long moment of consideration before I spoke again.

“You love each other.”

Godric smiled gently on inclining his head.

“Eric would not call it that, and even several decades ago neither would have I.”

“Changing words don’t always change meaning.”

“Of that we are in perfect accord.”

“So…” I said.  “Am I gonna be on your menu?”

I was quite serious about the question.  I’d kind of calculated being fed on as a part of the job, though I was pretty intent on being only a sometimes snack.

“I’m not entirely certain that is a good idea.”

“Why not?” I inquired in an injured tone.

He flashed to a polite stop in front of me, index finger raising up to touch lightly on the tip of his nose.

“If you will permit?”

“Sure,” I consented on an agreeable nod.  Unlike the… discomfort I’d felt with Eric, and the awe I’d felt for Pam, all I got off Godric’s power was a sense of tranquility.  It was an easy enough to let him lean in for a closer whiff.

“Fae,” he breathed on inhaling, eyes sliding closed on some private ecstasy.

“Uh, Godric?” I whispered cautiously.  “What’s a fae?”

“You are, Miss Stackhouse,” he replied without opening his eyes.

“Uh huh, I’m getting that.  But what, exactly, does that mean I am?”

“Delicious,” he sighed.

“I have you tell you, you’re being mighty creepy at the moment.”

His eyes flew open, his lips parted over his fangless shock, and then he was laughing.  Softly at first, and then louder and louder and louder.  By the end of it his eyes were rimmed in pink tinged tears and his skin was as glowing as brightly as sun lit snow.

“Delightful, too,” he chuckled as he took a wet nap to his bloody eyes.  “But not meant for me.”

Looked like Godric was coffin bent on playing matchmaking maker.

“What’s a fae?” I repeated again, entirely prepared to beat the dead horse ‘til it talked.

“Fae is an Old World term for fairy,” Godric said on flowing down into his white leather chair.  Who knew it was possible to make a roller chair look like a throne?

Wait a second…

“Fairy?” I repeated on a stupid drawl.  “You think I’m a fairy.  As in Tinkerbell an’ the like?”

“At least in part, yes, and not nearly as Disney.  All the fae I have been acquainted with were far more dangerous than I.”

“Were?”

Godric gave me a mildly pointed look.

“Right.  Of course.  Delicious,” I managed weakly.

Godric motioned towards the leather chair facing his desk, and I settled down on a bit of surprise at its softness.

“My best guess is a grandparent.”

“I think I might have taken note of that in the family bible,” I said uncertainly.

Godric shrugged absently.

“Truthfully, it is of little consequence.  It will make you more appealing to my kind, of course, but your scent alone is not strong enough to draw much of a threat.  Especially given that you are now under my protection.”

“There is something more.”  I hesitated briefly before shoving onward with my earlier decision for full disclosure.

“I can hear people’s thoughts.  Not vampires,” I tacked on super quick on seeing his glow surge powerfully.  “Just people… people.  It’s so quiet here,” I added on a happy note.

“I see,” he murmured consideringly.  And I could tell more from the gentle understanding in his eyes then his inflection that he did, in fact, see my greater need.

“I take it this quiet is the reason you decided to take me up on my offer?”

“It’s a big part,” I admitted wistfully.  “But you were right at the bar.  I am searching for… something.”  I shrugged my confusion aloud.  “I’ve spent my whole lift sitting on what I can do, keeping it as secret as the thoughts I can’t help hearing.  I guess I’m just tired of sitting on the shelf collecting dust.”

“I had wondered why My Psychic sent me to a sushi bar on a game night.  She has the most peculiar sense of humor.”

Godric said ‘My Psychic’ in a lovingly possessive way I’ve only heard men speak of favorite power tools, or vintage cars restored off years of weekend labor.

“Someone sent you after me?” I asked, feeling more than a slight case of unsettled.

“After you?”  He smiled gently.  “No.  She never tells me exactly what I am supposed to find, only where to seek it.  ‘Destiny flows better with a lubricant of vagueness,’ as she says.”

“So what?  You like… collect people with powers?”

“We’re collectively known as Supes, Miss Stackhouse.  And I am practical enough to employ the useful willing among us, yes.”

I didn’t even bother trying to ignore the happy butterflies I got off being part of a community ‘us,’ even if it was a hodge podge supernatural collective.

“How can you be sure I was what you were lookin’ for?”

“I have survived two thousand years primarily on my skills of discernment, Miss Stackhouse.”

Two thousand years?  Good Lord, my boss was a contemporary of Christ.

“Well, that’s a real good reason for surety, I’ll give you that.”  I hesitated, then just went on and gave in to my curiosity.

“Say, you never had a chance to meet Jesus, did you?”

“The fisher king?  No.  I wished I could have, but I missed him.  Different continents,” he added with an indulgent smile.

“To business, then.”

“You will serve as my primary liaison on set and off.  Which, I must confess, will primarily make you a gopher of authority.”

“Oh, that’s just fine,” I cheered happily.  “Waitressing isn’t much above gophering for pennies.”

“You will have final say on human personnel conflicts.  Vampire personnel conflicts are to be directed to Eric, and if he is not available, Isabella.”

Directly to Eric?  My heart convulsed in my chest, my body tightened in longing.  How was I gonna be able to deal with him on a regular basis when even thinking about him caused such reactions?

“Do you enjoy reading?”

I glanced up from my mixed bag feelings to find Godric looking at me expectantly.

“What?  Oh, well, yes.  Novels, mostly.”

“Excellent.  I am terribly behind on my scripts, and as much as this company is my brainchild, I do have other duties.”

I blinked at him happily.

“You want me to read movie scripts?”

“It’s a bit different then a novel, but nearly as enjoyable, I suppose.  The dialogue is the main focus, with movement cues and set descriptions in the place of prose.  There’s a lot of open ground for actors and directors to interpret.”

“Sounds fascinating,” I all but crowed.

“Excellent.”  He absently patted the yellow envelope.  “This paperwork covers the more mundane business details, and the rest of your duties will be learned hands on, as they say.”

He offered me the envelope, and I happily took it off his hands.

“There is a key card inside that will grant you direct access to these offices via the employee entrance on Grace Street.”

“Thank God for that,” I blurted with enough gratitude to have Godric’s eyebrow popping.

“It’s just that it took me an’ Eric like 20 minutes to get here from the street entrance.”

“Did it?” he mused.

“Doesn’t it?” I asked confused.

“Eric knows shortcuts.”

“Of course he does,” I muttered irritatedly.

Godric’s Look was far more pointed than his as-yet-unseen fangs.

“I have never known Eric to waste time unnecessarily.”

“Uh huh,” I said, far from convinced.  “Well, at least he didn’t try to sell me on the pool on the roof.”

“As it turns out, Miss Stackhouse, we do indeed have a pool on the roof.  Garden top,” he added on my look of disbelief.  “You are more than welcome to enjoy it and any of the other facilities we have to offer.”

“Any immediate questions?”

“Are there any things I should know about vampires, you think?”

“We are not inclined to casual touch, and, for the most part, prefer frankness to visible fear.”

“Well that’s sure easy enough,” I said.  “I’m not real touch forward myself on account of it amplifying the thoughts, and I’m already frank to a sometimes fault.”

“I’ll be putting my two weeks in tomorrow,” I said on rising to my feet.  “You won’t mind the wait?”

“Not at all.  And Sookie?”

“Yes Godric?”

“There will be jealousies, and criticisms.  It is the nature of the business.  Understand when you hear them that I hired you for who you are now, not who they think you should be.”

I stared at his gentle smile for a moment, holding my eyes idiot wide to stop the creeping moisture.

“Death potential aside, you really are the nicest man I’ve ever met.”

“We are going to get along well, you and I.”

 

 

I nearly swallowed my tongue on reading my annual salary.  In just six months working for Godric, I would pull in more money than I’d made during the collective entirety of my career as a barmaid.  I signed the papers with an almost trembling hand of gratitude.  This was real.  This was my life now.  No more suffering butt pinches off drunken assholes, or poor tips off stingy customers.

I picked up the phone and punched numbers in a kind of self-satisfied bliss.

“Hey Gran!”

“Sookie!  Oh, my dear, it’s good to hear from you!”

“Gran,” I laughed.  “You just talked to me like three days ago.”

“Oh, I know.  I’m just missin’ you, is all.”

I was feeling more than a bit guilty on hearing that.  Normally I rang up Gran every day before my shift, but ever since I’d gotten the job offer from Godric, I’d been hesitant to call.  I’d wanted time to puzzle out this new direction I seemed to be taking, had needed to work the pieces on my own.  For all my determination to make a life outside of Bon Temps, I’d had no real ties here in Wilmington.  Nothing to stop me from packing in and turning back to the only life I’d ever known.  Now I had ties, vampire ones, and a promise of a true life among the dead.

“I’m sorry I haven’t rang.  Things just got a bit hectic the last couple of days.  Good hectic,” I added quickly over her sure-to-be impending worry.  “I got a new job.  I’m gonna be working for a movie production company here in town.”

“Oh, Sookie, how wonderful!”

“I know, right?  But it’s not even the movie part that’s the real fascination.  Gran, my new boss is a vampire.”

“A vampire!  Ooh, how exciting!”

“Give me a week or two, and I’ll be sending you a check for the roof.”

“A week or two?  Sookie, honey…  New job or not, I don’t want you stretching yourself.”

“There’s no need to be worrying over such things, Gran.  The movie business pays real well.”

Godric’s words came back to me then, punching through my brain like bullets out of thin air.  I didn’t want to ask, I didn’t, because I wasn’t sure what learning the truth would cost me.  After a lifetime of unwanted hearing, I was an expert at the consequences of unwanted truth.

But the hearing itself just couldn’t be ignored.

“Gran, do you know anything about there being fairies in our family tree?”

Gran was real quiet on the other end of the line.

“Who’ve you been talking to, Sookie?” she asked finally in a weary tone.

“It’s true then?”

“It’s true.”

She paused painfully, then pushed on for what I knew to be my sake.

“It was the mumps, you see, and I was so wanting children.  The fairy, he came to me offering just that, one day when I was out hanging the laundry.  Looked like an angel, he did.”

“Grandaddy Earl?” I asked, shatteringly soft.

“Was your Grandaddy by all accounts that matter.”

“Does he even have a name?”

“You’ll be watching your tone, girl.  And his name is Fintan, of the sky fairies.”

“Sky fairies.  Well, I suppose that explains my love affair with tanning, then.  And my telepathy.”

“Actually, no.”

“No?”

“That was a gift from a family friend.”

“A family friend,” I repeated dimly.

“There’s reasons, Sookie.  Things you’re not in a place to understand just yet.  But all God’s gifts are of a purpose, even when it’s hard on us for being unable to see to His ends.”

I pushed down hard on my heartache and pushed forward.

“How come you never told me?”

“Certain kinds of truths can lead to ugliness, Sookie.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothin’ you need burden yourself with.  You are exactly who you ought to be, Sookie Stackhouse.”

After we hung up on renewed sentiments, I sat staring at my phone in a kind of daze.  What bizarre world was this that I’d chosen to dive headfirst into?    Scheming sky fairies seducing my married Gran on a promise of procreation.  Mysterious family friends filling my infant head with telepathic powers before it could even hit the cradle.  Lusty vampire movie moguls flattering me senseless.

I was thinking of Godric, of course.  Certainly not Mr. Northman of the wicked smirk and unfathomable blue eyes.  Definitely not Eric of the sexy leer and clever quips.  Nope.  There was absolutely no way was I thinking of him- or his perfectly proportioned butt.  Not even the least little cheek-

Ah, hell.