Free From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris Page B

her. However, my son could talk a woman into anything, even into something against her moral judgment.... And if she was very beautiful, so was he.”
    I tried to see the woman she must have been, in the grandmother I’d known. And I just couldn’t.
    “What was your father like, my grandson?” Niall asked.
    “He was a handsome guy,” I said. “He was a hard worker. He was a good dad.”
    Niall smiled slightly. “How did your mother feel about him?” That question cut sharply into my warm memories of my father. “She, ah, she was really devoted to him.” Maybe at the expense of her children.
    “She was obsessed?” Niall’s voice was not judgmental but certain, as if he knew my answer.
    “Real possessive,” I admitted. “Though I was only seven when they died, even I could see that. I guess I thought it was normal. She really wanted to give him all her attention. Sometimes Jason and I were in the way. And she was really jealous, I remember.” I tried to look amused, as if my mother being so jealous of my father was a charming quirk.
    “It was the fairy in him that made her hold on so strongly,” Niall said. “It takes some humans that way. She saw the supernatural in him, and it enthralled her. Tell me, was she a good mother?”
    “She tried hard,” I whispered.
    She had tried. My mother had known how to be a good mother theoretically. She knew how a good mother acted toward her children. She’d made herself go through all the motions. But all her true love had been saved for my father, who’d been bemused by the intensity of her passion. I could see that now, as an adult. As a child, I’d been confused and hurt.
    The red-haired Were brought our salad and set it down in front of us. He wanted to ask us if we needed anything else, but he was too scared. He’d picked up on the atmosphere at the table.
    “Why did you decide now to come meet me?” I asked. “How long have you known about me?” I put my napkin in my lap and sat there holding the fork. I should take a bite. Wasting was not part of the way I’d been raised. By my grandmother. Who’d had sex with a half fairy (who’d wandered into the yard like a stray dog). Enough sex over enough time to produce two children.
    “I’ve known about your family for the past sixty years, give or take. But my son Fintan forbade me seeing any of you.” He carefully put a bit of tomato into his mouth, held it there, thought about it, chewed it. He ate the way I would if I was visiting an Indian or Nicaraguan restaurant.
    “What changed?” I said, but I figured it out. “So your son is dead now.”
    “Yes,” he said, and put down the fork. “Fintan is dead. After all, he was half human. And he’d lived for seven hundred years.”
    Was I supposed to have an opinion about this? I felt so numb, as though Niall had shot Novocain into my emotional center. I probably should ask how my—my grandfather had come to die, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
    “So you decided to come tell me about this—why?” I was proud of how calm I sounded.
    “I’m old, even for my kind. I would like to know you. I can’t atone for the way your life has been shaped by the heritage Fintan gave you. But I will try to make your life a little easier, if you’ll permit me.”
    “Can you take the telepathy away?” I asked. A wild hope, not unmixed with fear, flared in me like a sunspot.
    “You are asking if I can remove something from the fiber of your being,” Niall said. “No, I can’t do that.”
    I slumped in my chair. “Thought I’d ask,” I said, fighting away tears. “Do I get three wishes, or is that with genies?”
    Niall regarded me with no humor at all. “You wouldn’t want to meet a genie,” he said. “And I’m not a figure of fun. I am a prince.”
    “Sorry,” I said. “I’m having a little trouble coping with all this ... Great-grandfather.” I didn’t remember my human great-grandfathers. My grandfathers—okay, I guess one of them