But it had been. I knew--even as I thought this--that I wasn't going to be able to fool myself. I'd changed in order to survive, and I was paying the price of survival. I had to be willing to change myself forever, or everything I'd made myself do was for nothing.
"Are you all right, Sookie?" Dermot asked, as he brought in more glasses.
"Yes, thanks." I tried to smile at him but felt it was a weak effort.
There was a knock at the back door. I supposed it was a late guest, trying to sneak in unobtrusively.
Mr. Cataliades stood there. He was wearing a suit, as always, but for the first time it seemed somewhat the worse for wear. He seemed not quite as circular as he had been, but he was smiling politely. I was astonished at his presence and not completely sure I wanted to talk to him, but if he was the guy who could answer big questions about my life, I really didn't have a lot of choice. "Come in," I told him, standing back and holding open the door.
"Miss Stackhouse," he said formally. "Thank you for your welcome."
He stared at Dermot, who was washing dishes very carefully, proud to be trusted with Gran's good china. "Young man," he said in acknowledgment.
Dermot turned and froze. "Demon," he said. Then he turned back to the sink, but I could tell he was thinking furiously.
"You're having a social occasion?" Mr. Cataliades asked me. "I can tell there are many women in the house."
I hadn't even noticed the cacophony of feminine voices floating down the hall, but it sounded like there might be sixty women in the living room instead of twenty-five. "Yes," I agreed. "There are. It's a baby shower for a friend of mine."
"Perhaps I could sit at your kitchen table until it's over?" he suggested. "Perhaps a bite to eat?"
Reminded of my manners, I said, "Of course, you can have as much as you like!" I quickly made a ham sandwich and put some chips and pickles out, and prepared a separate plate with party goodies. I even poured him a cup of punch.
Mr. Cataliades's dark eyes glowed at the sight of the food in front of him. It might not be as fancy as he was used to (though for all I knew he ate raw mice), but he dug in with a will. Dermot seemed all right, if not exactly relaxed, at being in the same room with the lawyer, so I left them to make the best of it and returned to the living room. The hostess couldn't be away for long; it wasn't polite.
Tara had opened all the presents. Her shop assistant, McKenna, had written down all the gifts and the givers, and taped the card in with each offering. Everyone was talking about her own labor and delivery--oh, joy--and Tara was fielding questions about her ob-gyn, the hospital where she'd deliver, what names they'd thought of for the babies, whether they knew the sexes of the twins, how far away her due date was, and on and on.
Gradually, the guests began to depart, and when they were all gone I had to fend off sincere offers from Tara and her mother-in-law and Jason's girlfriend, Michele, to help with the dishes. I told them, "No sirree, you just leave them there, that's my job," and I could hear my grandmother's words flowing right out of my mouth. It almost made me laugh. If I hadn't had a demon and a fairy in my kitchen, I might have. We got all the gifts loaded into Tara's and her mother-in-law's cars, and Michele told me she and Jason were having a catfish fry the next weekend and they wanted me to come. I said I'd see, that sounded wonderful.
It was a huge relief when all the humans were gone.
I would have thrown myself in the chair and read for thirty minutes or watched an episode of Jeopardy! before starting to clean up if I hadn't had the two men waiting in my kitchen. Instead, I had to march back laden with still more plates and cups.
To my surprise, Dermot was gone. I hadn't noticed his car go down the driveway, but I assumed he'd blended in with all the other departing guests. Mr. Cataliades was sitting in the same chair, drinking a cup of coffee. He had put his plate over by the sink. Hadn't washed it, but he'd carried it over.
"So," I said, "they've left. You didn't eat Dermot, did you?"
He beamed at me. "No, dear Miss Stackhouse, I did not. Though I'm sure he would be tasty. The ham sandwich was delicious."
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," I responded automatically. "Listen, Mr. Cataliades, I found a letter from my grandmother. I'm not sure I understand our relationship correctly, or maybe I just don't understand what it means that you are my sponsor."
His beam intensified. "Though I'm in a slight hurry, I'll do everything I can to dispel your confusion."
"Okay." I wondered why he was in a hurry, if he was still being pursued, but I wasn't going to be sidetracked. "Let me sort of repeat this back to you and you can tell me if I got it straight."
He nodded his round head. "You were good friends with my birth grandfather, Fintan. Dermot's brother."
"Yes, Dermot's twin."
"But you don't seem that fond of Dermot."
He shrugged. "I'm not."
I almost got off on a tangent there, but I stuck to my train of thought. "So, Fintan was still alive when Jason and I were born."
Desmond Cataliades nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, he was."
"My gran said in her letter that you visited my dad and his sister, Fintan's actual children."
"I was here."
"So, did you give them--us--a gift?"
"I tried, but you couldn't all accept it. Not all of you had the essential spark."
That was a phrase Niall had used. "What is the essential spark?"
"What a clever question!" Mr. Cataliades said, regarding me as if I were a monkey who'd opened a hatch to retrieve a banana. "The gift I gave to my dear friend Fintan was that any of his human descendants who possessed the essential spark would be able to read the minds of their fellow humans, as I can."
"So, when it turned out that my dad and aunt Linda didn't have it, you returned when Jason and I were born."
He nodded. "Seeing you wasn't absolutely necessary. After all, the gift had been given. But by visiting Jason and then you, I could know for certain. I was very excited when I held you, though I think your poor grandmother was frightened."
"So only I and--" I choked back Hunter's name. Mr. Cataliades had written Hadley's will, and she hadn't mentioned Hunter. It was possible he didn't know Hadley had had a child. "Only I have had it so far. And you still haven't explained what the spark is."
He gave me an arch look as if to say he sure couldn't get anything by me. "The essential spark isn't easy to pin down in terms of your DNA," he told me. "It's an openness to the other world. Some humans literally can't believe there are creatures in another world besides ours, creatures who have feelings and rights and beliefs and deserve to live their own lives. Humans who are born with the essential spark are born to experience or perform something wonderful, something amazing."