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one who was doing the dying. I’d save that question for later.
    “Yes. Her share of the house. Her car. Though I already had one.” For some reason, Claude was looking self-conscious. And guilty. Why on earth would he look guilty?
    “How do you ride in it?” I asked, sidetracked. “Since fairies have such issues with iron?”
    “I wear the invisible gloves over exposed skin,” he said. “I put them on after every shower. And I’ve built up a little more tolerance with every decade of living in the human world.”
    I returned to the letter. “There may be more I can do for you. I will let you know. Claudine left you a gift.”
    “Oh, Claudine left me something, too? What?” I looked up at Claude, who didn’t look exactly pleased. I think he hadn’t known the contents of the letter for certain. If Niall hadn’t revealed Claudine’s legacy, Claude might not have. Fairies don’t lie, but they don’t always tell all the truth, either.
    “She left you the money in her bank account,” he said, resigned. “It contains her wages from the department store and her share of the income from the clubs.”
    “Aw . . . that was so nice of her.” I blinked a couple of times. I tried not to touch my savings account, and my checking account wasn’t too healthy because I’d missed a lot of work recently. Plus, my tips had suffered because I’d been so down. Smiling waitresses make more than sad waitresses.
    I could sure use a few hundred dollars. Maybe I could buy some new clothes, and I really needed a new toilet in the hall bathroom. “How do you do a transfer like that?”
    “You’ll get a check from Mr. Cataliades. He is handling the estate.”
    Mr. Cataliades—if he had a first name, I’d never heard it—was a lawyer, and he was also (mostly) a demon. He handled the human legal affairs of many supernaturals in Louisiana. I felt subtly better when Claude said his name, because I knew Mr. Cataliades had no bone to pick with me.
    Well, I had to make up my mind about Claude’s housemate proposal.
    “Let me make a phone call,” I said, and pointed to the coffeepot. “If you need some more, I can make some. Are you hungry?”
    Claude shook his head.
    “Then after I call Amelia, you and I need to have a little chitchat.” I went to the phone in my bedroom. Amelia was an earlier riser than me, because my job kept me up late. She answered her cell phone on the second ring. “Sookie,” she said, and she didn’t sound as gloomy as I’d anticipated. “What’s up?”
    I couldn’t think of any casual way to lead into my question. “My cousin would like to stay here for a while,” I said. “He could use the bedroom across from mine, but if he stays upstairs, we’d each have a little more privacy. If you’re coming back anytime soon, of course he’ll go on and put his stuff in the downstairs bedroom. I just didn’t want you to come back to find someone sleeping in your bed.”
    There was a long silence. I braced myself.
    “Sookie,” she said, “I love you. You know that. And I loved living with you. It was a godsend to have somewhere to go after that thing with Bob. But right now I’m stuck in New Orleans for a while. I’m just . . . in the middle of a lot of stuff.”
    I’d expected this, but it was still a tough moment. I hadn’t really expected her to come back. I’d hoped she’d heal faster in New Orleans—and it was true she hadn’t mentioned Tray. It sounded like more than grieving was going on. “You’re okay?”
    “I am,” she said. “And I’ve been training with Octavia some more.” Octavia, her mentor in witchcraft, had returned to New Orleans with her long-lost love. “Also, I finally got . . . judged. I’ve got to pay a penalty for—you know—the thing with Bob.”
    “The thing with Bob” was Amelia’s way of referring to accidentally turning her lover into a cat. Octavia had returned Bob to his human form, but naturally Bob hadn’t been happy with Amelia, and