Table of Contents
Ace Books by Charlaine Harris
The Sookie Stackhouse Novels
DEAD UNTIL DARK
LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS
CLUB DEAD
DEAD TO THE WORLD
DEAD AS A DOORNAIL
DEFINITELY DEAD
ALL TOGETHER DEAD
FROM DEAD TO WORSE
DEAD AND GONE
DEAD IN THE FAMILY
DEAD RECKONING
A TOUCH OF DEAD: SOOKIE STACKHOUSE,
THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES
Ace Anthologies Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner
MANY BLOODY RETURNS
WOLFSBANE AND MISTLETOE
DEATHS EXCELLENT VACATION
Berkley Prime Crime Books by Charlaine Harris
SWEET AND DEADLY
A SECRET RAGE
The Harper Connelly Mysteries
GRAVE SIGHT
GRAVE SURPRISE
AN ICE COLD GRAVE
GRAVE SECRET
The Lily Bard Mysteries
SHAKESPEARES LANDLORD
SHAKESPEARES CHAMPION
SHAKESPEARES CHRISTMAS
SHAKESPEARES TROLLOP
SHAKESPEARES COUNSELOR
The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries
REAL MURDERS
A BONE TO PICK
THREE BEDROOMS, ONE CORPSE
THE JULIUS HOUSE
DEAD OVER HEELS
A FOOL AND HIS HONEY
LAST SCENE ALIVE
POPPY DONE TO DEATH
Berkley Prime Crime Anthologies Edited by Charlaine Harris
CRIMES BY MOONLIGHT
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions. ACE and the A design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harris, Charlaine.
Dead reckoning : a Sookie Stackhouse novel / Charlaine Harris. p. cm.(Sookie Stackhouse / True blood ; 11)
eISBN : 978-1-101-51438-2
1. Stackhouse, Sookie (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. VampiresFiction.
3. WerewolvesFiction. I. Title.
PS3558.A6427D433 2011
813.54dc22
2010054261
http://us.penguingroup.com
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Baileyd
I have to dedicate this book to
the memory of my mother.
She would not have thought it strange
to have an urban fantasy novel dedicated to her.
She was my biggest fan and my most faithful reader.
There was so much to admire about my mother.
I miss her every day.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am afraid Ill skip someone this time around, because I am fortunate enough to have a lot of great help as I work on these books. Let me thank my assistant and best friend, Paula Woldan, first and foremost, for allowing me the peace of mind to work without worry; my friends and readers Toni L. P. Kelner and Dana Cameron, who help me focus on the important aspects of the work at hand; Victoria Koski, who tries to keep the huge world of Sookie in order; and my agent, Joshua Bilmes, and my editor, Ginjer Buchanan, who work so hard to keep my professional train on the tracks. For this book, I had the excellent advice of Ellen Dugan, writer, mother, and witch.
Chapter 1
The attic had been kept locked until the day after my grandmother died. Id found her key and opened it that awful day to look for her wedding dress, having the crazy idea she should be buried in it. Id taken one step inside and then turned and walked out, leaving the door unsecured behind me.
Now, two years later, I pushed that door open again. The hinges creaked as ominously as if it were midnight on Halloween instead of a sunny Wednesday morning in late May. The broad floorboards protested under my feet as I stepped over the threshold. There were dark shapes all around me, and a very faint musty odorthe smell of old things long forgotten.
When the second story had been added to the original Stackhouse home decades before, the new floor had been divided into bedrooms, but perhaps a third of it had been relegated to storage space after the largest generation of Stackhouses had thinned out. Since Jason and I had come to live with my grandparents after our parents had died, the attic door had been kept locked. Gran hadnt wanted to clean up after us if we decided the attic was a great place to play.
Now I owned the house, and the key was on a ribbon around my neck. There were only three Stackhouse descendantsJason, me, and my deceased cousin Hadleys son, a little boy named Hunter.
I waved my hand around in the shadowy gloom to find the hanging chain, grasped it, and pulled. An overhead bulb illuminated decades of family castoffs.
Cousin Claude and Great-Uncle Dermot stepped in behind me. Dermot exhaled so loudly it was almost a snort. Claude looked grim. I was sure he was regretting his offer to help me clean out the attic. But I wasnt going to let my cousin off the hook, not when there was another able-bodied male available to help. For now, Dermot went where Claude went, so I had two for the price of one. I couldnt predict how long the situation would hold. Id suddenly realized that morning that soon it would be too hot to spend time in the upstairs room. The window unit my friend Amelia had installed in one of the bedrooms kept the living spaces tolerable, but of course wed never wasted money putting one in the attic.
How shall we go about this? Dermot asked. He was blond and Claude was dark; they looked like gorgeous bookends. Id asked Claude once how old he was, to find he had only the vaguest idea. The fae dont keep track of time the same way we do, but Claude was at least a century older than me. He was a kid compared to Dermot; my great-uncle thought he was seven hundred years my senior. Not a wrinkle, not a gray hair, not a droop anywhere, on either of them.
Since they were much more fairy than meI was only one-eighthwe all seemed to be about the same age, our late twenties. But that would change in a few years. I would look older than my ancient kin. Though Dermot looked very like my brother, Jason, Id realized the day before that Jason had crows-feet at the corners of his eyes. Dermot might not ever show even that token of aging.
