Note: This story is told from multiple points of view. The chapter title will reveal that POV. Keep your eye on the title to avoid confusion! Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Lover Lay Down

Amelia

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Just lay your head on the pillow and close your eyes. Close your eyes and you'll drift off. It will just happen. Like…well, not like magic. You know, magic would make this so much easier. No! No, Amelia, you need to learn how to sleep on your own. Okay, maybe if I meditate? Maybe…

I adjusted myself on the bed, crossing my legs under my ass. I couldn't pull off that yoga lotus move. How do women do that kind of thing, anyway? I can get one foot up, but the other one just lays there all helpless and hopeless and sad. And then, of course, my toes fall asleep. That just messes up my concentration. Pins and needles in your big toe…yeah, that's no fun. What was I doing? Oh right, meditating.

Clear your mind. You will not think about Bob sitting on your pillow and purring. Wow, he really made a much better cat than a person. Oh come on, Amelia, like you wouldn't be grumpy if you'd been shitting in an enclosed plastic box for a month. Maybe Sookie would agree to get a new kitten? Every witch needs a good kitten. Didn't Sookie tell me she used to have one? I wonder what happened to it. Oh…oh right, cat murder. Poor thing. Poor Sookie. Anyway, if we get a new cat, we should adopt it from the shelter. Those poor kitties shouldn't have to grow up in four by four cages. What was I doing? Oh right, trying to meditate. Oh yeah, that's going well.

Well maybe this is the best way to clear out the mind, by going over all the things that are bugging me. What's next? The new regime. You know, before I met Sookie Stackhouse, I never cared much about vampire politics. Hadley never really mentioned the politics before. She just came and went with the queen, and I rarely heard a peep out of her. But with Sookie? Sookie's in deeper than…than something really deep. I mean, that girl is up to her ass in vampire politics. Mm, of course, if I liked my men cold-blooded and pale skinned, I wouldn't mind exchanging vampire politics for a few nights in Eric Northman's bed. Yum. Oh yum. That man really brings out the straight girl in me. I wonder if they're actually sleeping together anymore. I've heard that vampires are really, really great in the sack. Pam…well, we're getting there.

Well, now that I'm horny. No, no, you're meditating, not masturbating! Why is this so difficult? I couldn't feel sleepy right now if I tried! I wish I was one of those girls that could get themselves off and then just pass out. That would solve *all* of my problems. All of them. Every. Last. One.

I wonder how Dad is doing with the new regime. Not that I care what Dad does, it's his business. Okay, I care. I give a damn about what Copley Carmichael does. But I'll never admit it to him! The minute he knows, I know he'll just swoop down into my life again and try to wreck stuff. I don't want to be in the family business, Dad! How many times do I have to tell you!?

This isn't working.

I got up and stretched. My pajamas were bunched up around my thighs, so I pushed them down with the arches of my feet. I deliberately squirmed as if Bob would follow me down off the bed, but of course he didn't. Because he wasn't there anymore. Sad face. As soon as I was up, I wandered down the stairs. The boards creaked under my feet. With every step, I prayed that I wouldn't wake Sookie. It was just after three, and she'd probably fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. She was so lucky! If I made it to the kitchen, I could make a little more noise.

Hot cocoa? Check. Furniture polish? Check. Clean rags? Check. I went into the dining room (that we never used) and cleaned like I had never cleaned before. I rubbed every nook and cranny of the ancient maple chairs. I dusted, and then vacuumed the upholstery. I wiped down the table, grabbed the silver polish, and sat down on the floor to polish every single spoon, knife, fork, and dish in the cabinet. When the sun rose over the horizon, I was still polishing.

"Okay, Amelia," I said out loud to the quiet house. "You can't go on like this. Eventually you will run out of things to clean. Then you'll end up in one of those internet chat rooms with robotic sex hounds and creepy stalkers. This has got to stop!" I got up off the floor and put away the last of the clean silver. Sookie had wandered into the kitchen and she looked up at me. I waved, put away the cocoa mug I had washed hours ago, and stomped back up the stairs to the second story of the old farmhouse.

I slumped onto the bed and pulled out my laptop. With a few clicks of the mouse, I was surfing the web. I pulled up Google and began typing. Sleeping spells. I need to sleep. The net was full of them of course, but I needed one that wouldn't put me to sleep immediately or knock me out forever or make me sleep during the day and keep me up all night long.

While I browsed the net forums, I flicked through my spell book. I knew there would be nothing in there, but maybe if I combined a charm from the book with a spell from the net, I could make the magic portable. Maybe I could stick my nose in a jar when I was ready for bed or something.

"Ooh, here we go," I exclaimed to the empty room. The spell was called, "Lovers of Sleep" according to the translation of the text. Perfect. I was a lover of sleep. Hell, who *doesn't* love sleep? Although, looking at the ingredients, I needed to head out to the occult shop. Hm. That involved some driving to Shreveport.

"But I don't want to drive to Shreveport!"

Screw it, I could make do.

Most of the day dawdled by while I collected sands and ground powders and boiled water. I dug around in the depths of my trunk and pulled out a white beeswax candle. It was true that the spell called for a black candle, and sure, that made a difference, but darn it, I was not driving a half hour to Shreveport for black wax! Maybe I could just, I don't know, paint it black. No one would ever know the difference.

I found some water colors in Sookie's linen closet (though why they were there is beyond me) and painted the candle black. It looked sort of sloppy and dirty when it had dried, but that didn't matter. No biggie.

Downstairs, the back door opened and shut again. Sookie was home from work. Perfect timing! There was only one more thing I needed, and it wasn't something I could buy at the store. Octavia was, unfortunately, out of town with my former coven doing some sort of elaborate ritual that I wasn't invited to attend. Not that I'm bitter… Sookie was the closest thing I had to a real coven, and while that wasn't very close, she did have a little magic in her. I skipped back down the stairs, a little elated by the promise of forty winks, and ran into Sookie as she walked out of her bedroom.

She was wearing a really pretty sundress that floated around her knees and ankles like it was made of water, or maybe air. Sookie isn't my type at all (and she's like a sister to me), but lordy, she looked good enough to eat. I grinned at her.

"Hey Sookie!" Okay, maybe a little too perky.

"There's no way. I have to go to Shreveport anyway."

Darn it, she'd already read my mind. Okay, so I didn't mind so much. I love it when she does that!

"Come on, Sookie," I begged. "It'll only take a couple of minutes. The sun has barely set! Please, please, please…"

She sighed at me, ho hummed a little, and inclined her head. That was the closest thing I was getting to a yes. I took her by the hand and marched her up the stairs to the second floor.

"Okay," I began, sitting on the floor. I pointed to a spot opposite me and she sat. "So what I need you to do is take this," I handed her a pinch of black sand, "and sprinkle it over the flame at the same time that I do. Then we both say 'lover, lay down' and you blow the candle out. Got it?"

"Lover, lay down?" She raised an eyebrow at me.

"Yeah." What's wrong with that?

"Fine." She frowned at me, but she held up her handful of sand and waited for me to do the incantation.

I murmured the spell, mostly in Latin, which I admit isn't a language I actually know. Then we both held up our handfuls of sand and sprinkled them over the little orange flame on my slightly grayish candle. We whispered the words at the same time, lover lay down, and Sookie bent down to blow out the candle.

And then Sookie Stackhouse fell backward against my chest of drawers, hit her head with a deafening and startling crashed, and was instantly asleep.

Oh shit!

"Sookie!" I yelped and got up from the floor. I shimmied over to her and shook her by the shoulders. She didn't rouse. Oh crap! Crap crap crap! I had read in the witch forums about this new phenomenon called an OSM, an Oh Shit Moment. This was one of those. Oh shit oh shit oh shit!

"Do over!" I yelled at my little grayish white candle, like that would make a difference. It didn't. I glanced back at the spell, but it was all Greek to me (okay, Latin, but same difference!). I grabbed Sookie again and shook her. Her head bobbed in a way that scared me, like the way a rag doll's head flops around. Gross. She wouldn't wake up, and I didn't want to make the bump on her head worse. Oh ew, was that blood on my underwear drawer? Oh damn it, I'd broken my landlady!

I grabbed the phone.

"Octavia!" I shrieked into the receiver as soon as it picked up. There was some mumbling, grumbling, dead air, and then Octavia had retrieved the phone.

"Amelia, I am in the middle of a ritual. What do you want?"

"I broke Sookie!"

"You…what?"

"Sookie! I was doing a sleeping spell because I can't sleep and now Sookie is asleep! Help!"

"Okay, calm down. What was the spell?"

I explained the spell with as much detail as I could remember. I told her about my painted candle, my ingredients, the black sand, and the words at the end.

"Lover lay down?" She confirmed. "That's the end of the spell?"

"Yeah! It's called Lovers of Sleep!"

"That's Sleep for Lovers, Amelia! Oh Great Goddess. Look, there's only one way to break the spell."

"Well what is it?!"

"True love's kiss," Octavia said firmly.

"Are you kidding me?"

"No."

"True love's kiss? What, like Snow White?"

"Nearly. This is a kiss of mutual love, mutual true love. I will work on a counter spell, but I cannot return until after the ritual. Sookie has a great many admirers. I would give them a call if I were you."

"There has to be another way…" I murmured.

"Amelia! Listen to me. Do NOT perform a counter-spell without my explicit permission. You are forbidden from performing further magics without assistance. I will see you in a week's time with a counter-spell. Call Sookie's admirers. That is an order!"

"Yes, Ma'am," I sighed into the phone.