Autumn Bones (16 page)

“Mmm.” He made a noncommittal sound. “What about the ghoul?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s a duppy?”

Again, Sinclair hesitated. “It’s . . . sort of like a ghost, only not a ghost. A spirit. A duppy’s what happens when someone dies and their earthly soul gets loose instead of going where it belongs.”

“Okay.”

“Sometimes they look like animals,” he said. “But mostly like dead people. Daisy, did my sister threaten to set a duppy on you?”

“Um . . . no?” At least I didn’t think so.

“Good.” He sounded relieved. “Look, let me talk to Emmy. She’s headstrong and she’s used to getting her own way. But if I ever do go back to the island, it will be on
my
terms, because
I
decided it, not because my sister decided it was time. I’ll tell her to leave you out of this, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “But as long as she’s here, I’m staying out of the way.”

“Fair enough.”

After a few more innocuous comments, we said good night and ended the call. I sat on the porch for a while longer, petting Mogwai and thinking about the conversation while the candles guttered into wax pools. On a Daisy-and-Sinclair basis, I felt good about it. I’d taken Lurine’s advice and cut him some slack. Other than dodging the whole ghoul issue, I thought I’d handled it pretty damn well from the standpoint of a supportive girlfriend, especially considering that the whole secret-twin-sister thing had just been sprung on me this morning.

As Hel’s liaison, I wasn’t so sure. Emmeline Palmer hadn’t just threatened me. She’d threatened my
town
. My territory, my turf, my responsibility.

I hoped that it was all just posturing, that dear Emmy would back down when Sinclair confronted her.

But if she didn’t . . .

“Bring it on, bitch,” I said aloud.

Okay, so I wasn’t entirely sure what
it
was or what I’d do about it if she did, but it felt good to say it.

Fifteen

I
awoke
with a splitting headache, an excruciating toothache, and blurred vision. And I panicked.

Here’s the thing: I don’t get sick. Ever. Oh, I’ve had headaches due to stress or fatigue, like the other night, and I found out the hard way that I can get hangovers, but I’ve never been
sick
. Never had the flu, the chicken pox, not even the common cold. Toothaches? I’d never even had a cavity. My mom’s theory is that it’s because my average body temperature runs higher than a normal human’s, around a hundred and five degrees. She thinks it kills the germs and bacteria. Maybe it’s even true, although I’ve never known a doctor to sign on to her theory.

So anyway, yeah, I freaked. First at the pain, which seemed to be simultaneously radiating from a molar on the right side of my jaw and pounding like a spike into my sinus cavity; second at the blurred vision.

That was the one that really got me. I pried myself gingerly out of bed, trying to hold my head as still as possible. In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face and into my eyes, blinking furiously and willing my vision to clear.

No luck.

Oh, crap
.

The small corner of my brain that wasn’t panicking went into damage-control mode. I didn’t know if I was having a stroke or an aneurysm or what, but I knew I needed help. And clothing. Hell if I was going to the emergency room in nothing but a tank top. I fumbled my way to the laundry hamper and pulled out yesterday’s clothes.

Okay, that would work. Sidling along the edge of my bed, I felt atop my nightstand until I found my phone, the shape of it familiar and comforting in my hand.

The problem was that I couldn’t make out the icons on the screen. And when I finally got to the keypad, through dint of trial and error, I couldn’t make out the numbers to call 911. Every time I tried to focus, they shifted and blurred. I kept pushing numbers I didn’t mean to, squinting in an agonized effort, unable to get to that magic combination. It was like a bad dream.

At some point I realized two things. One was that whatever the hell was happening to me, it wasn’t getting any worse. Oh, it was bad. My jaw was throbbing, my head was pounding, and I couldn’t see for shit, but I probably wasn’t dying.

The other was the first inkling of suspicion that whatever the hell was happening to me might not be medical in nature.

If you’re thinking I should have suspected that from the get-go, I’m not arguing. But it’s really, really hard to think straight when your skull feels like it’s being split open with a railroad spike and you can’t see.

And . . . I wasn’t sure what to do with that suspicion.

So instead I hoped like hell it was a medical issue and went through the whole trial-and-error bit to pull up my contacts on my phone. Elusive letters and numbers skittered across my vision, but if I concentrated like crazy, I could make out the contacts with photos assigned to them. Since I was kind of lax about that, there were only two, my mom and Jen. And while, on the one hand, I really wanted my mommy right about now, I also didn’t want to freak her out, so I jabbed at the screen until Jen’s contact came up.

“Hey, Daise.” She answered on the second ring. “What’s going on?” I was so relieved to hear her voice, I had to choke back an involuntary sob. “Daisy?” Jen’s voice sharpened. “What’s up?”

“Not sure,” I whispered. “Either I’m having an aneurysm or I’ve been hexed.”

“Are you serious? Jesus! Did you call 911?”

“No.” I closed my eyes. Blocking out the light helped a very little bit. “Can’t see to dial.”

“Okay, hang on. I’m coming to take you to the ER.”

“Wait, wait!” Now that my panic was ratcheting down a notch, the prospect of massive medical costs alarmed me. As a part-time employee, I didn’t have health insurance, which had never worried me that much because I never got sick. And I’d never had to explain the quirks of my hell-spawn physiognomy to unfamiliar doctors. They’d probably want to hospitalize me for my temperature alone. “I just . . . it really might be a hex, Jen. Or a migraine! What if it’s a migraine?”

“What if it’s
not
?” she asked with acerbity. “And by the way, why do you think it might be a hex?”

“Long story.” I cupped my right hand over my pulsating jaw. “I’ve got a toothache, too.”

“A
toothache
?”

“I know, I know! But seriously, it feels like someone’s trying to chisel it in half.”

“Okay, listen.” Jen’s tone was pragmatic. “It doesn’t sound like you’re dying. More like maybe you have an impacted wisdom tooth or something. Maybe you’re having a severe reaction because you never freakin’ get sick. Let me call Doc Howard and see if he can take a look at you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Call you back in a sec. Oh, and, Daise? If he can’t, I
am
taking you to the ER,” she warned me.

“Okay,” I repeated.

Within three minutes, Jen called me back to say Doc Howard would see me and she was on her way to pick me up. Within ten minutes, her ancient LeBaron convertible pulled into the alley. I grabbed my messenger bag, put on my hobgoblin-cracked sunglasses, and fumbled my way down the stairs, my head swimming with pain. Even with the sunglasses, the sunlight hit me like a ton of bricks. Closing my eyes again, I began feeling my way around the LeBaron to the passenger side.

“Jesus!” Jen got out of the car and steered me by the elbow. “You look like crap, Daise. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the ER?”

“Yeah.” I slid into the cracked vinyl seat. “I’m sure.”

“Are you aware that your sunglasses are broken?”

“Uh-huh.” I leaned my head against the headrest.

She put the car in gear. “Just checking. Now what the hell’s up with this hex business?”

I got the gist of the story out on the drive to the doctor’s office. Jen listened in disbelief, saving her commentary until after my appointment. I’d known Doc Howard since I was barely out of diapers. Even though I never got sick, Mom took me to the town doctor for all my regularly scheduled checkups. He took my temperature—which he pronounced Daisy-normal at a hundred and five—and blood pressure, listened to my heart, peered into my ears and eyes and throat with the bright-light scope thingy; or at least he did his best. It hurt so much I had a hard time keeping my eyes open during that part.

Bottom line, there was no sign of anything physically wrong with me, not even an impacted wisdom tooth.

Damn.

A part of me had been hoping for an impacted wisdom tooth.

“Daisy?” Doc Howard’s concerned face floated blurrily in my vision. “I’m going to write you a prescription for migraine medication and recommend that you make an appointment with your dentist as soon as possible just to be sure about that tooth. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

He scribbled on a prescription pad. “But if the headache and blurred vision continue for more than seventy-two hours, call me and I’ll refer you to Appeldoorn Community Hospital for a CT scan.”

I took the slip of paper. “Okay.”

“Have a lollipop,” Doc Howard said sympathetically, holding out a jar I remembered from my childhood. “It might help bring up your blood sugar level. Just be sure to eat something healthy when you get home.”

I tried to smile, but it hurt to move the muscles of my face. “Thanks, Doc.”

Then it was back out into the skull-shattering sunlight. Swear to God, I had no idea pain could be this fucking
painful
. My head felt like it was swollen to twice its normal size and misshapen, ballooning around the jackhammering agony in my jaw.

Bring it on, bitch
.

I had a feeling it had been brung.

“So what’s it going to be?” Jen asked me. “Are we going to the drugstore to get your prescription filled or are we going to go kick some obeah woman ass?”

If I could have laughed, I would have. “Drugstore. Right now, I couldn’t kick Stacey Brooks’s ass.”

Back in downtown Pemkowet, Jen double-parked outside the drugstore and came back with a vial of Imitrex, a bottle of water, and a pair of the darkest cheap sunglasses she could find. “Here.” She popped the lid on the vial and shook out a tablet, handing it to me. “The pharmacist said to take one now, and another in two hours if the migraine persists.”

“Thanks.” I cracked open the bottle of water to wash down the pill.

“What happens if this doesn’t work, Daise?” There was a worried note in her voice. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.” I switched my hobgoblin-cracked sunglasses for the new ones. “I need to lie down in a dark room and think about it.”

“Okay.”

Jen drove me home and insisted on staying with me while we waited to see if the meds kicked in. She went around the apartment and closed all the shades while I lay on the futon with my eyes closed and held a plastic bag full of ice against my jaw.

“Do you need me to call in to work for you?” she asked softly when the room was as dim as it was going to get.

“Not yet,” I murmured. “I’m not scheduled to go in until this afternoon. What about you? I don’t mean to keep you.”

“It’s okay, I didn’t have anything today but end-of-season cleanup on a couple of places that were just vacated.” Jen worked for the Cassopolis family business, cleaning houses and rental properties. “What about Sinclair? I mean, if this
is
obeah, he ought to know what to do about it, right? It’s his fucking sister that hexed you.”

“Probably.” It was easier to think while lying prone. “No, don’t call him. Not yet. I need to figure this out on my own.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s that working out for you so far?”

“Ha ha. If I call Sinclair, he’ll confront dear Emmy,” I said. “And I don’t want her thinking I needed her brother’s help to beat this.”

“Even if you do?” Jen sounded skeptical. “No offense, Daise, but isn’t pride one of the Seven Deadlies you’re supposed to worry about?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s not just pride. It’s about status, too. That’s a big deal in the eldritch community. I need to show Emmeline Palmer she can’t sail into Pemkowet and fuck with Hel’s liaison without consequences, which means I need to fix this before Sinclair hears about it.”

“How?”

“Good question.”

Now that I was past the panicking stage, my wits were working again. Slowly and painfully, but they were working. Option one: I could try to strong-arm Emmeline into unhexing me. Well, not me personally, not in this condition, but I could call on allies. The fact that Emmeline was wearing some kind of protective ward strong enough to make a two-hundred-year-old ghoul wary was an issue, but I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t dissuade oh, say, Lurine. No matter what mojo dear Emmy was packing, I doubted it was a match for an eldritch being with fond memories of the Bronze Age and the physical capability of crushing her to death one vertebra at the time. Or maybe Gus the ogre. He could always threaten to bash her over the head and eat her.

Of course, that also meant getting someone else to fight my battle. Which wasn’t entirely unappealing—delegating wisely is an important skill and dear Emmy ought to know that there was more to Pemkowet’s eldritch community than sparkly fairies and one brother-dating hell-spawn.

On the other hand, there was option two: I could get myself unhexed without the assistance of either of the Palmer Wonder Twins. It would require the Fabulous Casimir’s aid, but again, he was a legitimate ally.

Somewhere in a dark part of my mind, my father’s voice whispered to me that there was a third option, an option that was always an option. I could claim my birthright, and all the powers it included.

You have but to ask. . . .

I sighed, pushing the thought away. Okay, so it probably wasn’t a great idea to involve Lurine or Gus unless I was actually willing to let Emmeline come to grievous bodily harm, which I wasn’t. Or at least I was cognizant of the fact that to do so would be inappropriate in my role as Hel’s liaison.

So, decision made.

“Hey, Jen,” I said. “Let’s go see Casimir.”

“Are you sure?” She checked her phone. “It’s only been about half an hour since you took the meds.”