Autumn Bones (34 page)

I glanced in Cody’s direction. “Shh.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s a werewolf, duh.” Bethany dusted herself off. A flaky flurry of burned skin settled around her. “I should have figured that out in high school. Oh, but you’re not allowed to gossip about any of this.” She pointed at her mother. “Or I’ll be back. And the next time, I’ll be angry.”

Lee gave a dry laugh. “This wasn’t angry?”

“Everyone’s still breathing, aren’t they?” She jerked her chin at her father. “Including him. Is he gonna be okay?”

Cody straightened. “Yeah. No thanks to you.” He ran one hand through his hair and looked soberly at her. “Listen, I’m not your enemy. And you’ve got to realize things are different now. For the rest of your existence, you’re just one slipup away from villagers with pitchforks and torches. Okay?”

Bethany shrugged. “Whatever.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. But this had to be done.” Ignoring Cody, she pinned her father with a flat stare. “You
do
understand me, don’t you, old man?”

He gritted his teeth. “Yes.”

“Good.”

At Cody’s suggestion, I got Lee onto his feet and into the living room while Cody went to retrieve the first-aid kit from the cruiser. Jen was in the kitchen making coffee because that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re trying to reestablish a sense of normalcy and you have no idea what else to do, and Brandon was playing some kind of first-person shooter military video game with a twelve-year-old’s determined intensity, blocking out the reality of the world around him in which his newly risen vampire sister had very nearly killed his father.

“Korengal Valley Mission?”
Lee asked, settling onto the couch beside him with a wince, still cradling his arm.

Brandon glanced at him. “Yeah.”

He smiled. “I might have a few tips for you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Brandon had the mother lode of insider advice on how to advance in
Korengal Valley Mission
, Cody had Lee’s broken forearm splinted and taped to his body, and Bethany was ready to go back to the House of Shadows.

“Give me a lift?” she asked her sister. “You don’t have to come in, but I’d really rather not call Geoffrey. Or steal your car.”

Hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, Jen gave her a slow, measuring look. “Beth, do you really expect me to believe you’ve been planning this for eight years?”

Her sister shrugged. “Well, not
exactly
.”

Jen said nothing.

The television emitted staccato bursts of gunfire. Lee and Brandon bent their heads together, murmuring. Cody’s portable police radio crackled and he stepped outside to handle the call.

“I was and I wasn’t,” Bethany said softly. “I mean . . . that’s what I meant to happen at the beginning. That’s how it started, that’s what I went looking for. I got lost along the way. A
lot
lost. And I’m sorry. I never meant to abandon you. I didn’t. I never meant to leave you alone to deal with all their shit and take care of Brandon. But I’m back now. I was weak for a while, okay? Maybe for a long while, but now I’m strong. You can move out, get a life. Quit worrying about Brandon. I’ll make sure nothing bad ever happens to him.”

Damn. If you’d told me that after eight years of being a sniveling, clingy blood-slut, Bethany Cassopolis would turn out to be one badass vampire, I wouldn’t have believed it. Aside from a few flakes of charred skin clinging to her glossy black hair, she even looked good, already healed from the blast of artificial sunlight.

“What do you think, Bran?” Jen asked her brother.

“About Bethany?” He looked up from his video game console, his face stony. “Are you kidding? I think it’s straight up
epic
.”

Okay, so apparently I was wrong about the blocking-out thing, and Brandon was just fine with his new vampire sister. I couldn’t blame him.

“Yeah?” Jen tousled his hair. “Okay, then. Are you going to be okay on your own while I run Bethany back out to the House of Shadows?” she asked him reluctantly. “Daisy and Officer Fairfax have to take Skelet—” She caught herself. “Lee, I mean Lee, to the emergency room.”

“It’s all right,” Lee said ruefully. “I don’t mind. People I work with in Seattle think it’s cool. They call me Skel all the time.”

“
I
mind,” Jen said in a firm tone. “Lee, you’re kind of the big hero of the night. I think that deserves a proper name.”

He blushed. Hmm, interesting. “I can stay with Brandon until you get back,” he offered. “It doesn’t hurt that bad.”

Jen eyed him. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Your hand’s starting to look kinda puffy.”

“Brandon can ride with us,” Bethany suggested, a little too languidly for her sister’s liking. “I bet he’d love to visit the House of Shadows.”

Jen shut that one down fast. “Um . . . no.”

“I’m okay staying by myself,” Brandon said, not sounding entirely convinced of it. “It’s not like I need a
babysitter
.”

Cody reentered the room. “Ready to go?” he asked Lee. “I’ve got the go-ahead to run you up to the ER in Appeldoorn. Daise, can you pick him up? I’ll drop you off to get your car.”

Gah! In the movies, no one ever has to deal with the logistics of transportation in the aftermath of a fight. They just cut away to the next good scene. “Why don’t you go ahead?” I said. “It’s going to take a while to get Lee patched up. Jen can give me a lift to pick up my car after she drops Bethany off, and Brandon can ride along with us.”

Thankfully, that settled it. Everyone took off on their respective errands, and I plunked down on the couch next to Brandon to watch him play
Korengal Valley Mission
. I couldn’t help but be uncomfortably aware of his parents in the bedroom nearby, his mother in a state of shock, his father with bruises darkening around his throat. I didn’t have a whole lot of pity for them—I’d known the family for too long, and Mrs. Cassopolis had run into far too many doorways, if you know what I mean—but under the circumstances, it was hard not to feel
something
for them. After all, I was only human.

Well, half, anyway. I wondered if I’d feel differently if I invoked my birthright, if I’d undergo a complete personality transformation like Bethany.

The thought made me shiver a little. Since her original personality— at least since I’d known her—hadn’t been all that great, it had worked out okay for her, but the thought of losing my human compassion and decency was pretty creepy.

So was the fact that I was even contemplating it, come to think of it. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I’d choked . . .
again
. That made it twice that I’d failed to take out a vampire in mid-throttle. And I wasn’t ready to make the argument that aside from Lee’s broken arm, it had turned out for the best. I mean, sure, I was glad I hadn’t had to kill my best friend’s newly undead sister, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that unleashing patricidal vampire Bethany on the world was a great outcome.

And always in the back of my mind was the awareness that the date of Emmeline Palmer’s return was creeping closer and closer.

I hadn’t lost too much face in our first encounter, but that was due to dumb luck and Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy’s jealousy. The truth is that dear Emmy totally got the drop on me, and I’d panicked.

I couldn’t let that happen again. This time, there would be witnesses. Casimir’s coven was on standby, and I had every intention of calling in whatever additional backup I thought would be useful, whether it was taking the chief up on his offer of mundane assistance from the department, calling in a marker with Stefan to have an army of Outcast escort Emmeline out of town, or hell, even brand-new badass vampire Bethany if it happened to go down after sunset. But ultimately, I was Hel’s liaison. No one else. However I did it, whatever it took to get the job done, protecting Sinclair and upholding Hel’s order was
my
responsibility. If I wanted to maintain any shred of authority in this town, I had to be tough, a hell of a lot tougher than I’d been so far.

I had to be strong. Ruthless.

Unhesitating.

Thirty-two

W
hen I was a kid,
it was the days of summer that slipped away too quickly, one lazy sunlit idyll blurring into the next, punctuated by the occasional excitement of a thunderstorm rolling across Lake Michigan.

September was the time when all of summer’s indolence ground to a screeching halt with the return to school, to being trapped behind a desk on a hard seat that bruised my tail no matter how much I tucked or squirmed, breathing in the scent of chalk dust, listening to teachers drone, flies buzzing against classroom windows, the minute hand on the clock inching along with agonizing slowness.

Funny how different things are when you’re an adult. This year, the remaining days of September fled.

It’s not like anything of note happened. I spent most of my time going through the X-Files, inputting data into the Pemkowet Ledger. It gave me a sense of satisfaction to see the database growing from a vague inkling of an idea into a useful, searchable tool. Plus, I was getting paid for doing the work.

I’m happy to say that I also helped Jen move out of her parents’ house. After a lot of soul-searching, several long talks with her brother, and a visit to Sinclair’s place to get a tour of his spare room and the battery of magical protections Casimir and his coven had implemented, she decided it was time. When I reminded her that dear Emmy’s return was just around the bend, she shrugged.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I plan on making myself scarce. But if that doesn’t work, right now I figure when it comes to hostile sorceresses, Sinclair’s is now officially the safest place in town.”

She had a point.

I
would
have spent time helping Mrs. Hastings, Lee’s mom. At the emergency room the night of Bethany’s rising, it turned out that Lee had a broken ulna. It was a simple fracture and the orthopedist on call assured him that he’d be fine after six weeks in a cast, but it meant that it was difficult for him to assist his mom with some of her household chores, which was his whole purpose in moving back to Pemkowet.

Of course, I volunteered, thinking that an elderly widow—actually, she was only in her late fifties, but she was one of those women who’d seemed old and crabby her entire life—half-crippled by rheumatoid arthritis would be grateful for the offer. I mean, you’d think so, right?

Not a chance.

She informed Lee in no uncertain terms that no spawn of Satan would ever darken her door and that he should have nothing further to do with me, and hinted broadly that he should move back into her house while his arm healed, which would make it easier for him to wait on her.

Lee refused in equally uncertain terms. Maybe he’d been a bit of a mama’s boy in high school, but no matter how strong a sense of filial duty she’d instilled in him, there was no way he was going to let himself slip back under her thumb.

No wonder he bought his own place. I found a solution by volunteering Jen in my stead, which turned out to be perfectly acceptable to Mrs. Hastings. Since Jen felt we all owed Lee for his successful artificial-sunlight intervention, she was amenable as long as I agreed to help her pack up her stuff.

Other than clothing, there wasn’t that much of it. Granted, the LeBaron had a big trunk, but come moving day, it only took us two trips.

“Oh, my God.” Jen stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the contents of her new room. “My life to date is pathetic.”

I perched on the edge of the sagging mattress. “At least it’s furnished.”

“I don’t have
sheets
.”

“We’ll get you sheets,” I said. “You can buy them at the dollar store now, remember? And socks. And underwear.”

It was an old joke in Pemkowet—you could buy a ten-thousand-dollar painting here, but there was no place to buy socks. Until the Dollar General opened on the outskirts of town a few years ago, it was true. Not a particularly funny joke if you grew up without a lot of money and had to worry about filling your tank with gas to drive to Appeldoorn to shop for sheets and underwear. There are downsides to living in a beautiful resort filled with boutiques and galleries.

Jen smiled reluctantly. “Probably pretty crappy sheets.”

“Probably.”

She sighed. “I should have done this years ago, shouldn’t I?”

I shrugged. “Jen, if you hadn’t been there when Brandon ran away to hide in the swamp earlier this summer, Meg Mucklebones might have eaten him. So who knows?” I paused. “He
has
promised not to do that again, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he’s okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “As much as he can be. Playing a lot of video games.” She smiled again, her expression softening. “He and some friends are working out some big pseudo-military strategy for the annual Easties vs. Townies Halloween battle. Something about an industrial-strength water-balloon launcher.”

I raised a fist. “Go, Easties.”

The front door opened and closed, and a few seconds later Sinclair poked his head into the spare bedroom, his dreads rattling faintly. A local glass artist who dabbled in talismans had made specially sized blue-and-white evil-eye beads for him. “Hey, roomie,” he said to Jen, hoisting a six-pack of beer. “Would you two care for a welcoming libation?”

“Sounds great.”

Okay, even though this was entirely my idea, I admit it, I felt a pang of jealousy. Sinclair looked good. He smelled good. Well, mostly he smelled like rosemary, which might just have been his weekly hair treatment but could have come from working in Warren Rogers’s nursery, which specialized in herbs and perennials.

Oh, well. I didn’t regret my decision, but I figured I was allowed to feel a little proprietary.

The weather had taken a turn for the warmer to usher out the month of September. The three of us sat on the back deck on rusty patio furniture, drinking our beers while Sinclair outlined the plans for the garden he intended to plant in the spring. It would be a combination of herbs for both magical and culinary purposes, a small but dense vegetable garden, a few perennials, and plenty of naturalized native species to beautify the place. He’d already gotten the go-ahead from his landlord.