Autumn Bones (35 page)

We talked about improved home furnishings and the best places to salvage decent stuff at a good price—I had a lot of experience in that area. We talked about Lee’s offer to hire Jen on a more permanent basis as a caregiver to his mother, and whether or not dealing with a cantankerous old biddy was worth getting out of the Cassopolis family business of housekeeping. We confessed to the worst guilty pleasures in our television-watching lives—Sinclair’s was an outrageous Japanese game show neither of us had heard of, Jen’s dated all the way back to
Dawson’s Creek
, mine was Gordon Ramsay’s
Kitchen Nightmares
. There’s just something so cathartic about the furious way Gordon swears when he’s worked up.

Eventually, it became obvious that there was one major topic we were deliberately avoiding.

It was Sinclair who broached it. “So I’ve been thinking about Emmy,” he said in a casual tone. “And I wonder if maybe we aren’t overreacting a bit.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been talking it over with my dad,” he said. “It really reminded me that this is a family matter. And he wants to be involved,” he said. “He’d like a chance to talk to her before we assume the worst.” He took a drink of beer. “I’d like that, too.”

“Your sister issued a pretty clear ultimatum,” I said. “Does your dad think he can talk her out of it?”

Sinclair shrugged. “Like I said, he’d like the chance to try. It can’t hurt. No matter when she shows, he can be here in within the hour.”

I looked at Jen.

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “If I’ve learned anything this month, it’s that I know fuck-all about sisters.”

“See, here’s the thing,” I said slowly. “Your sister crossed a line when she went after me. I’m not just some girl, hell-spawn or not, you happened to be dating. I represent Hel’s authority in Pemkowet.”

Sinclair glanced at me. “You don’t think Hel would appreciate a peaceful resolution to this?”

“It’s not that.” I shook my head. “When I told Emmy to leave town, I also told her she wasn’t welcome back here. I can’t back down on that at the eleventh hour. I can’t totally abdicate
my
authority.”

“No one’s asking you to.” He looked away, picking absently at the label on his beer bottle. Jen murmured something about getting another beer and made a discreet exit. “I’m just asking for a little time for my father and me to negotiate with her before we send in the cavalry. Is that so unreasonable?”

I sighed. “I guess not. But I do think I should at least be there as an official presence. And I want the, um, cavalry in shouting distance.”

“Deal!” Sinclair said promptly.

“Why the change of heart?” I asked him. “Was it just talking to your dad?”

“Mostly.” He took another pull on his beer. “With him on board, I really do think it might be our best chance of talking Emmy out of doing something foolish. But do you remember me saying that magic was more powerful here in Pemkowet?” I nodded. There was a rustling in the overgrown patch of wildflowers along the fence at the back of the yard. A chicory fairy’s head poked over the top, her blue hair—if you could call it that—looking like a chicory-flower-shaped cap. “Hey!” Sinclair smiled. “Quit spying, you.” Reaching down, he picked up an acorn that had fallen onto the deck from the big oak in his neighbor’s yard and shied it at the fairy. She dodged it with a high-pitched trilling giggle, translucent wings blurring like a hummingbird’s, then blew him a kiss and vanished in a puff of glittery dust.

I’m telling you, those fucking fairies really love Sinclair.

“So you’re afraid Emmy’s going to be too strong to handle here?” I asked him. “Even for the whole coven?”

“Not exactly.” He frowned. “Island magic is unpredictable anyway. The coven asked me what would happen if Emmy tried to unleash a duppy here. Truth is, I don’t know. And I don’t want to take a chance on finding out. She might set loose more than she can handle.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t
know
,” Sinclair repeated. “I just know there could be repercussions. On a primordial level, everything’s connected.”

Catching sight of Jen hovering behind the screen door, I beckoned to her. “It’s okay. We’re just talking about what would happen if Emmy succeeded in turning a duppy loose in Pemkowet.”

Jen slid into her seat. “Well, that would
really
make Halloween more exciting this year.”

I laughed. “No kidding.”

The three of us sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping our beers.

“Hey, is that video rental place that no one ever goes to still open?” I asked Jen. “The one next to the dollar store?”

She shook her head. “It closed down. Why?”

“Because you still need sheets,” I said. “And this conversation’s given me a weird urge to watch
Ghostbusters
.”

Thirty-three

O
n the first day of October, the calendar on Lee’s awesome database sent me a reminder via pop-up, e-mail, and text message that Emmeline Palmer might be returning tomorrow, which would have been four weeks to the day from her ultimatum. Not that I needed the reminder, but it was nice to know it worked.

Anyway, no Emmeline the following day, so I guess we were going by the date. Accordingly, I received a second reminder two days later. I’d entered both dates into the calendar just in case.

It’s funny, but it never occurred to me that dear Emmy was being anything less than literal about her one-month deadline. An ordinary mundane mortal might say, “I’ll be back in a month,” meaning approximately a month’s time depending on flight schedules and availability. But numbers and units of time have significance in the eldritch community. A month meant a month.

And on the fourth of October, the early-warning system I’d bartered for paid off.

It was Mogwai who sensed it first. I was at home in my apartment working my way through the 2009 X-Files. I
should
have been practicing psychic shield drill, but it was already late afternoon and I was too jittery to concentrate. At a little after three thirty, Mogwai went from a sedate lump of cat dozing in my lap to a hissing, caterwauling wild thing flinging himself at the nearest window, claws splayed.

My heart skipped a beat. “What the hell, Mog?”

I went to the window to look. Across the park, the eldritch equivalent of a rugby scrum was headed our way—fairies, bogles, hobgoblins, and pixies, scrimmaging in a tangle of tattered wings and long, thorny limbs, all of them quarreling and shrieking at a decibel level barely within my range of hearing.

Leaving Mogwai behind, I clattered down the stairs just in time to see a trio of hobgoblins blocking like linebackers—okay, I’m mixing my sports metaphors, sue me—freeing a fourth to race free of the pack.

“Tuggle?” I peered at him as he gained the alley. Behind him, the scrum broke apart in disappointment. One lucky tourist snapped frantic photos before the disentangled fey winked out of visibility and the park abruptly sprouted a number of new shrubs and bushes, not to mention a pretty ring of poisonous mushrooms. “Is that you?”

The hobgoblin’s beady eyes gleamed. “The sister is back!” he announced triumphantly. “That makes us even for the sunglasses, right? I get a clean slate in your ledger?”

“Right,” I said. “So where is she now?”

Tuggle’s hooked nose twitched. “What do you mean
now
? She drove into town in a car like before. You said the first to tell you when,” he said in an accusatory tone. “You didn’t say to tell you
where
.”

“I thought it was—” I abandoned the thought in midsentence. “Never mind. Can you find out where she is now? Then I’ll owe you.”

“Ha!”
a familiar voice shrilled. Jojo popped into view, hovering, green arms no bigger around than pipe cleaners folded over her slight bosom. “The sorceress has purchased residence in the same inn she frequented prior,” she informed me. “
I
thought to keep watch there. And now thy debt to me is increased yet again.”

Echoing her stance, I folded my arms. “My offer was to Tuggle, not you.”

Her wings beat at an agitated pace and her luminous lavender eyes narrowed. “I assumed—”

I interrupted her. “You know what they say—”

Jojo hissed at me. In the window upstairs, Mogwai hissed back. Tuggle scowled and fingered his nose.

“Okay, okay!” I sighed. “Jojo, just keep an eye on her and stay out of sight. Let me know if she makes a move to go anywhere. For Sinclair’s sake. Do that and I’ll owe you. Deal?”

The fairy sniffed. “Thou hast a deal, scullion.”

Great.

Upstairs, I petted Mogwai until he calmed down. First, I called the chief to let him know everything was under control, and then I called Sinclair to set the coven’s phone tree in motion.

And then I changed my clothes and went to pay a call on dear Emmy herself.

Strolling over to Idlewild Inn, I felt surprisingly calm. To be honest, a good wardrobe helped. One of the other things I’d done in the intervening weeks was turn my mom loose on mine. She’d designed a simple jersey knit dress for me that had just the right amount of motion, drape, and cling, and actually worked with the broad belt from which
dauda-dagr
hung. In charcoal-gray with a pair of knee-high black patent leather boots—sophisticated, but practical, with just a one-inch heel—it made for a reasonably elegant working outfit. I felt grown-up and competent wearing it. Plus, it left my tail free.

The boots had been a splurge. Although I had to wait another two months for it, I was kind of counting on collecting that two hundred and forty dollars I’d turned in after I busted Tuggle and Company’s shell game.

I had to show my police ID to the desk clerk at the Idlewild before she agreed to ring Emmeline Palmer’s room and announce me as a visitor. Then I had to wait, idling in the Idlewild’s quasi-Victorian lobby until dear Emmy deigned to emerge.

Maybe it was all the training in psychic self-defense that I’d been doing, or maybe it was just that Emmeline wasn’t bothering to hide her light under the proverbial bushel, but this time I sensed her power as she glided into the lobby.

Her dark gaze swept over me, possibly taking in the upgraded wardrobe—Emmeline herself was wearing a beautifully cut pantsuit of taupe silk with a cream-colored blouse underneath—and then skated past me to look out the window at the street beyond. She seemed mildly surprised to see nothing out of the ordinary there.

“Have you come to escort me out of town?” she inquired. “I would have expected a posse. Isn’t that how you Americans do things?”

“Sinclair wants a chance for the two of you to talk things out reasonably,” I said. “And I’ve agreed to it.”

Her eyelids flickered. “He does? I wouldn’t have—” She stopped.

“Wouldn’t have what?” I asked suspiciously.

“I wouldn’t have thought he’d bother,” Emmeline said flatly. “My brother knows when my mind’s made up.”

“Yeah, well.” I shrugged. “Maybe he’s got a few things to say that you haven’t considered.” I wasn’t about to give her any hint that her father was going to be part of the parley.

She eyed me dubiously. “And you would have me believe you simply agreed to this?”

“I don’t care what you believe.” I eyed her in return. “What was
your
plan if I had come in with a posse?”

Emmeline didn’t answer, her face taking on a shuttered look.

“Right.” I handed her a slip of paper. “In case you don’t have it, here’s Sinclair’s number. Give him a call and work out a time and place to meet on neutral territory.”

“No posse?” she asked.

“I’ll be there to observe,” I said. “And the posse will be close at hand. But you’ll have a chance to talk. It’s more than I would have given you.”

It was a good exit line, so I took it, leaving Emmeline standing in the lobby without a response.

I’m not going to lie—that part felt satisfying. There was a stirring in the hydrangea bushes alongside the inn’s front door as I passed, and Jojo peeked out to give me a grim-faced thumbs-up.

Half an hour later, I was feeling a lot less complacent.

“You agreed to
what
?” I shouted into my phone at Sinclair. “To meet
where
? Are you serious? The
graveyard
? At freakin’
sundown
?”

“Emmy called on her right to have the dead bear witness on her behalf,” he said, as though it were the most logical thing in the world. “It was either that or agree to meet her with no witnesses of my own.”

“Uh, no!” I could feel the air around me tightening, and I tamped down my temper. “She doesn’t get to dictate the terms, Sinclair. We do.”

“Look, you agreed to let me set this up, Daisy.” There was a faint note of impatience in his voice. “She invoked a protocol. I accepted a compromise. Would you rather I’d agreed to meet her alone?”

“No,” I said. “I’d rather you hadn’t agreed to meet her at duppy ground zero. I mean, that’s what a cemetery is, right?”

There was a clicking sound on the other end of the phone as Sinclair shook his head, beaded dreads clattering. “Only if you want to catch ’em newly dead,” he said. “I checked the obituaries; no one’s died in Pemkowet in the past week. No wandering souls around. Anyway, I’m not worried about her catching duppies, just unleashing one. And if she decides to unleash a duppy she’s already caught, it won’t matter where we are. Trust me—Emmy’s just grandstanding. She probably thinks it will scare you,” he added.

Beneath my charcoal-gray knit jersey dress, my tail swished back and forth. “Don’t goad me.”

Sinclair gave a brief chuckle. “Sorry.”

“You’re
sure
?” I pressed him. “What does Casimir say? What about your dad? Is he on his way?”

“Casimir said the coven will only gain strength from making a stand on hallowed ground,” he said. “And my father should be arriving in about ten minutes. Okay?”

I sighed. “Okay.”

After I got off the phone with Sinclair, I called Stefan to inform him that I needed a posse. I mean, we’d talked about it before, so he was expecting my call. He just wasn’t expecting me to call it a posse.