Poison Fruit (3 page)

“Outcast,” I said automatically.

She blinked at me. “You want to put it on repeat?”

I blinked back at her. “What?”

“Outkast?”

Oh, right. “Not the band,” I clarified. “I mean Stefan’s kind of Outcast.”

To be fair, I can’t blame Jen for using the term
ghoul
. Everyone does it. I haven’t entirely broken the habit myself, though I try to be respectful.

“
Outcast
, right. Sorry.” Jen paused. “Did you ever find out what he did to get . . . Outcast?”

Here’s the thing about the Outcast. The name, which is the name they call themselves, refers to the fact that they’re formerly mortal human beings who’ve been cast out of heaven and hell alike and condemned to an eternal existence on the mortal plane, forced to subsist on the emotions of other humans.

Hence, the reputation as ghouls.

I admit, I’d found ghouls—the Outcast—pretty damn creepy myself before Stefan Ludovic came to town. If I’ve changed my tune, it’s in part because I’ve gotten to know him, and realized that you don’t get kicked out of heaven and hell without one heck of a tragic backstory. I’m not exactly sure how it works—even the Outcast themselves aren’t certain—but essentially, a human soul becomes Outcast by dying in a state of commingled sin and faith and transcendently powerful emotion, which creates some sort of theological loophole that thrusts them back into their bodies in the mortal plane . . . over and over and over again.

Oh, they can die, all right; but they come back. Cast out again. It happens in the space of a heartbeat. I’ve seen it and it’s profoundly unnerving. As far as I know, there are only two ways one of the Outcast can end his or her existence. One is to be starved of human emotions for a prolonged and agonizing period of time, until they consume their own essence and fade into the void of nonbeing.

The other is if I kill them, because I just so happen to possess a magic dagger that only I can wield and that’s capable of killing even the
immortal undead. It was given to me by Hel herself, and its name is
dauda-dagr
, which means “death-day” in Old Norse. Right now, it was in a hidden sheath in the custom-made messenger bag hanging from my coatrack. So far, I’d only had to kill two ghouls and dispatch one zombie skeleton with it.

“Daisy!” Jen snapped her fingers at me. “Daise?”

“Um, yeah.” I poured myself another shot of tequila and downed it without bothering with the salt or lime. “Stefan’s uncle killed his father and married his mother. He—”

“Wait.” She interrupted me. “Isn’t that the plot—”

“Of
Hamlet
,” I agreed. “Only Stefan wasn’t indecisive. He killed his uncle outright, and his uncle’s guards stabbed him to death.”

Jen shivered. “Damn.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Honor thy father and thy mother,” she murmured. “That’s the element of faith, right?”

“Right.”

We sat in silence with that for a moment. On the stereo, Snoop Dogg advised us to drop it like it’s hot.

“I think you should do it.” Jen poured another shot for both of us. “One date. What do you have to lose?”

I held up my shot glass and squinted at the tequila it held. “Well, there is the small matter of one of the Norns warning me that the fate of the world might hinge on the choices I make.”

She did her shot with salt and lime. “Do you
really
think the Norn was talking about your love life?”

“Probably not,” I admitted.

“So?”

I pointed at her. “I can’t believe you of all people would suggest I date an eldritch predator.” That was because Jen’s sister Bethany had spent eight years as a blood-slut in thrall to a vampire. Okay, she proved to be a surprisingly badass vampire in her own right when he finally turned her, but for eight long years, no one would have guessed it. Plus, her blood-bonded vampire mate was an insufferable prat.

“I know, I know! But . . .” Jen hesitated. “Daise, sometimes I forget
that you’re
not
human. If all you really wanted was a nice human guy—”

“I’d still be dating Sinclair,” I finished for her, downing my shot.

She nodded. “You know what brought it home to me? When you told me that first time with Cody, he was a little . . . wolfy.”

“Sorry.” I grimaced. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“I know.” Jen refilled our shot glasses, her shiny black hair falling forward. She tucked it behind her ears. “I’m just thinking, you’ve spent your whole life trying to repress your inner nature. Maybe it’s time to explore it.”

Okay, this definitely wasn’t a conversation we’d be having sober. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Jen was right. I
had
spent my entire life trying to contain my outsize emotions, especially anger and anything linked to the Seven Deadlies. I had an array of visualization techniques that my mom began teaching me at an early age. It kept me safe—safe from the prejudices of mundane humans, safe from the temptation scenarios my father, Belphegor, whispered to me when my unruly temper weakened the Inviolate Wall dividing us.

Too safe, maybe? After all, I’d recently indulged in some serious lust without any apocalyptic consequences. And when I’d nearly gotten myself killed using the pneuma as a weapon, it was my anger that had turned the tide.

On the other hand, unleashing Armageddon really wasn’t something you want to take a chance on.

“You’re the one I count on to keep me grounded,” I said to Jen. “This is not exactly helpful.”

She shrugged. “Look, the Norn said to trust your heart, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But you don’t know what your heart wants.” Jen pushed the full shot glass toward me. “How the hell else are you supposed to find out?”

I picked up the shot. “You have a point.”

“And you know what else?” She was warming to the topic. “Stefan’s
interested
in you, Daise. I don’t know . . . I don’t know exactly what that means for a ghoul, um, Outcast, and a hell-spawn, but . . . he’s
being upfront about it, you know? He’s not dicking you around. What did he say when he kissed you?”

“He said he couldn’t offer me eternity,” I murmured, “but he could offer me the here and now.”

“Right!” Jen gestured with her shot glass, tequila slopping over the sides. “He’s not gonna sneak around on the down-low like Cody. He’s owning it.”

“He’s sexy and he knows it,” I said, paraphrasing the not exactly immortal lyrics of LMFAO.

For some reason—well, the obvious reason—this struck us both as hysterically funny, and we spent a solid minute laughing our fucking asses off. Which, under the circumstances, was appropriate.

“Oh, my God.” Jen wiped away tears of laughter. “You know what, though? He really is.”

“Mm-hmm.” That was undeniable.

“You know what
else
?” She fumbled for the saltshaker. “I think Stefan actually respects you, Daise. Unlike some werewolves.”

“Cody respects me!” I protested.

“Oh, fuck Cody!” Jen waved the saltshaker. “Because Cody . . . Cody . . . Look, it’s not like plenty of couples don’t struggle with fertility issues. He’s willing to write you off just because you can’t have his were-puppies. Who does that?”

“Members of a dwindling species fighting for their survival,” I said. “Plus, there’s that whole hunting-beneath-the-full-moon thing I could never share with him.”

Jen made a dismissive sound. “Yeah, and if I was dating a guy who ran marathons, that’s not something we’d ever share, no matter how much he went on about the endorphin high.”

Again, she had a point. I’d never thought about it that way.

“So call Stefan.” Seeing me weaken, Jen put down the saltshaker and looked around for my phone. “Here. Call him.”

“No.” I folded my arms. “I am
not
drunk-dialing a six-hundred-year-old immortal Bohemian knight.”

“Text him?”

I hesitated. “No.”

“You want to,” Jen said. “You
so
want to. Fine. I’ll do it for you.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Her thumbs danced over my phone’s screen. “Too late.”

“Jen!” I pleaded.

She put the phone out of my reach. “You’ll thank me in the morning, Daisy. Trust me on this one.”

After that, it gets a little blurry.

I’m pretty sure that Jen and I reached the maudlin stage of drunk, bawling along to a Kelly Clarkson song on our old playlist and declaring our undying friendship for the umpteenth time. I have a vague memory of the two of us digging into a carton of Breyers cookies and cream with a pair of spoons, talking about whether or not Lee Hastings would ever summon the courage to ask Jen out, and an even vaguer memory of ransacking the linen closet and dumping an armful of clean sheets and a blanket onto the futon for Jen before staggering to my own bed, where I collapsed in an unconscious heap.

All in all, a successful night.

Three

I
awoke with a hangover.

Not just any hangover, but an epic hangover—the kind of hangover they make movies about.

Unfortunately, I
did
remember the thing I’d rather have forgotten about last night, and it jolted me out of bed and in search of my phone. And when I found it, it was even worse than I’d feared.

“Jennifer Mary Cassopolis, what the fuck were you thinking?” I shouted at the figure buried beneath a pile of linens on my futon.

“Huh?” The pile stirred.

“The text,” I said grimly. “The text you sent Stefan!”

“What?” Jen’s head poked out of the covers. Her eyes were bleary and she looked as hungover as I felt. “Why?”

I showed her the message she’d sent on my phone’s screen.
UR HAWTT!! LETS DO THIS!!!

“Oh, shit!” Jen made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. “Daise, I’m sorry. Is there any coffee?”

I glared at her. “Seriously?”

She sat upright, pushing the hair out of her face. “I’m sorry! It seemed funny at the time.”

“He’s a six-hundred-year-old immortal!” I said. “You sent him a text from
my
phone that sounded like it came from a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl!”

“Look, just explain it to him. If he’s got a sense of humor, he’ll understand,” Jen said. “And if he doesn’t, you might as well find out now and avoid wasting your time . . . Daisy, what are you doing?”

I’d disconnected her phone from my stereo and was composing a message on it. “I’m returning the favor.” Jen made a futile, blanket-encumbered lunge in my direction, which I dodged handily. “There.” I finished and handed her the phone.

“Want to get a cup of coffee sometime this week?” she read aloud, then made a face. “You sent that to
Lee
? I just texted
Skeletor
for a date?”

Back in the day, I would have been surprised to find myself considering Lee a friend. He’d been a tall, painfully thin—hence the nickname—geeky kid who’d spent all his time hanging with a couple of other geeky kids, playing
World of Warcraft
. But things change. Oh, Lee was still tall and too thin, but he’d parlayed his love of video games and genius with computers into a successful career out in Seattle. Now he was back in Pemkowet, doing consulting work and caring for his ailing mother. And since Jen had given him a makeover last month, he was actually looking halfway decent.

Plus, he’d developed an awesome database that would let me keep track of the eldritch population in town, and he was doing some research on the side into a matter that Hel had asked me to look into.

“It’s just coffee,” I said to Jen. “And at least I had the decency to make you sound like an adult.”

“Yeah, and I’ll sound like a jerk if I try to explain it was just a joke,” she grumbled. “Speaking of coffee—seriously, is there any?”

“I’ll make some.”

“Thanks.” Jen began extricating herself from the tangle of sheets and blankets. “Hey, Daise? Did Stefan reply? You didn’t say.”

In my mortification, I’d forgotten to look. Now I did, and what I saw made me frown. “Yeah, he did.”

“Well?”

“He says he needs to talk to me,” I said. “And I should stop by the Wheelhouse today.” Jen and I exchanged a look. “Do you think he changed his mind? Do you think he got sick of waiting for me to make up mine?”

Jen shook her head. “I don’t think someone who’s been alive for six hundred years loses patience easily.”

I wasn’t so sure. That text might have been enough to remind Stefan of the vast gap in age and experience that lay between us and convince him to change his mind.

Maybe.

On the other hand, thanks to the fact that I’d let him feed on my emotions last summer, Stefan had a direct pipeline into what I was feeling—a fact that I conveniently managed to ignore most of the time. At least that meant he’d know I was a little messed up last night. And today, for that matter. With the weight of my hangover crushing down on me, coffee seemed like a very good idea.

I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

In the kitchen, Jen shuffled up behind me, wrapped in a blanket. “I’m really sorry about the text, Daise.” She rested her chin on my shoulder as I poured water into the coffeemaker. “Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I blame the playlist,” I said. “We wouldn’t have been acting like teenagers if you’d left Billie Holiday on.”

Jen grimaced. “I blame the tequila.”

“That, too.” I turned to face her. “But you laid some righteous truths on me, too.”

She gave me a wry smile. “Well, I hope I didn’t undo whatever good it did.”

“Eh.” I waved a dismissive hand. “You’re right about that, too. Screw him if he can’t take a joke.”

Half an hour later, fortified by coffee, we drove in separate cars to the Sit’n Sip; separate cars because I planned to stop by the Wheelhouse later and, no matter how hot she thought Stefan was, Jen had no intention of walking into a biker bar filled with ghouls; and the Sit’n Sip because when you have a towering hangover in Pemkowet, that’s where
you go for a gloriously greasy breakfast. I’m talking the equivalent of a Denny’s Grand Slam, scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns, plus a side of biscuits and sausage gravy. It sounds disgustingly excessive—okay, it
is
disgustingly excessive, but there’s nothing better for putting ballast in your belly to offset that queasy, acidic, roiling sensation.