Autumn Bones (6 page)

Sinclair gave me a lazy grin, lying back to grab my hips and pull me atop him, my hair spilling around his face. “Definitely.”

Somewhere outside the bedroom door, the bass player for the Mamma Jammers struck up a
bom-chicka-wow-wow
groove. Apparently, that wasn’t his amplifier I’d accidentally blown. I don’t know if it was meant to be funny or thoughtful, but either way, it was effective.

So, yeah.

Bom-chicka-wow-wow
.

Afterward, exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks. My eyelids felt like they weighed a hundred pounds apiece, and the thought of trying to make polite conversation with Sinclair’s friends made me want to hibernate.

“Is it okay if I just crash here?” I mumbled into the pillow. “For a little while anyway?”

“Yeah, of course.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, Sinclair fished for his shorts. “I promised you pancakes, didn’t I?” He stood. “I’m just going to go out and explain things to the guys.”

I cracked open one eye to peer at him. “What are you going to tell them?”

He shrugged. “Guess I’ll go with the truth.”

“Oh.”

I wanted to stay awake long enough to find out how
that
went, but all I remember is hearing a brief, low murmur of male voices before I was spiraling down into sleep, the memory of
bom-chicka-wow-wo
w sex with Sinclair blurring with the memory of kissing (and yes, okay, grinding on) Cody, the satyr’s grin, and the shocking jolt of hunger in Stefan’s gaze. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I heard a deep, resonant chuckle of pure demonic amusement and entertained the fleeting thought that if my father, Belphegor, was pleased, I definitely shouldn’t have done what I did tonight.

Screw it. I’d feel guilty in the morning.

And if real life was like the movies, I would wake up in the morning to realize I’d blown things with a nice guy I actually liked by rushing into something neither of us was ready for, just like Kristy McNichol in
Little Darlings
. Which, in case you’re not familiar with it, is an old movie where Kristy and Tatum O’Neal make a bet at summer camp about who’s going to be the first to cash in her v-card, only they don’t call it that because . . . well, it’s an old movie. Like, an eighties movie before John Hughes made eighties movies a thing. When I was growing up, Mom used movies to teach me important life lessons, and she used the movies she knew best. Also, the movies that we could rent for free from the Pemkowet District Library, because we didn’t have a lot of money.

Anyway, I should have felt awful and this should have been a disaster. In fact, I woke to early-morning sunlight and Sinclair sprawled in the bed next to me, one arm flung carelessly over me. And I felt pretty damn good.

I held still for a moment, listening for the echo of demonic laughter. Nope. Either I’d imagined it, or dear old Dad was amused by something more complicated than the fact that his half-human daughter had thrown caution to the winds and given in to licentious behavior. Which . . . wasn’t entirely reassuring, but I’d take it.

“Hey.” Sinclair roused himself sleepily. His head was on the pillow beside mine, and his dark eyes gazed into mine at close proximity. Like, so close I almost felt cross-eyed looking back at him. “You okay, Daisy?”

I wasn’t used to this kind of intimacy. All of the sexual encounters I’d had had ultimately ended . . . well, awkwardly. This morning-after business was new to me.

“Yeah.” I tried the sentiment on for size. It fit. “You?”

“Uh-huh.”

My stomach rumbled.

Sinclair laughed. “Come on. Let’s make some breakfast.”

Okay, time to suck it up and take the walk of shame. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d endured in my life. I’d grown up in a small town where everyone knew my story, and I was used to curious stares. At least Sinclair’s friends were polite and didn’t make any jokes about what was obviously a total booty call or ask if I filed my horns down like Hellboy. I got that a lot back in high school when the first movie came out. I kept my tail tucked and did my best to make a good impression, memorizing their names and asking them questions about themselves.

They seemed to be good guys, laid-back and easygoing. Over a mountainous stack of pancakes—Sinclair hadn’t lied, he made them from scratch with buttermilk, and they were probably the best pancakes I’d ever had—I learned that Roddy, the drummer, was also of Jamaican origin. His mother had a Caribbean restaurant and his uncle owned the custom auto shop where Sinclair’s dad worked.

Under the guise of making small talk, I asked him why his family had left Jamaica, secretly hoping to gain some insight into Sinclair’s situation.

“Poverty,” he said simply. “Unless you have the right connections, there are no real job opportunities, no way to change your lot in life.”

“Is that why your dad left?” I asked Sinclair.

“Dad knew Roddy’s uncle Joseph.” He set a platter of bacon on the table. “He knew there would be a good job here for him.”

Huh. As an answer to a direct yes-or-no question went, that was sort of a nonanswer. “Why Kalamazoo?” I asked curiously, reaching for a piece of bacon. “I mean . . . why Michigan at all?”

As it transpired, apparently Kalamazoo, Michigan, has been host for many years to a world-class reggae festival, one of the largest in the United States. Hence, the long-standing connection to Jamaica from whence many of the festival’s headliner acts have come. I felt a little silly for not knowing this about a city only an hour away.

“Damn, girl! You need to get out of Pemkowet more often,” Ben, the bass player, teased.

“I guess,” I said. “But there’s no underworld there.”

Oops. A little silence settled over the crowded table in the breakfast nook. “You mean . . . hell?” Roddy inquired cautiously.

I shook my head. “No, I mean an actual physical underworld that exists on the mundane plane, ruled by a deity of a non-apex faith.”

“That’s what allows an eldritch community to exist and thrive.” Sinclair rescued me, sliding into the seat beside me. “Here in Pemkowet, they call it Little Niflheim. Right, Daisy?”

I nodded. Little Niflheim was where Hel held court, beneath the shifting sand dunes that had buried the lumber town of Singapore—the very dunes said to be haunted by the ghost of Talman “Tall Man” Brannigan, the lumber baron responsible for the deforestation that caused the dunes to swallow Singapore. Tall Man Brannigan, who slaughtered almost his entire family in a fit of madness and despair.

It was a typical urban legend. No one I knew had ever seen the Tall Man’s ghost, but everyone knew someone who knew someone whose cousin or brother claimed to have done so—and then died after the sighting. But Little Niflheim was real. I’d been there on a number of occasions.

“I’ve seen the world tree,” Sinclair added, cutting into his pancakes and stabbing a forkful. “Yggdrasil II.”

For the next half hour, he entertained the Mamma Jammers with the kind of patter he used to entertain the tourists, a blend of history, conjecture, and fact, all extolling the wonders of Pemkowet.

“Speaking of . . .” Sinclair glanced at the watch on his wrist. “It’s almost showtime. I’ve got to get ready for the first tour of the day.”

The Mamma Jammers packed their gear and beat an efficient retreat, thanking him for the gig and the place to crash.

In the kitchen, I helped him do a quick washup of the breakfast dishes. My body still felt languid and relaxed, but my mind was buzzing. “Hey, Sinclair?”

He shot me a sidelong look. “Uh-huh?”

I scrubbed diligently, declining to meet his gaze. “How come you never talk about your mom?”

More silence.

I snuck a sideways peek of my own. Sinclair reached over to turn off the water faucet. “My mother is a very powerful woman, Daisy.”

I remembered what Cody had told me. “Oh, yeah? Is she an obeah woman?”

“She’s a judge.” His voice was flat. I felt a powerful surge of white-girl guilt. Yeah, given the first opportunity, that’s where I’d gone. Ooga-booga island voodoo. But then Sinclair’s full lips compressed to a tight line. “And yeah, she’s an obeah woman,” he admitted. “A very, very powerful one. Dangerous, too. It’s in our bloodline. If you really want to know, that’s why my father left Jamaica. My mother worked some shady magic. In her legal dealings and her personal dealings, too. He had his doubts about her intentions. He felt he might have been compromised in their relationship and didn’t want me further exposed to it. That’s why we left. And that’s pretty much the whole story. I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t like to think about it. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Sinclair leaned over to kiss me. “Cool.” He glanced at his watch again. “Look, I really do have to run. Call me later?”

“You bet.”

Six

I
finished the
dishes and let myself out, locking the door behind me. It was a bright, sunny morning, and being alone in broad daylight in yesterday’s clothes—which were probably tainted with satyr-funk—I felt more than a little slutty.

Which, I have to admit, wasn’t entirely a bad feeling. Except maybe for that guilty thrill I felt when I thought about what had happened with Cody at the nightclub, not to mention the latent shock of discovering that Sinclair’s mother was an obeah woman, whatever that meant.

So, yeah. It’s complicated.

Heading for my Honda, I went over a mental checklist of Things to Do Today. What I really wanted to do, first and foremost, was call my best friend, Jen, and give her the 411 on everything that had just gone down. In a close second place, I wanted to do some research into exactly what an obeah man or an obeah woman was. I mean, obviously we were talking about some sort of magic worker, but beyond that, I was clueless. Not a lot of call to study up on Caribbean lore here in the Midwest. Casimir, aka the Fabulous Casimir, might be able to help; he was the head witch in Pemkowet’s local coven. Or my old teacher Mr. Leary, who knew more about eldritch history and folklore around the world than anyone I knew.

Of course, what I
had
to do first was head down to the station and fill out a report on the orgy for the Pemkowet X-Files. Checking my phone, I saw there were voice mails from Chief Bryant and, oh, gah, Amanda Brooks at the PVB.

Okay, those could wait. After all, I was reasonably certain that Lurine had the satyr situation under control. If all hell had broken loose again, Cody knew where to find me. Before I did anything, I was damn well going to go home, take a shower, and change my clothes.

I was reaching for the driver’s-side door handle when something sharp stung the back of my neck. “Ow!” I brushed frantically at the spot, thinking a bee had stung me, but nothing was there. “What the hell?”

It stung me again.

“Goddammit!” Spinning around, I waved my arms in the air. “Seriously, what the . . . oh, crap.”

Ten feet away, beside a scraggly juniper bush, a joe-pye weed fairy with green skin and clumps of pale purple hair piled atop her head hovered in the air. Her face was contorted with jealous rage, her translucent wings were a blur, and she was carrying some kind of sling-type weapon made of woven grass.

“Hey, Jojo.” I held up both hands in a peaceful gesture. “Look, I was just leaving.”

“Foul, sluttish hoyden!” she shrilled, whirling the sling and whipping another pebble at me. “Leave him be!”

I dodged. “I really don’t—”

“Hell-spawned, urchin-snouted doxy!” She flung another, her tip-tilted eyes bright with tears and fury. “I hate you!”

Um, yeah. So ever since we struck our bargain with the Oak King to have the smallest and sparkliest of his subjects make regularly scheduled appearances along the tour route, it turns out the fairies kind of
like
Sinclair. This one in particular, whom we’d nicknamed Jojo, had a wicked crush on him. Usually Jojo confined herself to skulking around and spying on him, but apparently I’d crossed some sort of invisible line by spending the night with him.

“Look, I’m sorry!” I said in frustration. “I know how you feel. Really, I do. But he’s just not that into you, okay?”

“Mewling, milk-livered strumpet!” Baring her sharp teeth, she wound up like a teeny-tiny major league pitcher to loose another pebble.

Yanking open the car door, I ducked inside the Honda. Pebbles rattled against the window as I stuck the key in the ignition and got the car started, throwing it into reverse and backing out of the driveway.

So much for the idea of Sinclair Palmer as a nice, normal human boyfriend. First I find out his absent mother’s the gavel-wielding Jamaican equivalent of a voodoo queen and then I get attacked by a jealous fairy.

Oh, well.

I drove to downtown Pemkowet, circling the blocks until I found a parking spot, always a challenge during tourist season and especially on the last holiday weekend of the summer. My apartment was located on the second story of an old building alongside a public park in a prime location above Mrs. Browne’s Olde World Bakery. Mogwai, the big calico tomcat I’d more or less adopted, was stalking chipmunks under the rhododendrons in the park and didn’t deign to come when I called him. Upstairs, I filled his dish anyway. There was a torn screen on the back porch that served as a cat door so he could come or go as he pleased during the summer months. We’d renegotiate come winter.

I allowed myself the luxury of showering and changing before I listened to my voice mail. The chief’s just said, “Daisy. Call me.”

Amanda Brooks’s message was considerably longer and delivered at a pitch of barely contained fury that rivaled Jojo the jealous fairy’s. Apparently she’d already gotten wind of the incident. I held the phone a foot away from my ear, wincing as I listened, then called the chief. I had a feeling he’d gotten an earful from her, too.

I was right.

“So is there any way you could have prevented this?” he asked me without preamble.

“No, sir,” I said. “I didn’t even know it was a possibility. Amanda Brooks is on the warpath, isn’t she?”

“Uh-huh. Now that you know, is there anything you can do to prevent it from happening again?”