Autumn Bones

Ten

I backtracked along the dock to see about refunding the actual money to the hobgoblins’ marks, but the crowd had already dispersed. Unless the marks had checked their wallets, they probably didn’t realize they’d been ripped off yet.

So I swung by the police station to log my time and fill out a report for the X-Files, leaving the money I’d retrieved in the desk clerk’s keeping in case anyone came to claim it. At the risk of courting avarice, I hoped no one did. What can I say? Working irregular hours on a part-time basis, I was always short of cash. I’d collected two hundred and forty dollars from Tuggle, and if no one claimed it in three months, it was mine.

Upon returning to my apartment, I found my sunglasses placed neatly on the doorstep in the alley, each lens cracked into a perfect spiderweb. That’s what you get for messing around with hobgoblins; and I’d taken it easy on them.

“Ha ha,” I said aloud to thin air. “Very funny.” It got me more peculiar glances from a trio of middle-aged ladies passing by, their arms laden with shopping bags, but the rhododendrons lining the park rustled, sounding distinctly like a snicker.

Upstairs, I discovered that Mogwai had gotten up onto the kitchen counter. Based on the mess and the sticky pawprints, he’d explored the bowl of wet ingredients before knocking the bowl of dry ingredients onto the kitchen floor and dashing in a panic out his escape hatch on the screened porch.

At least the chocolate chips were safe. I sighed, dumped the ingredients, and cleaned up the mess.

By the time I finished, the urge to bake was a distant memory. I spent the remainder of the afternoon with my battered old laptop, looking at images of shields online and practicing the visualization Stefan had tried to teach me. It probably didn’t help that I took a break every ten minutes to trek into the kitchen for a handful of chocolate chips. And okay, yes, I also searched for information on obeah. There really wasn’t a lot out there, at least not a lot that looked credible. I jotted down a couple of obscure out-of-print book titles I came across, resolving to pursue it later.

I gave up in time to freshen my makeup, change my clothes—a black linen sheath dress, my classic fallback—and meet Sinclair at Lumière at seven o’clock.

Since it was only a few blocks away, I walked. Sinclair was waiting for me on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, his touring bicycle chained to the wrought-iron fence that hemmed the patio.

Oh, crap. I was a terrible girlfriend. Sinclair’s place was a couple miles north on the rural highway and he didn’t have a car, just the tour bus and the bike, which he used for transportation when he wasn’t working. Hence, those Tour de France–worthy thighs I mentioned earlier.

He smiled at me. “Hey, girl! There you are.”

“I’m so sorry!” I said in dismay. “I should have picked you up—”

“Daisy—”

“I just wasn’t thinking! You should have reminded—”

“Daisy!” Sinclair raised his voice. I shut up. He held out a single red rose. “This is a date. A romantic date. No way I was going to let you drive. Okay?”

“Okay.” I accepted the rose, hiding my face in it to conceal the fact that I was blushing a little. No one had ever given me a rose before. I peeked over it at Sinclair. He was wearing a fitted black T-shirt that showed off his torso, neatly creased khakis, and a pair of huarache sandals. Upscale casual. It looked good on him. “You look nice,” I said. “Did you bike down here wearing that?”

“Nah.” He grinned. “Spare clothes are in the saddlebag. I changed in the bathroom. You look great, too.” He crooked his arm. “Ready, sistah?”

Although I don’t have anything to compare it to, I’m pretty sure that as potentially awkward post-hookup dates go, this one was close to perfect. The hostess seated us on the patio near the gently splashing fountain. It was an intimate space, and the surrounding buildings blocked the light of the lowering sun, giving us a jump on candlelit ambience. The music of Édith Piaf was piped in at the exact right level to enhance the French bistro atmosphere without overpowering it.

From the first time we’d met, small talk had come easily to Sinclair and me. There was an affinity between us. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were both only children raised by single parents coming from adverse supernatural circumstances, although it’s not like I’d known that until just the other day. Anyway, I was glad to find that the easy connection was still there, that the new level of physical intimacy between us just took it to a different, more charged level. We held hands atop the table and played footsy under it. We pored over the wine list and pooled our limited knowledge of French wines. We talked about favorite movies, an inexhaustible topic, over salad and bread. We exchanged stories about our respective days over salmon almondine (me) and coquilles St. Jacques (Sinclair), debating his prospects for running a scaled-back tour in the coming fall and winter months, the antics of vengeful hobgoblins, the depths of Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy’s crush, and exactly who the hell St. Jacques was and what the hell he had to do with scallops.

I thought about asking Sinclair back to my place, which I hadn’t done yet. This whole boyfriend–romantic date thing was awfully seductive. Based on the steady heat in his eyes, he was thinking about it, too.

But . . . yeah. There was a pretty big elephant on the patio with us. And every time I tried not to think about it, I did.

“It’s killing you, isn’t it?” Sinclair asked me over dessert. “Not asking about it.”

I winced. “Is it that obvious?”

“Not really, no.” He leaned back in his chair, cocking his head. “But I know you just well enough to be able to tell.”

“Do you blame me?” I met his gaze.

“No.” Sinclair gave me a rueful look. “I truly don’t.”

I looked down at the table, my spoon toying with the ramekin of chocolate mousse we were sharing. I know, you’d think I’d had enough of chocolate today, but you’d be wrong. “I guess it’s just that I’ve been really up-front with you.” I kept my voice low. “You, not so much.”

“Look, Daisy.” Reaching across the table, he took my hands in his, spoon handle and all. “For a long time I didn’t have a choice in the matter. My father sent me back to my mother one month out of every summer. It was part of their . . . agreement. When I turned eighteen, I got to decide for myself. I haven’t been back to the island since, even though . . .” He fell silent a moment. “Well, I haven’t. I put it behind me.”

“Things don’t always stay where we put them,” I said softly.

“No, I know.” Sinclair squeezed my hands, his gaze earnest. “But can we leave it there for just this weekend? Let’s enjoy tonight and tomorrow. Things in town are going to slow down after this, and we’ve got all fall and winter to talk about it.”

My stomach did a flip-flop. He made it sound like he was in this for the long haul, which both delighted and, yeah, terrified me. “Promise?”

“Yeah.” His strong thumbs rubbed the backs of my hands. “I promise.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Did you happen to pack a toothbrush along with a change of clothes?”

“Maybe.” Sinclair smiled. “Does that question mean what I think it does?”

I glanced out toward the darkening street. “Well, I’d hate to think of you biking down the highway at night.”

“Oh, I’ve got good lights on my bike,” he said with a straight face. “Don’t go to any worry on that account, girl.”

“Fine.” I withdrew my hands from his and folded them on the table. “Would you like to come over to my apartment?”

He grinned. “Love to.”

After finishing dessert and paying the tab, we strolled slowly back to the apartment, Sinclair walking his bike alongside me. There were a lot of people out, and most of them smiled at us. Maybe a few of them recognized Sinclair from his tour, but mostly it seemed like they were smiling because we looked like a young, happy, attractive couple having a fun night out on the town. And okay, maybe we were too old to do the hands-in-each-other’s-back-pockets thing, but I have to admit, for the first time in my life, I got what it felt like to be one of the cool couples.

Sinclair was right, I decided. It would be stupid not to enjoy the moment for what it was.

It felt strange to have him in my apartment, but a good kind of strange. The place was modestly furnished and decorated, but throughout my childhood my mom and I had gotten good at salvaging and rehabbing stuff from thrift stores, yard sales, and, yes, even Dumpsters, and I thought it looked pretty decent. After checking in vain for Mogwai, I gave Sinclair the tour—living room, kitchen, screened porch, bedroom, and bath—then left him to poke around while I found a bud vase for my rose and poured us each a few inches of single-malt scotch, my one mature indulgence.

In the living room, Sinclair was examining my music collection, the neat array of CDs I’d never gotten around to digitizing. “Thanks,” he said absently when I handed him a glass. “So you really do like the blues, huh?”

I’d told him that on our first date. “Why would I make that up?”

“Yeah, well . . .” He looked amused and a little apologetic. “Chalk it up to shit white girls say to impress a brother. Which is funny, because I know fuck-all about the blues. But you’ve got quite a collection.”

“Yeah.” I took a sip of scotch. “It belonged to a guy my mom dated for a while. A jazz bass player. He left it to me.”

“He took off?”

“No.” I shook my head. “He was killed in a car accident. It’s okay,” I added, forestalling his sympathy. “I mean, it’s not okay, but it was twelve years ago. He was a good guy. It turns out the blues calm me down, especially the female vocalists. He helped me figure it out.”

“Must have been a good guy to recognize this would mean so much to a kid,” Sinclair mused. “Play me something? One of your favorites?”

Feeling self-conscious, I fussed over my choice. Of course, now that he’d mentioned it, my immediate impulse was to pick something out of the pop culture mainstream, something like Ma Rainey’s “Deep Moaning Blues,” that would establish my blues credentials. But I didn’t want to be that girl, and if Sinclair really knew fuck-all about the blues, there was no point, so I went with something obvious instead.

Strings swelled in a simple, familiar arrangement, paving the way for Etta James’s effortlessly powerful vocals as she sang with impassioned tenderness about how her lonely days were over now that her love had come at last.

Okay, I really hadn’t thought about the implications of the lyrics. Way to go, Daise.

“Ah . . . don’t read too much into it,” I said hurriedly. “It’s a classic, that’s all. You know, she just passed away a couple of years ago. Etta James, that is.”

“Daisy.” Sinclair set down his glass on a bookshelf. “It’s okay. It’s just a song.”

Out of habit, I tucked my tail between my legs, clamping it tight as his hands curved around my waist and pulled me close to him, just like I’d done at every high school dance I’d attended, at every nightclub I’d ever danced in. And it may seem like a small, silly thing, but it was a moment of pure bliss to realize I didn’t have to.

I unfurled my tail and slid my arms around Sinclair’s neck, gazing up at him as we swayed slowly together. He lowered his head to kiss me, tasting of scotch tinged with a faint hint of chocolate, while Etta sang in the background.

Hands down, most romantic evening ever. Way better than a funky satyr booty call. Although that had had its merits, too. Just thinking about it, I felt my temperature rise a few degrees. But this time I wasn’t going to be the one to make the first move. I’d wait for Sinclair to do it.

I didn’t have to wait long.

The song ended, and Sinclair tilted his head toward the bedroom with an inquiring look. “Shall we adjourn?”

I smiled up at him. “Love to.”