Autumn Bones

Eleven

“What the holy hell?”

“What?” Jolted awake, I sat upright, looking frantically for my phone, or dauda-dagr, or . . . I don’t know what. “What?”

“This . . . thing!” Sinclair was lying flat on his back beside me with Mogwai perched high on his chest, paws neatly tucked, purring contentedly as he gazed down at Sinclair with slitted eyes.

I laughed out loud. “I told you I had a cat!”

“That’s a cat?” He took a sharp breath, Mogwai rising obliviously with his chest. “More like a duppy.”

“A what?”

“Nothing.” He let out his breath in a sigh. “S’okay. Is he your familiar or something?”

I lifted Mogwai off Sinclair’s chest and set him on the bed between us. It was true that he was a pretty big cat, eighteen pounds and none of it fat, and according to the vet, male calicoes were a genetic rarity. Other than that, he seemed pretty normal. “Something, I guess. He likes you.”

“Good thing.” He eyed Mogwai, then reached out to give him a tentative scratch under the chin. “You startled me, bwai! Give me a chance to get to know you, eh?”

Glancing toward my bedroom window, I saw sunlight. All right, I had a sexy naked guy in my bed, but it was Labor Day in Pemkowet and I had an agenda. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going to make coffee, then run down to Mrs. Browne’s for a couple of cinnamon rolls. If you want to shower before we do the Bridge Walk, now’s your chance.”

Sinclair stretched, slow and leisurely, giving me a significant look. “Bet I’ve got a couple of hours before my first tour. You sure about this Bridge Walk?”

Um . . . no?

“Yes,” I said sternly. “You said you wanted the full-on experience, and this is a proud local tradition.” I poked him. “You’re not backing out on me, are you?”

He gave a good-natured laugh. “Nah.”

“Good.”

Forty minutes later, we were on our way, clean and fed and caffeinated. I’d offered to drive, but Sinclair wanted to bike home to pick up the tour bus, so after some debate I wound up riding perched on his bike seat while he stood on the pedals—which, I have to say, afforded me a nice view of his butt.

Okay, so the annual Labor Day Pemkowet Bridge Walk is sort of an elaborate joke. It was inspired by the annual Labor Day Mackinac Bridge Walk, which has been going on for, like, more than fifty years, and isn’t a joke. A little background for non-Michiganders: The Mackinac Bridge spans the straits between the upper and lower peninsulas—peninsulae? Mr. Leary would know—and at about five miles long, it’s one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Thousands of people do the Bridge Walk every year. It takes a couple of hours to make it across, after which you receive a certificate.

The bridge between Pemkowet and East Pemkowet is exactly zero point one nine miles long, and it takes about five minutes to walk it . . . after which you receive a certificate and an invitation to a pancake breakfast at the Masonic Lodge.

See, the thing is, it’s not just the eldritch community that makes Pemkowet a place where weird shit happens. It’s the people, the mundane people, too.

For example, we have a town crier. You know, the guy who shows up in a long wig and a frock coat, ringing a bell and doing the whole “Hear ye, hear ye!” thing. It’s not a paid or elected position or anything. There’s just a guy who does it.

And yep, there was the town crier, surrounded by a bunch of other people in period attire. Except for some prominent tattoos, they looked like they’d walked out of the nearest Renaissance faire. There were ladies from the Red Hat Society, people walking dogs, people pushing kids in strollers, people towing kids in little red wagons.

Sinclair was laughing. “This is crazy!”

I smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

Oh, and there was Stacey Brooks taking publicity photos for the PVB. I smiled even wider and gave her an obnoxious little finger wave, watching her scowl in reply and fight the urge to flash devil horns at me in public.

We lined up behind the wooden barricade, milling and chatting. Glancing over at the squad car that blocked the west end of the bridge, I saw Bart Mallick was on duty. Since I hadn’t been one of his favorite people before the whole Rainbow’s End incident, I didn’t bother to greet him, but I ran into my mom’s friend Sandra Sweddon, there with her daughter Terri, who was now Terri Dalton, and made a point of introducing Sinclair to them.

At nine o’clock, the town crier issued a proclamation announcing the start of the annual Pemkowet Bridge Walk. Everyone streamed around or over the barricade. About twenty yards in there was a guy holding a sign reading THE FAINT OF HEART SHOULD TURN BACK NOW!

“You know this is absurd, right?” Sinclair asked, walking his bike beside me.

“Uh-huh. Aren’t you glad you didn’t miss it?”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

At the halfway point, just under one tenth of a mile, the Pemkowet Historical Society had set up a refreshment station with Dixie cups of Gatorade. I took one for tradition’s sake, even though I think the stuff’s vile.

“Hey.” Sinclair downed his Gatorade and tossed the cup in the trash. He patted the handlebars of his bike. “Hop up. I’ll ride you the rest of the way.”

I gave him a dubious look. “You sure about that?”

Straddling his bike, he balanced on the pedals, making it stand upright and motionless, then went a few inches forward and backward before returning to perfect stillness. “Sure. C’mon, hop up.”

“Oh, fine.”

Yes, it was totally showing off, but you know what? It was fun. Sinclair rode as slowly as possible to keep pace with the walkers, weaving only a little with the added weight of me on the handlebars. The sun was shining and a slight breeze ruffled the surface of the river. It was a holiday and it felt like it.

“Did you really like that Etta James song I played for you?” I asked Sinclair over my shoulder.

“Yeah, I did.”

“We should go to the Bide-a-Wee Tavern tonight,” I said. “They have live jazz and blues, and there’s always a big bash for the end of the season. It’s mostly locals, too, since a lot of summer people and tourists leave this afternoon.”

“Sounds great.” The bike wobbled slightly. “Oops.”

“You’re sure?” I glanced back at him again. “I mean, we didn’t have plans or anything.”

“Hey, I made you sit through the Mamma Jammers. It’s only fair,” he said, then laughed at the expression on my face. “I’m kidding! It sounds like fun.”

“Okay. Call me when you get home, and I’ll pick you up.”

“Deal.”

We made it across the bridge. I hopped down from the handlebars, and Sinclair and I received our official certificates, Xeroxed copies of a form signed by the mayors of both Pemkowet and East Pemkowet.

“I’ll cherish it forever,” Sinclair teased me, stuffing his in the saddlebags of his bike. “Maybe I’ll start a scrapbook.”

“You do that.” I was distracted by the sight of Cody Fairfax standing beside a squad car at the east end of the bridge, where a line of vehicles was waiting for the barricade to be lifted. The sunlight brought out goldish glints in his bronze hair. My stomach tightened a bit. Cody didn’t usually work day shifts, but Chief Bryant liked to schedule an additional officer on duty during the holidays and Cody tried to pick up an extra shift around the full moon to compensate for lost time.

He was talking to a young woman in an impeccably tailored off-white linen business-casual suit, a short jacket nipped in at the waist, a hint of flair to the pant legs. Hey, as my mother’s daughter, I notice these things. Under the jacket she wore a silk camisole in a vivid hue of yellow that contrasted perfectly with her rich cocoa-brown skin—it was one of those colors I could never wear without looking jaundiced.

She had short, almost shorn hair that clung to her skull, and high, rounded cheekbones. She looked familiar, and I’m embarrassed to say that for one fleeting moment as I tried to place her, I thought she looked like a contestant I remembered from one of the earlier seasons of America’s Next Top Model.

Annnd . . . then I realized that Sinclair had gone stock-still beside me, and the reason she looked familiar is that she looked a hell of a freaking lot like him.

As though he’d called her name, she glanced over at him. Something intangible passed between them, and then her face broke into a wide, bright smile. “Sinny!”

Sinny?

“Emmy,” he murmured half under his breath, and I realized that although we’d spent the past night and day playing boyfriend and girlfriend, I definitely didn’t know him well enough to read his reaction. That was pretty well confirmed when he walked away from me and toward her without another word.

Not knowing what else to do, I hung back.

Cody ambled over, a studiedly neutral look on his face. “Looks like your boyfriend’s sister’s in town.”

Sister, huh? “Looks like it,” I agreed.

“Must be a surprise visit,” Cody said. “She was asking directions to the tour bus pickup stop.”

“What a nice surprise.” Damned if I was going to give anything away to Officer Down-low. If he didn’t want to be a part of my personal life, he didn’t have the right to pry into it.

Unfortunately, Cody and I had put in a lot of hours working closely together on the Vanderhei case earlier this summer, and he did know me well enough to read my reaction. His amber eyes narrowed. “You didn’t even know he had a sister, did you?”

At that moment, Sinclair beckoned me over, sparing me the necessity of a response. “Daisy, I’d like you to meet my sister.” Talk about neutral—the tone of his voice was the epitome of neutral. It was neutral raised to the nth power of neutrality. “Daisy Johanssen, Emmeline Palmer.”

“His twin sister,” Emmeline corrected him with a smile before greeting me with an airy European double-cheek kiss that I was totally unprepared for. “Hullo, Daisy. Lovely to meet you.”

I’m not sure what threw me for the biggest loop—the cheek kisses, the twin sister revelation, or the fact that Emmeline appeared to have a British accent overlaying her musical Caribbean lilt. Maybe it was that faint tingle of otherness I got from her, suggesting that both of the Right Honorable Mama Palmer’s babies had a touch of an eldritch gift. Or maybe it was the fact that she looked like she’d just stepped out of the pages of Vogue, while I was wearing an old floral-print sundress that suddenly made me feel all of sixteen years old, which is about what I’d been acting.

Or maybe it was that Sinclair hadn’t bothered to freaking mention that he had a twin sister, who was standing right in front of me!

Those were the thoughts that went flashing through my head while I stood blinking like an idiot, finally managing to stammer out, “Nice to meet you, too.”

Emmeline gave me a sympathetic just-between-us-girls wink before turning to Sinclair. “Right, so I’ll go find that coffee shop and meet you at the tour bus in a few.” She glanced back toward the line of parked cars. “Looks like we’re about to get going. Daisy, I’ll see you later?”

“Um . . . sure?”

Sinclair and I got out of the way as Cody pushed the barricade aside and traffic began to move across the bridge. All I could do was stare blankly at him.

“Look.” He raised both his hands, palms outward. “Daisy, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“You had no idea you had a twin sister?”

“No idea she was coming.” He sounded tired.

My tail began lashing back and forth in agitation. “Oh, and where exactly did Emmy pop in from, Sinny dear? Did she drive up from Kalamazoo? Because I don’t recall you mentioning a sister. And it sounded a lot like jolly old England, which I don’t recall you mentioning, either. Is that something else you put behind you? Or maybe putting on accents is a thing with the Palmer clan. Pip pip, cheerio—”

“Kingston!” Raising his voice, Sinclair cut me off. “She flew in from Kingston, all right?” He ran one hand over his dreadlocks. “And the accent’s not phony. I grew up in Kalamazoo. Emmy grew up in boarding schools overseas.” He gave me a faint, wry smile. “She took her law degree at the University of Oxford a year ago.”

“Oh.” My tail went still.

“Just . . .” Sinclair sighed. “Look, I meant what I said last night. I just really wasn’t expecting this.” Reaching out, he took my hands. “It’s complicated. I’ll explain it when I can, but right now I’m not even sure why Emmeline’s here.” His dark eyes were clear and steady. “Can I count on you to have my back?”

I softened, my temper subsiding. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”

“Thanks, Daisy.” He gave me a quick kiss before glancing at his watch. “I’ve got to run. I’ll give you a call later, okay?”

“Okay.”

Leaning against the guardrail at the entrance into town, I watched Sinclair pedal with swift determination along the shoulder of the highway. Cody pulled the squad car up before me and leaned over toward the passenger door. “Can I give you a lift, Daise?”

I scowled at him. “No.”

“You sure?” he asked mildly. “I’m headed back to the station.”

“Oh, fine.”

We rode in silence, but it was a comfortable silence. Funny how that works when you’ve spent a lot of time together.

Cody parked in one of the station’s reserved spaces. He gave me a sidelong glance, a reflective film of green shimmering behind his amber eyes. “Just so you know, I’m not sure about that guy. There’s something sketchy about him. And I will kick his ass seven ways till Sunday if he hurts you.”

I nodded. “Duly noted. But Sinclair’s a good guy, Cody. Sometimes people hurt each other anyway. If it happens, it won’t be on purpose.”

His lip curled, baring his eyeteeth. Yep, definitely getting close to the full moon. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah,” I said to Cody, who had hurt me without meaning to. “It does.” I got out of the squad car. “Thanks for the ride.”