Autumn Bones

Seventeen

As soon as Jen left, I hustled back to the Sisters of Selene to update Casimir. Beneath his heavy makeup, he flushed with anger. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut for the space of a few breaths, his long, crimson-lacquered nails digging into the counter.

“Daisy, I am so sorry,” he said when he’d collected himself. “I jumped to a conclusion when I should have taken the time to do the research.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I lost my temper and it made me careless. I should never have left my bag unattended, not with dauda-dagr in it. And you warned me that you didn’t know a lot about obeah.”

“That’s no excuse.” His face was grim beneath his bouffant wig. “But it may mean she’s not as powerful as we thought. I’ll tell you, the law of threefold return’s going to bite her in the ass, and I wouldn’t mind helping it along. Shall I start working on a counterspell, darling? Something nice and vengeful?”

“What?” I blinked. “No! Jesus, Cas! You’re the one who’s always warning me not to be tempted by the dark side—which, by the way, just makes me think about it when I wasn’t. Anyway, I need to handle this myself.”

Pursing his lips, he considered me. “I suppose you do. All right, hold on a moment.” He went over to unlock a glass display case and rummage inside it, coming up with a small silver medallion etched with a Star of David inside concentric circles and various squiggly markings, along with a loop so it could be worn as a pendant. “Here. This is your basic Seal of Solomon. It’s the same seal I used in the working earlier. It should give you a measure of protection from hostile spells.”

“I’m a little short on cash,” I admitted. I was always short on cash.

Casimir reached for my hand and plunked the medallion into it. “Don’t worry, it’s not the most expensive amulet I carry, honey. And they’re more effective when they’re given as a gift. Take it with my blessing and wear it in good health.”

“Okay, okay!” I undid the clasp on my necklace and threaded the Seal of Solomon onto the chain. When I was done, it nestled beside the Oak King’s talisman, clinking companionably against it in my cleavage. “Thanks. I’ll, um, record the favor in my ledger.”

He eyed me. “You keep a ledger?”

“I do.” I stated it with a tone of authority, or at least I tried to. “In the interest of maintaining Hel’s order, of course.”

“Good for you.” It must have worked, because there was a note of respect in the Fabulous Casimir’s voice.

I really needed to get started on that database. Too bad I knew nothing about creating databases. For now, I’d just have to settle for making mental notes, because I had more pressing matters to attend to.

After leaving Casimir’s shop, I went back to my apartment to take a quick shower and change my clothes. Since there was no point in trying to compete with Emmeline Palmer on the basis of style, I went practical instead, with a working wardrobe of jeans and a black scoop-neck T-shirt. Pants weren’t as comfortable as skirts since they confined my poor tail, but I’d found that people tended to take me more seriously in them.

Last, I buckled on my dagger belt. People took me a lot more seriously with dauda-dagr on my hip, too. Well, at least people who had some inkling that it was an ancient and magical weapon that put fear into the immortal undead. Otherwise, they just thought it was some weird survivalist goth chick fetish.

I gave Sinclair a call. If possible, I wanted to talk to him alone and in person before confronting Emmy.

“Hey, Daisy.” He answered on the third ring, sounding curious. “What’s up? I thought you were lying low.”

“Things have changed,” I said. “Where are you? Can we talk?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Now his tone was a bit cautious. “I’m doing some work on the house. I was going to meet Emmy for lunch in an hour.”

“Perfect. I’ll be there in five.” I ended the call before he could reply. And okay, maybe that was abrupt, but I was angry. Not my usual reactionary loss of temper, but a slow, controlled burn. I’d cut Sinclair slack, I’d forgiven him for being considerably less than forthcoming, I’d offered to stay out of the way while he worked things out with his sister. And I’d woken up hexed for my trouble.

I drove over to his rental, parking beside the tour bus. He greeted me at the door. He’d been stripping some seriously ugly wallpaper in the living room, and there were shreds of it clinging to his skin and stuck in his dreads. Under different circumstances, I would have found it adorable.

“You okay?” he asked me, taking stock of my attire.

“Not exactly.” I walked past him into the living room, turning to face him when he followed. “You see, I woke up this morning with a splitting headache.” I fished in the pocket of my jeans and brought out the leather sack, holding it out to him. “Then I found this in my messenger bag.”

Something in Sinclair’s expression shifted. He took it from me without comment, loosening the cord and examining the contents.

“You know what it is, right?” I asked.

“Yeah.” His voice was flat. “You might call it a conjure bag or a gris-gris here in the States. In the Caribbean, we call it a wanga bag. Daisy, I’m so sorry. I swear, I had no idea. I would never have let Emmy do that to you.”

“I know,” I said. “But she did. And the thing is, I’m not just some girl you’re dating, Sinclair, hell-spawn or otherwise. I’m the agent of Hel’s authority in Pemkowet. I was willing to let a vague threat slide, at least for a while. Not this.” I shook my head. “I can’t. In attacking me directly, your sister challenged Hel’s order.”

He swallowed. “I don’t think she meant to, Daise. I don’t think she knew what she was doing.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Here in Pemkowet,” he clarified. “It’s different on the island. Look—you know what, never mind. We can talk about it later. What happens now?”

I laid my hand on dauda-dagr’s hilt. “What happens now is that Hel’s liaison needs to tell Emmeline Palmer to leave town.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Sinclair asked.

I hesitated. “It gets ugly. Which for your sake, for our sake, I don’t want. Which is why I’m here.”

“You want my help in convincing her to leave?” he asked. I nodded. Sinclair held the wanga bag balanced in the palm of one hand, contemplating it. Various emotions I couldn’t read passed behind his dark eyes. “All right,” he said at length, closing his fingers around the leather sack. “Let’s go see my sister.”

We rode in silence back to downtown Pemkowet. Emmeline was staying at the Idlewild Inn, which was the most expensive B&B in town. I’d never even set foot in the place before, but it was pretty much what I would have guessed from the outside, all English cottagey, comfortable and tasteful, with framed nature prints on the walls and overstuffed floral cushions on the furniture in the lobby. The hostess’s smile faltered at the sight of us, me in a T-shirt and jeans with dauda-dagr on my hip and Sinclair with bits of wallpaper clinging to him—he hadn’t taken the time to tidy—but she directed us to a charming little interior courtyard where dear Emmy was sitting on a bench in the sunlight, reading a book and enjoying a cup of tea.

It made for a pretty picture. She glanced up at our approach, her face brightening briefly at the sight of her brother. “Sinny! You’re early—”

And then she saw me, and her expression changed. It was like a thundercloud had blotted out the sun.

Without a word, Sinclair tossed the wanga bag at her feet.

“Ah.” Leaning over, Emmeline picked up the leather sack. “I see.”

A fountain in the center of the courtyard burbled cheerily. I held up my rune-marked left hand. “Emmeline Palmer, as the agent of the goddess Hel’s authority in Pemkowet, I’m ordering you to leave town.”

Her gaze was stony. “I don’t take orders from you.”

I met it without flinching. “Maybe not outside the sphere of Hel’s influence, but within this ten-mile radius, you do.”

Emmeline cocked her head slightly. “And if I don’t? Do tell. You’ll make me wish I had, right?”

“Emmy.” There was a raw note in Sinclair’s voice. “Don’t do this. You crossed a line. Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

“Very well.” She set her book on the bench, placing the wanga bag atop it, crossed her legs, and took a sip of tea, replacing the cup carefully in the saucer on the end table. “I’ll make it as easy as can be. Sinclair, come with me. We’ll be out of town by sundown and on the next plane home.”

Aha. So that was where this was leading.

He shook his head. “No.”

She stared at him, and although she looked elegant and perfectly relaxed, lovely as a model posing for a photo shoot, I felt that same tangible sense of menace rolling off her like fog rolling over the lake when a cold front comes through. “It’s where you belong, Sinclair. It’s your home.”

“No, it’s not.” If Sinclair felt menaced, it didn’t show. In fact, his expression had turned as flinty as his sister’s. “I made my choice a long time ago, Emmy. Why the hell can’t you respect it?”

“Because we need you!” Emmeline came off the bench as fast as a rattler striking, eyes blazing with sudden passion. I found my hand on dauda-dagr’s hilt and the blade half drawn without thinking, but she wasn’t paying any attention to me. I might as well have not existed. “Dear God, Sinclair, do you not know why a country that ought to be a fucking paradise on earth is paralyzed by endless poverty? Do you need a history lesson?”

“No,” he murmured. Well, that made one of us.

“Debt and desperation,” she said grimly, ignoring him. “The International Monetary Fund’s been imposing impossible conditions on Jamaica since before you or I was born, Sinny. Brutal austerity measures. Tearing down trade barriers that protected our fragile commerce. Do you know local farmers still can’t compete with the price of imported produce? And they bloody well destroyed the dairy industry importing powdered milk when we were still children. Powdered milk! Have you forgotten?”

“I remember,” he said quietly.

Emmeline jabbed a finger at him. “That’s the battle our mother’s been fighting her whole life!”

“Oh, really?” Sinclair shot back. “Funny how nothing ever changes, except that Letitia Palmer gets richer and more powerful every year, while anyone who dares oppose her ends up broken.”

“It will change,” his sister said emphatically. “She’s spent a lifetime positioning herself for it. She’s running for a seat in Parliament next year.”

“And I’m sure she’ll get it,” he said. “The same way she’s gotten almost everything she’s set her will to.”

“She needs you, Sinny,” Emmeline said. “Your country needs you. I need you. I miss you. It’s where you belong. It’s what you were born to do. It’s in your blood. It’s your birthright. You can help us finally, finally make a difference. Just come home.”

Hell, I was halfway convinced. She was good. But Sinclair looked away and shook his head again. A few scraps of wallpaper floated to the paving stones. “Maybe God draws straight using crooked lines, but I don’t believe people do. At least not our mother.”

“You never gave it a fair—”

“She put a love spell on our father, Emmy!” he shouted at her. “He hated everything she stood for! He never wanted anything to do with her!”

Ohh-kay. I was definitely in the thick of some serious family issues now. Ordinarily, I would have beat a discreet retreat, but I’d instigated this confrontation and my authority was still on the line.

“It’s a path of balance,” Emmeline said defiantly. “You know that! You’ve got to take the dark with the light. But you know what you can’t do? Turn your back on it. And that’s what you imagine you’ve done.”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “By choice, when I became a man.”

Now she shook her head. “It will find you, Sinclair. How do you think you ended up here?” She pointed at me. “With that?”

“Hey!” I protested.

His shoulders tensed. “Leave Daisy out of it. You’ve done enough to her already.”

Dear Emmy laughed. “Oh, that little charm?” she said in a dismissive tone. “That was nothing. Just a friendly warning that I mean business.”

Some warning. My tail twitched in the confines of my jeans. “I think we’ve gotten a little off track here,” I said to her, my hand resting casually on dauda-dagr’s hilt. “This is my friendly warning that I mean business. You have twenty-four hours to leave Pemkowet voluntarily. If you don’t, I’ll have you escorted outside the boundaries of Hel’s territory.”

She gave me a long, appraising glance.

I returned it steadily. Along with being seriously pissed in a slow, simmering way, I was feeling pretty confident about my backup after Stefan’s visit. If Emmeline wanted a showdown, I was ready for it. But she zigged when I was expecting her to zag.

“You know, you really should have agreed to work with me on this, Daisy. It would have been ever so much more civilized,” she said, gathering her things. “Very well, I’ll go. But I’ll be back. Sinny, this isn’t over. You have a month to think about it.”

His face was stoic. “I don’t need a month. My answer is no.”

“I won’t ask nicely the next time,” Emmeline warned him. “Whatever happens, it will be on your head.”

“Nice,” I said. “Classic abusive logic. Oh, and by the way? You’re not welcome to return.”

She ignored me. “Deep down, there’s a part of you that wants it, Sinclair,” she said softly. “I know you miss me. And you know that the two of us together could be more than twice as powerful as either of us alone.”

Sinclair folded his arms. “That’s what this is really all about for you, isn’t it? Go home, Emmy.”

Reaching up, she patted his cheek with her free hand. “Think about it.”