Autumn Bones

Nineteen

Since I had to work at eight, I showed up on Sinclair’s doorstep at seven thirty the next morning.

He answered the door bleary-eyed and blinking, his dreads looking frowsy. However, he was also wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxer shorts, which was almost enough to make me change my mind. “Daisy?”

“Okay, here’s the thing,” I said without preamble. “When I say I want us to stay friends, which I’m about to do, I don’t just mean I want us to be civil to each other. I mean I want to stay friends. I want to be able to call you because I heard a good joke or I had a lousy day, and I want you to feel the same way. I want to get to know you better. I want to eat popcorn and make fun of bad movies with you. I want you in my Scooby Gang.”

“Your what?” Sinclair stared at me in bewilderment. “Wait, hang on. Are you breaking up with me?”

“Well, since we never actually defined our relationship, I don’t know if you can call it breaking up, but . . . yeah.” I winced. “Sorry. I’ve never done this before, and I kind of suck at it, don’t I?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “And I’m half asleep. Is it because of my sister?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “Ultimately, no.”

Dropping his hands, Sinclair regarded me. “And yet you’re doing exactly what Emmy told you to do.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Sinclair, listen. If Emmy hadn’t blown things up, I think we could have had a lot of fun together, and I wish we’d had that chance. But you’re not just some nice, uncomplicated guy with a great smile. And I’m . . . me. In the long run, I don’t think we’re the right kind of complicated for each other. Do you?”

“No,” he admitted after a long moment. “But I was happy to give the short run a try, Daisy.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said ruefully. “But after yesterday, I think right now we can do each other a lot more good as friends. Are you okay with that?”

“Do I have a choice?” Sinclair asked.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“All right.” Sinclair gave me a reluctant smile. “If I’m going to face down my sister, I need all the friends I can get. But if you ever need to make another funky satyr booty call, girl, I’m your man.”

A sense of relief and gratitude suffused me. “You’re the first person I’d call,” I assured him.

We parted with a hug. There was regret in it, but there was genuine affection, too; and it occurred to me as I drove downtown to the police station that in a perverse way, Emmeline might have done us an unwitting favor. After taking a long, hard look at my own feelings, I doubted that any budding romance with Sinclair could have withstood the double-barreled assault of his sister’s surprise visit and her return to either collect on the ultimatum she’d issued or deliver on her threat.

But friendship? Hell, yeah. It was a lot easier to forgive a friend in trouble than it was a sort-of-boyfriend who’d been less than honest. I had experience with standing up for my friends.

And all dear Emmy’s prank with the charm had done in the end was warn me not to underestimate her.

Next time I wouldn’t.

It actually felt good to settle into a familiar routine at the station, reviewing the stack of incident reports that had accumulated over the holiday weekend. Nothing suspicious of an eldritch nature caught my eye, which meant Tuggle and his hobgoblin buddies had the last hurrah of the high season with their shell game.

Well, except for Emmeline Palmer. A part of me—the part that was embarrassed by the fact that I hadn’t exactly handled the encounter with aplomb—wanted to avoid documenting the incident. But it was my responsibility, and it was time I started acting more professional about it, so I wrote up a full report for the X-Files.

Chief Bryant came in just as I was finishing. After exchanging a few words with Patty Rogan at the front desk, he caught my eye. “Daisy. I’d like a word with you in my office when you’re done.”

A little knot of apprehension formed in the pit of my belly. “Be there in a few, sir.”

He nodded and went past me into his office, closing the door. I shot Patty an “Am-I-in-trouble?” look. She shrugged. Patty and I had a decent working relationship, but not a great one. I knew there were times she thought the chief was guilty of favoritism toward me. And the fact is, it was probably true. I’d known Chief Bryant since I was little. When my mom waitressed at Callahan’s Café, sometimes during a day shift she’d park me in an empty booth with a coloring book. The chief used to come in for coffee, and occasionally to cheat on his diet. That’s when he first took a sort of paternal interest in Mom and me, which ultimately led to my part-time job here in the department.

Since that time, I’d never been less than a hundred percent straight with Chief Bryant. Well, at least until I called in sick yesterday, which is probably why I was feeling apprehensive. As a rule, I tried to avoid lying. It’s not one of the Seven Deadlies—why, I don’t know, since dishonesty seems a lot more like a sin than oh, say, sloth—but when it comes to temptation I like to err on the side of caution.

I drafted the last couple of lines of my report and printed a copy before knocking on the chief’s door.

“Door’s open.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desk as I entered. “Have a seat, Daisy.”

I sat.

Chief Bryant leaned back in his chair and studied me. He was a big man with sleepy, hooded eyes that always reminded me of the old actor Robert Mitchum. A lot of people missed the intelligence in those eyes and the fact that there was solid muscle under the extra pounds he carried. “You called in sick yesterday.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re never sick,” he said. “Never known you to have a sick day in your life. Your mother used to brag about it.”

“I had a situation.” I slid the report across his desk. He put on a pair of reading glasses and skimmed it, then folded the glasses and put them down.

“Palmer,” he said. “That’s that young fellow you’ve been seeing? Runs the bus tour?” I nodded, although I wasn’t fooled. Chief Bryant knew exactly who Sinclair was. He prodded the report with one thick finger. “Sounds like his sister put quite the whammy on you,” he observed. “You feeling okay today?”

“Much better, thanks.”

He looked at the report again. “So this obeah woman . . . what is that? Is that like a voodoo priestess?”

“A little bit,” I said. “Not exactly.”

He fixed me with his deceptively sleepy gaze. “Do you think she’s coming back to finish what she started?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Unfortunately, I do.”

The chief shifted in his chair. “It’s a tricky business, Daisy. As long as she hasn’t violated any actual laws, I don’t know how I can help you.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s okay, I’m not asking for help. This one’s my responsibility, sir.”

“You’ve got a plan?” he asked.

I temporized. “I’ve got a start. I’ll ask Casimir and the local coven to work on it. If we can figure out how to protect Sinclair so she can’t cast a spell or set a duppy on him, I think we’ll be okay. She took me by surprise this time. The next time, I’ll be ready.”

He blinked. “What the hell’s a duppy?”

“It’s a kind of ghost.”

Chief Bryant processed that for a moment. “All right. If there’s anything I can do, you let me know.”

“Just back me up if I need to have her escorted out of town,” I said.

“Will do.” He nodded. “We can always write her up for loitering or disturbing the peace. You want me to assign Fairfax to work with you on this? The two of you did a good job together on the Vanderhei case.”

My heart leaped a bit, then subsided. “Cody’s, um, on his time off, isn’t he?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Emmeline Palmer said she’d be back in a month,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s four weeks or by the calendar, but . . .” I didn’t finish the thought out loud. Although I was positive that the chief knew about Cody, it wasn’t something he’d ever overtly acknowledged in no uncertain terms.

“Cutting it close either way,” Chief Bryant said in a neutral tone. “A lunar month is twenty-nine and a half days.”

Okay, those were pretty certain terms. “Right.”

He sighed. “All right, then. Fairfax is out. But if you need backup, let me know.”

“Will do.”

With that, the chief dismissed me. I went back to the front office and finished filing the reports I’d reviewed, then clocked out for the day.

I swung by the Sisters of Selene to talk to Casimir about setting up a meeting with Sinclair. He offered to contact the coven and promised to call me when they agreed on a time and place.

Just to be on the safe side, I stopped in at the Idlewild to make sure that Emmeline Palmer had checked out. The hostess wasn’t too pleased to see me—I guess I didn’t make as good an impression as Emmy—but when I showed her my police ID, she confirmed that Sinclair’s sister had left late yesterday afternoon.

With that done, my time was my own. I went back to my apartment and spent an hour researching database software online before giving up in despair. I needed something more sophisticated than I could afford—like the police reporting software we used at the station but something I could customize for my own purposes. That is, if I had the faintest idea how to do such a thing, which I didn’t.

I knew someone who did, though. Or at least I’d gone to high school with him. I tried the phone book, but there was no listing.

I called Jen. “Hey, do you have any idea how to get in touch with Lee Hastings?”

There was a pause on the other end before she asked in an incredulous voice, “Skeletor?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard he moved back to town a while ago.”

“Why do you want to get in touch with Skeletor?” she asked.

“I need a computer geek,” I said. “And he sort of had a crush on me.”

“Good luck,” Jen said. “He skipped college and went straight into the gaming industry. I heard he made a shitload of money out in Seattle before he moved back. Now he gets paid big bucks as a consultant. Basically, he’s Alan Cumming in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, only without the part where he came back better-looking.”

“So you’re saying I can’t get him to do my homework just by promising to be nice to him anymore?”

“Is that how you got a B in computer science?” she asked. “I always wondered. You know, come to think of it, you were actually pretty decent to him. Let me call my mom. She keeps in touch with Mrs. Hastings.”

“Thanks.”

Fifteen minutes later Jen called me back. “Okay, this is going to sound weird, because it is. He doesn’t give out his info, but you can try contacting him on his Facebook alias page. If he feels like it, he’ll accept your friend request.”

“What’s an alias page?” I asked her.

“It’s this persona he’s created. Dan Stanton. Apparently it’s a minor character in one of his games.”

“Ohh-kay.”

“Told you it was weird,” she said. “Hey, how are you feeling today? How did it go with the evil twin sister?”

I hesitated. “I’m fine. And it went . . . okay for the moment. She left, but she’s coming back. She gave Sinclair an ultimatum. Leave town or else.”

“Damn!”

“Yeah.” I lowered my voice. “We’re working on it. But I broke things off with Sinclair this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Daise.” Jen’s sympathy was genuine. “Because of his sister? Or because he didn’t tell you about her?”

“Not really,” I said. “I mean, yeah, I guess that set it off. But I realized we’re better off being friends right now.”

“Did it have anything to do with the infamous hot ghoul I met yesterday?” she asked shrewdly. “Or lingering feelings for a certain officer of the law?”

“Maybe a little,” I admitted. “I realized I wasn’t being entirely fair to Sinclair. But I think he and I are okay, honestly.”

“Good,” she said. “I like him.”

Inspiration struck me. “You know, Sinclair’s got a spare bedroom. He talked about taking a roommate to help with the rent now that business is slowing down. And you’ve been talking about moving out of your folks’ place for ages.”

“Um. . . . yeah.” Jen didn’t sound thrilled “Let’s table that idea until the evil twin’s out of the picture, okay?”

“Fair enough.”

After we ended our call, I went back online and logged on to Facebook. I didn’t use it often—I never got in the habit because my mom and I couldn’t afford Internet access or expensive phone plans when I was growing up—but I had an account. Also, I had free wireless in my apartment courtesy of Mrs. Browne’s Olde World Bakery downstairs.

A search for Dan Stanton returned two results. One was some shirtless guy in Sydney, Australia. The profile picture for the other was a video game avatar of a soldier in battle fatigues. Betting on the latter, I sent a friend request. I would have added a personal message, but the option was disabled. All I could do was hope that Lee Hastings, aka Dan Stanton, aka Skeletor, remembered me kindly as someone who’d never called him that last one.

Well, at least not to his face. After all, it was high school.

Checking the time, I saw it wasn’t yet three o’clock. Until I heard from Casimir or Lee, there wasn’t much I could do on either Operation Contain Dear Emmy or Operation Database, which meant I had no excuse not to respond to Stefan Ludovic’s request to contact him when I was ready.

So I called him, trying to ignore the fluttery feeling in my belly. Partly because it made me feel guilty and partly because the whole thing weirded me out. Hot or not, I still had the image of Stefan impaling himself on his own sword stuck in my memory.

“Daisy.” Stefan picked up on the third ring. “Good afternoon. Are you well?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” I said. “But then, you’d be the first to know if I wasn’t, wouldn’t you?” I was still a little pissed about the bond between us being established without my knowledge or consent, too. “Anyway, you asked me to call?”

“Yes,” he said. “As I said, I have something I would like to show you. I think it will be of aid in the exercise we attempted the other day.”

“Okay,” I said. “Is this a good time for you? If it is, I can swing by the Wheelhouse.”

“Your timing is excellent,” he said. “But I think perhaps this would be better done in privacy. Would you care to meet me at my quarters?”

The flutters intensified. “Your . . . quarters?”

“My condominium,” Stefan clarified, then paused. “Forgive me. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable. Would you prefer to meet at the Wheelhouse? Or somewhere else? I can retrieve the item I wished to show you.”

Thinking about it, it probably made more sense to minimize my exposure to the emotion-starved Outcast throng. And after what we’d been through together earlier in the summer, I did trust Stefan.

Mostly.

“No,” I said. “You’re right. What’s your address?”

He told me.

I jotted it down on a piece of scrap paper. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said before I could change my mind, and hung up.