Autumn Bones

Twenty-seven

For the next week or so, things were fairly quiet in Pemkowet. No rutting satyrs, no threatening obeah women, no suspicious hell-spawn lawyers, no abducted teenagers, not even a hobgoblin prank.

It was a relief. Tourist season doesn’t actually end after Labor Day—the PVB does its damnedest to make Pemkowet a destination all year long, and with the exception of the frigid months of January, February, and March, it’s gotten some results—but every local I know, myself included, counts on things ratcheting down a notch. This year, between Emmeline Palmer’s ultimatum, an unexpected visit to Little Niflheim, and the melodrama out at the House of Shadows, I hadn’t had the chance to properly appreciate the fact that I could find a parking place downtown on a weekday without circling the block or get a cinnamon roll at Mrs. Browne’s bakery without waiting in line.

Now I did.

There wasn’t more than a few hours’ worth of filing to be done at the police station, but I had the entire backlog of the X-Files to comb through, and in a moment of expansive generosity, Chief Bryant had agreed that I should be paid for the time spent developing the database. On the one hand, it made sense—it would, after all, enable me to do my job better—but on the other hand, since I’d made it clear that I would be the only person to have access to it, he would have been within his rights to deny my request to log those hours on the department’s budget.

To be honest, the chief hadn’t been too thrilled with my stance. It had come up when I’d reluctantly refused to identify the membership of our local coven after their meet and greet with Sinclair. But we had a long talk about confidentiality, honor, respect, and the eldritch code, and although he didn’t like it, he understood. A lot of the same principles apply in the police force, even in a tiny one like ours.

For example, Chief Bryant knew that Bart Mallick had been first on the scene at the satyr orgy and had failed to respond thereafter. Given what had gone down at Rainbow’s End that evening, there could pretty much be only one reason for it, but Cody and I had covered for him—I think our report said something to the effect that Officer Mallick was engaged in conflict resolution, which was certainly one way of putting it—and the chief hadn’t requested clarification. Like I said, he understood.

Anyway, I was grateful to get paid for the work.

I took a shot at tracking down the mysterious lawyer, whose full name was Daniel Dufreyne, in my spare time and hit a dead end. I got his name and contact info from a business card he’d left with Amanda Brooks at the PVB, but the weird thing was there was no business listed on it, nor a physical address—just a cell phone number and a Gmail address. Definitely sketchy. Amanda seemed surprised that she hadn’t noticed, which I chalked up to the whole powers-of-persuasion thing. All I could do was leave a vague voice mail message and send an equally vague e-mail and hope Dufreyne responded. So far, he hadn’t.

Most of the time, I concentrated on poring over the X-Files. While I didn’t have an actual base in which to enter the data yet, the process helped me identify concrete working examples and additional criteria to provide to my genius programmer, Lee. For instance, I’d completely forgotten about the phooka that haunted the fields around Columbine Creek. One of the Donaghue kids came away with a broken arm a couple of years ago after the phooka took him for a wild ride. So, yeah, while I’d be responsible for entering all sensitive data such as the particulars of the incident, Lee needed to create a listing for phookas under the categories of eldritch beings, and a location listing for the creek.

I met with Lee a couple of times to give him my input and discuss the project, which was shaping up to be a lot fancier than anything I’d envisioned, insofar as I’d envisioned anything, which wasn’t far. I’d figured he could create some kind of easy-to-use customized database software and load it onto my laptop, but oh, no. Lee was developing an online database that would be hosted on a dedicated server in an air-conditioned techno-vault in his basement, with backups and fail-safes and layers of encryption and a self-destruct sequence. Okay, I may be exaggerating and I probably have some of the terminology wrong, but basically he assured me it would be more secure than the Pentagon. At least I was pretty sure it would be safer there than loaded on my seven-year-old laptop, and it would be nice to have the luxury of accessing it anywhere.

Or anywhere in theory, I should say. On the downside, Lee informed me that it was too risky to use free Wi-Fi to access this or any password-protected site, which meant I’d have to start paying for Internet service instead of surfing on the bakery’s. Good thing the project was generating a bit of extra income.

The one thing that did worry me was Lee’s ability to access the database. He swore up and down that once I changed the password on the administrative panel, I would absolutely, positively be the only person in the world able to access it.

Did I believe him? Hell, no, not for an instant. I had no doubt that Lee would build some kind of back door into the program, and I’d never in a million years be able to find it or have the faintest idea of what to do about it if I did.

So I settled with threatening him with dire consequences if he went poking around in the database once I started entering confidential material. If it hadn’t been for our trip to Little Niflheim, I don’t think he would have taken me as seriously as he did, but the thought of being escorted to the underworld and facing down Hel in the full wrath of a goddess betrayed definitely gave him pause.

As it should. Although I also planned to use a private code for certain entries, just to be extra-safe.

“You can trust me, Daisy,” Lee promised, looking pale. “I swear, I won’t do anything to jeopardize this.”

“Good,” I said. “Because if you do, I’m not taking the blame for your transgression this time.”

He gave a nervous laugh. “Duly noted.”

I spent time with Sinclair, too. In honor of his new commitment to a magical vocation, I rented one of my favorite guilty-pleasure movies from the library and spent an evening introducing Sinclair to The Craft.

To be honest, the video was just an excuse. It was good to spend time with him. There was a little lingering awkwardness, like figuring out how close together we should sit on the couch, but we found ourselves establishing new patterns of platonic friendship without a great deal of difficulty.

Ongoing home improvement projects aside, Sinclair had always kept a tidy house, but now it was immaculate. Apparently the ritual that Kim McKinney had overseen included not only a full-immersion bath performed in the Fabulous Casimir’s backyard under moonlight—Sinclair glossed over the details on that part—but a thorough cleansing of the entire rental property. It had been scrubbed top to bottom with a wash that included essential oils of rosemary, juniper, and lavender, after which every nook and cranny was smudged with purifying sage smoke, all of which left his place smelling sweet and herbaceous. There was an altar set up on a sideboard in the living room. The thresholds of the front and back doors had been blessed with salt water, and there were crosses of rowan branches tied with red thread.

Theoretically, it meant that not only could no malevolent spirit cross the threshold but no mortal could enter Sinclair’s home with ill intent.

“Do you think it will work?” I asked him.

Frowning, he turned down the volume on the TV. “On a duppy? Yeah, I do. Magic here feels strong, Daisy, stronger than it does on the island. The roots go deeper. Everything’s more powerful. Casimir says it’s because of Hel and the underworld. All I know is that I can feel it working.”

“But . . . ?”

“I don’t know if it would work on Emmy,” he admitted. “I can’t ban her from my heart, which means the binding may not hold against her. And if she truly believes in her heart that she’s doing the right thing, it wouldn’t work anyway.” He shrugged. “But safeguarding the house is only the first step. I need to learn to protect myself.”

“You don’t think Kim’s magic bath did the trick?” I teased him. “How about the nice scarf Mrs. Meyers knitted for you?”

Sinclair gave me a look. “Hey, now! Are you making fun of my prayer shawl?”

“Not at all.” What Mrs. Meyers had produced was a lightweight scarf striped in the pan-African colors of red, green, gold, and black. It actually looked rather dashing looped around Sinclair’s neck. “I just didn’t know knitting was a kind of magic.”

“Neither did I.” He stroked the scarf absentmindedly. “But it makes sense. Knots are a form of binding. It’s the intention that it’s done with that makes it effective, and I can feel hers in this.”

“A blessing in every stitch?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Believe me, that kind of focused intention is hard to maintain. I’ve been working on visualization techniques. It’s tough.”

“Like a shield?” I asked, hoping maybe we could compare pointers. Or maybe, truth be told, that I could show off a little. I’d held my own in the House of Shadows and I’d kept up my daily practice, including several more sparring sessions with Cooper out behind the Wheelhouse. I was proud of my progress.

But Sinclair shook his head. “Not exactly. More like an orb of white light. And chakras,” he added. “I don’t even know if I believe in them, but did you know Mrs. Sweddon can actually manipulate her entire aura? It’s pretty amazing.”

“Huh.”

He stretched out his hands, regarding them. “So far, my favorite part is working in the nursery with Warren. I’d forgotten how much I liked working with plants.”

“So no tattoo?”

Although I asked half as a joke, Sinclair took the question seriously. “I stopped by the shop and took a look at their portfolio. It’s all beautiful work, but nothing felt quite right, you know? I think for that kind of commitment, it has to be right. Mark and Sheila told me it would be better to wait for my personal sigil to reveal itself than to choose something just for the sake of getting some protective ink.”

I glanced involuntarily toward the altar. At this point it was pretty sparse, containing a pair of white candles, several seashells, including a conch with blue beads glued to it, and a small dried starfish. The conch shell was missing a few beads and one of the starfish’s brittle arms was broken. I had a feeling those items had been in his possession for a long, long time.

Sinclair followed my gaze. “Yemaya’s symbols. Could be an element of a sigil, but not a whole. Not anymore.”

I’d done a little research since he’d mentioned being dedicated to her at the coven meet and greet, enough to know that Yemaya was one of the orishas, Yoruban deities whose worship was imported into the Caribbean via the slave trade. It appeared she was a benevolent goddess associated with the sea, a sort of oceanic mother-of-all. There was a wealth of information available about her role in what Mr. Leary called the syncretized religions like Santería. Obeah, not so much.

Some of the more fabulous depictions I’d found online reminded me of Lurine in her true form. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out she’d served as the inspiration somewhere back at the dawn of time.

Anyway, I kept that thought to myself. “You’ll figure it out,” I said. “Don’t worry. You don’t need a tattoo to face down your sister, Sinclair. Not with the whole eldritch community of Pemkowet behind you.”

He took my hand and squeezed it. “Thanks, Daisy.”

I squeezed his hand back. “I mean it.”

Both of us glanced down at our clasped hands, then let go and scootched a few more inches apart on the couch by mutual accord.

Sinclair turned the volume back up on the TV and reached for the popcorn, settling in to watch a coven of teenaged witches turn on one of their own. “You do know this movie is ridiculous, right?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “I know. But sometimes ridiculous is exactly what you need to make it through the day.”

He laughed. “True dat.”