Autumn Bones

Thirty-four

Note to self: When striking a bargain with fairies, be very, very specific.

I’d like to say a cloud passed over the moon and thunder rumbled as Letitia Palmer and her daughter approached our group. It didn’t happen, but it felt like it should have. Sinclair’s mother wore a lavender suit that looked like one of Hillary Clinton’s more ill-advised fashion choices. She carried a matching clutch purse in one hand and an empty glass jar in the other, and an aura of power surrounded her like a storm cloud.

Still, she wasn’t expecting to see her ex-husband. The sight of him brought her and Emmeline up short.

“Thomas.”

“Letitia.”

There was a whole lot of history in that exchange of names. Sinclair’s father gathered himself, standing taller.

“You’ve got no business doing this,” he said sternly. “The boy’s made his choice. You need to learn to respect it.”

“I did.” Her gaze swept around the cemetery, taking in the lurking fey, the waiting coven, Stefan, and the hovering fairy before coming to rest on me with an expression of profound distaste. “Until I found out what it brought him to.”

“Hey, don’t use me as an excuse,” I said, raising my hands. “We’re not actually dating anymore.”

Mrs. Palmer ignored me. “I’ve been patient with you, boy,” she said to Sinclair. “But enough is enough. Are you ready to come home where you belong?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Sinclair’s voice was strained. He cleared his throat. “This is my home.”

She let out a snort. “This? You’ve got no roots here, son. Home is where the bones of the past are buried. Home is where the soil is soaked with the blood of your ancestors. This place?” She shook her head. “This isn’t home. These aren’t your dead. And these most assuredly aren’t your people.”

“Just come home, Sinny,” Emmeline added in a pleading tone. Apparently she was playing good cop to her mother’s bad cop. “I miss you!”

“No.” Sinclair’s voice grew stronger. “I’m sorry, Emmy. I miss you, too. But you’re wrong. This is my place. And these are my people. Not because I was born here, not because they’re my blood kin. But because I chose this. And I’m not leaving.”

Casimir and the coven had drawn close, ranging themselves behind us. In the headlights, their faces looked stern and different. Even Kim McKinney’s, and I usually thought of sliced cheese and cold cuts from the deli counter when I saw her.

“Your son is under our protection, ma’am,” Casimir said, polite but firm. “And he’s given you his answer.”

Letitia Palmer gave him a stony look, but the Fabulous Casimir didn’t quail before it. She took in his height, his false eyelashes, and the crimson satin turban he was wearing. She took the coven’s measure, took in the hand-knitted scarf knotted around Sinclair’s throat, the evil-eye beads sewn into his hair. She took in the sight of Stefan leaning casually on his sword, his face almost vampire-pale in the headlights. She took in me.

“Letitia, go home,” Thomas Palmer murmured. “Sinclair’s a grown man. Let him live his life.”

“No.” She handed her clutch purse to Emmeline and grasped the glass jar in both hands. “Not like this. Not surrounded by imps and goblins and ghouls, she-males and demon-spawn.”

I had a bad feeling about that jar. Like maybe it only looked empty.

“Don’t!” Sinclair’s voice rose. “There’s no point in threatening me, Mom. I’m protected!”

She looked at him. “Oh, I’m not threatening you, son. This is for everyone else in town.”

He held out one hand. “Give it to me. You don’t know what you’re doing. Magic’s stronger here. You don’t know what you might unleash.”

“On the contrary, I know exactly what I’m doing.” Letitia Palmer stroked the empty jar. “This is my father’s spirit in here, your grandfather Morgan’s. I put the jar to his lips and caught it myself on his deathbed.”

Okay, this would be the time to get authoritative. “I don’t care who’s in the jar, Mrs. Palmer,” I said in a firm tone. “You’re not setting it loose in Pemkowet. Give it to Sinclair, or set it down and walk away.”

She gave me a scathing glance. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll take it from you myself,” I said, suiting actions to words without waiting for her response.

In a perfect world, I’d be rewarded for acting without hesitation, right? I took two swift steps toward Letitia Palmer, reaching for the jar to wrest it out of her grasp. Her eyes widened in surprise. She wasn’t accustomed to being defied, and she hadn’t expected me to act so quickly and decisively. And if Jojo hadn’t had the exact same idea at the exact same time, I’m pretty sure it would have worked.

A green blur streaked past me on translucent wings, then recoiled violently, colliding with my face in an explosion of sparkling dust.

Sinclair’s mother wore a cowry shell like her daughter’s around her neck on a gold chain. Apparently, the ward worked on fairies.

All around us there was shouting, chanting, and commotion, a sense of power thrumming in the night air. I scrubbed at the fairy dust in my eyes and swore at Jojo, who swore back at me. How the hell she’d ever thought she was going to get those pipe cleaner arms around the jar, I couldn’t say.

“Here.” Stefan’s voice, calm and steady. He handed me a clean bandanna to wipe my face.

When I could see again, whatever magical throwdown I’d missed witnessing had turned into a standoff. Letitia Palmer had positioned herself behind a headstone, and her daughter was guarding her back. Sinclair’s mother had the jar raised above the headstone, and her face was grim.

“Tell them!” she shouted at her son. “If I smash the jar, there’ll be no putting him back!”

“She’s right,” Sinclair said in a low tone. “Stand down. Don’t provoke her.”

Stefan gave me an inquiring look, his sword held lightly in one hand.

And I hesitated.

I don’t know if he would have killed her. I don’t know if he could have killed her, not with the ward she was wearing. Not without breaking the jar. Maybe. Or maybe Stefan was just testing me, testing the bounds of my humanity. It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t give the order. Obeah woman or not, Letitia Palmer was human and mortal. Killing her in cold blood would have violated Hel’s rule of order. And even if that weren’t the case, hell-spawn or not, I wasn’t a murderer.

I shook my head.

Letitia Palmer permitted herself a small, victorious smile. “I have spoken at length to your grandfather’s spirit,” she said to Sinclair. “The country needs you. Your sister needs you. I need you. I’m running for Parliament, you know. There’s a great deal at stake. Blood calls to blood, spirit to spirit. Your grandfather knows. He understands. When you’re ready, truly ready, to come home for good, you’ll be able to recapture his spirit and return it to Jamaica where it belongs. When you do, I’ll lay it to rest. Until then—”

“Mother, I am begging you,” Sinclair said. “Don’t—”

She did.

With a simple, deft twist, the Right Honorable Judge Palmer opened the jar. In case you were wondering, there wasn’t anything special about the jar. I don’t know what it held before it held her father’s spirit. Pickles, maybe.

An eddy of ice-cold air spilled forth from it, circling all of us. My skin prickled at its touch, rising into goose bumps, and I tucked my tail involuntarily between my legs. It smelled acrid and foul, like gunmetal and burning hair, with a powerful underlying note of death and decay, like meat left to rot. The stench of it triggered my gag reflex, and I came seriously close to throwing up. A handful of maple leaves rose in a flurry.

And then the wind died down as abruptly as it had sprung up. The maple leaves settled back onto the grass with a soft rustling sound. We all stood around waiting for something to happen.

“That’s it?” I said to Mrs. Palmer. “That’s your big, scary Grandpa Morgan duppy? A stinky breeze?”

She gave me a flat stare, but behind the bravado there was a hint of uncertainty in it. “Wait.”

“For what, exactly?” I returned her stare. “You don’t know, do you? Sinclair’s right. You’ve turned this thing loose on us with Little Niflheim underfoot, a functioning underworld, and you don’t have the faintest idea what’s going to happen.” My tail untucked and began lashing. “Right. Well, you’re not going to stick around to find out. As Hel’s liaison, I’m ordering you out of town. Now.”

“Or what?” It was the same response she’d give me before, this time dripping with contempt. Any trace of uncertainty in her eyes had vanished. They were hard, hard as the granite headstones around us. Her voice dropped to a lower register, laden with power as she uttered a word. Don’t ask me what word, but it was in a language that sounded like it dated back to the dawn of time, and every syllable of it tolled like a bell. “You don’t dare lay a hand on me, child.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but the word she’d spoken seemed to have lodged itself in my throat like a stone. I couldn’t talk. In fact, beyond opening my mouth, I couldn’t move. I wasn’t entirely sure I could breathe. Letitia Palmer’s eyes glittered in the headlights. Maybe I was human enough that her ward didn’t protect her from me, but I was also human enough to be vulnerable to her magic. The Seal of Solomon charm that Casimir had given me felt hot against my breastbone. Apparently it wasn’t doing shit.

I got angry. I mean, really angry. It was the kind of rich, molten fury I almost never let myself indulge in. I let it fill me until the pressure hurt my ears and the sap began to crackle in the nearest pine trees.

It felt like something physically breaking when her hold on me cracked, like the stone stuck in my throat had shattered.

I tried an experimental cough. Yep, that worked. I went back to Plan A and closed the distance between us, but this time, instead of grabbing for the jar, I reached across the headstone and grabbed the cowry shell strung around her neck, yanking the chain taut. I could feel a vibration of power against my palm, but the ward didn’t repel me.

“Here’s or what,” I said to Letitia Palmer, our faces inches apart above the headstone that separated us. “You will swear on the bones of your ancestors to leave immediately and never return, or I’ll jerk this thing clean off your neck and turn the tall ghoul with the large sword loose on you. And that goes for your daughter, too.”

There was a sheen of sweat on her brow, but she didn’t back down an inch. “You don’t have it in you.”

“Oh, it’s not about what I have in me.” I smiled grimly. “It’s about what you have in you, Mrs. Palmer. Pride. Ambition. Hope. Patriotism. Dignity. Your daughter didn’t seem familiar with the Outcast, so maybe you’re not, either. That’s what they do. They subsist on human emotion. And I will feed you to the ghouls. Everything that defines you? I’ll let them take it all, every last ounce. I’ll let them suck you dry until they’re ravening, until there’s nothing of you left but an empty husk. And when they’re done with you, I’ll let them drain your daughter. Stefan?”

He appeared at my side. “Hel’s liaison.” There was a dark, dangerous note of hunger in his voice. “I await your bidding.”

There was some scuffling behind her as the coven moved to surround dear Emmy, and I heard Sinclair speaking to his father in a low, urgent voice, but I kept my gaze locked on Letitia Palmer’s. She hadn’t been afraid before, but she was now. I could see it in her eyes, in the sweat beading on her forehead. “You did what you came to do, lady,” I said to her. “You’ve fulfilled your threat. Take your victory and go, before the taste of it turns to bile in your mouth.”

Fancy wording, right? That’s what comes from hanging out with a six-hundred-year-old Eastern European nobleman. But I have to give the Right Honorable Judge Palmer credit—she was one tough lady. Curling her lips with distaste, she gave me the briefest of nods.

“Swear it,” I said without relinquishing an ounce of pressure on her necklace.

“I swear it on the bones of my ancestors,” she said in a bitter voice. By the sound of it, I was a little late with the whole taste-of-bile thing. “Emmeline and I will leave Pemkowet immediately, never to return.”

“Good.” I let go of the cowry shell. “Stefan and his men will give you an escort. As soon as you retrieve your luggage at the Idlewild, I want you out of town.”

Letitia Palmer straightened the chain on her necklace and dusted off her lavender suit as though to brush away any lingering hell-spawn taint. She presented Sinclair with the empty glass jar.

“You know what to do, son,” she said to him. “When you’re ready, you and your grandfather come on home.”

He took the jar in one hand, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his other in a quick, fierce gesture. “Do you know the one thing that might have made a difference, Mom? You could have told me you loved me. You could have said you wanted me back because you loved me, not because you’re running for Parliament.”

“Of course I love you!” She looked surprised. “You’re my son.”

Sinclair laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You might want to lead with that next time. By the time you’ve passed the point of supernatural extortion, it’s a little too late.”

“Sinny—” Emmeline began.

He looked at her. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

She fell silent.

There were a few more fraught exchanges and awkward logistics to be sorted out, but ten minutes later, Letitia and Emmeline Palmer were on their way out of town with a four-motorcycle escort of hungry, glittering-eyed ghouls. Sinclair and his father had departed, as had most of the coven, with promises to confer tomorrow. Casimir and nice Mrs. Meyers from the historical society were the only ones still lingering in the cemetery with me.

It was quiet. Too quiet. I mean, I know that’s the nature of a cemetery, but after all that dramatic buildup, I felt like there should be a ghost wailing and shrieking among the headstones, or maybe taking on some of the bizarre and terrifying appearances that duppies were said to manifest.

I kicked at the dry grass scattered with brown pine needles and maple leaves. “Grandpa Morgan?” I called. “Are you there?”

Nothing.

“Daisy, I want to apologize to you,” Casimir said to me. “We concentrated our efforts on protecting Sinclair. That was a mistake.”

I shrugged. “We all agreed it was the right approach. The question is, what happens next?”

Mrs. Meyers was sitting primly on the stoop of Talman Brannigan’s mausoleum. She’d taken her knitting out of her handbag and her needles were clicking away. “No one knows, dear. That’s the problem.”

“Maybe it just . . . fizzled,” I suggested. No one was buying it. Another thought struck me. “Or maybe . . . maybe Hel claimed Grandpa Morgan’s spirit herself! She is a goddess of the dead, after all.”

It was a nice idea, and it cheered me up while it lasted, which was as long as it took for Mikill the frost giant to pull into the cemetery in his dune buggy and summon me to an audience with Hel.

Oh, crap.