Autumn Bones

Forty-five

As if to mock my sense of impending doom, Halloween day dawned bright and clear and unseasonably warm.

By noon, the festivities in the park were in full swing.

The sky overhead was that deep, vivid blue that you sometimes get in October in Michigan. A light breeze ruffled the river, but the thermometer registered seventy-four degrees. A band played in the gazebo. Grown-ups danced and drank beer. Kids with jack-o’-lanterns and black cats with arched backs painted on their cheeks laughed and shrieked, chasing one another over the grass, bobbing for apples, burying their faces in pies donated by Pomona Orchards, rolling pumpkins for prizes.

“I feel kind of silly now,” Jen muttered to me. She was wearing an old carpenter’s apron she’d appropriated from her father at some point in time, nails in the front pocket, hammer slung through a loop.

“I can live with silly.” I was sporting dauda-dagr on my hip and I had the spirit lantern tucked under my arm. As far as I was concerned, “silly” was a luxury that meant everything was quiet and calm. Ken Levitt was present in uniform representing the Pemkowet PD—Cody was on road patrol until later that evening—and he had a hammer and nails, too. Stefan’s second lieutenant, Rafe, was perched solitary on a motorcycle on the rise at the far end of the park, observing from a distance, his inhuman pallor hidden behind riding leathers and a helmet with a dark visor.

Sinclair was off on his tour bus route, but he was only a phone call and ten minutes away, tops. Sandra Sweddon, Mrs. Meyers, and Sheila Reston were all volunteering to help staff the festival.

So was my mom, which was a bit of a sticking point. Once it was clear that the event was going forward, she’d refused to back out of her commitment when I asked her. At least she’d promised to go home when the shindig in the park ended.

And right now, it looked like I was being an alarmist. If it meant we got through the next twelve hours without a catastrophe, that was okay with me, too.

I nudged Jen with my shoulder. “So tell me about you and Lee.”

She shrugged. “Nothing to tell.” I gave her a look. “Okay, okay! I talked him into letting me give him a makeover.”

“Good job.”

“I know, right?” Jen couldn’t resist a quick satisfied smirk. “He’s got a good frame for clothes.”

“So . . . would you ever?” I asked her.

“Date him?” She started to grimace, then caught herself. “Seriously, I don’t know, Daise. I mean, there’s a part of me that thinks, hey, why not? He cleans up sort of cute, he’s really smart, and a fairly nice guy once you get to know him. Then I think . . . ew, but it’s Skeletor.” She glanced guiltily in my direction. “I’m not proud of that, but I can’t help the way I feel.”

“I get it,” I said. “But it’s probably way past time to let that old high school shit go, you know?”

“I know, I know!” Jen sighed. “But if it were that easy, they wouldn’t make movies about it.”

“True words, Romy. Or were you Michele?” It’s not like I was one to talk, although I was pretty sure Stacey Brooks had earned a lifetime exception to the “grow up and get over it” clause.

She smiled. “Can you imagine the two of us turning up at our ten-year class reunion on Lee’s arms?”

“I can imagine worse things.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Jen’s smile faded. “Listen, if Lee ever does ask me out, I’ll think about it, I really will. But it’s not just the Skeletor thing. He’s got this weird paranoid, secretive streak, you know?”

“It’s not paranoia if they’re out to get you.” I dodged the halfhearted smack Jen aimed at my arm. “Okay, seriously! I don’t know about that whole corporate espionage thing—maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But remember, Lee’s got his own high school damage. I think he’s been burned a lot of times and it’s hard for him to trust people. He was so sure I was trying to trick him when we visited Little Niflheim, and I was nice to him back in the day.”

“Point taken.” Jen cocked her head at me. “Um, speaking of secretive, Miss Johanssen . . . ?”

“What?” I flushed. Jen folded her arms. “Okay, look . . .” I glanced around, half hoping for a timely manifestation. Unfortunately, the scene in the park was the very picture of a charming small-town harvest festival. If it weren’t for Sheila Reston’s neck tattoo, it could have been a Norman Rockwell painting. Since everything was quiet on the Western Front, maybe it was finally time for me to spill the beans. “It’s complicated.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Remember the day the Tall Man’s remains went missing?” I said in a low voice. “Well, Cody and I sort of hooked up that morning.”

“Sort of?”

“Sort of as in totally,” I admitted. “And one other time. After the ghost uprising at the old hospital.”

“Wow.” Jen let out a long breath. “How was it?”

“Intense.” I shivered, my tail twitching involuntarily. “Especially the first time. He was still a little . . . wolfy.” There was a look on Jen’s face I couldn’t quite decipher, a look that said she was suddenly seeing me as a someone unfamiliar. “Look, don’t say anything to anyone about it, okay?”

The look turned to indignation. “Duh. So?”

“So . . . nothing,” I said ruefully. “I mean, we’re still not the same freakin’ species. Like I said—”

“It’s complicated,” Jen finished. “So that’s it?”

“Not exactly.” I looked around again to confirm that no one was in earshot. “Yesterday, Stefan kissed me.”

Her eyes widened. “No shit! The hot ghoul?”

“Uh-huh.”

She glanced toward Rafe, sitting motionless on his motorcycle. “Is that him up there now?”

“No,” I said. “That’s one of his lieutenants.”

“Okay.” Her gaze returned to me. “So?”

“I don’t know, Jen,” I said honestly. “Any of it. I don’t know what to think about or even how to think about it, let alone talk about it. Any of it. All of it. Either of them.” My tail began lashing with the pent-up agitation I’d been suppressing for days. “And I feel like with Halloween barreling down on us and Grandpa Morgan’s duppy out there, I’ve barely had time to breathe—”

Across the park, a beer keg blew a gasket and my mom sent an inquiring look in my direction. “Whoa, whoa!” Jen grabbed my arms. “Daise, chill.”

With an effort, I chilled. “Sorry.”

“No, my bad.” She let go of me. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“It’s okay.” I gave my mother an apologetic wave. She nodded and returned to duct-taping down plastic sheeting on the table for the pie-eating contest. Up on the rise at the other end, Rafe was pointing at me, his helmeted head cocked in a questioning manner. Great, so he’d felt it, too. When I waved him off, he settled back into a watchful pose astride his bike.

Jen glanced toward him again. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Stefan’s lieutenant keeping his distance. You’d think he’d want to get his ghoul on in a place where everyone’s happy and having fun. I mean, I know they’re not supposed to feed on the unwilling unless it’s an emergency,” she added quickly. “But as long as he’s here doing panic control, you’d think he’d want to skim a little of the good stuff off the top. I would.”

“Cooper says it’s painful,” I murmured. “Happiness, that is.”

“Who’s Cooper?”

I gave Jen a sharp look, but the question was genuine. In the weeks that I’d gotten to know Cooper, I hadn’t mentioned him to her. It made me realize how much distance my role as Hel’s liaison was creating between me and my best friend. “He’s Stefan’s other lieutenant.”

“Oh.” Judging from that one syllable, she was realizing it, too.

“Hey.” I shifted the spirit lantern in my left arm, grabbed Jen’s hand, and squeezed it. “I’m sorry if I’ve been secretive. I don’t mean to be, it’s just that I’ve had a lot going on. And I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to help out with this from the get-go, but I’m really glad you’re here now. Okay?”

“Okay.” Jen squeezed my hand back.

On the street alongside the park, Sinclair’s red, yellow, and green bus pulled up to let passengers disembark, PEMKOWET SUPERNATURAL TOURS painted on its side. I couldn’t help but gaze wistfully at it. I’d liked Sinclair. Well, I still did, of course, but life would have been a lot different if things had worked out between us. “Does he ever talk about me?” I asked Jen. “Now that you’re housemates?”

She followed my gaze. “A little, sure. I mean, he knows we’re friends, obviously. I think Sinclair feels bad about what happened. Aside from his familial baggage, which is a fairly huge deal breaker at the moment, he’s a sweetheart.” She paused. “Do you think you made a mistake breaking up with him?”

“No,” I said. “But I wish I did.”

Jen nodded. “I don’t blame you.”

A little before three o’clock, the harvest festival began winding down and young kids and their parents began to assemble across the street for the children’s parade. Not a single ghost had manifested and not a single hammer had been drawn. I was glad, but it didn’t do anything to alleviate the uneasiness I felt in the marrow of my bones.

“You be careful out there tonight, Daisy baby,” my mom said to me, hugging me in farewell. “And you, too, honey,” she added to Jen.

“We will, Mom Jo,” Jen assured her.

Jen and I followed the parade on foot down the main street of downtown Pemkowet, which was easy enough to do since the array of pint-size lions, witches, skeletons, zombies, and princesses moved at a snail’s pace. Ken Levitt brought up the rear in a squad car, creeping behind the procession.

At the end of the parade route, parents and children gathered on the municipal basketball court, where folding chairs on loan from the Women’s Club had been set up, and Mrs. Brophy from the library read an abridged version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in a loud, theatrical voice.

Even though I knew what was coming, it was effective. There was a paved footpath that led up the hill alongside the basketball court, and when Mrs. Brophy got to the story’s climax, the Headless Horseman himself came clattering down the footpath astride a coal-black horse, looking about seven feet tall in the saddle thanks to the long, dramatic cape obscuring his entire head and torso. Children shrieked, local parents cheered—it was an annual event, and the guy who played the Horseman had a riding stable a few miles outside of town—and adult tourists shouted in excitement and reached for their cameras and phones, many of them believing it was a real apparition. Like I said, it was a badass costume.

The Headless Horseman drew rein long enough to hurl a jack-o’-lantern onto the court, smashing it against the cement, before whirling and trotting briskly back up the footpath.

Once he’d vanished, the mood broke and the crowd began to scatter, sheepish tourists putting away their cameras, realizing it had all been part of the act. Rafe, who’d circled around town to position himself across the street during the parade, roared away on his motorcycle. Stefan and I had agreed to limit the utilization of the Outcast to large public gatherings where widespread panic could prove dangerous.

At least we’d gotten through the first one without incident. I let out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s phase one over with, anyway.”

Jen tapped the hammer hanging from her carpenter’s apron. “On to phase two?”

“Yep.”

We retrieved Jen’s convertible and drove up the hill—it’s not much of a hill, but it’s the only one we’ve got—to the main residential area of Pemkowet, parking on the street in front of the high school, where we’d have a good view of the neighborhood.

Ken Levitt pulled up alongside us. “Are the two of you going to be all right here on your own, Daisy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got additional backup coming in a few.”

“Good.” He nodded. “I’ll be cruising the neighborhood up here on the hill. Cody’s doing the same over in East Pemkowet, and Bart Mallick’s making a circuit of those new developments on the outskirts. Anything happens, call dispatch.”

“Will do,” I said. “And if you see anything . . . call me.”

Jen watched him drive away. “Call me a wuss, but I’m hoping that additional backup comes quickly.”

“You’re a wuss,” I said obligingly.

“Thanks.”

As it happened, we didn’t have to wait long. Mark and Sheila Reston arrived within a few minutes, parking behind us. We milled around in the street, making the sort of awkward conversation that arises when a handful of people who don’t know one another well gather to prepare for a possible massive ghost uprising or zombie apocalypse. Things went more smoothly when Sinclair arrived after his final tour of the day, sputtering up the hill to join us in the battered Chevy Lumina he’d purchased a few weeks ago.

That made four people on backup. To be honest, I’d rather have had Cody there, but it made sense to spread our resources around, coven members and police presence alike. If anything did happen, we’d have to converge, fast. But I’d chosen the hill since I figured it would get the most traffic from trick-or-treaters, and as I’d observed, the dead seemed to like an audience.

Perched on our cars and swinging our heels, we waited while a soft pre-dusk dimness settled over the hill and kids in costume flitted from house to house.

Despite the hour, the unnaturally balmy conditions persisted, a warm breeze springing up to rustle the piles of fallen leaves along the streets. Halloween in Pemkowet is old-school—none of that sterile contemporary business of determining a preordained time and place for trick-or-treating. People take the holiday seriously. Houses on the hill were decorated for the occasion, candlelit jack-o’-lanterns flashing flickering grins on every doorstep, fake gravestones in the front yards, fake cobwebs in the windows, plastic cauldrons from the dollar store spewing swirls of fake fog. Roving bands of trick-or-treaters went on foot from door to door, mostly accompanied by parents, but not always.

At around half past five, Jen’s phone rang. She took the call and hung up after a brief exchange. “Oh, crap.”

“What?”

“That was my mom,” she said in a grim tone. “Brandon’s missing. So’s his bike. That little shit! He promised me.”

“Damn.” I called in to dispatch. “Sue, it looks like the Easties vs. Townies battle is on after all. Can you notify the officers on patrol?” When I ended the call, Jen was on her phone again, leaving a voice mail.

“Just left a message for Bethany at the House of Shadows,” she said when she finished, her voice still grim. “She did promise to make sure nothing bad ever happened to him.”

“She probably hasn’t, um, risen for the night yet.” I glanced toward the west. The horizon was obscured by trees, but amber luminosity lingered in the sky. “Looks like another hour until the sun sets.”

“Great.”

“He’s a kid,” Sinclair said quietly. “He just wants to have fun with his friends. I would have done the same thing at his age.”

“On the verge of a zombie apocalypse?” I asked him.

He smiled wryly. “Probably.”

Over on the hood of her car, Sheila Reston shuddered. “Can we not call this a zombie apocalypse?”

“I don’t care what you call it,” her husband, Mark, grumbled beside her. “I just wish something would happen. I’m bored and I’m starving.”

I eyed a Harry Potter lugging a brimming bag of candy down the sidewalk. “You could always mug a trick-or-treater.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

I wasn’t about to complain about being bored any more than about feeling silly, but he had a point about being hungry. We should have gotten hot dogs at the harvest festival, or at least appropriated the leftover pies from the contest.

Just as I was thinking that very thing, another car pulled up to park behind us. I assumed it would be another member of the coven, but instead Lee emerged. “Hey,” he said uncertainly. “Mind if I join you? I brought pizza.”

“Oh, my God, Lee!” I scooted over and patted the LeBaron’s hood. “You really are a genius.”

I was on my second slice of sausage-and-mushroom when the Easties bicycle posse rounded the curve at the end of the street and came pelting past us, seven kids around Brandon’s age wearing hoodies and laden backpacks. One of them hurled a water balloon in our direction. It broke against the side of the LeBaron in an explosion of water and red food dye, most of it splattering Jen.

“Goddammit!” she shouted, hopping down. “Brandon Cassopolis, get back here!”

They didn’t even look back, let alone stop, instead pedaling hell for leather like kids in a Spielberg movie.

“We’re going after them.” I shoved the pizza box into the backseat. “Guys, hold the fort.”

Jen got behind the wheel and gunned the LeBaron. We nearly caught up with the Easties at the corner of Prospect, but a group of trick-or-treaters walked blithely across the street and she had to slam on the brakes while the bicyclists veered around the pedestrians. By the time we got through the intersection, the figures of the Easties were vanishing in the gathering dusk.

“That way.” I pointed, catching a glint as the last one turned onto Elm.

They ditched us in the labyrinth of short roads leading down the hill. “Left or right?” Jen asked at the next stop sign.

“Turn left,” I said. “They’re probably doubling back into town.” The victorious team in the Easties vs. Townies battle wasn’t exactly determined by scientific method. It was based on a rough estimate of who inflicted the most damage in the other’s neighborhood, or at least who bragged about it the loudest afterward. In the rearview mirror, I saw a second bicycle posse zooming around the corner of Elm in the opposite direction. That would be the Townies in hot pursuit. Apparently, the battle was shifting to East Pemkowet. “Uh-oh. My bad. They’re headed for the bridge.”

“Shit.” Jen tried to do a U-turn and had to wait for another group of costume-clad pedestrians.

I called Cody. He picked up immediately, his voice tense. “Daisy. What is it?”

“No ghosts yet,” I said. “Easties on bikes are on the move for home turf, Townies behind them. Can you head them off at the bridge? Brandon Cassopolis is with them.”

“On it.” He hung up.

At a bend in the road, over the river we caught one last glimpse of the Easties posse silhouetted in the lowering twilight as they pedaled furiously across the bridge, bent low over their handlebars, legs pumping. The Easties made it across and scattered into their own territory seconds before Cody arrived to pull the cruiser sideways across the street, strobe lights flashing red and blue.

Jen swore again, pounding the steering wheel with both hands. I winced. “I’m so sorry! I really thought they were headed back into town.”

She glanced at me, water and red dye still dripping from her hair in an unnerving Carrie-at-the-prom manner. “It’s not your fault, Daise. He shouldn’t be out here in the first place.”

The convertible top was down and the backwash of evening air over my skin made the fine hairs on my arms prickle, which in turn made me shiver. Everything felt wrong. It shouldn’t be this warm in October. It should be cool and crisp, the scent of wood smoke and autumn leaves hanging in the air. Not this. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that something very, very bad was coming.

“No one should,” I said to Jen. “Not tonight.”