Autumn Bones (19 page)

“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.”

Eighteen

T
hat afternoon, I called in sick to work—hell, after the morning I’d had, I figured I was entitled—and Sinclair and I had The Talk. By this time, I’d already pieced together most of the details, but it was good to get the whole story.

In a nutshell, his mother was a brilliant, ferociously ambitious lawyer, now judge, and obeah woman descended from a long line of obeah men and women, and had used her gifts throughout her life to obtain whatever she wanted, including Sinclair and Emmeline’s father, who was a good-looking, hardworking, God-fearing man who had wanted nothing to do with obeah or those who worked it. When the twins were three years old, by sheer happenstance their father discovered the love charm that had bewitched him.

And no, I did not interrupt Sinclair’s story to inform him that while infatuation could be compelled, genuine desire couldn’t.

Anyway, it was at that point that his father fled the island of Jamaica, taking his son with him.

“Why did he leave Emmy behind?” I asked him. We were on the dilapidated, butt-sprung plaid couch in Sinclair’s living room, where he was lying with his head in my lap, eyes closed.

“He tried to take her,” he murmured. “She didn’t want to go. She screamed bloody fucking murder. So in the end he left her with the neighbor.”

I stroked his temples. “Do you remember it?”

“I remember Emmy screaming,” he said.

In the years that followed, the divorce and the terms of custody were settled. From the time he was a young boy, Sinclair spent one month out of every summer on the island, being trained in the tradition of obeah until he was old enough to choose otherwise.

“Why did you walk away from it?” I asked him. “I’m not arguing the decision by any means—I’m just curious.”

He opened his eyes. “I saw what it did to my father, Daise. All my life, he’s never been quite . . . whole. And my mother . . . you know, for all her power, I don’t think she’s a happy woman.”

“What about your sister?” I asked. “What was that business about the two of you being twice as powerful together?”

Sinclair was silent a moment. “It’s true, but it’s not that simple. You know what she said about obeah being a path of balance?” I nodded. “Well, I’m drawn to the light. Emmy’s drawn to the dark. Together, we’re capable of finding balance in far greater extremes.”

“Sounds kind of ominous,” I said.

“It’s dangerous,” he said soberly. “Especially for her. That’s another reason I left. What’s the point in studying healing magic, blessings, and luck charms if it drives the person closest to you deeper into darkness?”

Okay, not exactly a question I could readily answer. “You know what’s odd?” I said instead. “Emmy mentioned the whole balance thing to me last night, only she said that your dating me was one step too far into the darkness.”

“Did she?” Sinclair smiled wryly. “I think what she really meant is that it’s one step too far out of reach. This has been going on for a while, Daisy. But before, Emmy and my mother could tell themselves that I’d be drawn back into the fold eventually. It was when I came to Pemkowet that they began to worry that I’d found something that suited me better. Dating a, um, member of the eldritch community was the final straw.”

I was dubious. “I don’t know how much she said to you, but Emmy didn’t think much of your life here.” If I recalled correctly, the terms “neutered American house cat” and “japing like a mountebank” had been used, but I wasn’t about to mention that either.

“Oh, I’m sure she was horrified,” he said. “All the more so for knowing I
like
being the guy who drives the tour bus, who brings a spark of magic and joy into the lives of people she doesn’t think deserve it.”

“Sounds about right.” Gazing down at Sinclair’s face, I sighed. “Dammit, you were supposed to be the normal guy! The nice, uncomplicated guy with the great smile and killer thighs, the guy I could talk to about movies and go out to dinner with and hold hands and feel like a normal human girl for once in my life.”

“Sorry.” He paused. “As opposed to who?”

“Oh, no one in particular.” It was a total lie, because of course I immediately flashed on the images of both Cody Fairfax and Stefan Ludovic, my long-standing childhood crush and the centuries-old Outcast who made me feel quivery inside. “It’s just . . . this was supposed to be simple.”

“Life isn’t, Daisy,” Sinclair murmured.

“Tell me about it.” I laid one hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat steadily beneath my palm. When all was said and done, there was something soothing in the contact. “Your sister’s coming back, isn’t she?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What happens when she does?” I asked him. “Because I can order her to leave again, and I’m pretty sure I can enforce it, but I can’t stop her from coming.”

Sinclair met my gaze. “I’ll tell her no.”

“And?” I prompted him.

He took a deep breath. “My guess? She’ll try to set a duppy on me, one that will haunt me until I say yes.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, thinking. “So that’s what we need to plan for, right? Protecting you from a . . . a duppy.”

“Right.” Sinclair nodded. “And in a way, I think Emmy’s right, Daisy. I’ve been running from something I
can’t
run from. I need to take a measure of responsibility for my own protection. I know some, but not nearly enough. I left the practice too soon. Maybe your local coven can help?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m sure Casimir would be delighted. He’s already got a grudge against your sister. Can you, um, do that? Just switch from one tradition to another?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably not entirely. But there should be enough overlap that I can continue to learn from them.”

“Good.”

An awkward silence descended between us. Where did that phrase come from? I wonder.
Silence descended
. Descended from where exactly? Was it hovering over us like the alien spaceship in
Independence Day
? Maybe it wasn’t really silence so much as it was the smothering weight of something unsaid, words we’d kept at bay, kept in the air, by talking about other things.