“No, but it was my job to prevent it from happening,” I said. “I didn’t. And now it’s my responsibility.”
“Right,” Cody said. “Plan B it is. Let’s start by heading over to Drummond’s to buy out their stock of hammers.”
It wasn’t much of a plan, but like he said, it was a start.
Forty-four
W
hile everyone else was carving jack-o’-lanterns, I spent the day before Halloween handing out hammers.
“The, um, particular talent of the Outcast will probably be more useful,” I said to Stefan. “But just in case.”
“Of course.” He inclined his head, a shadow of regret behind his ice-blue eyes. “Some of us may find peace in laying the spirits of the dead to rest.” He paused. “Are you well, Daisy?”
“Not exactly,” I said honestly. “But I’m doing my best.”
Stefan’s pupils were steady. “I could alleviate your fear.”
I raised my mental shield without thinking. “No. Thanks, but no.”
Unexpectedly, he smiled. “Better. In battle, fear is a warrior’s friend. You are wise to keep yours honed to a fine edge.”
“Um . . . thanks.” Keeping my shield in place between us, I eyed him. I couldn’t help but think about what Cooper had said about us, not to mention Cody’s occasional flares of jealousy. “Stefan, exactly what am I to you?”
He frowned slightly. “How do you mean the question?”
“I don’t know.” I really wasn’t sure what I was asking, but I also wanted to see how he would answer without any guidelines.
Stefan was silent for a minute. “A rarity.”
Okay, that wasn’t what I’d expected. “Excuse me?”
“A rarity,” he repeated. “A demon’s seed conceived in innocence, born in faith, raised in love. That makes you a rarity, Daisy Johanssen.” Leaning forward, Stefan raised one hand to cup the back of my head and kissed me on the lips.
Whoa.
It was a gentle kiss, but authoritative; a kiss that staked a definite claim. A jolt of electricity, or whatever the thing that feels like electricity is, shot through me. I’m not sure, but I may actually have gasped out loud.
Stefan released me and straightened, his pupils waxing into dark moons. “Does that answer your question?”
“Not exactly, no.” My heart was beating fast and hard, and my knees felt wobbly. “But it raises plenty of others. Only—”
He finished my thought for me. “Only now is not the time.”
“Right.”
Stefan smiled again, this time faintly, but with genuine affection. “You should know that there are those of us who appreciate you for what you are and do not dismiss you for what you are not, Daisy. The Outcast will support you as best we can in whatever manner necessity dictates. I have conceived a fondness for this ridiculous town, and I do not wish to see it forevermore haunted. When All Hallows Eve has passed, I will answer any question your heart desires. But for now, it is best that you go.”
I went, the impress of his kiss lingering on my lips. Life can be incredibly inconvenient at times.
Although I debated it, in the end I asked Lurine to be on hand to provide backup. I figured that if she was in costume, the odds that anyone would recognize her would be reduced.
Lurine agreed readily to help out after dark. “No worries, cupcake,” she said, idly tossing the hammer I gave her. “Some of the prettiest boys from Rainbow’s End are planning to march in the adult parade as an entire squadron of Lurine Hollisters. No one will recognize the real deal.”
“What about . . .” I struggled to remember the name of the satyr, who was nowhere in evidence. “Nico?”
“Nico?” She looked blank for a second. “Oh, right. He got a little tiresome. I sent him off to pick apples at Pomona Orchards. Perfect place for a rustic deity. Do you want him there?”
“No, that’s okay. I’d rather have people I know well enough to trust,” I said. “I just thought maybe you were an item.”
“An item.” Lurine looked amused. “That’s not really a term that applies to satyrs, cupcake. Satyrs are for . . .” She gave a little wriggle that managed to suggest serpentine undulations even though she was in human form. “Oh, let’s just call it a down-and-dirty celebration of the urge to merge, shall we?”
Kind of like Cody and me,
I thought. Well, except for the part where I wanted an actual relationship, which wasn’t an option for a werewolf and a hell-spawn, because we were unsuitable mates incapable of producing little half-breed werecubs. Not that it was anything I was contemplating, but . . . God, I wondered if members of the Outcast could have children? I’d never heard of it happening, but I didn’t know if there was a physiological reason for it, like maybe the plane of mortal existence between salvation and damnation was a sterile one, or—
“Daisy?”
I blinked at Lurine. “Huh?”
“I lost you for a minute there, baby girl.” There was concern in her blue eyes. “Everything okay?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.” It was a good, solid “no,” a bracing, cut-through-the-bullshit “no.” Lurine sat on the couch opposite me, arms spread casually along its back, legs crossed at the knee, one dangling foot flashing the trademarked crimson sole of a spike-heeled Christian Louboutin pump. The wisdom in her patient gaze dated back to the Bronze Age, rendering Stefan Ludovic a mere child in her experience.
I sighed. “Didn’t you tell me heartbreak was a rite of passage?”
“I did.”
“Well, I might be stumbling toward a new phase of maturity.”
“Oh, baby girl.” Lurine came off the couch in a graceful slithering motion to embrace me. “It’s all right.”
I closed my eyes. “It’s not, though. It’s really not, Lurine. All this crap that’s going on in my personal life doesn’t matter. I screwed up. And I’m scared. Hel’s disappointed in me. So is the chief.”
Lurine shrugged. “Oh, fuck them.”
I inhaled sharply. “Lurine!”
“Oh, you know what I mean, cupcake.” Letting me go, she ruffled my hair. “I’m on your side. And you can do this.”
My eyes stung with tears. “Thanks.”
“What can I say, baby girl?” Holding me at arm’s length, Lurine regarded me. “
I
believe in you. Go out there and make your mama proud.”
It heartened me.
It’s surprising what an affirmation from a millennia-old monster can do for your self-esteem; and I don’t use the word
monster
lightly. The truth is, Lurine was a monster by her own admission. In a way, so was I. And it was good to be reminded of it.
Feeling a little better about tomorrow’s prospects, I stopped by Sinclair’s after his last tour was done for the day.
Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy was lurking outside his place, huddled under the juniper bush, clutching her slingshot. She looked weary and bedraggled, a brownish cast to her green skin, the purple clumps of her hair going to seed. It was late in the season for a wildflower fairy like her to be out and about. Usually, they vanished by this time, hibernating or taking to the hollow hills or whatever it was that nature elementals did during the winter.
“I come in peace, Jojo,” I said, eyeing the slingshot. “This is business.”
“Yes, I know.” Although she didn’t insult me, she summoned the energy to cast a disdainful look in my direction. “Someone must needs keep a vigil.”
“Are you expecting the duppy to show up here?” I asked her. “Do you know something I don’t know?”
“Like as not.” Jojo bared her teeth in a pointed grimace. “But not about the spirits of the mortal dead, no.” Her grip on the slingshot tightened. “I would fain keep him from harm, ’tis all.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “Be careful.”
Inside, Sinclair promised to distribute hammers and nails to all the members of the coven and assured me that they had a phone tree in place and were prepared to convene on a moment’s notice at the first sighting of his grandfather’s duppy.
“They won’t be able to help with the hammering thing if that happens, though,” he warned me. “They’ll need to form a spirit circle around him.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m just trying to get as many people armed and ready as possible. God knows, we could be overrun by ghosts before Grandpa Morgan decides to make his grand entrance. We might need all the help we can get.”
Sinclair nodded at the silver acorn whistle hanging around my neck. “Have you thought about . . . ?”
“Summoning the Oak King?” I touched the gleaming metal. “I don’t think this is something even he can help with, Sinclair. The fey don’t wield influence over the dead. Although Jojo’s determined to try,” I added. “She’s out there with her slingshot. Says she would fain keep you from harm.”
He smiled tiredly. “Poor thing. She’s been dogging my footsteps ever since it happened.”
“She’s been dogging your footsteps ever since
before
it happened,” I pointed out.
“True.”
The front door opened to admit Jen and a tall, lanky, good-looking guy in corduroy pants, a cable-knit fisherman’s sweater, and a chestnut-colored suede jacket. Even given the fact that the jacket was draped over his shoulder to accommodate the cast on his left forearm, it took me a couple of takes to recognize him.
“Lee?”
“Oh, hi, Daisy!” He grinned. The Velcro landing strip of beard was gone from his chin and he had a new haircut. He still had the steel hoops in his earlobes, but now they contributed a mild hint of subversiveness. He looked surprisingly good, in a heroin-chic-meets-Abercrombie-&-Fitch sort of way. “So what’s up? Are we on the verge of a zombie apocalypse?”
Clearly, I’d been distracted. I shot Jen a
WTF, girlfriend?
look. She shot me a
We’ll talk later
look in return.
“Um, yeah,” I said belatedly. “I mean . . . I don’t know. I hope not, but we’re on the verge of something, that’s for sure.”
“You’re recruiting ghostbusters?” Jen set down a shopping bag and picked up one of the hammers, hefting it. “Cool. I’m in.”
“Those are for the coven,” I said without thinking. “Not you.”
“Why not?” Her voice turned cool, but the hurt registered in her brown eyes. “I’m not good enough to help?”
I could have kicked myself. “No, I didn’t mean that! But they’ve got spells and magic and stuff to protect them.”
“
You
don’t.”
“No, but—” I sighed. “Jen, if you really want to help, the biggest thing you could do is convince Brandon and his friends to call off the Easties vs. Townies fight. That would be huge. The fewer kids out there I have to worry about, the better.”
“Fine,” she said promptly. “Actually, I’ve already talked to him about it. Now can I be a ghostbuster?”
“You did say we might need all the help we could get,” Sinclair reminded me. Lee didn’t say anything, glancing back and forth between us. Lee was a pretty smart guy.
“I just don’t want to put you at risk,” I said to Jen.
She smiled wryly. “Look, Daise, I know I’m the Xander in your Scooby Gang. But at least Xander could hammer a nail. So can I. And I promise, whatever happens, I won’t freak out. Let me help?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Deal.”
Forty-five
A
s if to moc
k 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.