Autumn Bones (51 page)

Across the meadow, the Oak King raised one hand in salute, sunlight streaming between his spread fingers.

I raised mine in acknowledgment.

And then the clouds closed, obscuring the sun. The bright shaft of golden autumn light vanished, and the Oak King vanished with it, fading back into the pine shadows without a single motion.

I let out a long, shuddering breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Beside me, Sinclair did the same.

“I don’t think Jojo’s coming back, Daisy,” he whispered. “Not ever.”

I reached out to slide my hand into his, entwining our fingers, and squeezed. “Yeah. I know.”

Some things come to an end.

And some things begin, too.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Hel. Well, that’s deliberate, because I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about what happened the night that she summoned me to Little Niflheim in the aftermath of the Halloween affair.

It’s . . . complicated. As usual.

I don’t mean the visit to Little Niflheim. Although I was a bit apprehensive, far from satisfied with how I’d handled the whole crisis, that part went fine. I should have known it would. It may have come down to the wire, but I’d upheld Hel’s rule of order, which was all that mattered. Whatever mistakes I’d made along the way were forgiven and forgotten in light of the fact that I’d produced the desired results. If Hel were a CEO rather than the Norse goddess of the dead, I’d say she was outcome-oriented. She even let me keep the spirit lantern as a bonus. Well, more of a precaution, but still.

It was on the way out of Little Niflheim that the first disconcerting thing happened. As Mikill and I approached the sacred well beneath the canopy of Yggdrasil II’s massive root system, one of the Norns stepped forward and held up a hand to halt the dune buggy.

I clambered out of the buggy for a little soothsaying. At a distance, the Norns don’t look terribly intimidating. At close range, it’s another matter. It was the youngest of them who beckoned to me now, fingernails like long silver talons, her eyes as colorless as mist.

“Young Daisy,” she said to me, her voice echoing as though it came from the depths of the well that lay beneath the roots of the world tree. “Embrace your mistakes. Learn from them. When the time comes, the fate of the world may hinge on the choices you make.”

Oh, great.

“Do you have any counsel for me, my lady?” I asked her.

The Norn maiden reached out with her long, long silver talons to caress my cheek, razor-sharp edges rasping against my skin and drawing a shudder from me. She gave me a faint smile, the pale mist that filled the hollows of her eyes swirling. “Trust your heart.”

I waited to see if any more sooth was forthcoming, but she withdrew her hand and returned to rejoin the other two Norns in the endless process of tending Yggdrasil II’s roots, drawing buckets from the well.

“Any idea what that was all about?” I asked Mikill, climbing back into the dune buggy.

The frost giant shook his head, the ice in his beard crackling. “The Norns see many possible futures.”

“Are they ever more specific about them?” I asked.

“No.” Mikill revved the engine. “They reveal as much as they may without breaking the skein of time.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s just . . . um, the fate of the world? I mean, no pressure or anything.”

Mikill gave me a long, grave look and for a moment I thought he was going to say something profound about how no one chooses their destiny no matter how humble or terrifying, or something reassuring about the many possible futures, or maybe a pep talk about how I was only just coming into my own, and I possessed reserves of strength and courage I hadn’t yet begun to tap. After all, we’d spent a fair amount of time together on our excursions to and from Little Niflheim by now.

But no.

“Keep your limbs well within the vehicle during the ascent, Daisy Johanssen,” he said quietly to me before gunning for the rampway that spiraled up the inside of Yggdrasil II’s mammoth trunk.

So, yeah, that was the first disconcerting thing that happened the night Hel summoned me. I didn’t know what to think about it or even
how
to think about it. On an intellectual level, of course, I’d always known about the danger my existence posed to the Inviolate Wall. It’s why I tried to tread lightly when it came to the Seven Deadlies and why I resisted even considering my father’s temptation scenarios. But as long as I maintained my hard-fought self-control—or at least enough of it not to breach the Inviolate Wall itself—those were only hypotheticals.

This . . . this was different. This was an immortal soothsayer, one of the Norns, telling me that a moment of choice was coming for me and the fate of the world would hang in the balance. Or
may
hang in the balance, what with the many possible futures and all.

I sighed, a distinctly unsettled feeling in the pit of my belly.

It didn’t help when Mikill pulled into the alley beside my apartment and the dune buggy’s headlights tagged the sleek, matte-black form of a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle parked there.

“It appears you have company, Daisy Johanssen,” Mikill announced in a formal tone.

“So it does.” I got out of the vehicle. “Thank you, Mikill.”

He raised one hand in farewell, put the dune buggy in reverse, and backed out of the alley, chugging away into the night, his frosty beard wagging in the breeze.

“Daisy.” Stefan, leaning against the wall, peeled himself upright. The lamp above the door cast his eyes in shadows. “I wanted—”

“I’m fine,” I interrupted him. “You don’t need to check up on me at every turn.”

He frowned. “Is it—”

I talked over him. “I mean, it’s just the fate of the world, right?”

“—so difficult to believe that . . .” Stefan paused. “What?”

We stared at each other. “Nothing.” I swallowed. “Just something one of the Norns said to me. I’m sorry. What?”

“Is it so difficult to believe that I’m here because I wished to see you, Daisy?” Stefan said gently to me.

“A little, yeah,” I said honestly.

He smiled. “I wanted to tell you that Cooper is lucid enough to express his apologies to you.”

“That was fast.” Based on what I knew, it took at least a week for a ghoul to stop ravening.

Stefan shrugged. “Cooper has considerable strength of will. Still, I will see that he is kept in seclusion. It will be some days yet before the ravening has fully passed.”

“Okay.”

Oh, in case you’re wondering, this was definitely the other disconcerting thing to happen that night.

“The Norn?” Stefan prompted me.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I mean, it’s nothing
yet
. And it’s nothing specific. Just that the fate of the world may hinge upon the choices I make.”

Stefan took a step closer to me. I was acutely aware of his presence; of his height, of the breadth of his shoulders, of the impossibility of his immortal existence. “That has always been the case, Daisy.”

“I know,” I whispered. Part of me felt crowded by Stefan’s presence. Part of me felt elated by it. “Is that why you came? To tell me about Cooper?”

“No.”

The air between us hummed with possibilities. I forgot about the Norn’s soothsaying. “Um . . . Stefan, wouldn’t it be dangerous? You and me, together?”

“Are you afraid of losing yourself in me?” His pupils dilated in a rush. “You could. Or I could let my control slip and you could send me ravening. But that’s part of the allure, isn’t it?” He was close enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin. “You’ve been with one of the eldritch, Daisy. There may be no future for you and the wolf, but do you really think you could go back to ordinary mortals?”

“No, but . . .” My mind was reeling. “There’s no future for us in the long run, is there? And Cooper said it’s human companionship you crave. In case you’ve forgotten, I don’t entirely qualify.”

Stefan cupped my face in his hands. “Your heart is human, Daisy. Human and more.”

He kissed me.

It was one hell of a kiss. I’d been impressed by the last one, but Stefan had definitely been holding back. If that first kiss had staked a claim on me, this one made good on it; and there was nothing gentle about it. That man did masterful things with his tongue, things that turned my knees to water and made my head spin, igniting a blaze of lust between my thighs. I guess six hundred years of practice will have that effect. I heard myself moan into his mouth and realized that my hands were fisted in his dark hair, pulling him closer until I could feel his erection pressed against me. It felt good. I could feel my yearning spilling into him, feeding him, and that felt good, too. I wanted more.

Damn.

A rill of terror mixed with desire ran through me, and I kindled a shield without thinking, pushing Stefan away.

Somewhere on the far side of the Inviolate Wall, my father, Belphegor, chuckled.

Stefan’s pupils waxed and waned, steadying in his ice-blue eyes. “We are well matched, you and I. I cannot offer you eternity, Daisy, but I can offer you the here and now.” He inclined his head to me. “Think about it.”

“Um . . . okay,” I said in a dazed tone. “I will.”

Stefan had the courtesy to make his exit on that note, straddling his black motorcycle and roaring away.

So, yeah.

That was more than a week ago. Since that time, Stefan hadn’t pressed me and I hadn’t sought him out. He was giving me time and space, and I was grateful for it.

I wanted what he offered. I wanted it a lot.

But it scared me, too.

And then there were my feelings for Cody, which hadn’t gone away. And we
still
hadn’t had a real conversation about it. Now that we weren’t working an eldritch case together, he was back on night shifts and I hadn’t seen him for days. He might have been avoiding me on purpose. I know he felt guilty about the fact that if our tryst that morning hadn’t happened, if we’d gotten to Clancy Brannigan’s house before the storm, he would have found the scent trail and the Tall Man’s remains. It’s not like I could blame him. I felt guilty about it, too. But it didn’t seem fair that it should completely invalidate what had happened between us, because let’s face it, what happened was shockingly intense and pretty damn amazing.

Of course, even if it hadn’t been for the element of guilt, there was the fact that I was an unsuitable mate. Nothing in the world was ever going to change that. It’s not like in the movies where a werewolf’s bite infects a human with lycanthropy—not that I would consider that, but still. Werewolves can only reproduce with their own kind. That’s why they’re so stringent about it. The survival of their species depends on it.

So maybe it was time I acknowledged it, gave up, and quit pining for Cody Fairfax for good. Maybe it was time I explored my attraction to Stefan, a prospect that filled me with equal parts of exhilaration and terror.

Or maybe that was the very choice the Norn warned me about. On the one hand, it seemed pretty freaking arrogant to imagine that the fate of the world might hang in the balance because Daisy Johanssen of Pemkowet, Michigan, decided to try dating the hot ghoul.

On the other hand, Stefan was one of the Outcast, banned from heaven and hell, and I was a demon’s daughter. As my old teacher Mr. Leary might say, that made for a heck of a potent eschatological cocktail. Eschatology—look it up. I did.

And of course there was the fact that Stefan Ludovic was the medieval Bohemian version of Hamlet, for Christ’s sake, a six-hundred-year-old immortal knight with a tragic backstory, and I was a twenty-four-year-old file clerk with a high school diploma.

That’s the sort of thing that looks ridiculous on paper, right? And yet it didn’t feel ridiculous.

After all, I wasn’t just a file clerk. I was Hel’s liaison. And despite everything, Stefan was a man—a man who had once been mortal, who had been Outcast in the prime of his life. He had the same longings and desires as any other mortal man. Well, plus one major addition, what with the subsisting on emotion and all.

Anyway.

Whether or not it was in reference to this particular choice, the Norn had told me to trust my heart. The problem was, Stefan was right. My heart was human. More, maybe; human, definitely, with all the confusion, messiness, and uncertainty that being human entailed. They say the heart wants what it wants. Well, mine wanted a lot of things.

I wanted what Stefan offered me.

I wanted what Cody couldn’t offer me, too.

Hell, there was a big part of me that wished Emmeline Palmer had never come to town and I was still dating her brother, Sinclair, still riding on the handlebars of his bicycle and enjoying a harmless romance that wasn’t overshadowed by insurmountable complications or inherent peril.

But you can’t turn back the hands of time, at least not that I’m aware of. What was done was done.

Sooner or later, I was going to have to make a choice. When all was said and done, I doubted that the fate of the world hung on this one. The Norn was probably talking about something else, something I couldn’t yet begin to envision.

At least I hoped so.

I’d have to think about it some more.