Autumn Bones

Page 16

Sinclair was right, I decided. It would be stupid not to enjoy the moment for what it was.
It felt strange to have him in my apartment, but a good kind of strange. The place was modestly furnished and decorated, but throughout my childhood my mom and I had gotten good at salvaging and rehabbing stuff from thrift stores, yard sales, and, yes, even Dumpsters, and I thought it looked pretty decent. After checking in vain for Mogwai, I gave Sinclair the tour—living room, kitchen, screened porch, bedroom, and bath—then left him to poke around while I found a bud vase for my rose and poured us each a few inches of single-malt scotch, my one mature indulgence.
In the living room, Sinclair was examining my music collection, the neat array of CDs I’d never gotten around to digitizing. “Thanks,” he said absently when I handed him a glass. “So you really do like the blues, huh?”
I’d told him that on our first date. “Why would I make that up?”
“Yeah, well . . .” He looked amused and a little apologetic. “Chalk it up to shit white girls say to impress a brother. Which is funny, because I know fuck-all about the blues. But you’ve got quite a collection.”
“Yeah.” I took a sip of scotch. “It belonged to a guy my mom dated for a while. A jazz bass player. He left it to me.”
“He took off?”
“No.” I shook my head. “He was killed in a car accident. It’s okay,” I added, forestalling his sympathy. “I mean, it’s not okay, but it was twelve years ago. He was a good guy. It turns out the blues calm me down, especially the female vocalists. He helped me figure it out.”
“Must have been a good guy to recognize this would mean so much to a kid,” Sinclair mused. “Play me something? One of your favorites?”
Feeling self-conscious, I fussed over my choice. Of course, now that he’d mentioned it, my immediate impulse was to pick something out of the pop culture mainstream, something like Ma Rainey’s “Deep Moaning Blues,” that would establish my blues credentials. But I didn’t want to be that girl, and if Sinclair really knew fuck-all about the blues, there was no point, so I went with something obvious instead.
Strings swelled in a simple, familiar arrangement, paving the way for Etta James’s effortlessly powerful vocals as she sang with impassioned tenderness about how her lonely days were over now that her love had come at last.
Okay, I really hadn’t thought about the implications of the lyrics. Way to go, Daise.
“Ah . . . don’t read too much into it,” I said hurriedly. “It’s a classic, that’s all. You know, she just passed away a couple of years ago. Etta James, that is.”
“Daisy.” Sinclair set down his glass on a bookshelf. “It’s okay. It’s just a song.”
Out of habit, I tucked my tail between my legs, clamping it tight as his hands curved around my waist and pulled me close to him, just like I’d done at every high school dance I’d attended, at every nightclub I’d ever danced in. And it may seem like a small, silly thing, but it was a moment of pure bliss to realize I didn’t have to.
I unfurled my tail and slid my arms around Sinclair’s neck, gazing up at him as we swayed slowly together. He lowered his head to kiss me, tasting of scotch tinged with a faint hint of chocolate, while Etta sang in the background.
Hands down, most romantic evening ever. Way better than a funky satyr booty call. Although that had had its merits, too. Just thinking about it, I felt my temperature rise a few degrees. But this time I wasn’t going to be the one to make the first move. I’d wait for Sinclair to do it.
I didn’t have to wait long.
The song ended, and Sinclair tilted his head toward the bedroom with an inquiring look. “Shall we adjourn?”
I smiled up at him. “Love to.”
Eleven
“What the holy hell?”
“What?” Jolted awake, I sat upright, looking frantically for my phone, or dauda-dagr, or . . . I don’t know what. “What?”
“This . . . thing!” Sinclair was lying flat on his back beside me with Mogwai perched high on his chest, paws neatly tucked, purring contentedly as he gazed down at Sinclair with slitted eyes.
I laughed out loud. “I told you I had a cat!”
“That’s a cat?” He took a sharp breath, Mogwai rising obliviously with his chest. “More like a duppy.”
“A what?”
“Nothing.” He let out his breath in a sigh. “S’okay. Is he your familiar or something?”
I lifted Mogwai off Sinclair’s chest and set him on the bed between us. It was true that he was a pretty big cat, eighteen pounds and none of it fat, and according to the vet, male calicoes were a genetic rarity. Other than that, he seemed pretty normal. “Something, I guess. He likes you.”
“Good thing.” He eyed Mogwai, then reached out to give him a tentative scratch under the chin. “You startled me, bwai! Give me a chance to get to know you, eh?”
Glancing toward my bedroom window, I saw sunlight. All right, I had a sexy naked guy in my bed, but it was Labor Day in Pemkowet and I had an agenda. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going to make coffee, then run down to Mrs. Browne’s for a couple of cinnamon rolls. If you want to shower before we do the Bridge Walk, now’s your chance.”
Sinclair stretched, slow and leisurely, giving me a significant look. “Bet I’ve got a couple of hours before my first tour. You sure about this Bridge Walk?”
Um . . . no?
“Yes,” I said sternly. “You said you wanted the full-on experience, and this is a proud local tradition.” I poked him. “You’re not backing out on me, are you?”
He gave a good-natured laugh. “Nah.”
“Good.”
Forty minutes later, we were on our way, clean and fed and caffeinated. I’d offered to drive, but Sinclair wanted to bike home to pick up the tour bus, so after some debate I wound up riding perched on his bike seat while he stood on the pedals—which, I have to say, afforded me a nice view of his butt.
Okay, so the annual Labor Day Pemkowet Bridge Walk is sort of an elaborate joke. It was inspired by the annual Labor Day Mackinac Bridge Walk, which has been going on for, like, more than fifty years, and isn’t a joke. A little background for non-Michiganders: The Mackinac Bridge spans the straits between the upper and lower peninsulas—peninsulae? Mr. Leary would know—and at about five miles long, it’s one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Thousands of people do the Bridge Walk every year. It takes a couple of hours to make it across, after which you receive a certificate.
The bridge between Pemkowet and East Pemkowet is exactly zero point one nine miles long, and it takes about five minutes to walk it . . . after which you receive a certificate and an invitation to a pancake breakfast at the Masonic Lodge.
See, the thing is, it’s not just the eldritch community that makes Pemkowet a place where weird shit happens. It’s the people, the mundane people, too.
For example, we have a town crier. You know, the guy who shows up in a long wig and a frock coat, ringing a bell and doing the whole “Hear ye, hear ye!” thing. It’s not a paid or elected position or anything. There’s just a guy who does it.
And yep, there was the town crier, surrounded by a bunch of other people in period attire. Except for some prominent tattoos, they looked like they’d walked out of the nearest Renaissance faire. There were ladies from the Red Hat Society, people walking dogs, people pushing kids in strollers, people towing kids in little red wagons.
Sinclair was laughing. “This is crazy!”
I smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
Oh, and there was Stacey Brooks taking publicity photos for the PVB. I smiled even wider and gave her an obnoxious little finger wave, watching her scowl in reply and fight the urge to flash devil horns at me in public.
We lined up behind the wooden barricade, milling and chatting. Glancing over at the squad car that blocked the west end of the bridge, I saw Bart Mallick was on duty. Since I hadn’t been one of his favorite people before the whole Rainbow’s End incident, I didn’t bother to greet him, but I ran into my mom’s friend Sandra Sweddon, there with her daughter Terri, who was now Terri Dalton, and made a point of introducing Sinclair to them.
At nine o’clock, the town crier issued a proclamation announcing the start of the annual Pemkowet Bridge Walk. Everyone streamed around or over the barricade. About twenty yards in there was a guy holding a sign reading THE FAINT OF HEART SHOULD TURN BACK NOW!
“You know this is absurd, right?” Sinclair asked, walking his bike beside me.
“Uh-huh. Aren’t you glad you didn’t miss it?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
At the halfway point, just under one tenth of a mile, the Pemkowet Historical Society had set up a refreshment station with Dixie cups of Gatorade. I took one for tradition’s sake, even though I think the stuff’s vile.
“Hey.” Sinclair downed his Gatorade and tossed the cup in the trash. He patted the handlebars of his bike. “Hop up. I’ll ride you the rest of the way.”
I gave him a dubious look. “You sure about that?”
Straddling his bike, he balanced on the pedals, making it stand upright and motionless, then went a few inches forward and backward before returning to perfect stillness. “Sure. C’mon, hop up.”
“Oh, fine.”
Yes, it was totally showing off, but you know what? It was fun. Sinclair rode as slowly as possible to keep pace with the walkers, weaving only a little with the added weight of me on the handlebars. The sun was shining and a slight breeze ruffled the surface of the river. It was a holiday and it felt like it.
“Did you really like that Etta James song I played for you?” I asked Sinclair over my shoulder.
“Yeah, I did.”
“We should go to the Bide-a-Wee Tavern tonight,” I said. “They have live jazz and blues, and there’s always a big bash for the end of the season. It’s mostly locals, too, since a lot of summer people and tourists leave this afternoon.”