Autumn Bones

Page 63

Well, not the romantic problems, anyway. The actual problems—those were my responsibility.
Damn, I was tired. Smoothing my dress in place, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the birch-bark-framed mirror on Cody’s bedroom wall. I looked a bit like a stranger to myself—bone-weary, yet sexually satiated. Determined, yet uncertain. Things that didn’t add up to a coherent whole.
Which was pretty much how I felt. Well, here’s looking at you, kid, I thought to myself. If I’d had a fedora, I would have tipped the brim in salute.
On the bed, Cody lay sprawled, loose-limbed in the abandon of sleep, dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes. There was no trace of the wolf in him tonight except for the light of the lamp on his bedside table glinting on the bronze stubble that grew faster than a mortal man’s. I ought to know—I had the beard rash to prove it.
“Sleep tight, partner,” I murmured, leaning over the bed to kiss his rough-bristled cheek. “But when this is over, assuming we all survive whatever the hell is coming, we are going to talk.”
There was no answer, not even a snore.
Turning off the lamp, I let myself out.
Forty-three
Altogether, Cody and I laid thirty-seven spirits to rest during the days and nights leading up to Halloween, and as far as I was concerned, that was reason enough to ensure that the gate between the realm of the living and the dead was closed.
It was exhausting, draining, and downright soul-wearying.
Some were easier than others. God help me, but I actually got inured to the ones who had died quickly or unexpectedly without much suffering—the bar patron shot in a lovers’ quarrel, the drunk settler who froze to death in a blizzard, the victims of a head-on collision who died instantaneously, the elderly cat lady who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in her sleep.
Others were harder.
Children were harder, just because. Any cop who’s ever worked homicide will tell you. Children just are.
Sometimes it was the ones I couldn’t have anticipated, like the ghost of a Potawatomi Indian woman who manifested in the middle of a Pemkowet city council meeting, clad in a buckskin dress adorned with elaborate quillwork. She carried the fur-wrapped bundle of a stillborn baby in her arms and pleaded softly with the horrified council members in a tongue none of them spoke, her eyes dark and sorrowful in her gaunt face.
I don’t know her story. I’m guessing she died in childbirth, but it wasn’t recorded in Bloody Pemkowet. Somehow it felt unfair to silence her voice forever.
In terms of sheer volume, the worst day was the one when the dead of the old hospital rose, haunting its empty corridors. Cody and I laid the spirits of almost a dozen men, women, and children to rest that day, me confronting the wandering dead with the blaze of the spirit lantern, throwing their shadows behind them down hallway after hallway, while Cody grimly pounded nail after nail into those same shadows in the worn linoleum.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, it was after that incident that we hooked up for a second time.
In between manifestations, I logged every encounter in my database and looked for correspondences, trying to find a pattern. Other than the fact that the dead appeared to like an audience, I couldn’t find one. And they certainly did seem to like an audience. Thank God for Stefan and his ghoul squad. I was judicious about calling on him for assistance, but without them, I don’t doubt there would have been a lot more panic and a lot less voyeuristic giddiness.
Three days before Halloween, it stopped. Just . . . nothing. An ominous nothing. A calm-before-the-storm nothing.
And in three days, Pemkowet would see its biggest crowds of the season.
Just the thought of it made my skin itch. Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, and between that and our new notoriety, the PVB was making the most of it. Corn-shocks and stacks of pumpkins donated by a local farm decorated every street corner. An all-day celebration was planned for downtown Pemkowet, with face painting, bobbing for apples, and a pie-eating contest in the park for the kids, and live music and a beer tent for the adults, followed by a children’s costume parade throughout the town, at the end of which a reading of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” would be staged, including an unannounced appearance by the Headless Horseman.
Which, by the way, is a badass costume.
And that was just during the daylight hours. By dusk, the younger kids would be all over the place trick-or-treating. Older kids like Jen’s brother, Brandon, and his friends would be lying in wait in alleys and on rooftops to ambush one another with eggs and paint guns and water balloons in the annual battle of Easties vs. Townies. Come nightfall, it was the adults’ turn. Every bar in town—and I don’t know the actual total, but for a small town, trust me, we have a lot of bars—was hosting a costume contest. At ten o’clock, the adult costume parade would take place on the main street of East Pemkowet.
It was going to be mayhem.
Which is why on the second day of ominous supernatural silence, Cody and I called for a joint meeting with Chief Bryant and Amanda Brooks to ask them to cancel the festivities.
It didn’t go over well.
Amanda Brooks was apoplectic—another of Mr. Leary’s vocabulary words and a fitting one—and ranted for a solid ten minutes about tourism being the lifeblood of Pemkowet, and how we were the only small town in Michigan to have weathered the economic downturn with our property values intact, which generated revenues that allowed us to have an excellent school district that sent a high percentage of its students to college, which in turn made more people eager to move here and raise families, generating more revenues that paid for things like, for example, the Pemkowet Police Department.
All of which was true, but beside the point. “None of that will matter if it turns into a fiasco,” I murmured.
She turned her acid gaze on the chief. “Tell me you’re not considering this, Chief Bryant.”
The chief sighed as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “Do you have any proof?” he asked Cody and me.
We shook our heads.
He steepled his thick fingers. “These . . . ghosts. They haven’t actually harmed anyone, have they?”
“No, sir,” Cody said. “But—”
The chief cut him off. “In fact, has there been any indication that their presence in Pemkowet is malevolent?”
“No,” I said. “But the duppy—”
“I don’t want to hear about the goddamn duppy, Daisy!” He’d raised his voice. “That’s a situation you assured me you had under control. Well, you didn’t, and now we’ve got ghosts. I’m not happy about it, but if there’s an upside to this whole business, we need to take advantage of it.”
Amanda Brooks sniffed in pointed agreement. “And I don’t understand why you’ve been wasting your time pestering my family.”
“Because I think the duppy was responsible for whoever took the Tall Man’s body,” I said stubbornly. “And they’re both still out there.”
“That magic watch you gave me says otherwise,” Chief Bryant reminded me. “Whoever took the Tall Man was human.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” I said in frustration. “According to Sinclair, there’s a good chance that human is possessed by Grandpa Morgan’s spirit. That’s not something the, um, magic watch would register.”
Cody cleared his throat. “The dead aren’t considered part of the eldritch community, sir. Only the living and the undead. Even magicians and sorcerers are only tangentially related. And the dead are just . . . dead.”
“Well, I wish the goddamn dead would stay put,” the chief said sourly.
“Chief Bryant, if you cancel the festivities, I will call for your resignation,” Amanda Brooks said in a stiff tone.
He ignored her. “We’re not canceling,” he said to Cody and me. “I’ll put everyone on duty. Twelve-, thirteen-hour shifts, whatever it takes. Time and a half for overtime. We’ll make a round of the bars, make sure no one stays open after closing time. By two a.m., I want everyone off the streets. But we’re not canceling.”
Failure felt like a leaden lump in my belly. “Two o’clock’s too late, sir,” I said quietly. “If we don’t catch this duppy by midnight, the gate between the living and the dead may never be closed.”
The chief’s world-weary gaze slewed my way. “Well, I’m afraid that’s your job, Daisy.”
I bit my tongue, then said what I was thinking anyway. “With all due respect, sir, you’re not making it easier.”
He continued to regard me. “Neither are you. Meeting dismissed.”
I won’t lie, the chief’s failure to trust me hurt. He’d been a father figure to me for a lot of my life.
But he was right. I’d screwed up and I hadn’t found a way to fix it yet. When it came down to it, I couldn’t blame him.
“What now?” Cody asked me in a low voice on the sidewalk outside the station, standing a little closer than professional courtesy dictated. “Plan B?”
“What’s Plan B?” I asked him.
He smiled ruefully. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
I smiled back at him, wishing we had a real relationship, wishing I could ask him to hold me just long enough to bury my face in the curve of his throat and inhale his scent of pine needles, musk, and a lingering trace of Ralph Lauren’s Polo. Which, come to think of it, would also be pretty damn unprofessional. “I think we need to assume the worst and call for whatever backup we can.”
A reserved look settled over his face. “You mean Ludovic.”
“I mean everyone,” I said sharply. “I want anyone we can trust not to lose their head carrying a hammer and nails, Cody, because we don’t know what’s coming down the pike! Sinclair said the Tall Man’s body could be used for death magic. For all we know, his grandfather’s planning to raise a host of Pemkowet’s dead going back to the Paleolithic era, and if that happens, all those tourists clamoring for a glimpse of a ghost are going to freak the fuck out, so yes, I want Stefan and the Outcast on hand. And I want Sinclair and the coven on hand to catch this damn duppy, assuming he finally makes an appearance, and I want anyone who can’t help keep the peace to stay the hell home and out of the way, because I’m scared!”