Autumn Bones

“Cody’s already filed an official report,” the chief said. “The X-Files version can wait. Call Amanda ASAP, Daisy. Understand?”

I sighed. “Yes, sir.”

Truth be told, Amanda Brooks is very good at her job. Paranormal tourism? She invented that industry. Oh, there have always been tourists in Pemkowet—it’s a pretty town, our beaches are lovely. It’s been an artists’ colony since the late 1800s, long before Hel established Little Niflheim, and there used to be a huge dance pavilion—I mean, like, seriously huge—that was a big draw before it burned down a couple of generations ago. I guess it’s always been a quirky place, even before Hel’s underworld made it a magnet for the eldritch.

And from what I understand, tourism actually declined in the second half of the twentieth century, after the big pavilion burned and Pemkowet was left with a reputation as an artsy place where weird shit happened. It wasn’t until Amanda Brooks took over the PVB and had the brilliant idea of turning a negative into a positive that the industry took off. Come to Pemkowet, where weird shit happens!

Now, people do. They come expecting to find a real-life Midwestern version of Sunnydale or Bon Temps or Forks or whatever their paranormal poison of choice might be. So, yeah, Amanda Brooks is really good at her job; but she seems to have a hard time grasping the fact that there’s an element of chaos at work here that can’t be controlled. This isn’t Disney World and the rides aren’t inspected for safety. There are no OSHA standards in the eldritch community.

Also, okay, I’m a little biased. During high school, her daughter, Stacey, was the head of the local mean girls’ clique and my own personal nemesis. I got suspended for a week thanks to her.

Still, duty beckoned, so I made the call. I was braced for the worst, but Amanda actually sounded a bit distracted.

“I’ve got to take a meeting,” she said. “It won’t be long. Can you be here in half an hour?”

“Sure.” Ending the call, I quickly called Jen, only to get her voice mail. Damn. I sent her a text asking if she was free to meet for lunch, which left me with twenty-five minutes to kill and an urgent need for girl talk. I thought about calling my mom, but . . . yeah, no way. Mom’s great, we have a great relationship, and I’m pretty honest with her about almost everything, but this was a bit too far outside the mother-daughter comfort zone.

Unfortunately, the only other person I could think of calling was Lurine, who I figured was still engaged in a marathon shag-fest with a horny satyr. On the other hand, I really did need to talk to her, since she was probably the best person to ask about preventing another satyr-funk incident.

Maybe they took breaks. I gave her a try, but no such luck. So I left a message asking her to call me when she had the chance, then spent the remaining twenty-four minutes tidying my apartment.

The Pemkowet Visitors Bureau, in a charming little shingle-sided building on the riverfront near the main entrance into the town, is adorned with sleek, modern furniture, glossy magazines, and Stacey Brooks’s haughty- faced presence behind the desk since her mother gave her a receptionist’s job there. She was usually yammering into the fancy Bluetooth earpiece of the office phone—why the hands-free option was so important I don’t know, since it’s not like she did anything but answer calls—but not today.

“Daisy.” She greeted me in a snide tone. “My mother’s meeting is running a little late. Have a seat.”

“Thanks.” Determined not to be baited, I sat.

“So I hear there was a big gay orgy out at Rainbow’s End last night.” Stacey arched her perfectly plucked ash-brown eyebrows at me. “I hear you were there.”

“I was.” I fished my Pemkowet Police Department ID out of my bag and showed it to her. “On official business.”

“Oh, please!” She sniffed. “Everyone knows you’re just a file clerk.”

I shrugged.

Stacey let the silence stretch for a moment, but she wasn’t the type to handle silence well. “So what was it?” she asked. “Kevin McTeague heard it was a bad batch of ecstasy, but Jane Drummond heard it was witchcraft.” Lowering her voice, she gave me a significant look. “Was it a succubus thing? A gay succubus thing? Is that why you were there, Daisy?”

Oh, for crying out loud. Despite my resolve, my temper stirred. “I’m not a succubus!”

She smirked at me. “Oh, so it’s just a gay thing?”

Yeah, I know. In this day and age, that shouldn’t be a viable taunt. Especially in a town that prides itself on welcoming diversity, especially coming from the freaking receptionist of the tourist bureau of said town. But there you have it. High school bully tactics never change. I shouldn’t have let Stacey know she’d gotten to me with the succubus thing. Now she’d just keep pushing gay, gay, gay until I couldn’t stand it and issued a denial I knew was (a) perfectly unnecessary, (b) beneath me, and (c) exactly what Stacey wanted.

Or, I could go with a classic change of tactics. “You know, I really can’t discuss the incident before I’ve had a chance to talk with your mother,” I said to her. “So, are you seeing anyone these days?”

Bingo! Of course I knew she wasn’t. It’s a small town. Stacey’s eyes narrowed. “Are you still seeing that bus driver?”

Nice try. I smiled. I’d actually met Sinclair for the first time in this very lobby and I knew damn well Stacey thought he was cute, too. “Yeah, I am. It’s going really well. I mean, except for the gay orgies and all.”

Her expression turned ominous. “Wait until he finds out what you—”

I interrupted her. “He knows.”

At that moment, the door to Amanda Brooks’s office was opened by a man with a briefcase showing himself out. My skin tingled with the telltale sign of eldritch presence and all thoughts of exchanging barbs with Stacey went clean out of my head. The man strode into the lobby, then stopped in his tracks and looked in my direction.

My tail twitched with alarm . . . and a sort of kindred recognition.

At a glance, he looked normal. Average height, early thirties, a decent build. Good-looking in a GQ sort of way, with a summer-weight suit that looked expensive and short, stylish light brown hair in a hundred-dollar haircut.

But his eyes were black, as black as mine. Ordinary mortals don’t have truly black eyes. A brown so dark it looks black, yes. Not the kind of black where the only way you can differentiate between the iris and the pupil is that the iris doesn’t admit light.

And there was a smell, like a whiff of sulfur . . . only not really a smell. More like a bad taste lingering in my mouth, like I’d eaten something rancid. Only that wasn’t right either. It wasn’t a sense I could put a name to.

Anyway, he was definitely a hell-spawn. And I suspected that, unlike me, he had claimed his birthright.

Now that was a scary thought.

I held my breath, half expecting to feel the Inviolate Wall tremble and threaten the architecture of existence.

But it didn’t. The man inhaled briefly, his nostrils flaring, his black eyes curious. Even without seeing, I could tell his own tail was swishing back and forth beneath his well-tailored linen-blend trousers.

And then he left, striding out the door.

I let out my breath and eased my hand out of my messenger bag. I’d been reaching for dauda-dagr without realizing it.

Oblivious to it all, Stacey gazed after him in a reverie. “See, that’s the kind of guy I’m looking for,” she murmured. “We need more like him in Pemkowet.”

Yeah, right.

Ignoring her, I admitted myself into Amanda Brooks’s office. She was seated at her desk, but her chair was swiveled to allow her to gaze at the river, and she didn’t turn around when I took a seat opposite her.

“Ms. Brooks?” I cleared my throat. “Daisy Johanssen. You wanted to see me?”

“Oh . . . right. Yes, of course.” Her reply sounded absentminded. She spun her chair around slowly. There was a vagueness to her usually keen features. “I’m sorry, Daisy. What was it again?”

My skin still felt prickly. “Ms. Brooks, who was that guy? What did he want?”

She blinked behind the lenses of chic glasses that probably cost more than I made in a month. “Who?”

I concentrated my gaze on her. “That guy! The one who just left.”

“Mr. Dufreyne? Oh, he’s a lawyer. He was just inquiring on behalf of a client about purchasing some lands