affectionate bump. “It has to do with scale, Daisy. I’m sure there’s some sort of formula,” she added idly. “Gallons of blood spilled per acre. The gods only know, there was blood and death aplenty throughout the entire West Indies during the centuries when the slave trade was flourishing.”
I shivered in the bright sunlight. “Okay. Enough said.”
“You asked,” Lurine reminded me in a mild tone.
“I did,” I agreed.
Pushing away from the edge, she sank beneath the water to swim the length of the pool and back again. Ensconced in my floating chaise, I rode out the surging waves generated by Lurine’s passage, gazing at the green treetops silhouetted against the bright blue sky and thinking about the terrible fragility of life.
Thirteen
Somewhat to my surprise, Sinclair wanted to keep our date to go to the Bide-a-Wee Tavern that night. The only difference was that his sister would be joining us.
“You’re sure?” I asked him on the phone.
“Positive,” he assured me. “Emmy’s looking forward to it. It will give you the chance to get to know each other.”
“Does she . . . know about me?” There’s really no delicate way to ask, oh, by the way, does your until- recently-secret twin sister know you’re dating a hell-spawn?
There was a pause. “Emmy’s like me,” he said. “She sees auras. I didn’t want to lie to her. We actually had a good talk today.”
According to Sinclair, most people’s auras were just little shimmers flickering around the edges of their bodies, while mine was a five-alarm fire shot through with veins of gold. If my memory was correct, Emmeline hadn’t shown any sign of surprise at it.
Interesting.
“Daisy?” Sinclair asked. “Are we okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to lie to her, either. And I guess she had to find out sooner or later. Did she freak?”
“She’s curious,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t say freaked. But, um, it wouldn’t hurt for you to keep a lid on —”
“Yeah, yeah.” I cut him off. “I’ll try to make a good first impression. Not like I did with the Mamma Jammers. No funky satyr booty calls, I promise.”
He gave a deep, rich chuckle that made my spine tingle and my tail twitch. “Just between you and me? I kind of liked the funky satyr booty call.”
I smiled. “Pick you up at seven?”
“Why don’t we pick you up?” Sinclair suggested. “Emmy’s got a rental.”
As it transpired, not only did Emmy have a rental car—Emmy had a brand-spanking-new rental convertible that was much, much nicer than my poor ten-year-old Honda Civic. At seven o’clock sharp, she and Sinclair pulled into the alley between my apartment building and the park to pick me up. Oh, and it was also a stick shift, which she drove with reckless aplomb.
I sat in the backseat, my blond hair whipping wildly around my head in the backwash of wind.
“Are you quite all right, Daisy?” Emmeline’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, concern in her gaze. Her close-cropped hair was unaffected. “Shall I put the top up?”
I rummaged in my bag for an elastic band and dragged my hair back into a ruthless ponytail. “Not on my account.”
Sinclair inhaled deeply. “It still smells like summer.”
I poked him in the back of the head. His short dreads were tight yet supple, stirring in the wind. Once a week, he treated them with an organic product containing essential oils, and I always knew because it smelled a lot like fresh rosemary. “I think that’s your salon treatment you’re smelling.”
Reaching behind him, he swatted at my hand. “Natty Dread got to look fine for his ladies, darling.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Emmeline give us both an indulgent smile in the mirror before downshifting. Something about her and her presence here in Pemkowet put me on edge. But since I couldn’t put my finger on it, I resolved to keep my promise and do my best to make a good first impression.
The Bide-a-Wee Tavern is located out in the sticks, a couple miles southeast of town along the rural highway. Frankly, it’s not the venue I would have chosen if I were trying to make a good impression on a first-time visitor to Pemkowet, or at least not a poised visitor oozing style and sophistication. It’s not a dive, but it’s pretty rustic: basic American bar food on the menu, well-worn carpeting and dented wood paneling that were probably installed in the 1970s.
Don’t get me wrong—I love the place. I love the sameness of it, and the fact that it hasn’t changed since I was a kid drinking Shirley Temples with my mom while her boyfriend Trey played bass guitar in the house band, eyes half closed and a beatific smile on his face. Just the memory filled me with tenderness.
That was what I’d wanted to share with Sinclair. But with Emmeline there, I couldn’t help but see it through her eyes, too.
It looked dingy and a little sad. As I’d promised, the place was full, but the clientele was older and overwhelmingly white. The latter’s sort of unavoidable since Pemkowet’s mundane population is fairly racially homogenous, but . . . let’s just say that there were a lot of frumpy middle-aged Midwestern ladies in their finest appliqued sweatshirts.
“It’s early,” I murmured to Sinclair. “We could probably still get into Lumiere.”
Sinclair glanced uncertainly at his sister.
“I think it’s brilliant,” Emmeline said in a firm voice, her British accent emerging in a clipped and authoritative manner. “Very authentic.” She turned to the hostess. “Table for three?”
So we stayed.
At first it was awkward, but eventually, music and food and beer greased the conversational skids. In between numbers, I asked Emmeline questions about herself, about her education at boarding schools and at Oxford. She responded with engaging tales laced with self-deprecating humor, asking me about myself in turn— about growing up in Pemkowet, about how I’d helped Sinclair secure the regularly scheduled appearances by pretty, sparkly fairies that helped popularize his tours.
Here’s what we didn’t talk about: Jamaica, obeah, Sinclair and Emmeline’s mother, and the fact that I was a hell-spawn.
That was okay with me. If she wanted to avoid talking about the various elephants in the room, I wasn’t going to bring them up. Sinclair definitely didn’t seem inclined to do so, and I was taking my cue from him.
“Fascinating,” Emmeline murmured when I’d finished telling the story of our bargain with the Oak King. “I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed riding along on Sinny’s tours today. Well done.”
“Oh, the tour is entirely Sinclair’s doing,” I said honestly. “It was all his idea. I just helped facilitate it.”
She gave me an open, friendly smile. “Well, you’re obviously very good at your job.”
“Thanks.” I smiled back at her and found myself relaxing. “I appreciate it. Half the time, I’m making it up as I go along.”
Emmeline laughed. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
The band wrapped up a Louis Armstrong number and paused to confer among themselves and talk to the staff. From what I could gather, they were trying to convince the woman tending bar to sing a number. Sinclair rapped his knuckles on the table. “Excuse me, ladies, but I’ve got to use the restroom. Back in a minute.”
As he left the table, the bartender acceded to demand and left her station to take the microphone. Her face was lined and weathered before its time, she was a hard-worn fiftysomething in faded jeans, a shapeless T-shirt, and a service apron, but I’d heard her sing before. Reaching for his mute, the trumpet player launched into the unmistakable opening bars of “Stormy Weather.”
“She’s good,” I said to Emmeline. “I know, you wouldn’t think it to look at her. But if you like the blues at all—”
