Autumn Bones

going to reactivate again, is it?”

“The charm is broken,” Jojo assured her. “The sorceress would have to cast the spell anew.”

“Good to know.” I began returning items to my messenger bag, starting with dauda- dagr, then glanced up at the throaty sound of a motorcycle chugging down the street.

Oh, duh. Given the surge of panic I’d experienced when I woke up, the only surprise was that I hadn’t had a concerned ghoul on my doorstep within the hour.

Stefan Ludovic pulled into the alley astride a gleaming black motorcycle. Well, parts of it gleamed, while others were a matte black that seemed to swallow the light. I happened to know that it was a Vincent Black Shadow, one of only seventeen hundred in existence; I knew this not because I knew anything about motorcycles but because Cody told me so when we spotted it in the garage of a suspect who couldn’t possibly have legitimately afforded it.

Apparently, it now belonged to Stefan. I hadn’t noticed that the other night at Rainbow’s End.

He lowered the kickstand and cut the engine. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, just a pair of wraparound sunglasses that should have looked tacky, yet somehow didn’t. In the daylight, the pallor of his skin was vivid. Not undead pallor like a vampire, just sort of otherworldly. His slightly too long black hair brushed the collar of the leather vest he wore over a plain, skintight black T-shirt. I couldn’t figure out how the hell Stefan made that look elegant, but he did.

“Holy shit,” Jen breathed fervently beside me. “That’s the hot ghoul you told me about, isn’t it?”

“Outcast,” I whispered. “That’s what they call themselves.”

Stefan took off his sunglasses, revealing those pale eyes, a shade of blue seldom seen outside the interior of a glacier. His pupils were contracted and steady as he met my gaze. “Hel’s liaison.”

“You know,” I said to him, “you don’t have to come running or send Cooper to check on me every time I have a little emotional blip.”

“A . . . blip.” The word sounded funny in his mouth. He looked down at the contents of my bag and Emmy’s charm strewn across the sidewalk, then back at me, arching one evocative eyebrow.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I handled it. By the way, this is my friend Jen. Jennifer Cassopolis, Stefan Ludovic. And . . .” I looked around for Jojo, but she’d made herself scarce. “Um, never mind.”

Stefan dismounted from his bike in one fluid motion, took Jen’s hand before she could react, and bowed slightly. “It is a pleasure, Miss Cassopolis.”

Jen gave me an uncertain look. With a sister in thrall to a vampire, she tended to be wary of predatory eldritch species, although a bit less so since learning that Cody was a werewolf. It makes a difference when you’ve known someone since high school.

“It’s okay,” I said to her. “Stefan’s got centuries of self-discipline under his belt.”

She relaxed. “Nice to meet you.”

Releasing her hand, Stefan nodded at the items on the sidewalk. “This is the work of the sorceress Cooper encountered last night, I take it?”

“Yep.”

He met my gaze again and this time his pupils did the wax-and-wane thing. “This is a grave breach of protocol, Daisy Johanssen. For an outsider to enter a community such as ours and give insult to a vested agent of the resident deity is tantamount to a challenge.”

“Yeah, I figured.” I prodded the pile of dirt with my toe. “Don’t worry. I plan on confronting her.”

Stefan inclined his head. “I remain in your debt. My services and my forces are at your disposal.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I’d like to try to handle this discreetly.”

He smiled at me, those unexpected dimples forming in the creases of his smile. “I can be discreet.”

I flushed and cleared my throat. “Um . . . yeah, no doubt. But it’s complicated. She’s, um, actually kind of my boyfriend’s sister.”

“Or more accurately, her kind-of boyfriend’s actual sister,” Jen added, not entirely helpfully. I shot her a quick glare. She responded with a “What?” face.

“As you wish, Hel’s liaison.” Thank God, Stefan chose to ignore our silent but not exactly subtle interplay. “The decision is yours, of course. When it’s convenient, there’s another matter I would discuss with you.”

“Oh, right.” Belatedly, I remembered that Cooper had mentioned it last night. “Sorry, I’ve been distracted.”

“For obvious reasons,” he acknowledged. “Call me when you’re less distracted.”

Sometimes the whole cryptic eldritch thing could be a bit much. “Can’t you just tell me now?”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “It’s not something I can tell you, Daisy. It’s something I wish to show you. I believe it will help in the work we undertook together.”

Oh. “Okay. Will do.”

He inclined his head again. “Until then.”

Jen and I watched him return to his Vincent Black Shadow, straddling it with easy grace before putting his wraparound sunglasses back on, kick-starting the motorcycle, and chugging away.

“Damn,” Jen said. “Just . . . damn! You weren’t kidding.”

“Nope,” I said. “I was not.”

She punched me in the arm. “I think he’s into you. So what’s this work you’re doing together? What’s his story anyway? I thought ghouls—excuse me, Outcast—were all gross redneck bikers that fed on the pathetic emotional dregs of skanky meth-heads.”

“Ow!” I rubbed my arm. “I don’t know. He hasn’t told me his story yet. But he doesn’t allow drugs on his turf. And he told me once that ghouls in America tend to come from areas where . . . I can’t remember exactly, but something about a conjunction of extreme ignorance and extreme faith. I think it’s different for some of the old ones from back in ye olden times.”

“Huh.”

“He said he could teach me to deflect my emotions,” I said. “That’s what we were working on.”

“I think he’s into you,” Jen repeated. “Did you even bother to ask him what his story was?”

“Yeah, I did,” I admitted. “It was, um, a little too soon in our acquaintance. That’s a big question, you know?”

“I guess. So, Mr. Ludovic,” she intoned, “tell me, exactly what did you do to get kicked out of heaven and hell?”

“Something like that,” I agreed.

“I wonder, though,” she mused.

I wondered, too. But right now I had more pressing matters to deal with. Stooping, I finished gathering the scattered contents of my messenger bag. I wrapped up the graveyard dirt, coffin nail, and tooth in the tissue and stuffed it gingerly back into the leather sack, ready to dump it back out at the first twinge of pain. I wouldn’t even have bothered if the nail wasn’t already poking holes in the tissue. But it seemed that Jojo had spoken the truth, and the charm was well and truly broken.

“So what happens now, Daise?” Jen asked me.

I took a deep breath, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “First, I need to tell Casimir that he can call off the coven. Second, I need to talk to Sinclair before I confront Emmy. I can’t leave him out of this. He needs to decide where he stands.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Jen offered. “Because I’ll be there if you do.”

“I know.” I gave her a quick hug. “You’re the best. This, I think I can handle. But I couldn’t have gotten through this morning without you. Don’t tell anyone how badly I freaked out, okay?”

She returned my hug, then did the lock-the-lips-and-throw-away-the-key gesture. “I’ll take it to the grave, Hel’s liaison.”

It was the first time Jen had ever called me by my title, and I have to admit it felt a little weird. Not bad, just . . . weird.

“Thanks,” I said. “Consider yourself the first member of my own personal Scooby Gang.”

Like most everyone else our age in Pemkowet, Jen and I had grown up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “That would be a lot cooler if I wasn’t totally the Xander.” She smiled wryly. “No