Autumn Bones

be here in within the hour.”

I looked at Jen.

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “If I’ve learned anything this month, it’s that I know fuck-all about sisters.”

“See, here’s the thing,” I said slowly. “Your sister crossed a line when she went after me. I’m not just some girl, hell-spawn or not, you happened to be dating. I represent Hel’s authority in Pemkowet.”

Sinclair glanced at me. “You don’t think Hel would appreciate a peaceful resolution to this?”

“It’s not that.” I shook my head. “When I told Emmy to leave town, I also told her she wasn’t welcome back here. I can’t back down on that at the eleventh hour. I can’t totally abdicate my authority.”

“No one’s asking you to.” He looked away, picking absently at the label on his beer bottle. Jen murmured something about getting another beer and made a discreet exit. “I’m just asking for a little time for my father and me to negotiate with her before we send in the cavalry. Is that so unreasonable?”

I sighed. “I guess not. But I do think I should at least be there as an official presence. And I want the, um, cavalry in shouting distance.”

“Deal!” Sinclair said promptly.

“Why the change of heart?” I asked him. “Was it just talking to your dad?”

“Mostly.” He took another pull on his beer. “With him on board, I really do think it might be our best chance of talking Emmy out of doing something foolish. But do you remember me saying that magic was more powerful here in Pemkowet?” I nodded. There was a rustling in the overgrown patch of wildflowers along the fence at the back of the yard. A chicory fairy’s head poked over the top, her blue hair—if you could call it that—looking like a chicory-flower-shaped cap. “Hey!” Sinclair smiled. “Quit spying, you.” Reaching down, he picked up an acorn that had fallen onto the deck from the big oak in his neighbor’s yard and shied it at the fairy. She dodged it with a high-pitched trilling giggle, translucent wings blurring like a hummingbird’s, then blew him a kiss and vanished in a puff of glittery dust.

I’m telling you, those fucking fairies really love Sinclair.

“So you’re afraid Emmy’s going to be too strong to handle here?” I asked him. “Even for the whole coven?”

“Not exactly.” He frowned. “Island magic is unpredictable anyway. The coven asked me what would happen if Emmy tried to unleash a duppy here. Truth is, I don’t know. And I don’t want to take a chance on finding out. She might set loose more than she can handle.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Sinclair repeated. “I just know there could be repercussions. On a primordial level, everything’s connected.”

Catching sight of Jen hovering behind the screen door, I beckoned to her. “It’s okay. We’re just talking about what would happen if Emmy succeeded in turning a duppy loose in Pemkowet.”

Jen slid into her seat. “Well, that would really make Halloween more exciting this year.”

I laughed. “No kidding.”

The three of us sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping our beers.

“Hey, is that video rental place that no one ever goes to still open?” I asked Jen. “The one next to the dollar store?”

She shook her head. “It closed down. Why?”

“Because you still need sheets,” I said. “And this conversation’s given me a weird urge to watch Ghostbusters.”

Thirty-three

On the first day of October, the calendar on Lee’s awesome database sent me a reminder via pop-up, e- mail, and text message that Emmeline Palmer might be returning tomorrow, which would have been four weeks to the day from her ultimatum. Not that I needed the reminder, but it was nice to know it worked.

Anyway, no Emmeline the following day, so I guess we were going by the date. Accordingly, I received a second reminder two days later. I’d entered both dates into the calendar just in case.

It’s funny, but it never occurred to me that dear Emmy was being anything less than literal about her one- month deadline. An ordinary mundane mortal might say, “I’ll be back in a month,” meaning approximately a month’s time depending on flight schedules and availability. But numbers and units of time have significance in the eldritch community. A month meant a month.

And on the fourth of October, the early-warning system I’d bartered for paid off.

It was Mogwai who sensed it first. I was at home in my apartment working my way through the 2009 X- Files. I should have been practicing psychic shield drill, but it was already late afternoon and I was too jittery to concentrate. At a little after three thirty, Mogwai went from a sedate lump of cat dozing in my lap to a hissing, caterwauling wild thing flinging himself at the nearest window, claws splayed.

My heart skipped a beat. “What the hell, Mog?”

I went to the window to look. Across the park, the eldritch equivalent of a rugby scrum was headed our way—fairies, bogles, hobgoblins, and pixies, scrimmaging in a tangle of tattered wings and long, thorny limbs, all of them quarreling and shrieking at a decibel level barely within my range of hearing.

Leaving Mogwai behind, I clattered down the stairs just in time to see a trio of hobgoblins blocking like linebackers—okay, I’m mixing my sports metaphors, sue me—freeing a fourth to race free of the pack.

“Tuggle?” I peered at him as he gained the alley. Behind him, the scrum broke apart in disappointment. One lucky tourist snapped frantic photos before the disentangled fey winked out of visibility and the park abruptly sprouted a number of new shrubs and bushes, not to mention a pretty ring of poisonous mushrooms. “Is that you?”

The hobgoblin’s beady eyes gleamed. “The sister is back!” he announced triumphantly. “That makes us even for the sunglasses, right? I get a clean slate in your ledger?”

“Right,” I said. “So where is she now?”

Tuggle’s hooked nose twitched. “What do you mean now? She drove into town in a car like before. You said the first to tell you when,” he said in an accusatory tone. “You didn’t say to tell you where.”

“I thought it was—” I abandoned the thought in midsentence. “Never mind. Can you find out where she is now? Then I’ll owe you.”

“Ha!” a familiar voice shrilled. Jojo popped into view, hovering, green arms no bigger around than pipe cleaners folded over her slight bosom. “The sorceress has purchased residence in the same inn she frequented prior,” she informed me. “I thought to keep watch there. And now thy debt to me is increased yet again.”

Echoing her stance, I folded my arms. “My offer was to Tuggle, not you.”

Her wings beat at an agitated pace and her luminous lavender eyes narrowed. “I assumed—”

I interrupted her. “You know what they say—”

Jojo hissed at me. In the window upstairs, Mogwai hissed back. Tuggle scowled and fingered his nose.

“Okay, okay!” I sighed. “Jojo, just keep an eye on her and stay out of sight. Let me know if she makes a move to go anywhere. For Sinclair’s sake. Do that and I’ll owe you. Deal?”

The fairy sniffed. “Thou hast a deal, scullion.”

Great.

Upstairs, I petted Mogwai until he calmed down. First, I called the chief to let him know everything was under control, and then I called Sinclair to set the coven’s phone tree in motion.

And then I changed my clothes and went to pay a call on dear Emmy herself.

Strolling over to Idlewild Inn, I felt surprisingly calm. To be honest, a good wardrobe helped. One of the other things I’d done in the intervening weeks was turn my mom loose on mine. She’d designed a simple jersey knit dress for me that had just the right amount of motion, drape, and cling, and actually worked with the broad