Autumn Bones

I sat bolt upright. “Is it ghosts? Or zombies?”

“Neither.” He hung up.

I threw on yesterday’s clothes, buckled dauda-dagr around my waist, grabbed the spirit lantern just in case, and hustled out to the cemetery in the predawn darkness through a light rain.

The chief hadn’t told me where to meet him, but it was a small cemetery. Even if it hadn’t been, I could have guessed. As soon as I turned onto the two-track, I saw a pair of cruisers parked under the pines in front of Talman Brannigan’s mausoleum. The door to the mausoleum was ajar, and there were lights moving inside it. I got out of the car, my stomach sinking.

Chief Bryant and Ken Levitt, one of the younger officers with whom I was on good terms, emerged from the mausoleum, flashlights in hand.

“What is it?” I asked apprehensively.

“Grave’s been robbed.” The chief beckoned to me. “Come have a look.”

I fingered dauda-dagr’s hilt. “You’re sure it’s not zombies?”

He pointed at a rusty padlock hanging from the door of the mausoleum. One side of the U-shaped shackle had been sheared clean through. “Not unless they were using bolt-cutters.”

Inside, there were more signs of human vandalism. Someone had used a crowbar or something like it to pry the lid off the huge sarcophagus, leaving clean scratches in the discolored old marble. The dusty floor of the mausoleum had been swept to obliterate footprints, and there were smears of something dark.

“Blood?” I asked.

The chief shook his head. “More like grease.”

“Huh.” I made myself peer into the sarcophagus. It held a wooden coffin, which had also been pried open. A scent of decay rose from it, but other than a bit of debris, which I chose to believe was decomposing clothing, it was empty. There was only the impression of a body having lain there, staining the rotting satin fabric that lined it. A big body. The Tall Man’s nickname was no joke. He must have stood seven feet tall. “What the hell?”

“The chief asked me to make sure I took a turn around the cemetery before my shift ended,” Ken Levitt said. “I spotted the open door and got out to take a look.”

“You didn’t see anything?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Just this.”

“Did you test the crime scene?” I asked Chief Bryant.

“Mm-hmm.” He pulled out the silver pocket watch I’d given him a couple of years ago and let it dangle over the violated sarcophagus. It had been made with the same exacting dwarfish craftsmanship as the spirit lantern, only it was responsive to the residue of eldritch presence. If this grave robbery had been the work of a member of the eldritch community, living nonhuman or undead human, the watch would have swung like a pendulum, its hands spinning frantically backward. Instead, it hung motionless on its chain, its second hand clicking clockwise with ordinary mortal precision. “Whoever did this was human.”

I stared into the coffin. “Why the hell would anyone steal a hundred-and-thirty-year-old corpse?”

“It was probably kids.” Ken shrugged. “Teenagers. Hell, there are a couple of troublemakers in town crazy enough to do anything on a dare. You went to Pemkowet High, Daisy—you remember how it was. And Halloween’s coming.”

“True.” I glanced at the chief. His eyes were gleaming under their deceptively sleepy lids. “But you don’t think it’s a coincidence, do you?”

“Do you?” he countered.

“No.”

Chief Bryant gave a decisive nod. “Something’s hinky. Levitt, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to turn this one over to Fairfax. He and Daisy worked together well on the Vanderhei case.”

Ken Levitt shrugged again. “It’s your call, sir.”

The chief looked at his pocket watch. “Fairfax is off duty, and he’s not answering his phone. Daisy, you mind stopping out there? Make sure he’s on board?”

I glanced involuntarily at the sky; I couldn’t see through the cloud cover, but I knew the full moon had already set. Cody might be a little edgy for another twenty-four hours, but he should be okay to work, at least during daylight. Probably, anyway. “Sure.”

“Good.”

Before I drove out to Cody’s place, I stopped at Drummond’s Hardware and bought a sturdy hammer and a box of heavyweight framing nails from the yawning salesclerk who was just opening the store for business.

What can I say? I felt better for being prepared.

The sky was only just beginning to turn an ominous gray in the east as I drove north of Pemkowet along the river. The maple trees were yellow and gold, glowing unnaturally bright underneath the lowering clouds, and the narrow, serrated leaves of the staghorn sumac were turning a brilliant crimson, complementing the conical clusters of their unlikely fuzzy-looking scarlet fruits. I passed the entrance to Sedgewick Estate, making a mental note to call my mother later, and drove deeper into the countryside until I reached Cody’s house.

It was quiet, but the front door was standing open. That didn’t seem right, not at seven-something on a rainy autumn morning.

“Cody?” I called softly. There was no answer. Trying the screen door, I found it unlatched and let myself into the house, closing the front door behind me.

Traces of pine needles and dirt led from the tidy little bachelor kitchen into the living room beyond. I followed them and found Cody Fairfax curled in a pile of blankets on the floor of his living room. The blankets were a hunter green plaid wool and Cody was stark naked beneath them, grime under his fingernails and pine twigs caught in his disheveled bronze-colored hair. Well, he wasn’t exactly lying beneath the blankets. It was more like he’d nestled into them the way a dog would. Or, apparently, a wolf.

I drew a short, sharp breath. I’d never seen Cody like this—implicitly dangerous, yet at his most vulnerable. It stirred a complicated mix of emotions in me. I wanted to ease the twigs from his tangled hair. I wanted to stand guard over his sleep. I wanted to curl up behind him and bite his earlobe to wake him. He was lying on his side, and beneath his skin I could see the oblique muscles of his rib cage expand and contract with his slow, steady breathing. While I watched, a muscle in the hollow of his bare flank jumped and twitched in a restless dream.

A sound escaped me. It may have been, “Eep!”

The next part happened fast. Cody’s eyes snapped open, phosphorescent green behind the amber. Baring his teeth, too many teeth, he lunged from his nest of woolen blankets and took me down, all naked skin, lean muscle, and werewolf speed.

I hit the floor hard, the impact driving the breath from my lungs. Thank God for shag carpeting. Cody pinned me, then snarled in pain and raised his torso as dauda-dagr’s hilt seared his bare skin. His face hovered above mine, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled my scent. I saw recognition dawn in his eyes.

“Daisy,” he growled, his fingers digging into my biceps. “You shouldn’t be here. Not now.”

“Why not?” I whispered.

It’s funny how desire can hit you out of nowhere like a ton of bricks at the most inappropriate times. Maybe it was the glimpse of Cody’s true innermost self in an unguarded moment. Maybe it was born of my long-standing crush, maybe it came from the loneliness I’d felt after breaking up with Sinclair. Maybe it was a combination of guilt and anger and frustration, or maybe this had been coming ever since the night of the satyr-funk orgy.

All I knew was that I wanted this. Here and now. Cody’s eyes were gleaming above mine, his naked skin was hot, hotter than a human’s. And I knew, beyond a doubt, that he wanted this, too.

“It’s not safe.” His breath was warm against my skin.

To hell with the Seven Deadlies, to hell with duppies and zombies and grave robbers, to hell with safe. Cody wasn’t human and neither was I. I wanted this moment. I wanted his wildness. I wanted his fierceness. Wrenching one arm free, I reached between us and plucked dauda-dagr from its sheath, tossing it several feet away on the carpet.

“I don’t care,” I informed him, twining my free hand in his twig-tangled hair and yanking.

He kissed me.

It wasn’t sweet and it wasn’t nice. It was hungry and primal, and there may still have been a few too many teeth involved. If I’d been thinking in words, words like ravaging and