Autumn Bones

Forty-two

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, after Stacey Brooks’s ghostbusting footage went viral, Pemkowet experienced an unprecedented boom in tourism for the month of October. A skeptical reporter from the Chicago Tribune got wind of the story and came out to investigate. Under pressure from Amanda Brooks and the PBV board, who were over the moon about the publicity, Chief Bryant strong-armed Cody and me into letting him ride along on a call to a site where we laid to rest the particularly gruesome ghost of an old lumberman who was crushed to death by a skid of falling logs in 1857.

After that, the reporter was convinced; and after his story was published, tourism doubled again and other news crews followed, hoping to get a scoop as good. I drew the line at cooperating with any more of them, though. So far we’d been lucky, but the bad feeling I had about this whole thing persisted. Maybe Letitia Palmer’s unleashing her dead obeah man father’s spirit had proved a boon instead of a bane for Pemkowet, but I didn’t think that was going to be the case in the long run.

Grandpa Morgan’s duppy was still out there somewhere, and the longer he went without showing himself, the more my nerves were on edge.

And Pemkowet’s dead continued to manifest in a variety of grisly manners.

Cody and I did our best. I hadn’t given up hope of finding the grave robber and the Tall Man’s corpse. We tracked down a few disgruntled ex-coven members, all of whom Cooper confirmed were false leads.

We even paid a second visit to Clancy Brannigan, or at least to his doorstep. One of his neighbors, poor crazy Marcia Hardwick, provided a handy excuse by phoning in a complaint about seeing strange lights through gaps in the plywood covering the clerestory basement windows in the rear of his house.

Okay, she thought he was building a spacecraft in his basement, but it was still a good excuse.

There was a long wait after Cody pressed the buzzer, but eventually the video screen lit up to reveal the distorted, close-up image of Clancy Brannigan’s face, a slick of sweat on his skin, the visor of a welding mask propped above his brow.

“What is it now, Officer?” he asked testily. “Has one of the Cavannaughs confessed?”

“Ah . . . no,” Cody admitted. “We had a report of strange lights, sir. Is everything all right?”

Clancy Brannigan snorted. “Right as rain, boy. I’m working on an important project. Come back when you get the truth out of the Cavannaughs. Until then, don’t bother me.” His hand rose, blurring the screen.

“Wait!” I said quickly. “Mr. Brannigan, can you think of anyone other than the Cavannaughs who’d want to steal your great-grandfather’s remains? Anyone?”

He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I can.” A crafty look crossed his face. “Anyone who married into that cursed family.”

I sighed. “Okay. Thanks for your time, sir. Sorry to disturb you.”

“You ought to be.” The screen went dark.

“Damn,” Cody said as we headed back toward the cruiser. “That old coot’s really got a hard-on for the Cavannaughs.”

“No kidding. I’m starting to rethink that whole lucidity thing. Although he’s right—we probably should interview spouses and significant others. I was going to suggest it earlier.” I glanced over my shoulder. “So he must have some kind of lab down in his basement, huh? What do you suppose he’s working on? A new and improved widget?”

“A spaceship,” Cody said drily. “To take him to a planet without any Cavannaughs.”

I laughed.

Unfortunately, that was pretty much the only thing I had to laugh about. Clancy Brannigan’s obsession notwithstanding, interviewing associates of the Cavannaugh family was a dead end.

And as for the dead, they just kept rising.

And Cody and I continued to work as a team, spending a succession of glorious autumn days laying the dead to rest with the spirit lantern and a hammer and nails, while tourists continued to flock to town in the hope of witnessing an actual haunting before we could get to it, buying out the historical society’s stock of a slender volume titled Bloody Pemkowet, taking Sinclair’s tour, and staking out sites that they thought were likely to reward their patience.

Oh, and the other thing that didn’t happen? Yeah, that would be a serious and candid conversation between Cody and me about our relationship, or nonrelationship, or whatever it was. Or wasn’t.

Which is not to say we didn’t hook up again, because in fact we did after a particularly difficult and grueling ghostbusting assignment that left us both emotionally wrung out and desperate for life-affirming connection. And okay, yes, horny. It’s weird how death’s presence can have that effect.

In a totally different way, it was as intense as it had been the first time. Less primal, but no less urgent and with more manual dexterity.

Afterward, I gathered my scattered clothing from his bedroom floor. “Hey, Cody? Are we ever going to talk about this?”

A faint snore escaped him in answer.

At that particular moment, I couldn’t blame him. It had been a really, really hard day. Still, we couldn’t go on like this forever.

I should probably have talked to my mom about it; or at least Jen or maybe Lurine. I didn’t know why I hadn’t already, except that I didn’t know what to say about it. It was hard to explain how and why it had happened the first time. The storm, post-wolf Cody curled naked in his blanket, that unexpected surge of raw desire . . .

This time was different, but it wasn’t something I could explain to anyone who hadn’t lived through what Cody and I had experienced that day. I’m not saying it compared to the sort of PTSD-inducing trauma that soldiers in combat and some police officers experience in the line of duty, but it was rough enough that I got why they don’t want to talk about it with someone who hadn’t been there.

And, too, there was a Casablanca factor that kept me from feeling inclined to discuss it. Between the relentless manifestations of the dead and the fact that Halloween was approaching and we were no closer to finding Grandpa Morgan’s duppy than we had been weeks ago, it was fair to say that the problems of one little hell-spawn and a werewolf on the down-low didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Well, not the romantic problems, anyway. The actual problems—those were my responsibility.

Damn, I was tired. Smoothing my dress in place, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the birch-bark- framed mirror on Cody’s bedroom wall. I looked a bit like a stranger to myself—bone-weary, yet sexually satiated. Determined, yet uncertain. Things that didn’t add up to a coherent whole.

Which was pretty much how I felt. Well, here’s looking at you, kid, I thought to myself. If I’d had a fedora, I would have tipped the brim in salute.

On the bed, Cody lay sprawled, loose-limbed in the abandon of sleep, dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes. There was no trace of the wolf in him tonight except for the light of the lamp on his bedside table glinting on the bronze stubble that grew faster than a mortal man’s. I ought to know—I had the beard rash to prove it.

“Sleep tight, partner,” I murmured, leaning over the bed to kiss his rough-bristled cheek. “But when this is over, assuming we all survive whatever the hell is coming, we are going to talk.”

There was no answer, not even a snore.

Turning off the lamp, I let myself out.

Forty-three

Altogether, Cody and I laid thirty-seven spirits to rest during the days and nights leading up to Halloween, and as far as I was concerned, that was reason enough to ensure that the gate between the realm of the living and the dead was closed.

It was exhausting, draining, and downright soul-wearying.

Some were easier than others. God help me, but I actually got inured to the ones who had died quickly or unexpectedly without much suffering—the bar patron shot in a lovers’ quarrel, the drunk settler who froze to death