Autumn Bones (Agent of Hel #2)

Autumn Bones (Agent of Hel #2) Page 15

There was no way in, well, hell, that I was going to bother the Norse goddess of the dead by reporting on a relatively harmless hobgoblin scam—and Hel has her own ways of keeping tabs on what’s going on aboveground in the mundane world—but Tuggle didn’t know that. I thought about forcing him to rat out his accomplices and decided against it. I was here to keep order, not make enemies. “We’ll see,” I said to him, easing dauda-dagr back into its hidden sheath. “Tell the others to consider this a warning. And I really would like those sunglasses back.”

Tuggle shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Tuggle.” I gave him a hand up, which he accepted. “No hard feelings?”

He shrugged again. “Eh.”

“Hey, lady!” a concerned voice behind me called. “You okay?”

I turned around. “Fine. Why?”

It was a teenaged kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, out wandering the town with his girlfriend. They were doing that thing where they had their arms wrapped around each other’s waists and their hands in each other’s back pockets. All the cool couples in high school used to stroll the halls that way. Of course, Jen and I had made fun of them, but secretly I was always a little envious of them. I’m pretty sure Jen was, too.

“It’s just that you’ve been talking to that bush for a while,” the kid said in an apologetic tone.

His girlfriend blinked. “Wait a minute. What bush?”

Apparently, Tuggle the hobgoblin was skilled at maintaining a glamour and had a knack for timing a getaway. Glancing behind me, I saw he’d made his escape, probably shifting back to his freckle-faced-kid guise when no one was looking.

Oh, well. At least I’d made my point.

“Welcome to Pemkowet,” I said to the teenagers. “Where weird shit happens.”

Ten

I backtracked along the dock to see about refunding the actual money to the hobgoblins’ marks, but the crowd had already dispersed. Unless the marks had checked their wallets, they probably didn’t realize they’d been ripped off yet.

So I swung by the police station to log my time and fill out a report for the X-Files, leaving the money I’d retrieved in the desk clerk’s keeping in case anyone came to claim it. At the risk of courting avarice, I hoped no one did. What can I say? Working irregular hours on a part-time basis, I was always short of cash. I’d collected two hundred and forty dollars from Tuggle, and if no one claimed it in three months, it was mine.

Upon returning to my apartment, I found my sunglasses placed neatly on the doorstep in the alley, each lens cracked into a perfect spiderweb. That’s what you get for messing around with hobgoblins; and I’d taken it easy on them.

“Ha ha,” I said aloud to thin air. “Very funny.” It got me more peculiar glances from a trio of middle-aged ladies passing by, their arms laden with shopping bags, but the rhododendrons lining the park rustled, sounding distinctly like a snicker.

Upstairs, I discovered that Mogwai had gotten up onto the kitchen counter. Based on the mess and the sticky pawprints, he’d explored the bowl of wet ingredients before knocking the bowl of dry ingredients onto the kitchen floor and dashing in a panic out his escape hatch on the screened porch.

At least the chocolate chips were safe. I sighed, dumped the ingredients, and cleaned up the mess.

By the time I finished, the urge to bake was a distant memory. I spent the remainder of the afternoon with my battered old laptop, looking at images of shields online and practicing the visualization Stefan had tried to teach me. It probably didn’t help that I took a break every ten minutes to trek into the kitchen for a handful of chocolate chips. And okay, yes, I also searched for information on obeah. There really wasn’t a lot out there, at least not a lot that looked credible. I jotted down a couple of obscure out-of-print book titles I came across, resolving to pursue it later.

I gave up in time to freshen my makeup, change my clothes—a black linen sheath dress, my classic fallback—and meet Sinclair at Lumière at seven o’clock.

Since it was only a few blocks away, I walked. Sinclair was waiting for me on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, his touring bicycle chained to the wrought-iron fence that hemmed the patio.

Oh, crap. I was a terrible girlfriend. Sinclair’s place was a couple miles north on the rural highway and he didn’t have a car, just the tour bus and the bike, which he used for transportation when he wasn’t working. Hence, those Tour de France–worthy thighs I mentioned earlier.

He smiled at me. “Hey, girl! There you are.”

“I’m so sorry!” I said in dismay. “I should have picked you up—”

“Daisy—”

“I just wasn’t thinking! You should have reminded—”

“Daisy!” Sinclair raised his voice. I shut up. He held out a single red rose. “This is a date. A romantic date. No way I was going to let you drive. Okay?”

“Okay.” I accepted the rose, hiding my face in it to conceal the fact that I was blushing a little. No one had ever given me a rose before. I peeked over it at Sinclair. He was wearing a fitted black T-shirt that showed off his torso, neatly creased khakis, and a pair of huarache sandals. Upscale casual. It looked good on him. “You look nice,” I said. “Did you bike down here wearing that?”

“Nah.” He grinned. “Spare clothes are in the saddlebag. I changed in the bathroom. You look great, too.” He crooked his arm. “Ready, sistah?”

Although I don’t have anything to compare it to, I’m pretty sure that as potentially awkward post-hookup dates go, this one was close to perfect. The hostess seated us on the patio near the gently splashing fountain. It was an intimate space, and the surrounding buildings blocked the light of the lowering sun, giving us a jump on candlelit ambience. The music of Édith Piaf was piped in at the exact right level to enhance the French bistro atmosphere without overpowering it.

From the first time we’d met, small talk had come easily to Sinclair and me. There was an affinity between us. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were both only children raised by single parents coming from adverse supernatural circumstances, although it’s not like I’d known that until just the other day. Anyway, I was glad to find that the easy connection was still there, that the new level of physical intimacy between us just took it to a different, more charged level. We held hands atop the table and played footsy under it. We pored over the wine list and pooled our limited knowledge of French wines. We talked about favorite movies, an inexhaustible topic, over salad and bread. We exchanged stories about our respective days over salmon almondine (me) and coquilles St. Jacques (Sinclair), debating his prospects for running a scaled-back tour in the coming fall and winter months, the antics of vengeful hobgoblins, the depths of Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy’s crush, and exactly who the hell St. Jacques was and what the hell he had to do with scallops.

I thought about asking Sinclair back to my place, which I hadn’t done yet. This whole boyfriend–romantic date thing was awfully seductive. Based on the steady heat in his eyes, he was thinking about it, too.

But . . . yeah. There was a pretty big elephant on the patio with us. And every time I tried not to think about it, I did.

“It’s killing you, isn’t it?” Sinclair asked me over dessert. “Not asking about it.”

I winced. “Is it that obvious?”

“Not really, no.” He leaned back in his chair, cocking his head. “But I know you just well enough to be able to tell.”

“Do you blame me?” I met his gaze.

“No.” Sinclair gave me a rueful look. “I truly don’t.”

I looked down at the table, my spoon toying with the ramekin of chocolate mousse we were sharing. I know, you’d think I’d had enough of chocolate today, but you’d be wrong. “I guess it’s just that I’ve been really up-front with you.” I kept my voice low. “You, not so much.”

“Look, Daisy.” Reaching across the table, he took my hands in his, spoon handle and all. “For a long time I didn’t have a choice in the matter. My father sent me back to my mother one month out of every summer. It was part of their . . . agreement. When I turned eighteen, I got to decide for myself. I haven’t been back to the island since, even though . . .” He fell silent a moment. “Well, I haven’t. I put it behind me.”

“Things don’t always stay where we put them,” I said softly.

“No, I know.” Sinclair squeezed my hands, his gaze earnest. “But can we leave it there for just this weekend? Let’s enjoy tonight and tomorrow. Things in town are going to slow down after this, and we’ve got all fall and winter to talk about it.”

My stomach did a flip-flop. He made it sound like he was in this for the long haul, which both delighted and, yeah, terrified me. “Promise?”

“Yeah.” His strong thumbs rubbed the backs of my hands. “I promise.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Did you happen to pack a toothbrush along with a change of clothes?”

“Maybe.” Sinclair smiled. “Does that question mean what I think it does?”

I glanced out toward the darkening street. “Well, I’d hate to think of you biking down the highway at night.”

“Oh, I’ve got good lights on my bike,” he said with a straight face. “Don’t go to any worry on that account, girl.”

“Fine.” I withdrew my hands from his and folded them on the table. “Would you like to come over to my apartment?”

He grinned. “Love to.”

After finishing dessert and paying the tab, we strolled slowly back to the apartment, Sinclair walking his bike alongside me. There were a lot of people out, and most of them smiled at us. Maybe a few of them recognized Sinclair from his tour, but mostly it seemed like they were smiling because we looked like a young, happy, attractive couple having a fun night out on the town. And okay, maybe we were too old to do the hands-in-each-other’s-back-pockets thing, but I have to admit, for the first time in my life, I got what it felt like to be one of the cool couples.