Home is where the soil is soaked with the blood of your ancestors. This place?” She shook her head. “This isn’t home. These aren’t your dead. And these most assuredly aren’t your people.”
“Just come home, Sinny,” Emmeline added in a pleading tone. Apparently she was playing good cop to her mother’s bad cop. “I miss you!”
“No.” Sinclair’s voice grew stronger. “I’m sorry, Emmy. I miss you, too. But you’re wrong. This is my place. And these are my people. Not because I was born here, not because they’re my blood kin. But because I chose this. And I’m not leaving.”
Casimir and the coven had drawn close, ranging themselves behind us. In the headlights, their faces looked stern and different. Even Kim McKinney’s, and I usually thought of sliced cheese and cold cuts from the deli counter when I saw her.
“Your son is under our protection, ma’am,” Casimir said, polite but firm. “And he’s given you his answer.”
Letitia Palmer gave him a stony look, but the Fabulous Casimir didn’t quail before it. She took in his height, his false eyelashes, and the crimson satin turban he was wearing. She took the coven’s measure, took in the hand-knitted scarf knotted around Sinclair’s throat, the evil-eye beads sewn into his hair. She took in the sight of Stefan leaning casually on his sword, his face almost vampire-pale in the headlights. She took in me.
“Letitia, go home,” Thomas Palmer murmured. “Sinclair’s a grown man. Let him live his life.”
“No.” She handed her clutch purse to Emmeline and grasped the glass jar in both hands. “Not like this. Not surrounded by imps and goblins and ghouls, she-males and demon-spawn.”
I had a bad feeling about that jar. Like maybe it only looked empty.
“Don’t!” Sinclair’s voice rose. “There’s no point in threatening me, Mom. I’m protected!”
She looked at him. “Oh, I’m not threatening you, son. This is for everyone else in town.”
He held out one hand. “Give it to me. You don’t know what you’re doing. Magic’s stronger here. You don’t know what you might unleash.”
“On the contrary, I know exactly what I’m doing.” Letitia Palmer stroked the empty jar. “This is my father’s spirit in here, your grandfather Morgan’s. I put the jar to his lips and caught it myself on his deathbed.”
Okay, this would be the time to get authoritative. “I don’t care who’s in the jar, Mrs. Palmer,” I said in a firm tone. “You’re not setting it loose in Pemkowet. Give it to Sinclair, or set it down and walk away.”
She gave me a scathing glance. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll take it from you myself,” I said, suiting actions to words without waiting for her response.
In a perfect world, I’d be rewarded for acting without hesitation, right? I took two swift steps toward Letitia Palmer, reaching for the jar to wrest it out of her grasp. Her eyes widened in surprise. She wasn’t accustomed to being defied, and she hadn’t expected me to act so quickly and decisively. And if Jojo hadn’t had the exact same idea at the exact same time, I’m pretty sure it would have worked.
A green blur streaked past me on translucent wings, then recoiled violently, colliding with my face in an explosion of sparkling dust.
Sinclair’s mother wore a cowry shell like her daughter’s around her neck on a gold chain. Apparently, the ward worked on fairies.
All around us there was shouting, chanting, and commotion, a sense of power thrumming in the night air. I scrubbed at the fairy dust in my eyes and swore at Jojo, who swore back at me. How the hell she’d ever thought she was going to get those pipe cleaner arms around the jar, I couldn’t say.
“Here.” Stefan’s voice, calm and steady. He handed me a clean bandanna to wipe my face.
When I could see again, whatever magical throwdown I’d missed witnessing had turned into a standoff. Letitia Palmer had positioned herself behind a headstone, and her daughter was guarding her back. Sinclair’s mother had the jar raised above the headstone, and her face was grim.
“Tell them!” she shouted at her son. “If I smash the jar, there’ll be no putting him back!”
“She’s right,” Sinclair said in a low tone. “Stand down. Don’t provoke her.”
Stefan gave me an inquiring look, his sword held lightly in one hand.
And I hesitated.
I don’t know if he would have killed her. I don’t know if he could have killed her, not with the ward she was wearing. Not without breaking the jar. Maybe. Or maybe Stefan was just