before rising into the night sky with a sense of purpose that’s hard to describe.
Well, actually, it’s not all that hard—it felt like the supernatural equivalent of casting a net or a fishing line. For a few tenuous moments, my hopes soared. And then it felt like the supernatural equivalent of that net or fishing line coming back empty, or at least what I would imagine it would feel like, since the closest I’ve ever gotten to fishing was accidentally getting sucked into an episode of Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel.
A bitter sense of loss suffused me. Until the coven’s effort failed, I hadn’t realized exactly how much hope I’d pinned on their success. I let the disappointed members confer among themselves for a few minutes before asking what their failure meant.
“It means his spirit is already bound,” Casimir said soberly.
“To what?” I asked. “Or who? By who? Or . . . whom?” Despite Mr. Leary’s best efforts, I still had a hard time with that one.
Casimir shook his head. “I don’t know. I would have said there wasn’t anyone outside this circle capable of it.”
“What about Liz Cropper?” Mark Reston from the tattoo parlor suggested, which triggered a five-minute discussion about the coven’s history of infighting and bitter quarrels with former members.
I pulled out my notepad and jotted down “Liz Cropper” and a couple of other names they mentioned, watching Sinclair out of the corner of my eye. He was quiet, not taking part in the conversation.
“You don’t think it’s a disgruntled ex-coven member, do you?” I asked him.
Sinclair shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, Daisy. Whatever they’re talking about was before my time. But . . . if my grandfather’s duppy is bound to someone, I’m guessing it was him that did the binding.”
“Whoever,” he said. “Yeah, maybe. Do you have any new leads?”
“No,” I murmured. “I was really, really hoping this summoning ritual would work. Any further thoughts on what kind of death magic we might be talking about?”
“No.” Sinclair was silent a moment. “I’ve tried, you know. Tried to will myself to consent to do what my mother wants.”
“You don’t—”
He shot me a look. “Yeah, I do. I brought this on Pemkowet. If it’s within my power to stop it, I have to try. But it’s not working. Either I just can’t, or my mother was wrong and my grandfather’s spirit isn’t bound to the terms of their agreement.”
“Or both,” I said.
“Or both.” He summoned a wry smile. “Hey, at least those videos are going to be good for the paranormal tour business. And you look pretty badass in them.”
“Yeah, that’s an unexpected bonus.” I tucked my notepad back into my messenger bag. “Do you think it’s worth it?”
“No.” Sinclair’s smile vanished, his expression turning grave. “I think that if we don’t catch my grandfather’s duppy before Halloween, something very, very bad is going to happen.”
I sighed. “Me, too.”
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.