I woke to early-morning sunlight and Sinclair sprawled in the bed next to me, one arm flung carelessly over me. And I felt pretty damn good.
I held still for a moment, listening for the echo of demonic laughter. Nope. Either I’d imagined it, or dear old Dad was amused by something more complicated than the fact that his half-human daughter had thrown caution to the winds and given in to licentious behavior. Which . . . wasn’t entirely reassuring, but I’d take it.
“Hey.” Sinclair roused himself sleepily. His head was on the pillow beside mine, and his dark eyes gazed into mine at close proximity. Like, so close I almost felt cross-eyed looking back at him. “You okay, Daisy?”
I wasn’t used to this kind of intimacy. All of the sexual encounters I’d had had ultimately ended . . . well, awkwardly. This morning-after business was new to me.
“Yeah.” I tried the sentiment on for size. It fit. “You?”
“Uh-huh.”
My stomach rumbled.
Sinclair laughed. “Come on. Let’s make some breakfast.”
Okay, time to suck it up and take the walk of shame. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d endured in my life. I’d grown up in a small town where everyone knew my story, and I was used to curious stares. At least Sinclair’s friends were polite and didn’t make any jokes about what was obviously a total booty call or ask if I filed my horns down like Hellboy. I got that a lot back in high school when the first movie came out. I kept my tail tucked and did my best to make a good impression, memorizing their names and asking them questions about themselves.
They seemed to be good guys, laid-back and easygoing. Over a mountainous stack of pancakes—Sinclair hadn’t lied, he made them from scratch with buttermilk, and they were probably the best pancakes I’d ever had—I learned that Roddy, the drummer, was also of Jamaican origin. His mother had a Caribbean restaurant and his uncle owned the custom auto shop where Sinclair’s dad worked.
Under the guise of making small talk, I asked him why his family had left Jamaica, secretly hoping to gain some insight into Sinclair’s situation.
“Poverty,” he said simply. “Unless you have the right connections, there are no real job opportunities, no way to change your lot in life.”
“Is that why your dad left?” I asked Sinclair.
“Dad knew Roddy’s uncle Joseph.” He set a platter of bacon on the table. “He knew there would be a good job here for him.”
Huh. As an answer to a direct yes-or-no question went, that was sort of a nonanswer. “Why Kalamazoo?” I asked curiously, reaching for a piece of bacon. “I mean . . . why Michigan at all?”
As it transpired, apparently Kalamazoo, Michigan, has been host for many years to a world-class reggae festival, one of the largest in the United States. Hence, the long-standing connection to Jamaica from whence many of the festival’s headliner acts have come. I felt a little silly for not knowing this about a city only an hour away.
“Damn, girl! You need to get out of Pemkowet more often,” Ben, the bass player, teased.
“I guess,” I said. “But there’s no underworld there.”
Oops. A little silence settled over the crowded table in the breakfast nook. “You mean . . . hell?” Roddy inquired cautiously.
I shook my head. “No, I mean an actual physical underworld that exists on the mundane plane, ruled by a deity of a non-apex faith.”
“That’s what allows an eldritch community to exist and thrive.” Sinclair rescued me, sliding into the seat beside me. “Here in Pemkowet, they call it Little Niflheim. Right, Daisy?”
I nodded. Little Niflheim was where Hel held court, beneath the shifting sand dunes that had buried the lumber town of Singapore—the very dunes said to be haunted by the ghost of Talman “Tall Man” Brannigan, the lumber baron responsible for the deforestation that caused the dunes to swallow Singapore. Tall Man Brannigan, who slaughtered almost his entire family in a fit of madness and despair.
It was a typical urban legend. No one I knew had ever seen the Tall Man’s ghost, but everyone knew someone who knew someone whose cousin or brother claimed to have done so—and then died after the sighting. But Little Niflheim was real. I’d been there on a number of occasions.
“I’ve seen the world tree,” Sinclair added, cutting into his pancakes and stabbing a forkful. “Yggdrasil II.”
For the next half hour, he entertained the Mamma Jammers with the kind of patter