“Foul, sluttish hoyden!” she shrilled, whirling the sling and whipping another pebble at me. “Leave him be!”
I dodged. “I really don’t—”
“Hell-spawned, urchin-snouted doxy!” She flung another, her tip-tilted eyes bright with tears and fury. “I hate you!”
Um, yeah. So ever since we struck our bargain with the Oak King to have the smallest and sparkliest of his subjects make regularly scheduled appearances along the tour route, it turns out the fairies kind of like Sinclair. This one in particular, whom we’d nicknamed Jojo, had a wicked crush on him. Usually Jojo confined herself to skulking around and spying on him, but apparently I’d crossed some sort of invisible line by spending the night with him.
“Look, I’m sorry!” I said in frustration. “I know how you feel. Really, I do. But he’s just not that into you, okay?”
“Mewling, milk-livered strumpet!” Baring her sharp teeth, she wound up like a teeny-tiny major league pitcher to loose another pebble.
Yanking open the car door, I ducked inside the Honda. Pebbles rattled against the window as I stuck the key in the ignition and got the car started, throwing it into reverse and backing out of the driveway.
So much for the idea of Sinclair Palmer as a nice, normal human boyfriend. First I find out his absent mother’s the gavel-wielding Jamaican equivalent of a voodoo queen and then I get attacked by a jealous fairy.
Oh, well.
I drove to downtown Pemkowet, circling the blocks until I found a parking spot, always a challenge during tourist season and especially on the last holiday weekend of the summer. My apartment was located on the second story of an old building alongside a public park in a prime location above Mrs. Browne’s Olde World Bakery. Mogwai, the big calico tomcat I’d more or less adopted, was stalking chipmunks under the rhododendrons in the park and didn’t deign to come when I called him. Upstairs, I filled his dish anyway. There was a torn screen on the back porch that served as a cat door so he could come or go as he pleased during the summer months. We’d renegotiate come winter.
I allowed myself the luxury of showering and changing before I listened to my voice mail. The chief’s just said, “Daisy. Call me.”
Amanda Brooks’s message was considerably longer and delivered at a pitch of barely contained fury that rivaled Jojo the jealous fairy’s. Apparently she’d already gotten wind of the incident. I held the phone a foot away from my ear, wincing as I listened, then called the chief. I had a feeling he’d gotten an earful from her, too.
I was right.
“So is there any way you could have prevented this?” he asked me without preamble.
“No, sir,” I said. “I didn’t even know it was a possibility. Amanda Brooks is on the warpath, isn’t she?”
“Uh-huh. Now that you know, is there anything you can do to prevent it from happening again?”
“I’ll find out.”
“Good. I want you to meet with Amanda and do your best to smooth things over.”
I made a face. “Yes, sir. As soon as I type up my report.”
“Cody’s already filed an official report,” the chief said. “The X-Files version can wait. Call Amanda ASAP, Daisy. Understand?”
I sighed. “Yes, sir.”
Truth be told, Amanda Brooks is very good at her job. Paranormal tourism? She invented that industry. Oh, there have always been tourists in Pemkowet—it’s a pretty town, our beaches are lovely. It’s been an artists’ colony since the late 1800s, long before Hel established Little Niflheim, and there used to be a huge dance pavilion—I mean, like, seriously huge—that was a big draw before it burned down a couple of generations ago. I guess it’s always been a quirky place, even before Hel’s underworld made it a magnet for the eldritch.
And from what I understand, tourism actually declined in the second half of the twentieth century, after the big pavilion burned and Pemkowet was left with a reputation as an artsy place where weird shit happened. It wasn’t until Amanda Brooks took over the PVB and had the brilliant idea of turning a negative into a positive that the industry took off. Come to Pemkowet, where weird shit happens!
Now, people do. They come expecting to find a real-life Midwestern version of Sunnydale or Bon Temps or Forks or whatever their paranormal poison of choice might be. So, yeah, Amanda Brooks is really good at her job; but she seems to have a hard time grasping the fact that there’s an element of chaos at