absently, creating eddies. My floating chaise rocked atop them. “You like him?”
I nodded. “I like him. Hell, Mogwai likes him.”
“You could pick a worse judge of character than your cat,” she said in a pragmatic voice. “Cut the young man a little slack, Daisy. You’re only just getting to know each other. People are allowed to have secrets.”
“Secret twins?”
“Well, it does happen all the time in soap operas.” Lurine poked my floatie with the tip of her tail, sending me drifting a bit. “The thing is, cupcake, Sinclair might have told you all about his sister tomorrow. But you’ll never know, because he never got the chance, which is why I think you should cut him some slack.”
“What about the whole obeah thing?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not my area of expertise.”
“Does it even work? I mean, how can it?” I was thinking aloud again. “There’s no underworld in Jamaica, is there?”
“Oh, that.” A loop of iridescent coil rose to halt my drift. “Islands have their own rules, especially if they’re blood-soaked.”
“Ew.”
Lurine shrugged. “Where there’s blood and death in abundance, there’s necromancy. And islands are circumscribed by salt water. It concentrates the effect.”
“Well, technically all land is circumscribed by salt water, isn’t it?” I said. “I mean, oceans cover something like seventy percent of the earth’s surface, right?”
“Aren’t you the smarty-pants!” A submerged segment of Lurine’s tail gave the underside of my floatie an affectionate bump. “It has to do with scale, Daisy. I’m sure there’s some sort of formula,” she added idly. “Gallons of blood spilled per acre. The gods only know, there was blood and death aplenty throughout the entire West Indies during the centuries when the slave trade was flourishing.”
I shivered in the bright sunlight. “Okay. Enough said.”
“You asked,” Lurine reminded me in a mild tone.
“I did,” I agreed.
Pushing away from the edge, she sank beneath the water to swim the length of the pool and back again. Ensconced in my floating chaise, I rode out the surging waves generated by Lurine’s passage, gazing at the green treetops silhouetted against the bright blue sky and thinking about the terrible fragility of life.
Thirteen
Somewhat to my surprise, Sinclair wanted to keep our date to go to the Bide-a-Wee Tavern that night. The only difference was that his sister would be joining us.
“You’re sure?” I asked him on the phone.
“Positive,” he assured me. “Emmy’s looking forward to it. It will give you the chance to get to know each other.”
“Does she . . . know about me?” There’s really no delicate way to ask, oh, by the way, does your until-recently-secret twin sister know you’re dating a hell-spawn?
There was a pause. “Emmy’s like me,” he said. “She sees auras. I didn’t want to lie to her. We actually had a good talk today.”
According to Sinclair, most people’s auras were just little shimmers flickering around the edges of their bodies, while mine was a five-alarm fire shot through with veins of gold. If my memory was correct, Emmeline hadn’t shown any sign of surprise at it.
Interesting.
“Daisy?” Sinclair asked. “Are we okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to lie to her, either. And I guess she had to find out sooner or later. Did she freak?”
“She’s curious,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t say freaked. But, um, it wouldn’t hurt for you to keep a lid on—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I cut him off. “I’ll try to make a good first impression. Not like I did with the Mamma Jammers. No funky satyr booty calls, I promise.”
He gave a deep, rich chuckle that made my spine tingle and my tail twitch. “Just between you and me? I kind of liked the funky satyr booty call.”
I smiled. “Pick you up at seven?”
“Why don’t we pick you up?” Sinclair suggested. “Emmy’s got a rental.”
As it transpired, not only did Emmy have a rental car—Emmy had a brand-spanking-new rental convertible that was much, much nicer than my poor ten-year-old Honda Civic. At seven o’clock sharp, she and Sinclair pulled into the alley between my apartment building and the park to pick me up. Oh, and it was also a stick shift, which she drove with reckless aplomb.
I sat in the backseat, my blond hair whipping wildly around my head in the backwash of wind.
“Are you quite all right, Daisy?” Emmeline’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, concern in her gaze. Her close-cropped hair was unaffected. “Shall I put the top up?”
I rummaged in my bag for an elastic band and dragged my hair back