“All right.” He sounded reluctant, but he agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”
Emmeline slid obligingly behind the wheel of her rental convertible. “What a peculiar young man,” she remarked, pulling onto the rural highway. “Is he even old enough for a driver’s license?”
“Cooper?” I met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, you could say so. He’s more than two hundred years old. He was hanged to death in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.”
Funny how those kind of details stay with you.
Her eyelids flickered slightly. “I see.”
“He’s not a duppy, Emmy,” Sinclair said. “He’s a ghoul.”
Duppy. It seemed like I’d heard that word before. I wanted to ask what a duppy was, but I kept my mouth shut on the question for now. It was worth noting that Emmeline hadn’t been able to recognize a ghoul on sight. That, I thought, was why she’d offered to shake Cooper’s hand; she was trying to get a read on him. It was also worth noting that she’d done it without the slightest trace of fear, and Cooper had been wary enough to refuse.
Okay, duly noted. Dear Emmy was packing some serious mojo and should not be underestimated.
By the time they dropped me off at my apartment, my head was aching with the effort of containing my various emotions. It was about half an hour later, around ten thirty or so, that Sinclair called. I’d thought he might. I was sitting on my screened porch listening to Billie Holiday, a few candles lit, a glass of scotch in my hand and Mogwai on my lap, kneading and purring. I was as calm as I was going to get.
“No,” he said. “I offered, but she’s staying at a B and B downtown. Why? What did she say to you?” He hesitated. “Does it have anything to do with that rat-faced little ghoul checking up on you?”
I stroked Mogwai’s calico fur. “Do you know why she’s here?”
“Yeah.” Sinclair let out a sigh. “To try to talk me into coming home. Home to Jamaica. At least during the off season. But you know . . .” There was a faint wistful note in his voice. “I think she misses me, too.”
“You must miss her,” I said.
“We’ve spent most of our lives missing each other, Daise,” he said. “But we’re on different paths.”
According to his sister, the path of obeah was a path of balance, a path between light and dark. That was one of those things that sounded good on paper, all profound and mystical, until you started wondering exactly what the hell it meant, what the real-world ramifications were for mundane and eldritch alike.
And I didn’t know. I had no idea. All I knew was that Emmeline was on it and Sinclair wasn’t, but she and their powerful mother thought he should be.
“Daisy?”
“Yeah.” I shifted Mogwai’s bulk into a more comfortable position. “Look . . . I don’t want to get in the middle of this.”
“What did she say to you?” Sinclair repeated.
I gazed out into the night, listening to the sounds of Pemkowet. It was quieter than it had been in months. It would get even quieter in the months to come. “Do you ever regret not following the same path as your sister?”
“No.” His reply was prompt and sure. “Daisy . . . listen, it’s a long story. It’s part of the conversation I promised you. But the short answer is no. A definitive no.” He paused. “Are you going to answer my question?”
I scratched Mogwai under his chin. He lifted it to allow me access, curling his lip with pleasure to reveal a sharp eyetooth. “Emmeline asked me to stop seeing you. To call off the fairies, use my influence in the eldritch community. To give you a reason not to stay here. To go home.”
There was a short, shocked silence. “She what?”
“Yeah.”
Sinclair laughed. “Oh, hell, no! Emmy, Emmy! I know she only just met you, but what in the world made her think you of all people would agree to it?”
See, here’s where it got tricky. Vague, creeping menace does not a coherent threat make. And I might be entirely in the right here, but I was also the outsider in this equation. Families, even dysfunctional families—hell, maybe especially dysfunctional families—tend to turn on outsiders who slander another member of the clan. I’d seen enough of it with the Cassopolis family to know