know that! You’ve got to take the dark with the light. But you know what you can’t do? Turn your back on it. And that’s what you imagine you’ve done.”
“Yeah, I did,” he said. “By choice, when I became a man.”
Now she shook her head. “It will find you, Sinclair. How do you think you ended up here?” She pointed at me. “With that?”
“Hey!” I protested.
His shoulders tensed. “Leave Daisy out of it. You’ve done enough to her already.”
Dear Emmy laughed. “Oh, that little charm?” she said in a dismissive tone. “That was nothing. Just a friendly warning that I mean business.”
Some warning. My tail twitched in the confines of my jeans. “I think we’ve gotten a little off track here,” I said to her, my hand resting casually on dauda-dagr’s hilt. “This is my friendly warning that I mean business. You have twenty-four hours to leave Pemkowet voluntarily. If you don’t, I’ll have you escorted outside the boundaries of Hel’s territory.”
She gave me a long, appraising glance.
I returned it steadily. Along with being seriously pissed in a slow, simmering way, I was feeling pretty confident about my backup after Stefan’s visit. If Emmeline wanted a showdown, I was ready for it. But she zigged when I was expecting her to zag.
“You know, you really should have agreed to work with me on this, Daisy. It would have been ever so much more civilized,” she said, gathering her things. “Very well, I’ll go. But I’ll be back. Sinny, this isn’t over. You have a month to think about it.”
His face was stoic. “I don’t need a month. My answer is no.”
“I won’t ask nicely the next time,” Emmeline warned him. “Whatever happens, it will be on your head.”
“Nice,” I said. “Classic abusive logic. Oh, and by the way? You’re not welcome to return.”
She ignored me. “Deep down, there’s a part of you that wants it, Sinclair,” she said softly. “I know you miss me. And you know that the two of us together could be more than twice as powerful as either of us alone.”
Sinclair folded his arms. “That’s what this is really all about for you, isn’t it? Go home, Emmy.”
Reaching up, she patted his cheek with her free hand. “Think about it.”
Eighteen
That afternoon, I called in sick to work—hell, after the morning I’d had, I figured I was entitled—and Sinclair and I had The Talk. By this time, I’d already pieced together most of the details, but it was good to get the whole story.
In a nutshell, his mother was a brilliant, ferociously ambitious lawyer, now judge, and obeah woman descended from a long line of obeah men and women, and had used her gifts throughout her life to obtain whatever she wanted, including Sinclair and Emmeline’s father, who was a good-looking, hardworking, God-fearing man who had wanted nothing to do with obeah or those who worked it. When the twins were three years old, by sheer happenstance their father discovered the love charm that had bewitched him.
And no, I did not interrupt Sinclair’s story to inform him that while infatuation could be compelled, genuine desire couldn’t.
Anyway, it was at that point that his father fled the island of Jamaica, taking his son with him.
“Why did he leave Emmy behind?” I asked him. We were on the dilapidated, butt-sprung plaid couch in Sinclair’s living room, where he was lying with his head in my lap, eyes closed.
“He tried to take her,” he murmured. “She didn’t want to go. She screamed bloody fucking murder. So in the end he left her with the neighbor.”
I stroked his temples. “Do you remember it?”
“I remember Emmy screaming,” he said.
In the years that followed, the divorce and the terms of custody were settled. From the time he was a young boy, Sinclair spent one month out of every summer on the island, being trained in the tradition of obeah until he was old enough to choose otherwise.
“Why did you walk away from it?” I asked him. “I’m not arguing the decision by any means—I’m just curious.”
He opened his eyes. “I saw what it did to my father, Daise. All my life, he’s never been quite . . . whole. And my mother . . . you know, for all her power, I don’t think she’s a happy woman.”
“What about your sister?” I asked. “What was that business about the two of you being twice as powerful together?”
Sinclair was silent a moment. “It’s true, but it’s not that simple. You know what she said