In the end, it didn’t matter which was true. I made my decision.
Then I cried for a while.
Nineteen
Since I had to work at eight, I showed up on Sinclair’s doorstep at seven thirty the next morning.
He answered the door bleary-eyed and blinking, his dreads looking frowsy. However, he was also wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxer shorts, which was almost enough to make me change my mind. “Daisy?”
“Okay, here’s the thing,” I said without preamble. “When I say I want us to stay friends, which I’m about to do, I don’t just mean I want us to be civil to each other. I mean I want to stay friends. I want to be able to call you because I heard a good joke or I had a lousy day, and I want you to feel the same way. I want to get to know you better. I want to eat popcorn and make fun of bad movies with you. I want you in my Scooby Gang.”
“Your what?” Sinclair stared at me in bewilderment. “Wait, hang on. Are you breaking up with me?”
“Well, since we never actually defined our relationship, I don’t know if you can call it breaking up, but . . . yeah.” I winced. “Sorry. I’ve never done this before, and I kind of suck at it, don’t I?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “And I’m half asleep. Is it because of my sister?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “Ultimately, no.”
Dropping his hands, Sinclair regarded me. “And yet you’re doing exactly what Emmy told you to do.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Sinclair, listen. If Emmy hadn’t blown things up, I think we could have had a lot of fun together, and I wish we’d had that chance. But you’re not just some nice, uncomplicated guy with a great smile. And I’m . . . me. In the long run, I don’t think we’re the right kind of complicated for each other. Do you?”
“No,” he admitted after a long moment. “But I was happy to give the short run a try, Daisy.”
“Yeah, me, too,” I said ruefully. “But after yesterday, I think right now we can do each other a lot more good as friends. Are you okay with that?”
“Do I have a choice?” Sinclair asked.
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“All right.” Sinclair gave me a reluctant smile. “If I’m going to face down my sister, I need all the friends I can get. But if you ever need to make another funky satyr booty call, girl, I’m your man.”
A sense of relief and gratitude suffused me. “You’re the first person I’d call,” I assured him.
We parted with a hug. There was regret in it, but there was genuine affection, too; and it occurred to me as I drove downtown to the police station that in a perverse way, Emmeline might have done us an unwitting favor. After taking a long, hard look at my own feelings, I doubted that any budding romance with Sinclair could have withstood the double-barreled assault of his sister’s surprise visit and her return to either collect on the ultimatum she’d issued or deliver on her threat.
But friendship? Hell, yeah. It was a lot easier to forgive a friend in trouble than it was a sort-of-boyfriend who’d been less than honest. I had experience with standing up for my friends.
And all dear Emmy’s prank with the charm had done in the end was warn me not to underestimate her.
Next time I wouldn’t.
It actually felt good to settle into a familiar routine at the station, reviewing the stack of incident reports that had accumulated over the holiday weekend. Nothing suspicious of an eldritch nature caught my eye, which meant Tuggle and his hobgoblin buddies had the last hurrah of the high season with their shell game.
Well, except for Emmeline Palmer. A part of me—the part that was embarrassed by the fact that I hadn’t exactly handled the encounter with aplomb—wanted to avoid documenting the incident. But it was my responsibility, and it was time I started acting more professional about it, so I wrote up a full report for the X-Files.
Chief Bryant came in just as I was finishing. After exchanging a few words with Patty Rogan at the front desk, he caught my eye. “Daisy. I’d like a word with you in my office when you’re done.”
A little knot of apprehension formed in the pit of my belly. “Be there in a few, sir.”
He nodded and went past me into his office, closing the door. I shot Patty an “Am-I-in-trouble?” look. She shrugged. Patty and I had a decent working relationship, but not a great one. I knew there were times she thought the chief was guilty of favoritism toward me. And the fact is, it was probably true. I’d known Chief Bryant since I was little. When my mom waitressed at Callahan’s Café, sometimes during a day shift she’d park me in an empty booth with a coloring book. The chief used to come in for coffee, and occasionally to cheat on his diet. That’s when he first took a sort of paternal interest in Mom and me, which ultimately led to my part-time job here in the department.
Since that time, I’d never been less than a hundred percent straight with Chief Bryant. Well, at least until I called in sick yesterday, which is probably why I was feeling apprehensive. As a rule, I tried to avoid lying. It’s not one of the Seven Deadlies—why, I don’t know, since dishonesty seems a lot more like a sin than oh, say, sloth—but when it comes to temptation I like to err on the side of caution.
I drafted the last couple of lines of my report and printed a copy before knocking on the chief’s door.
“Door’s open.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desk as I entered. “Have a seat, Daisy.”
I sat.
Chief Bryant leaned back in his chair and studied me. He was a big man with sleepy, hooded eyes that always reminded me of the old actor Robert Mitchum. A lot of people missed the intelligence in those eyes and the fact that there was solid muscle under the extra pounds he carried. “You called in sick yesterday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re never sick,” he said. “Never known you to have a sick day in your life. Your mother used to brag about it.”
“I had a situation.” I slid the report across his desk. He put on a pair of reading glasses and skimmed it, then folded the glasses and put them down.
“Palmer,” he said. “That’s that young fellow you’ve been seeing? Runs the bus tour?” I nodded, although I wasn’t fooled. Chief Bryant knew exactly who Sinclair was. He prodded the report with one thick finger. “Sounds like his sister put quite the whammy on you,” he observed. “You feeling okay today?”
“Much better, thanks.”
He looked at the report again. “So this obeah woman . . . what is that? Is that like a voodoo priestess?”
“A little bit,” I said. “Not exactly.”
He fixed me with his deceptively sleepy gaze. “Do you think she’s coming back to finish what she started?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Unfortunately, I do.”
The chief shifted in his chair. “It’s a tricky business, Daisy. As long as she hasn’t violated any actual laws, I don’t know how I can help you.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s okay, I’m not asking for help. This one’s my responsibility, sir.”
“You’ve got a plan?” he asked.
I temporized. “I’ve got a start. I’ll ask Casimir and the local coven to work on it. If we can figure out how to protect Sinclair so she can’t cast a spell or set a duppy on him, I think we’ll be okay. She took me by surprise this time. The next time, I’ll be ready.”
He blinked. “What the hell’s a duppy?”
“It’s a kind of ghost.”
Chief Bryant processed that for a moment. “All right. If there’s anything I can do, you let me know.”
“Just back me up if I need to have her escorted out of town,” I said.
“Will do.” He nodded. “We can always write her up for loitering or disturbing the peace. You want me to assign Fairfax to work with you on this? The two of you did a good job together on the Vanderhei case.”
My heart leaped a bit, then subsided. “Cody’s, um, on his time off, isn’t he?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Emmeline Palmer said she’d be back in a month,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s four weeks or by the calendar, but . . .” I didn’t finish the thought out loud. Although I was positive that the chief knew about Cody, it wasn’t something he’d ever overtly acknowledged in no uncertain terms.
“Cutting it close either way,” Chief Bryant said in a neutral tone. “A lunar month is twenty-nine and a half days.”
Okay, those were pretty certain terms. “Right.”
He sighed. “All right, then. Fairfax is out. But if you need backup, let me know.”
“Will do.”
With that, the chief dismissed me. I went back to the front office and finished filing the reports I’d reviewed, then clocked out for the day.
I swung by the Sisters of Selene to talk to Casimir about setting up a meeting with Sinclair. He offered to contact the coven and promised to call me when they agreed on a time and place.
Just to be on the safe side, I stopped in at the Idlewild to make sure that Emmeline Palmer had checked out. The hostess wasn’t too pleased to see me—I guess I didn’t make as good an impression as Emmy—but when I showed her my police ID, she confirmed that Sinclair’s sister had left late yesterday afternoon.
With that done, my time was my own. I went back to my apartment and spent an hour researching database software online before giving up in despair. I needed something more sophisticated than I could afford—like the police reporting software we used at the station but something I could customize for my own purposes. That is, if I had the faintest idea how to do such a thing, which I didn’t.
I knew someone who did, though. Or at least I’d gone to high school with him. I tried the phone book, but there was no listing.
