I nodded. Little Niflheim was where Hel held court, beneath the shifting sand dunes that had buried the lumber town of Singapore—the very dunes said to be haunted by the ghost of Talman “Tall Man” Brannigan, the lumber baron responsible for the deforestation that caused the dunes to swallow Singapore. Tall Man Brannigan, who slaughtered almost his entire family in a fit of madness and despair.
It was a typical urban legend. No one I knew had ever seen the Tall Man’s ghost, but everyone knew someone who knew someone whose cousin or brother claimed to have done so—and then died after the sighting. But Little Niflheim was real. I’d been there on a number of occasions.
“I’ve seen the world tree,” Sinclair added, cutting into his pancakes and stabbing a forkful. “Yggdrasil II.”
For the next half hour, he entertained the Mamma Jammers with the kind of patter he used to entertain the tourists, a blend of history, conjecture, and fact, all extolling the wonders of Pemkowet.
“Speaking of . . .” Sinclair glanced at the watch on his wrist. “It’s almost showtime. I’ve got to get ready for the first tour of the day.”
The Mamma Jammers packed their gear and beat an efficient retreat, thanking him for the gig and the place to crash.
In the kitchen, I helped him do a quick washup of the breakfast dishes. My body still felt languid and relaxed, but my mind was buzzing. “Hey, Sinclair?”
He shot me a sidelong look. “Uh-huh?”
I scrubbed diligently, declining to meet his gaze. “How come you never talk about your mom?”
More silence.
I snuck a sideways peek of my own. Sinclair reached over to turn off the water faucet. “My mother is a very powerful woman, Daisy.”
I remembered what Cody had told me. “Oh, yeah? Is she an obeah woman?”
“She’s a judge.” His voice was flat. I felt a powerful surge of white-girl guilt. Yeah, given the first opportunity, that’s where I’d gone. Ooga-booga island voodoo. But then Sinclair’s full lips compressed to a tight line. “And yeah, she’s an obeah woman,” he admitted. “A very, very powerful one. Dangerous, too. It’s in our bloodline. If you really want to know, that’s why my father left Jamaica. My mother worked some shady magic. In her legal dealings and her personal dealings, too. He had his doubts about her intentions. He felt he might have been compromised in their relationship and didn’t want me further exposed to it. That’s why we left. And that’s pretty much the whole story. I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t like to think about it. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
Sinclair leaned over to kiss me. “Cool.” He glanced at his watch again. “Look, I really do have to run. Call me later?”
“You bet.”
Six
I finished the dishes and let myself out, locking the door behind me. It was a bright, sunny morning, and being alone in broad daylight in yesterday’s clothes—which were probably tainted with satyr-funk—I felt more than a little slutty.
Which, I have to admit, wasn’t entirely a bad feeling. Except maybe for that guilty thrill I felt when I thought about what had happened with Cody at the nightclub, not to mention the latent shock of discovering that Sinclair’s mother was an obeah woman, whatever that meant.
So, yeah. It’s complicated.
Heading for my Honda, I went over a mental checklist of Things to Do Today. What I really wanted to do, first and foremost, was call my best friend, Jen, and give her the 411 on everything that had just gone down. In a close second place, I wanted to do some research into exactly what an obeah man or an obeah woman was. I mean, obviously we were talking about some sort of magic worker, but beyond that, I was clueless. Not a lot of call to study up on Caribbean lore here in the Midwest. Casimir, aka the Fabulous Casimir, might be able to help; he was the head witch in Pemkowet’s local coven. Or my old teacher Mr. Leary, who knew more about eldritch history and folklore around the world than anyone I knew.
Of course, what I had to do first was head down to the station and fill out a report on the orgy for the Pemkowet X-Files. Checking my phone, I saw there were voice mails from Chief Bryant and, oh, gah, Amanda Brooks at the PVB.
Okay, those could wait. After all, I was reasonably certain that Lurine had the satyr situation under control. If all hell had broken loose again, Cody knew where to find me. Before I did anything, I was damn well going to go home, take a shower, and change my clothes.
I was reaching for the driver’s-side door handle when something sharp stung the back of my neck. “Ow!” I brushed frantically at the spot, thinking a bee had stung me, but nothing was there. “What the hell?”
It stung me again.
“Goddammit!” Spinning around, I waved my arms in the air. “Seriously, what the . . . oh, crap.”
Ten feet away, beside a scraggly juniper bush, a joe-pye weed fairy with green skin and clumps of pale purple hair piled atop her head hovered in the air. Her face was contorted with jealous rage, her translucent wings were a blur, and she was carrying some kind of sling-type weapon made of woven grass.
“Hey, Jojo.” I held up both hands in a peaceful gesture. “Look, I was just leaving.”
“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 work here that can’t be controlled. This isn’t Disney World and the rides aren’t inspected for safety. There are no OSHA standards in the eldritch community.
Also, okay, I’m a little biased. During high school, her daughter, Stacey, was the head of the local mean girls’ clique and my own personal nemesis. I got suspended for a week thanks to her.
