Poison Fruit: Agent of Hel

by Jacqueline Carey

  He blew me a kiss over the phone. “Anytime, Miss Daisy.”

  I tried calling Lurine, the resource I had in mind. When my call went to voice mail, I decided to drive over to her place anyway. I’d known Lurine since I was scarce out of diapers—she used to babysit for me when she lived two doors down from Mom and me in Sedgewick Estate—and I figured there was a good chance she was already up too, and simply not answering her phone. Of course, given the cold weather, there was an equal chance that she’d been asleep for several days. Lurine’s schedule didn’t exactly conform to mortal circadian rhythms.

  Either way, it was worth a try.

  Lurine’s mansion out on Lakeshore Drive was a far cry from the mobile home she’d lived in when I was growing up. The sky was just beginning to pale in the east as I pulled up to the gated drive and pressed the button on the intercom.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, Edgerton,” I greeted her trusty and discreet butler or manservant or whatever the hell he was called. “It’s Daisy Johanssen. Is, um, Ms. Hollister available?”

  There was a pause. “Ms. Hollister is enjoying a swim.”

  “She’s in the pool?” I didn’t know why that would matter. I’d spent plenty of time poolside with Lurine. Never in November, mind you, but she could afford to keep her pool heated year-round. “Can you ask her if she’d mind if I stopped by?”

  “I’m sure she would be delighted,” he said in a formal tone. “But I’m afraid Ms. Hollister isn’t in the pool.”

  Oh.

  “Thanks, Edgerton,” I said.

  I put the Honda in park and got out, slinging my messenger bag across my chest. Lurine’s place was on the east side of the road, situated inland in the woods and safely away from the eroding bluffs, but her property came with lakefront access. On the west side of Lakeshore Drive, a long zigzagging wooden staircase broken up by a series of platforms led to the beach below.

  I crossed the road, turned up the collar on my black leather motorcycle jacket, and began the long descent, taking care on the sleet-slick steps. The wind was bone-chillingly cold, but at least it appeared to be driving away the clouds. Lake Michigan’s iron-gray surface was ruffled with wavelets. I couldn’t begin to imagine swimming in it on a cold November day, but then, I wasn’t a lamia.

  Halfway down, a distant glimmer of green and gold and blue caught my eye. I paused on one of the platforms to take in the scene.

  Lurine was swimming some fifty yards from the shore, undulating coils gleaming with rainbow hues whenever they broke the surface. Pale, silvery forms darted around her—naiads or undines or nixies; I couldn’t tell at this distance.

  Whatever they were, it was an incredible sight. As the sun rose above the tree line behind me, laying a shining golden path on the gray water, Lurine and her coterie of water elementals surfaced to greet it with a burst of song, a shimmering chorus that made me shiver to the bone with its unearthly beauty.

  The bell-like notes hung in the morning air after they finished, fading slowly, until an aching sense of loss filled me. I found my feet moving unbidden, carrying me down the slippery stairs with reckless abandon.

  Alas, the water elementals scattered, dispersing in silver flashes.

  “Wait!” I cried out in despair. “Don’t go!”

  Out in the lake, Lurine cocked her head. “Daisy? Is that you?”

  “Yeah! I’m coming!” I called to her, crossing the expanse of driftwood-strewn sand.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Stay where you are, cupcake.” Lurine plunged beneath the water, arrowing for the shore.

  Ignoring her order, I kept going. I didn’t have a single thought in my head beyond an overwhelming desire to hear those glorious voices again. I was knee-deep in Lake Michigan when Lurine surfaced a few yards away, water streaming from her golden hair and naked human torso.

  “Okey-dokey, baby girl.” The coils of her tail encircled my waist, plucking me out of the frigid water. “Snap out of it.”

  “I just—” I blinked. “Whoa. Did I just walk into the lake?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Lurine looked amused. “Now you know why thousands of sailors have plunged to their watery doom over the years.” She gave me an affectionate squeeze, those sleek, muscular coils capable of crushing a grown man to death contracting around my waist with suggestive intimacy. “You should be more careful, cupcake.”

  “Lurine!” I protested. “Put me down, will you?”

  She stroked my cheek with the tip of her tail. “Aw, you’re blushing! That’s just adorable.”

  Okay, so there are probably plenty of people in the world who have a little bit of a crush on their ex-babysitters—yes, fine, I’m willing to admit it—but I might be the only one whose attraction is only operative when said ex-babysitter is in the form of a millennia-old mythological creature whose lower half looks like the love child of an anaconda and a rainbow.

  I closed my eyes, blocking out the sight of those iridescent coils and trying to ignore the fact that they were still firmly wrapped around my waist, smooth scales sliding against the leather of my jacket . . . damn.

  “I’m here on business, okay?” My voice sounded feeble.

  “Oh, fine.” Lurine deposited me effortlessly on the shore. I cracked open one eye and watched her shift into her human form. She waded out of the lake, wringing the water out of her hair. “What is it?”

  Now that I wasn’t warm with inappropriate thoughts and embarrassment, I realized that my knee-high black leather boots—which had been a splurge purchase, dammit—were filled with icy lake water. My feet were freezing and my teeth were chattering. “Can we talk about it inside?”

  “Of course.” Lurine stepped into a pair of baby pink Juicy Couture sweatpants. “Hand me my jacket, will you?”

  Eight

  Up at the mansion, Lurine turned maternal on me, wrapping me in a blanket and insisting I drink a cup of hot tea. She even sent my sodden boots off with her butler to be dried with one of those fancy Sharper Image–type appliances. I didn’t know anyone actually bought those things. “What were you thinking, Daisy?” she chided me. “You shouldn’t have been out there.”

  I sipped the tea. “Edgerton said you’d be delighted. I assume he didn’t know I’d be crashing some sort of sirens’ dawn choral practice?”

  “True,” she admitted. “My bad. But in all fairness, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I didn’t know you sang,” I said. “Not like that.”

  Lurine gave a modest shrug. “A girl’s got to have some secrets, cupcake. So what’s up?”

  I told her about Scott Evans and his dilemma. “So what’s your verdict on Night Hags? Real or not real?”

  “Oh, they’re real,” Lurine assured me. “They’re also part of humanity’s collective unconscious, which is why mortals anywhere might think they’ve experienced an attack. But here in Pemkowet, yeah, it was probably an actual hag.” She shuddered. “Nasty, smelly creatures.”

  “Cody said there was no scent,” I said. “Which seems odd.”

  Lurine waved one hand. “Oh, you know those dreamwalker types. They have a complicated relationship with corporeal reality.”

  I did not, in fact, know those dreamwalker types. Being Hel’s liaison came with a steep learning curve and a lot of on-the-job training. “Meaning . . . ?”

  “Meaning the Night Hag only exists physically for the person whose dreams she enters, cupcake,” she said patiently. “Or nightmares, I should say. That’s what they feed on.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So Night Hags are basically the Freddy Kruegers of the eldritch community?”

  You might think a pop culture reference like that would be lost on someone whose origins date to the Bronze Age, but in Lurine’s case, you would be wrong. In the current incarnation of her identity, she left Sedgewick Estate when I was in my late teens and attained B-movie fame starring in a couple of cult-favorite horror films. After that, she married an octogenarian real-estate tycoon who died within a year, leaving her the
bulk of his massive fortune.

  Hence, the mansion and the boot-warming appliances. Although to be fair, Lurine’s probably thrown away as many fortunes as she’s gained over the course of centuries.

  “More or less,” she said. “As far as I know, Night Hags don’t have the ability to actually kill people in their sleep.”

  “Just to make them think they’re dying,” I said. “Or crazy.”

  Lurine nodded. “All good fodder for nightmares.”

  “Or suicide attempts,” I noted.

  “That, too,” she agreed. “The mortal human mind’s at once a powerful and fragile thing, baby girl.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So how do I find and catch the bitch?”

  “No idea, cupcake.” Lurine shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, not my area of expertise. If I were you, I’d ask around among the fey. Night Hags are kin to bogles, if I’m not mistaken. I have a hard time keeping track of them all.” She eyed the pendant around my neck. “You could ask him.”

  My right hand rose to close over the silver acorn-shaped whistle. “The Oak King?”

  “Well, you might not want to start by pestering eldritch royalty,” she said in a pragmatic tone. “But it’s something to keep in mind.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I promised. “Thanks, Lurine.”

  She smiled at me. “Anytime.”

  Okay, so that boot-warmer thingy? Totally awesome. Plus, Lurine’s butler/manservant Edgerton had waxed and shined them, so that they not only felt toasty warm but looked completely undamaged and as good as new when I put them on. He seemed embarrassed when I thanked him profusely.

  Lurine escorted me to the foyer. “Hey, how’s your love life, cupcake?” she asked me. “Any less complicated?”

  I hesitated. “You might say so.”

  “Cody?”

  I shook my head, my heart aching a little. “Taking himself out of the picture.”

  “So who’s still in the picture?” Lurine’s gaze sharpened. “Stefan Ludovic?” I didn’t say anything. She frowned at me. “You’re walking on thin ice with that one, Daisy.”

  I temporized. “Well, he’s in Poland. Outcast business.”

  She sighed. “Oh, baby girl!”

  “I thought you were okay with Stefan.” I was feeling a bit defensive. “Look, he’s been a strong ally. You helped him rescue me last summer! And if it wasn’t for Stefan, that Halloween debacle would have been a bloodbath.”

  “I’m fine with Stefan, but I can handle myself. It’s you I worry about.” Lurine’s cornflower-blue eyes began to take on a stony basilisk stare. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it would be for you to consort with a ghoul?”

  I kindled my mental shield between us, something I’d never done before. “Yeah. I do. Apparently, I’m drawn to dangerous things.”

  Lurine’s expression was unreadable, and she held her silence long enough that I began to fear I’d crossed a line. But at last she gave me a rueful smile. “Touché.” She nodded at the shield of energy I wielded, invisible to the mundane eye, bright and shining to the eldritch. “Just tell me you don’t actually think you need that with me.”

  “No, of course not.” I let it dissipate. “I just wanted to show you that I can take care of myself, too.”

  “Daisy—”

  “Look, Stefan knows you’ve declared me under your protection,” I said to her. “He knows you’d crush him to a pulp if he ever did anything to harm me.”

  Lurine folded her arms over her baby pink Juicy Couture jacket, managing to emphasize her admittedly spectacular cleavage in the process—maybe an attempt to distract me, probably just reflex. Lurine knows perfectly well that her human bombshell form doesn’t faze me. But her real one . . . that’s something else.

  Perverse, but true. What can I say? Eldritch tendencies manifest in unexpected ways.

  “I don’t think he’d hurt you on purpose,” she said. “But if you send him ravening, all bets are off.”

  “I know, I know!” I said. “Lurine . . . I’ve got to make my own choices. And you’ve got to decide whether you’re going to treat me like a child or a grown woman. You can’t keep doing both.”

  “Oh, cupcake.” She laughed softly. “You can’t tell people how to feel. You know, I like the young woman you’ve grown into very much. You’re determined and brave and loyal. But you’ll always be that impetuous, hot-tempered hell-spawn toddler I first knew, too, and I’ll always worry about you. You’ll just have to live with it. You and your mother are the first mortals I let myself care about in a long, long time.”

  It’s kind of hard to argue with a declaration like that, especially when you’re a bit misty-eyed.

  “Thanks,” I said. “And I’ll be careful. I promise. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about Stefan anytime soon. Like I said, he’s off on some mysterious errand in Poland.” I strapped my messenger bag across my chest. “And I’m off hunting a Night Hag.”

  “Good luck,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said again. At the door, a thought struck me, and I turned back in curiosity. “By the way, what were you and those undines singing?”

  “Naiads,” Lurine corrected me. “They’re prickly little bitches, but they can sing. It was a hymn to Helios.”

  “Really?” I don’t know why it surprised me. It’s not like I ever forgot what Lurine was, but I guess sometimes I lost sight of exactly what it meant, and where and when she came from.

  There was a faraway look in her eyes. “Some of us try to keep the old traditions alive, Daisy. At least when we can.” Her gaze returned from the distance. “Off-season is the only time I can greet the dawn properly.”

  “It was beautiful,” I said honestly. “Truly.”

  “Thank you.” Lurine smiled, looking genuinely pleased. “Sorry about accidentally luring you into the lake.”

  I shrugged. “Totally worth it.”

  “Don’t mention it to your mother.”

  “I won’t.”

  Nine

  Back in my car, I checked my phone and saw I had a text from Sinclair inviting me to attend his ritual tattooing at noon today, which was perfect. Well, mostly perfect. If you wanted to talk to one of the fey, especially a nature elemental, without spending hundreds of dollars on cowslip dew, Sinclair Palmer was the man to see. He ran Pemkowet Supernatural Tours, and thanks to the generous support of the Oak King, there were almost always nature fairies along his route.

  Obviously, there weren’t as many around this time of year—it’s a seasonal thing—but there were a few species hardy enough to endure the winter. Plus, it helps that nature fairies freakin’ love Sinclair.

  I can’t blame them, since Sinclair’s a great guy. He’s also my ex-boyfriend. That would be the less than perfect part. Okay, it’s not like we dated that long—it was only about a month—and I’m the one who broke it off, but still.

  It’s not that I regret ending things with Sinclair, but the relationship didn’t have a chance to run its natural course. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that it involves his secret twin sister, obeah magic, and a Jamaican duppy.

  Anyway.

  Since I had time to kill, I drove over to East Pemkowet. Realizing I was starving, I got a cheese Danish to go at the Sit’n Sip and ate it on the way to the library.

  Let me just say that for my money, the Pemkowet District Library is one of the best things about this town. Seriously, it’s awesome. It’s small and quaint—it’s actually lodged in a charming old building that was a church in the 1800s—but the services it offers are huge in comparison.

  The library was a big part of my life when I was growing up. Mom and I didn’t have a lot of money, but as long as we could use computers and check out books and videos and music CDs from the library for free, it didn’t matter that we couldn’t afford cable or satellite TV or an Internet connection at home. Being a small facility, the library doesn’t have an extensive collection, but it’s good—you can also request anything you want from another l
ibrary in the region, and they’ll deliver it within days. Very cool.

  Plus, there’s the Sphinx, which is why I decided to pay the library a visit today.

  The Sphinx is either an oracle or a very eccentric old librarian with an incredible memory and a penchant for riddles. I’m honestly not sure which, and I don’t know how or when she became known as the Sphinx. According to Mr. Leary, whoever gave her the nickname was probably thinking of a Sybil instead, although he allows that the Sphinx was also known as an oracle.

  Which, by the way, anyone who’s ever seen The NeverEnding Story could have told him. That’s one of the classic movies from Mom’s childhood that we watched on loan from the library. I recommend it, although I’ll warn you, unless you have a heart of stone, you will cry at the part where the pony dies.

  There weren’t a lot of patrons in the library at this time of day. I approached the Sphinx, who was puttering around behind the checkout counter, returning DVDs to their filing units.

  For the record, the Sphinx’s given name is Jane Smith. If you think that sounds too generic to be true, I’m right there with you.

  Generally speaking, the eldritch always recognize one another. Even if we can’t identify the other’s exact species, there’s a telltale tingle. I have to admit, I’d never felt it with the Sphinx. Sinclair can see auras, and he says that hers is very muted, which means that either she’s near the end of her life, or she’s powerful enough to suppress it.

  It’s a tough call. The Sphinx has looked ancient since I was tall enough to see over the checkout counter.

  “Good morning, Ms. Smith,” I greeted her. “I’m looking for information on Night Hags.”

  The Sphinx looked at me without blinking. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Her shoulders were hunched with osteoporosis, and her skin was beyond wrinkled, etched with deep crevasses. We’re talking apple-head doll territory here. It was impossible to determine her ethnic heritage. Egyptian, East Indian, Native American, light-skinned black—she could have been any or all of the above. I was pretty sure she wasn’t Asian, anyway. Not only did her eyes lack an epicanthic fold, but they were disconcertingly round and an almost luminous brown, without a lot of white showing around the iris. Her eyes looked more like a monkey’s or a chimp’s than a human’s, and I knew for a fact that she could stare an unruly child into silence in three seconds flat without a single “Shush!”