Poison Fruit: Agent of Hel

by Jacqueline Carey

  “Thou art asking one now,” she pointed out.

  Like I said, literal. Fighting the urge to grit my teeth, I rephrased the question. “Do you know how I can find and catch a Night Hag?”

  Ellie shook her head, the leaves of her cape stirring. By the way, I don’t know exactly what hellebore is, but if you ask me, it probably looks a little like a shaggy marijuana plant. “I do not.”

  “Do you know who would be able to tell me?”

  “A bogle.”

  God, it was like playing a game of Twenty Questions. “Do you know where I can find a bogle?” There was another long pause. I flashed my rune-marked palm at her again and put on a stern voice. “Ellie, I’m working to uphold Hel’s rule of order. If you’re withholding information from me, not only will there be no favor recorded in my ledger, but there will be a transgression. A serious one.”

  The hellebore fairy blanched, her skin turning a paler hue of chartreuse. “A bogle haunt lies a league yonder,” she said, pointing to the southwest.

  Even if I had known how far a league was, that didn’t exactly narrow it down. “Any chance you can be more specific?”

  “Yes.” Her pretty green lips curled in a smirk, revealing a glimpse of needle-sharp teeth. “There is a chance.”

  My tail twitched with irritation. “Where’s this bogle haunt?” I said. “Please be as specific as possible.”

  Ellie’s slight chest rose and fell in an aggrieved sigh. I knew how she felt. “The bogle’s haunt lies in the woods,” she said reluctantly. “It prowls the grounds of the abandoned encampment by night.”

  “The abandoned . . . Wait, do you mean the old Presbyterian camp?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “I know not what you call it.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Is there anything else I should know? Anything you’re not telling me that would earn you a black mark in my ledger?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?” I pressed her.

  Her yellow eyes flashed. “Dost thou call me a liar?”

  “Hey, I’m just checking.” I spread my hands. “No offense intended. Thank you, Ellie. I’ll record the favor.”

  With another sniff, she vanished.

  So goes the scintillating work of conducting a paranormal investigation. Actually, it’s not that different from conducting a regular investigation, which is infinitely more tedious than it looks on TV. Lots of interviewing witnesses, sources, and informants, lots of paperwork, not a lot of chasing bad guys.

  “Thanks,” I said to Sinclair. “I appreciate it.”

  “Anytime,” he said. “Do you want me to go out to the camp with you?” He thumped his chest. “I’m extra . . . ouch!”

  I winced. “Sorry! Does it hurt?”

  Sinclair coughed. “Only when I hit myself. It’s a little tender. Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, thanks.” I shook my head. “We couldn’t go right now. Bogles only come out at night. Anyway, I’m working with Cody on this one.”

  “Ah.” Something in his expression shifted. “Are you okay with that?” Damn, I didn’t think Sinclair knew about me and Cody. He gave me a wry smile. “Sorry, sistah. Jen let it slip after your night of debauchery.”

  “It is what it is.” I couldn’t help an edge creeping into my voice. “What about you and Stacey?”

  “What about us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you actually like her?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know—it’s too soon to tell.” Sinclair was silent for a moment. “I think she’s lonely, Daisy. And sometimes I am, too. I mean, I’m glad to have made some friends here, I’m glad Jen decided to rent the spare bedroom, and I’m grateful for the coven, but I’m still the new guy in town. Look, I love Pemkowet—I really do. You know I’ve always been drawn to the place. But sometimes it seems like everyone here’s known one another forever, and I’ll always be the new guy.”

  “The new guy everyone likes,” I pointed out.

  “The new guy who got dumped by the first girl he liked,” he said quietly. I flinched a little. “It’s okay. I understand. Our timing was lousy. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt, Daisy.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured.

  “I know.” Sinclair shrugged. “What can I say? Stacey brought me cookies as a thank-you for saving her life. We got to talking. She’s got an overbearing mother,” he added. “I can relate.”

  “That’s a bit of an understatement,” I said. No kidding; Amanda Brooks might be a pit bull as the head of the PVB, but Sinclair’s mom was a judge, an aspiring candidate for the Jamaican Parliament and a powerful obeah woman who’d unleashed the duppy that raised Pemkowet’s dead and nearly got Stacey Brooks killed. “And you weren’t exactly going it alone in the life-saving department.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “I mentioned that to her. To be honest, I think she feels a little self-conscious about it.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say she damn well should feel self-conscious given the amount of shade she’d thrown my way over the years, but I figured there are times to take the high road, and this was probably one of them. “Just doing my job.”

  Sinclair smiled, a genuine smile. “You want to come in for a cup of coffee or something?”

  I shook my head. “I should head down to the station and catch up on my filing. Thanks, though.”

  He walked me to my car. “Take care, Daisy.”

  “You, too.” I paused. “By the way, your tattoo’s really beautiful. It’s perfect. Totally perfect.”

  “Thanks.” Sinclair laid a hand over his heart; gently this time. “I think so, too.”

  The rest of the day proved uneventful, with one exception. I got a call from Amanda Brooks notifying me that Daniel Dufreyne was coming to town to meet with her tomorrow morning at eleven a.m. I confirmed that I’d be there well in advance, reiterating my warning not to meet with him alone.

  I left a voice mail message for Cody telling him I had an update on the Night Hag case and to prepare for an after-hours jaunt to the old Presbyterian campgrounds, and spent the afternoon filing, as well as writing up a report for the X-Files, which I logged into my ledger, along with an entry for Ellie the hellebore fairy and the favor I owed her.

  Shortly before five p.m., just as I was wrapping things up, Cody swung by the station.

  “Hey,” I greeted him, still trying to pretend things weren’t awkward between us. “Did you get my message?”

  “Yeah, about that.” He perched on a corner of my desk. “I can’t do it tonight, Daise. I’m on duty. I called around, but there’s no one else who can cover my shift, and the chief doesn’t want the only cop on call traipsing around in the woods looking for . . . What, exactly, would we be looking for?”

  “A bogle,” I informed him.

  Cody blinked. “Huh. Okay.” He nodded in the direction of the conference room. “Maybe you should give me the lowdown.”

  I filled him in on what I’d learned. “Don’t worry about tonight,” I added. “Sinclair offered to go with me. I’ll just take him up on it.”

  Cody made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded a lot like a suppressed growl. “I’d rather you waited until I’m free, Daise. The Evanses should be safe now, right?”

  “Should being the operative word, yes,” I said. “But that leaves the rest of the town vulnerable.”

  “Yeah, well, the rest of the town isn’t as unstable as Scott Evans.” Cody rubbed the bronze stubble on his chin. “If you absolutely, positively insist on going, I’d rather you take Ludovic for backup,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t like him, but I’d trust him in a clinch over the fledgling Jamaican warlock.”

  “Stefan’s out of town,” I said. “I could ask Cooper.”

  “No.” Phosphorescent green shimmered in Cody’s eyes and his voice was adamant. “No way.”

  I couldn’t exactly blame him, since the last time he’d seen Cooper, Cooper was ravening. Still . . .

  “
You don’t get to go all possessive alpha male on me, Cody,” I said to him. “You just don’t.”

  “I know.” He looked away, his jaw tightening, then looked back at me. “Give me this one, Daise? We’re talking about over a hundred acres of woods. You could look for hours without finding a thing. But if there’s a bogle out there, I can track it.”

  He had a point.

  “You can track a bogle?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Cody nodded. “And I’ll twist some arms to make sure I’m free tomorrow night. Deal?”

  I hesitated. “Deal.”

  Eleven

  I found myself in a restless mood that night.

  Part of it was the lack of action. I’d been planning on hunting a bogle, and I’d had to put my plans on hold. It made me apprehensive; worried that the Night Hag might find a way around the wards Casimir had sold the Evanses, worried that she might strike somewhere else, finding another unstable victim.

  But if I was honest with myself, it had a lot to do with the fact that I’d be meeting with Daniel Dufreyne, possibly nefarious lawyer and suspected hell-spawn, late tomorrow morning.

  Someone like me. Only . . . if I was right about him, he’d claimed his birthright.

  It made me feel strange and shivery inside. I’d spent my whole life trying to avoid the Seven Deadlies, using the visualization techniques my mom had taught me to keep my outsize emotions in check, afraid that if I didn’t, I might succumb to one of the temptation scenarios my father offered me and breach the Inviolate Wall in the process.

  What if that was wrong?

  It’s not that I wanted to lay claim to my demonic heritage—or at least, not exactly. I mean, it would be nice to have powers of persuasion and all that, but I’d seen Daniel Dufreyne in passing and something about him felt downright icky. I didn’t want to be icky. I just wanted to know. What if everything I’d been taught was wrong?

  It was an unnerving thought.

  I rummaged through my music collection until I found something that suited my mood: an old, scratchy recording of the mostly forgotten blues singer Clara Smith. Long ago, when my mom was dating a jazz musician, I discovered that there’s something about the blues that always calms me down.

  Tonight it was Clara Smith singing in a doleful warble about how she done sold her soul to the Devil and her heart done turned to stone, reminding me that whatever the truth, the bargain was never worth it.

  Especially since, according to all the soothsaying that had been laid on me lately, it seemed that I was going to need to trust my heart or see with the eyes of my heart, whatever that meant.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen if my heart done turned to stone, Mog,” I informed my cat, who was purring on my lap. Mogwai liked it when I was in a blues-listening mood.

  I listened to the track half a dozen times, letting Clara’s mournful regret settle deep inside me, until my thoughts were quiet enough for sleep.

  Speaking of sleep, the next morning I called Dawn Evans to make sure Casimir’s charms had proved effective. Good news—not only had they worked, but the peace of mind they gave Scott had allowed him to sleep through the night for the first time in ages. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  After running a few errands, I made a point of arriving at the PVB office a good fifteen minutes before the scheduled meeting time. Since my last visit, the lobby had been rearranged to incorporate an additional desk: a sleek, modern, minimalist number behind which sat Stacey Brooks.

  “Daisy!” Stacey practically leaped from her chair as I entered the lobby, her eyes bright with excitement. “I figured it out!”

  You know that thing in sitcoms where a character pulls a “Who, me?” face and looks around to make sure it isn’t someone else being spoken to? Yeah, I actually did that before determining that it was in fact me that Stacey Brooks was addressing with animated enthusiasm. “Figured what out?”

  “The Sphinx’s riddle.” She lowered her voice, twisting a lock of highlighted ash-brown hair around her fingers and giving me a significant look. “It’s hair.”

  I stared at her. “Hair?”

  “Some pass through the gate at dawn crowned, some do not, right?” she said. “She’s talking about birth.”

  “And hair?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard that saying about a woman’s hair being her crowning glory?” Stacey asked. “And the gate at nightfall, that’s death, right? Well, some babies are born with hair, and some aren’t. And some men go bald before they die, right?”

  Now that I dredged my memories to recall Mr. Leary’s old Myth and Lit classes, it did echo the original—or possibly simply the younger—Greek Sphinx’s riddle, which was something about what goes on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and three legs at night, the answer being man, who crawls as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a cane in old age.

  But . . . hair?

  “You know, that’s great,” I said to Stacey. “I think you might really be onto something with that whole birth and death thing. I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to use hair to catch a Night Hag.”

  She shrugged. “Look, that’s your department. I’m just trying to help out.”

  “Thanks,” I said, striving for sincerity and managing to get pretty darn close. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem.”

  We had a vaguely uncomfortable frenemy moment, which was broken by Amanda Brooks poking her head out from her office and inviting me inside to wait for the lawyer Dufreyne.

  I’ll say one thing for the mysterious Mr. Dufreyne—he was prompt. He showed up at eleven a.m. on the dot, and Amanda’s new assistant ushered him into her office.

  My tail twitched in an involuntary response.

  At a glance, Daniel Dufreyne appeared innocuous. Average height, early thirties, a decent build. It’s fair to say that he was handsome in a bland, upper-middle-class Ivy League white-guy sort of way, and he looked like money, with an impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit, expensive loafers, expensive briefcase, and a hundred-dollar haircut.

  But then, there were those black, black eyes, which shouldn’t have been disconcerting, since I saw the same thing in the mirror every day. Yet they were.

  And then there was the smell. Except it wasn’t a smell, not exactly. It was a sense like a smell, the olfactory equivalent of someone striking a hideously discordant note on a piano or screeching fingernails over a chalkboard.

  All I know is that it made my skin prickle in a distinctly unpleasant way.

  Dufreyne paused in the doorway, his too-black gaze skating over me. His nostrils flared slightly, and he permitted himself a faint smile.

  “Mr. Dufreyne,” Amanda said briskly. “I do apologize for bringing you here under false pretenses, but I understand you’ve been avoiding returning Ms. Johanssen’s calls, and frankly, I’m a little curious myself about what the company you represent is planning to do with the property you’re acquiring on their behalf.”

  “I’m sure you are.” He had a smooth, mellifluous voice. I could see Amanda Brooks relaxing visibly at the sound of it, and if it hadn’t been for that smell, which apparently was undetectable to mundane mortals, it might have worked on me, too. “I assure you, the party I represent has nothing but Pemkowet’s best interests at heart.”

  “Which are?” I said bluntly.

  His gaze lingered on me. “Daisy Johanssen, I presume?” He offered his hand. “A pleasure.”

  I didn’t want to shake his hand. I really didn’t. But my mother had raised me to be polite, and there was a part of me that was just plain curious, so I did. It felt like shaking any ordinary human’s hand, but there was something about the press of his flesh against mine that gave me the creepy-crawlies. He smiled again without any warmth, and I had the impression of something unpleasant lurking behind his black pupils, like the flicker of a shark’s tail in dark waters.

  When he let go of my hand, I had to fight the urge to wipe it on my skirt. “So tell me about Pemkowet’s
best interests.”

  “All will be made clear in due time.” Dufreyne took a seat uninvited. “Business deals are complicated. My employers are under no obligation to divulge their plans prematurely.”

  Ignoring a disapproving look from Amanda, I hiked my butt onto the corner of her desk so I could keep him in view. “Elysian Fields?”

  His eyelids flickered with annoyance. “Yes.”

  Amanda cleared her throat. “Mr. Dufreyne, I must say, the sheer amount of property—”

  Dufreyne held up his left hand to forestall her, then lowered it quickly, but not before I caught a glimpse of a symbol etched on his palm, the lines a golden shimmer. It was similar to the silvery lines of the Norse rune etched on my own palm, although it didn’t look like any rune I’d ever seen. “Again, I assure you, there is no cause for concern,” he said in that velvety voice. “I have no doubt that Pemkowet will be delighted when the plans are unveiled.”

  “I do,” I said.

  His black gaze flicked over me. “Then I look forward to your surprise when you find yourself convinced otherwise. Ms. Brooks, since I’m here, shall we discuss the offer on the table for the Cavannaugh property?”

  “I really haven’t any intention of selling.” Amanda sounded uncertain and her features had taken on an unfamiliar vague look.

  I kindled my mental shield, spinning it into a disk wide enough to encompass us both. “She really doesn’t.”

  “I really don’t,” she repeated in a stronger tone.

  “Interesting.” Daniel Dufreyne arched one manscaped eyebrow. Goddammit, why was it that everyone in the eldritch community but me could do that? “Well, then.” He rose. “I’m sorry we’ve wasted each other’s time.”

  “That’s it?” I let my shield dwindle. “You’re just giving up? You’re not going to pit your powers of persuasion against me?”

  Another smile, this one condescending. “Powers of persuasion? What a quaint term for a modern young lady.”

  If my tail hadn’t been tucked on account of the hard desk beneath my butt, it would have been lashing. “You know what I mean.”