Poison Fruit: Agent of Hel

by Jacqueline Carey

  “I know the circumstances have changed since the initial offer was made.” Dufreyne addressed Amanda. “And I will tell you this as a courtesy, Ms. Brooks. Eventually, you will want to sell that property, and if you choose not to accept this offer, the next one may not be as generous.”

  “Is that a threat?” I asked him, expanding the circumference of my shield to cover Amanda again.

  “No, Ms. Johanssen.” He leveled his black gaze at me. “A fact. Ms. Brooks, you have my number. Good day, ladies.”

  Swearing under my breath, I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from Amanda’s desk, sketching out my best approximation of the symbol I’d glimpsed on Dufreyne’s left palm while he let himself out of the office.

  “Daisy—” Amanda protested.

  “Back in a sec.” I followed Dufreyne into the parking lot. “Hey! I wasn’t done talking to you. What do you mean, circumstances have changed?”

  Standing beside a silver Jaguar, he fished out his car keys. “All I’ll say is that according to the rumors I hear, a lot of people have been very busy since the events of Halloween.” His black gaze with dangerous things swimming in it fixed on me and he smiled again, showing his very white teeth. “Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?”

  That foul smell that wasn’t a smell hit me, and the pit of my stomach lurched. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “How can you be? I mean, you did it, didn’t you? Claimed your birthright?” I waved one hand. “And yet—”

  Dufreyne leaned close to me, the reek of wrongness that hung about him intensifying. “And yet the Inviolate Wall still stands,” he whispered in a silken tone, his breath hot against my face. “Is that it?”

  I held my ground with an effort. “Yes.”

  He laughed. It wasn’t a full-on villainous mwah-ha-ha, but it was close. “I don’t know whether to envy you or pity you, Daisy Johanssen. You honestly don’t know what the difference is between us, do you?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Well, I can think of a few.”

  For a long moment, he just stood there, his gaze boring into mine, the stench of his existence surrounding me. “Your mother was an innocent,” he said at length. “Foolish and ignorant, but innocent.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, it makes all the difference.” This time Dufreyne’s smile was bitter. “Only one of our kind conceived in innocence has the power to breach the Inviolate Wall and destroy the world as we know it. One such as you.” He shook his head. “But you’ll never use it, will you?”

  “No,” I said automatically.

  “More’s the pity,” he observed. “I hope you appreciate the irony. You, possessed of world-shattering power, can never use it.”

  “Why the fuck would I?” I asked. “Why would you? Why would anyone?”

  Dufreyne did the eyebrow-raise. “To reign over the resulting chaos?”

  Beneath my skirt, I swished my tail back and forth. “Yeah, that’s not really on my bucket list.”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “Because you were raised to love and cherish this tiresome world, to live a tiresome mortal life and die a tiresome mortal death.”

  I eyed him. “If you’re that bored, maybe you need a hobby.”

  “A hobby.” The notion seemed to amuse him. “Yes, thank you for the suggestion. Perhaps when this business is concluded, I’ll take a flower-arranging class.” He beeped his Jaguar unlocked and turned to open the driver’s-side door. “In the meantime, I have a vocation.”

  “Wait!” I called out. “Your mother . . . If she wasn’t innocent, what was she?”

  He paused, his back to me. “Complicit.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words came unbidden.

  His shoulders tensed visibly before easing, but the tone of his response gave no indication that my sympathy had struck a nerve. “Don’t be. She was well compensated for it.” He got into his car. “I may not be capable of destroying the world, but I can wield influence over it, and there are those who value my skills.”

  “Like who?” I asked him. “Satan’s Planned Parenthood? Whoever’s behind this whole Elysian Fields thing? What do you mean when you say a lot of people have been busy since Halloween?”

  “Good day, Ms. Johanssen.” Daniel Dufreyne closed his car door, cracking the window. “I’m sure our paths will cross again.”

  I watched him pull out of the parking lot. “No shit.”

  Twelve

  I ducked back into the PVB office.

  “Wow, way to throw yourself at Mr. Brooks Brothers, Daisy,” Stacey observed. “Not exactly subtle.” I shot her a glance, and she had the grace to look abashed. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  “Don’t have anything to do with that guy,” I said to her. “He’s bad news.”

  “Like what?”

  I hesitated, then flashed her the devil-horns sign with my right hand. As far as I was concerned, Daniel Dufreyne wasn’t protected by the eldritch honor code. “One of my kind gone to the dark side.”

  Her face paled. “Are you serious?” She cast an involuntary glance upward, as though the Inviolate Wall were hovering above us. “I didn’t think you could do that without . . . you know.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “But he can. Apparently, not all hell-spawns are created equal.”

  I knocked on Amanda’s office door and went in to retrieve the sketch I’d made, apologizing for my hasty departure.

  “That’s quite all right.” Amanda Brooks sounded shaken, which was disconcerting in and of itself. “Did you learn anything further from him?”

  “Not really.” Well, that whole only-one-conceived-in-innocence thing was a pretty big bombshell, but that wasn’t what she was talking about. “I asked him what he meant by circumstances changing, and all he’d say was that a lot of people had been busy since the events of Halloween.”

  She frowned. “Meaning what?”

  “I wish I knew.” I held up the piece of paper with my sketch. “He had a mark on his palm. Like mine, only different. You wouldn’t have been able to see it,” I added. “It’s an eldritch thing. It could mean that he’s sworn to someone’s service like I’m sworn to Hel’s. Or it could be something altogether different. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “You don’t know?” Amanda’s voice took on an accusatory tone, which was annoying, yet reassuringly familiar.

  “Look, it’s not like my job came with a training manual,” I said. “I’m just doing my best to figure it out as I go along, whether that means doing a Google search like everyone else, or bargaining with fairies and hunting bogles . . . Oh, crap.”

  She raised an inquiring eyebrow. Okay, so can everyone but me do the one-eyebrow-raise thing?

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just thought of something.” I tucked the sketch into my messenger bag. “Thanks again for setting up the meeting. I appreciate it.”

  Amanda gave me a brusque nod. “I don’t know where this is going, but I don’t like it. Keep me in the loop.”

  “Will do,” I promised.

  Outside, I called Cody.

  Investigating the suspicious purchases of large tracts of land in Pemkowet was something Hel had specifically asked me to look into, and it had occurred to me that since Dawn and Scott Evans were safely warded and there were no rumors that the Night Hag had struck elsewhere, reporting to Hel had to be my top priority.

  And unfortunately, that could only be done after sunset, which meant our bogle hunt would have to wait until tomorrow night.

  “Goddammit, Daise,” Cody grumbled into the phone after I’d explained it to him. “I had to call in a favor from Ken Levitt to cover my shift tonight.”

  “Well, can he cover it tomorrow instead?” I asked. “I mean, I’m sorry if it inconveniences him, but it is a request from a goddess, after all.”

  Cody laughed. “Good point, Pixy Stix.”

  I sighed inwardly. “Well, let me know. If you can’t get off tomorrow night, maybe we can go when I get back from Little Niflhei
m.”

  “Or I could go alone,” he said. “I can track the bogle without you.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have Hel’s authority to question the bogle,” I said. “Believe me, it’s hard enough to get answers out of the fey with it. Without it, you’re screwed.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  I headed over to the Sisters of Selene to see if Casimir recognized the symbol, waiting while he assisted a couple of middle-aged shoppers poring over his selection of crystal pendants.

  “Hey, I know you,” one of them said to me as Casimir rang up the other’s purchase. Her eyes widened, and she mimed a stabbing gesture. “You’re the ghostbuster girl from those YouTube videos, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted reluctantly. I’d tried to keep a low profile after the Halloween parade debacle, but a number of spectators had gotten footage of the incident, including me using dauda-dagr to dispatch the Tall Man’s reanimated remains. “Guilty as charged.”

  The shopper shivered. “I have to say, that looked absolutely terrifying. Claire and I even considered canceling our annual holiday shopping trip, didn’t we?” she said to the other woman.

  “We did,” Shopper Claire agreed. “But Pemkowet has the cutest boutiques with the most unusual items.”

  “Thanks ever so much, dahling,” Casimir said to her, wrapping up the pendant she’d purchased and tucking it into a little cardboard box. “We do appreciate it, don’t we, Daisy?”

  “We certainly do,” I agreed. “And I assure you, what happened on Halloween will never happen again.”

  “Well, I should hope not,” the first shopper said in a tart voice. “If you ask me, it was irresponsible of the city to use all those dreadful ghostly appearances to promote itself in the first place. It’s exploiting the dead, may they rest in peace, and putting the living in jeopardy.”

  I raised my hands. “You’re preaching to the choir, ma’am.”

  That appeared to mollify her. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  I watched them make their exit, purchase secured. “Have you been hearing a lot of that, Cas?”

  “More than I’d like, Miss Daisy.” He tidied his counter. “What can I do for you today? Has the Night Hag struck again?”

  “No, all’s quiet on the Night Hag front. I’m here about something else.” I gave him the background and showed him my sketch, which, by the way, looked like a capital letter C with a cross added to it.

  Casimir studied it with a frown, pursing his carmine lips. “It looks familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s not one we use in the practice. Are you sure it’s not a compound glyph? It could be the crescent of Islam combined with a Christian cross.”

  “I’m not sure of anything,” I said. “Though I’m guessing he’s probably not a Jihadist for Jesus.”

  “Here.” The Fabulous Casimir emerged from behind the counter to peruse a shelf of books. “You can borrow this,” he said, handing me a thick tome titled Dictionary of Symbols. “It’s got everything from alchemical notation to hobo signs. Just be careful not to break the spine.”

  “Thanks, Cas.”

  As long as I was in the vicinity, I took the book over to the Daily Grind next door to get myself a mocha latte while I skimmed through it. With all the tedious investigation I’d been doing, I figured I deserved a treat.

  I started out trying to actually read the thing, but it was pretty dense going, although I did learn that a cat chalked on a residence was a hobo sign indicating that a kind lady lived there. Go figure. I guess that was before the crazy-cat-lady stereotype was born. Or maybe crazy cat ladies were kind to hobos back in the day. Halfway through my latte, I gave up and just started flipping pages, looking for anything that resembled the symbol in my sketch.

  Amazingly enough, I found it within ten minutes. “Gotcha,” I murmured with satisfaction, flattening the page. “So what do we have here?”

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t Hades; and to further confuse matters, the symbol didn’t refer to the Greek deity. It referred to some hypothetical planet that probably didn’t exist.

  “Huh.” I sat and thought about that while I finished my mocha latte. Okay, I didn’t know any astrologers, but I did know someone with firsthand knowledge of Greek deities, so I opted to pursue that angle.

  “Hey, cupcake!” Lurine answered her phone when I called. “You must have read my mind.”

  “I did?”

  “I’m over at your mom’s. We’re talking about my spring wardrobe and looking at some gorgeous fabric. Can you get away to join us?”

  In case I haven’t mentioned it, my mom’s a seamstress. She started sewing when I was a baby, altering my onesies—and probably diapers, too, come to think of it—because I couldn’t stand to have my tail confined. It turned out she had a real flair for it, and years later, she managed to turn it into a full-time business.

  “Sure,” I said. “Can I pick your brain while we’re at it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  After returning Casimir’s book, I drove over to Sedgewick Estate. It’s a little mobile home community, which is a lot nicer than it sounds by virtue of being located right on the Kalamazoo River. I’d grown up there, and it was a pretty cool place to spend your childhood.

  “Hey, Daisy baby!” Mom greeted me at the door of her double-wide with an effusive hug, then held me at arm’s length to give me the maternal once-over. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled at her. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too.” She patted my hand. “Come on in and see the embarrassment of riches that Lurine brought.”

  Mom wasn’t kidding. The entire place was strewn with bolts and lengths of fabric. That wasn’t unusual when she was in the middle of a commission, but this time the array was staggering.

  “What did you do?” I asked Lurine. “Buy out the entire stock of Mood?” Mood, by the way, is a fabric store in New York where Tim Gunn always takes the contestants on Project Runway to shop. Unsurprisingly, that’s one of Mom’s and my favorite TV shows, right up there with Gilmore Girls.

  “Oh, I just ordered a few things.” Lurine set a glass of champagne on our old Formica dinette and picked up a bolt of midnight blue silk shantung, beckoning to me. “C’mere, cupcake.”

  I let her drape a length of it over my shoulder. It had the subtle sheen and texture of a very, very expensive fabric.

  “See?” Lurine cocked her head at my mom.

  Mom did the make-a-picture-frame thing with her fingers. “Cocktail dress? Maybe a 1950s silhouette?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You can’t do that!” I protested. “You bought this stuff for your spring wardrobe!”

  “Oh, just indulge me.” Lurine tweaked a lock of my hair. “I ordered a lot of fabric that caught my eye for one reason or another. I must have had you in the back of my mind. This isn’t a color for spring, anyway.”

  I stroked the silk, feeling the barely perceptible slub of the natural fibers under my fingertips. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  For the next several hours, Lurine and Mom and I delved into the treasure trove of fabrics that Lurine had purchased, fanning out glossy copies of foreign and domestic editions of Elle and Vogue and Marie Claire, sipping champagne and nibbling on canapés.

  And okay, yes, I probably should have gotten straight to business, but there was a part of me that needed this. Daniel Dufreyne’s revelation had shaken me, maybe more than I’d admitted to myself.

  It made me look at my mother with renewed tenderness. I might have been conceived by accident, a horrible accident, but no matter what, I had never, ever doubted that she loved me. Not once.

  I didn’t think Daniel Dufreyne’s mother had loved him. And yet she’d borne him on purpose.

  Complicit, he had said. Complicit in his conception, complicit in his birth. And then she’d done . . . what? Raised him to claim his birthright?
Handed him off to whatever creepy cabal had hired her to serve as a surrogate mother to a hell-spawn? Were there others? Was there a freakin’ breeding program? Ick! The whole thing made my skin crawl, and there was no better antidote than an afternoon of old-fashioned girl time with my mom and Lurine.

  But alas, all good things must come to an end. Before I knew it, it was almost four o’clock in the afternoon, and outside the windows of Mom’s double-wide the world was beginning to look gray and murky. The sun wouldn’t set for another hour and a half or so, but it was getting late.

  I fished out my sketch of the symbol on Dufreyne’s palm and showed it to Lurine. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head. “No. Why?”

  I explained, although I left out the part about Dufreyne’s birth. I didn’t think Mom needed to hear that; not now, anyway. If we had that discussion, it should be just the two of us. “Casimir’s book said it was an astrological symbol representing a hypothetical planet called Hades,” I finished. “Which probably doesn’t exist. So I was wondering if it might refer to the actual deity.”

  “It’s possible.” Lurine frowned in thought. “As far as I know, astrological symbolism is a bit of a mishmash developed over the ages. Back in my day, there weren’t any graphic symbols that represented Hades, or any of the Olympians, for that matter. At least none that I was aware of.”

  “So Hades might have appropriated it?” I suggested.

  “Maybe.” Taking my left hand, Lurine turned it over and traced Hel’s mark on my palm. “After all, this is just an ordinary rune, right?”

  “Basically,” I agreed. “I mean, it marks me as Hel’s liaison, but it’s part of the common runic alphabet.”

  Lurine shrugged. “So maybe Hades did the same thing. Your guess is as good as mine, cupcake.”

  “I was hoping you might have some extra insight,” I said. “You, um, did mention something about keeping the old traditions alive the other day.”

  Her gaze turned flinty. “I wasn’t talking about the Olympians, Daisy.”

  Oops. I had the feeling I’d unwittingly crossed a line. “I’m sorry. Did I miss something?”