Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  I gritted my teeth. “Yes.”

  “So you’re saying that knowing that this . . . duppy . . . was still at large,” he continued at full reverb with an added blast of thunderous indignation thrown in for good measure, “and with the complete support of the Pemkowet, East Pemkowet, and Pemkowet Township boards and city councils, Chief Bryant and Amanda Brooks refused to consider a direct request from Hel herself and continued to promote this parade as a fun, safe activity, encouraging visitors to attend?”

  In the jury box, heads were nodding. So was the judge’s.

  “I didn’t say that!” I protested. “Asking to cancel the parade was Cody’s and my call, not Hel’s. And none of the members of tri-community government even heard about our request! You can’t just lie about it!”

  That earned me another gavel tap, this one a bit sterner.

  “Withdrawn,” Dufreyne said smoothly, his voice back to normal. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Double crap.

  Of course, it was at that moment that the alarm sounded, and not a minute before, when it would have done the most good. A security officer entered the courtroom and spoke to the bailiff, who announced in a reassuring voice that everyone should gather their personal belongings and proceed to evacuate the building in an orderly fashion, using the staircases instead of the elevators.

  “Light pass through me,” I whispered under my breath, uttering the words like a desperate prayer as I willed my aura to disperse to the four corners of the courtroom. “Gaze pass over me.”

  The evacuation was quicker and more orderly than I’d expected. Judge Martingale exited through the door behind him into his chamber; everyone else filed toward the main exit. I held my breath and slouched low in my seat on the witness stand as Daniel Dufreyne cast a curious glance around the room, but his gaze didn’t linger on me, and he didn’t seem overly suspicious.

  I didn’t want to take any chances, though. I waited until everyone’s back was turned before sliding out of my seat and squeezing through the narrow aperture between the box that housed the judge’s bench and the wall, fishing in my pockets for the wrapped charm and the square of mounting tape. With shaking hands, I peeled the backing off the double-sided tape, stuck the charm to the tape, and affixed it to the underside of Judge Martingale’s oversize leather desk chair.

  Done.

  I scrambled out from behind the judge’s bench and squeezed myself back through the gap so fast that I overbalanced and nearly took a header. The pouch of wolfsbane fell out of my bra in the process, causing me to lose my focus.

  “Ma’am?” The security officer at the door beckoned politely. Forget invisibility; even unobtrusibility is impossible when you’re the only person left in the room and you’ve dropped your wolfsbane. “Everyone out, please.”

  “Sorry, just dropped my coin purse.” Stooping, I grabbed the pouch and shoved it in my pocket, hoping like hell that the security officer hadn’t noticed me until it fell out of my bra.

  Apparently, she hadn’t.

  “This way,” she said. “Down the hall and to your left.”

  Breathing a sigh of relief, I followed her instructions.

  Forty-four

  Outside, we gathered in a parking lot across the street. Having left my coat in the witness waiting room, I wrapped my arms around myself in the cold, dank February air, shivering in nothing but trousers and a thin silk blouse.

  Cody found me with my nice new red wool coat over one arm and fire in his eyes. “Here!” he hissed, shoving my coat at me. “Put it on. You’re freezing.” I didn’t argue. He waited until I’d buttoned the coat to grab me by the shoulders and shake me hard. “Are you out of your mind?” Even through the thick wool, Cody’s fingers dug into my flesh. “Tell me I did not just send a text message to trigger a bomb scare,” he said in a tone low enough that only I could hear him.

  I winced. “Well . . .”

  “Daisy!”

  “I’m sorry!” I hissed back at him. “I needed a distraction. Anyway, what makes you think it was a bomb scare?”

  “I’m a cop,” he said grimly. “Security guards tell cops things they don’t tell civilians, because we’re useful people to have on the scene.” He let go of me. “Did you at least accomplish . . . whatever you were trying to accomplish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it help?”

  “I sure as hell hope so,” I said. “Because it’s not going well in there. Cody, Dufreyne knows that you and I tried to have the parade canceled. He’s claiming that the request came directly from Hel and that the board and council members backed the chief’s refusal. That’s how he’s putting blame on the local governments.”

  “What?” Cody frowned. “None of them had any idea.”

  “That’s what I said,” I said. “And he withdrew the question, but the damage was already done.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to push back against it as hard as I can,” he said.

  “Push back against what, son?” Chief Bryant inquired, approaching us with Stacey and Amanda trailing behind him. I explained. The chief shook his head. “That’s one decision I’d like to take back,” he said. “But you’re right—the blame for it rests squarely on our shoulders. I’ll do my damnedest to make it clear.” He glanced at Amanda Brooks. “And I hope you’ll do the same.”

  She looked around nervously. “I don’t want to be accused of witness collaboration.”

  The chief sighed. “Just tell the truth, Amanda. No one’s suggesting you perjure yourself. Word is we’re dismissed for the day,” he added. “Report back tomorrow at the same time unless you get a call instructing you otherwise.”

  “Did they tell you why we were evacuated?” Amanda asked with a shiver.

  “Bomb threat,” Chief Bryant said soberly, rubbing the pouchy skin beneath his left eye. “Apparently, the call originated in Abu Dhabi, and they’re taking it seriously. So go home and kiss your loved ones.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “See you here tomorrow.”

  Abu Dhabi? Holy crap. I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with Lee’s hacker connections or vaguely terrified. Both, maybe.

  I drove home and spent the remainder of the day half expecting a knock on my door from Homeland Security. Cody was right. I was out of my mind to take part in such a dangerous, illegal scheme. And I shouldn’t have dragged him into it. I’d betrayed his trust.

  I just hoped it worked.

  The next morning it was business as usual at the courthouse, the bomb squad having combed the ventilation system and found nothing. At least I didn’t have to wait before being called back to the witness stand, since proceedings picked up where they’d left off the previous day.

  Pemkowet’s legal defense team was headed up by Cheryl Munz, Lurine’s celebrity lawyer having determined she was the shrewdest of the local lot. “I just have a few questions for you, Miss Johanssen.” She pulled a photograph from a file and showed it to me. “Do you recognize the people in this photograph?”

  It was a family portrait of Cooper’s victims. “Yes. That’s Doug and Lois Blumenthal, and their daughter Emily. I didn’t know their names until the trial, though,” I added.

  “That’s all right.” Cheryl Munz gave me a smile that was meant to be encouraging, but came off as exhausted. This trial had to have been a nightmare for her. “When did you first encounter the Blumenthals?”

  “At the Halloween parade,” I said.

  “Where they were victims of a ravenous ghoul,” she said. “Is that correct?”

  “Ravening,” I said, wondering exactly how this line of questioning was supposed to help the defense’s case. “And they prefer the term Outcast. But yes.”

  “And why were there ghouls—excuse me, Outcast—present at the parade?” Cheryl inquired.

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Daniel Dufreyne said without looking up from his notes. “I fail to see the relevance.”

  “Overruled,” Judge Martingale said.

  Dufreyne’s head s
napped up and he put on the reverb, his voice deepening. “I said I object, Your Honor.”

  Light flashed off the judge’s glasses as he gave the prosecuting hell-spawn attorney a stern look. “And I said overruled, Mr. Dufreyne.” He gestured at me. “The witness may answer the question.”

  I suppressed a gleeful smile. It looked like the charm was working. “The Outcast were there to provide crowd control.”

  “Crowd control?” Cheryl echoed.

  I nodded. “To prevent widespread panic in the event of a supernatural manifestation, yes.”

  “And did they achieve that goal?” she asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Objection!” Dufreyne said curtly. “The witness is being asked to speculate on an outcome that can’t possibly be known.”

  The judge hesitated, then nodded. “Sustained.”

  “Withdrawn,” Cheryl said. “Miss Johanssen, please clarify something for the court. Who authorized the presence of the, um, Outcast at the parade?”

  Okay, I saw where this was going now. Cheryl Munz was attempting to throw me under the bus. Under the circumstances, that was just fine with me. I might have cause to regret it later, but right now, I’d gladly take a dive under those wheels. “I did.”

  “And did you consult with anyone regarding this decision?” she asked. “The chief of police, the director of the visitors bureau?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Did you consult with any members of the township board or either of the city councils?” Cheryl asked.

  “No.”

  “So you made the decision to have ghouls—excuse me, Outcast—present entirely on your own?” she pressed me.

  “Objection!” Dufreyne thundered, his voice making the rafters tremble. “Leading the witness!”

  Judge Martingale scowled at him. “Overruled!”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  Cheryl Munz looked slightly delirious at the prospect of actually being allowed to continue this line of questioning. “And again, just to be perfectly clear, that includes the, um, member of the Outcast who attacked the Blumenthals?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Absolutely. All of the Outcast, including Cooper, were there at my request.”

  She conferred briefly with her colleagues, then asked to revisit the video footage of the parade, fast-forwarding to a sequence of Stefan and his broadsword battling the Tall Man. “In fact, as we see in this footage, it was one of those very Outcast who engaged the, um, revenant, and prevented it from harming spectators, wasn’t it?”

  Oh, that was a good angle. The jury murmured with interest.

  “Yes,” I said. “It was.” I made deliberate eye contact with each member of the jury. “I’m very sorry for the unpleasantness that the Blumenthals endured, but if it wasn’t for the presence of the Outcast that night, in particular the man you see defending innocent bystanders there, there would have been near-certain fatalities.” I expected Dufreyne to object or the judge to rebuke me, but neither did. Emboldened, I continued. “I take full responsibility for that decision.”

  “Thank you, Miss Johanssen.” It sounded like Cheryl Munz was ready to cry with relief. This had probably been the first break the defense team had gotten during the entire trial to date. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Dufreyne?” Judge Martingale inquired.

  Narrowing his eyes, Dufreyne fixed me with a long, speculative look. He knew something had happened to nullify his powers of persuasion, but he didn’t know what or how. Taking a page from his book, I returned his gaze as blandly as possible. “I have no additional questions, Your Honor.”

  The judge dismissed me. I exited the courtroom with my head held high, feeling Daniel Dufreyne’s gaze boring into my back the whole way.

  Granted, it was a limited victory. Dufreyne’s infernal influence over the jury and members of the media was still in full effect. But any settlement would have to be approved by the court, and Judge Martingale was now a neutral party. By the time the local news aired that evening, it was obvious that while the media remained biased in favor of the plaintiffs, the tone of the proceedings had shifted.

  Oh, and it appeared that Lee’s untraceable bomb threat was proving to be well and truly untraceable.

  I was willing to call that a win.

  So was the coven. The Fabulous Casimir hosted an impromptu victory celebration at his place.

  “It’s far too soon to break out the champagne, dahlings,” he announced to us. “But I think the occasion deserves at least a passable merlot.” Casimir hoisted his wineglass. “To a job well done.”

  “And to never having to do anything like it again,” I added fervently before drinking.

  On my way home, I noticed Cody’s cruiser parked in front of Callahan’s again, and stopped to tender a more formal apology.

  “That thing I asked you to do yesterday?” I said. The waitress was nowhere near us, but I figured it was best to be oblique. “I just wanted to say that I’m really, truly sorry, Cody.”

  He sipped his coffee and eyed me. “You should be.”

  “I am,” I promised him. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never trusted me again.”

  “Ah, well.” Cody’s mouth quirked. “I thought Judge Martingale was evenhanded while I was on the stand. I did my best to push back against Dufreyne’s narrative. Whatever you did, it sounds like things went better in court today for our side.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They did. And anyway . . . thank you.”

  Cody took a breath as if to speak, then let it out in a long sigh. “It’s okay, Daise. I’ve still got your back.” He slid out of the booth and shrugged into his uniform coat. “Look, my break’s over. I’ve got to get back on patrol. I’ll see you later.”

  I watched him go, feeling like I’d missed something. Or maybe that was just the way it would always be with Cody and me.

  It was the one detail I didn’t tell Stefan when I reported on the success of our venture to him. It’s funny, but since his ravening, we were both more relaxed and more careful with each other. He was right; the worst had happened, and we were both still standing.

  We were also both very, very aware that we didn’t want it to happen again.

  “Are you feeling better about the business of this lawsuit?” Stefan inquired, stroking my back as I lay against him in bed that night, cautiously testing the limits of postcoital cuddling.

  “A little,” I said. “It felt good to do something, anyway. Terrifying, but good.”

  Stefan smiled at me, eyes glittering. “I’m glad.”

  “Me, too.” Stretching, I leaned up to kiss him. “I should go, shouldn’t I?”

  “Probably,” he said with regret.

  Including the weekend, the celebratory phase of our victory lasted approximately four days.

  It ended at around a quarter past five on Monday. I was passing Mrs. Browne’s Olde World Bakery on my way home when the warm aromas of bread and cinnamon wafting through the door as a patron exited mingled with something foul and rank, a smell that wasn’t a smell. Reaching into my messenger bag, I eased dauda-dagr from its sheath before I rounded the corner and entered the alley, where a sleek silver Jaguar was idling.

  And there was Daniel Dufreyne, leaning against it, his hands in the pockets of his long charcoal-colored wool coat, his breath frosting in the cold February air.

  My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach and I tightened my grip on dauda-dagr. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Dufreyne smiled—his sharklike smile, not the bland one he used in court. “Why, hello to you, too, cousin.”

  “I’m not your cousin!” I spat at him.

  “Tsk-tsk!” Removing one gloved hand from his coat, he wagged a finger at me. “And here I made the trip just to congratulate you in person.”

  I was confused. No decision had been reached in the trial yet, and from what I knew of Dufreyne, it didn’t seem like him to accept a setback as a defeat. “What do you mean, congrat
ulate me?”

  “It was an outstanding effort,” he said. “Really, it was. In fact, I was lucky to figure it out in time. But in the end . . .” Turning his hand over, he opened it to reveal the silver cross lying in his palm. Tendrils of smoke rose from it as it slowly seared a brand into the expensive leather of his glove. “Nice try.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It wasn’t until this morning that it occurred to me to cook up a pretext to have a word with Judge Martingale in his chambers,” Dufreyne continued conversationally. “That’s when I realized that whatever you’d done to render him immune to my charms, shall we say, it was only in effect when he was on the bench. So I asked for a brief recess and had a look. That was quite ingenious, affixing it to the underside of his chair.”

  Ingenious, hell. It had been inspired by a prank Kim McKinney’s brother used to play with a fart machine. I stared at the smoldering cross, thinking that should have been my first tip that this whole thing had been a very, very bad idea.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Dufreyne inquired.

  I pointed to the cross on his palm. “That’s got to hurt.”

  “Not yet, but it will. Soon, if I don’t do something about it.” He bared his unnaturally white teeth in another feral smile. “I bet it didn’t bother you one bit to hold this little charm, did it? Born of an innocent and all. But you’re not so innocent, are you, Daisy?” He tsk-tsked me again, this time without the finger wag. “Calling in a bomb threat? That’s a federal offense. Do you know what kind of sentence it carries?”

  “No,” I said. “Why would I?”

  Dufreyne ignored me. “Ten years and a quarter of a million dollars.” He paused, frowning. “I’ll admit, I can’t quite figure that part out yet. You had to have had help, and very sophisticated help at that. But no matter.” He shrugged. “I’ll save that for later. At the moment, I’ve far bigger fish to fry.” His voice took on a low, velvety, reverberating note. “Once Pemkowet’s affairs are settled, I’ll make it a point to find out who your friends and connections are and persuade them to talk.”