Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  Good to know, since that was pretty much what I’d planned on doing when I caught the bitch. “Thank you, my lady.”

  “Is there aught else?” Hel inquired.

  I shook my head. “No, my lady.”

  “You’ve done well, my young liaison.” Opening her right eye, Hel fixed me with her double-barreled gaze, the right corner of her mouth lifting in a smile. “And I am grateful for your service.”

  It’s impossible to describe the effect of a goddess’s approval. A warm glow suffused me, driving away the chill of Little Niflheim. Beneath my down jacket and the layers betwixt and between, I wriggled my tail with pleasure.

  Hel’s smile—well, her half smile—broadened. “You have my leave to go.”

  I bowed. “Thank you.”

  Fourteen

  The euphoric mood that Hel’s approval had instilled in me lasted for approximately twelve hours.

  Long enough for Mikill to drive me home, long enough to check the messages on my phone and confirm that Cody had gotten Ken Levitt to cover for him tomorrow night so we could go bogle hunting. Long enough to fill Mogwai’s bowl with kibble, climb into bed, and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Long enough to report to the police station the next morning to catch up on the latest backlog of filing.

  And that was pretty much where it ended. At around nine thirty in the morning, Jen called me from the Reynolds place, one of the regular year-round customers of the Cassopolis family’s housecleaning service.

  “Hey, Daise,” Jen said in a low tone. “I thought you might want to know that Sonya Reynolds kept her son Danny home from school today after he woke up screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night.”

  I swore. “The Night Hag?”

  “Well, apparently he said that an evil old lady sat on his chest and strangled him.”

  Crap. I’d really hoped the Night Hag wouldn’t find another victim that easily. “Does Sonya know you’re calling me?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t give her any details, but I told her she should talk to you. I’m just being quiet for the kid’s sake.”

  “I’ll be right over.” So much for euphoria.

  Don and Sonya Reynolds had a house on the hill overlooking downtown Pemkowet and the river beyond. I’m not sure if it qualified as a mansion, but it was big and fancy and new, occupying a large footprint on a lot where a much smaller, more modest residence had once stood.

  I knew the Reynoldses by reputation—he was a local boy made good at an industrial design firm in Appeldoorn, where he was now some kind of managerial bigwig, and she was his college sweetheart—but I’d never met either of them in person. They were a good fifteen years older than me, the sort of up-and-coming power couple that got invited to all the big fund-raisers and social events in town.

  Me, not so much.

  “You must be Daisy,” Sonya greeted me at the door. She was a petite, pretty brunette whose conservative Talbots mom-on-the-go wardrobe made her look older than her years. Well, that and the haggard expression she wore today. “Come in. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “Is there somewhere we can talk without disturbing your son?”

  “I think Jennifer’s finished in the kitchen,” Sonya said. “We can talk there.”

  The Reynoldses’ kitchen was one of those spacious affairs with big windows admitting lots of wintry November sunlight, sleek aluminum appliances, and granite countertops with inlaid mosaic backsplashes. We sat at a table in the breakfast nook.

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me about Danny’s nightmare.”

  She hesitated. “If you don’t mind, I’m a little confused. What, exactly, is your role here?”

  Not for the first time, I wished my job as Hel’s liaison came with credentials other than a rune that mortal eyes couldn’t see and a magic dagger that no one else could touch. Instead, I showed her my police ID card. “I work for the department on cases where eldritch involvement is suspected.”

  “And you think . . .” Sonya’s voice trailed off.

  “I think it’s possible,” I said gently. “How old is your son? Has he ever had this kind of nightmare before?”

  It took some coaxing, but I got the details out of her. Danny was seven years old and in second grade at Pemkowet Elementary School. He was a sensitive boy with a vivid imagination. While he was prone to nightmares, he’d never had one of this bloodcurdling intensity. After telling her about the evil old lady sitting on his chest, he’d gone nearly catatonic for the better part of an hour, finally falling asleep between his parents in their king-size bed.

  “May I talk to Danny?” I asked when she’d finished. “I’d just like to ask him a question or two about the old lady.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Sonya demurred. “It could traumatize him all over again.”

  “What kind of questions?” a boy’s voice piped up from the doorway.

  “Danny!” His mother actually gasped and covered her mouth. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “For one minute exactly,” he said with childlike dignity, clad in a pair of pajamas with cartoon characters from the Madagascar movies. “I wanted a glass of chocolate milk.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Jennifer to get it for you?” Sonya scolded him.

  I would have high-fived the kid if he’d said, Because you don’t pay your cleaning lady enough to serve as my nanny—I knew what Jen went through at some of these gigs—but his response was almost as good. “Because I can get it myself,” he said, turning a haunted gaze toward me. “I know how to make it.” Despite the bruised shadows under his eyes, he was a cute kid, with his mom’s delicate features and a shock of dark brown hair. “What did you want to ask about the old lady?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “It’s not too scary to talk about her?” I asked him.

  Danny shook his head, eyes grave. “Not in the daytime.”

  “Right.” I nodded. “Because daytime’s safe.” He nodded in agreement. His mother’s shoulders slumped in defeat. Glancing around, I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll let you in on a secret. That old lady can’t actually hurt you, not even in the nighttime. All she can do is scare you. Can you tell me what she looked like?”

  He considered. “Like a Halloween witch. Like this.” He bared his teeth and clawed his hands.

  “Did she have a hat like a witch?” I asked.

  He shook his head again. “She had hair like a witch, and red eyes, like, like . . . a really evil witch.”

  “What did she do?”

  “You don’t have to talk about her, Danny,” Sonya murmured. “Come here.” He padded over to her on bare feet and she hoisted him onto her lap, holding him as though he were a much younger child. “It’s okay. It was just a bad dream.”

  He regarded me from the security of his mother’s embrace. “It wasn’t, was it?”

  “What do you think?” I asked carefully.

  “She sat on me.” Danny’s eyelids fluttered involuntarily. “I was laid on my back and she sat on me and I couldn’t move. Not one inch. And then . . .” Grimacing with all the ferocity a seven-year-old could muster, he made his hands into claws again and reached out in a throttling gesture. “I think it was a dream, but I think she’s real, too.” He lowered his hands, his gaze skittering around the room, his voice dropping to a frightened whisper. “And I think she’s coming back.”

  His mother glowered at me. “See what you’ve done!”

  I ignored her. “No way, Danny,” I said firmly. “We’re going to make sure she’s not coming back here, ever.”

  “Yeah?” There was a faint spark of hope in his bruised gaze.

  “Yeah.” I unfastened the chain of dwarf-wrought silver around my neck and unthreaded the Seal of Solomon charm Casimir had given me a few months ago, tucking it into his small hand. “This will help protect you.”

  Danny examined it. “Don’t you need it?”


  “Not anymore.” Strictly speaking, that might or might not be true, since Casimir had given it to me to ward off obeah magic that was no longer a threat. “You keep it as long as you need it. Then someday, you’ll give it to someone who needs it more than you do, okay? That’s how it works.”

  He nodded. “Like if that old lady comes after some other kid?”

  God, I hoped not. “Exactly. Except I plan on catching her first, because that’s what I do.”

  His hand closed over the charm. “Okay.”

  I refastened the chain around my neck, now strung with only the Oak King’s silver acorn token. “Good job. Why don’t you make yourself that glass of chocolate milk while I have a quick word with your mom?”

  “Okay.” Danny slithered down from her lap obediently and padded toward the refrigerator.

  Sonya Reynolds escorted me to the front door. “I really don’t appreciate you encouraging him,” she said in a fretful tone. “Danny’s a sensitive boy and he has such an active imagination.”

  “He didn’t imagine this,” I said quietly. “I wish he had.”

  She paled. “It’s real? You’re sure?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” I handed her one of Casimir’s business cards, having grabbed a few when I was in his store the other day. “The charm might help, but I wouldn’t count on it. There are other precautions you should take. Tell Casimir that I sent you and that it’s about warding off another Night Hag attack.”

  Sonya stared at the card.

  Behind her, Jen descended the master staircase, a compartmentalized carryall of cleaning supplies in one hand, a dustrag in the other. We exchanged a wordless glance of understanding.

  “You know, I didn’t bargain for this when I agreed to raise our children—our child—in Pemkowet,” Sonya said, her voice shaking. She raised her stricken gaze to mine. “Don said it was different, a special place, a magical place. A safe place. He didn’t say anything about this.”

  I felt bad for her.

  “Pemkowet is special,” I said to her. “But there’s no such thing on earth as a truly safe place. All we can do is try our best to make it safer, and here that sometimes means unusual measures. You’ll take my advice?”

  She nodded, squaring her shoulders. “You’ll catch the bitch who terrorized my son?”

  I nodded in reply. “You’re damned right I will.”

  Fifteen

  Shortly after sunset, Cody swung by my apartment. Since he wasn’t on patrol duty, he was driving his pickup truck and wearing his usual civilian gear of faded jeans and a worn flannel shirt, topped with a fleece-lined Carhartt jacket due to the cold weather. Like I’ve said before, he was one of the few guys who could pull off that look without it going redneck. Although it’s also possible that I imprinted on jeans and flannel at a tender age thanks to countless episodes of Gilmore Girls. When it came to Lorelei Gilmore’s love life, I was Team Luke all the way.

  Now that I thought about it, I was probably lucky Cody didn’t wear a backward baseball cap. Definitely not a look that ages well.

  At any rate, I climbed into his truck and we headed out to the old Presbyterian camp. I filled him in on the latest during the drive, both the Night Hag attack and the Elysian Fields business.

  He let out a low whistle at Daniel Dufreyne’s born-of-an-innocent revelation. “That’s pretty heavy, Daise. How do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Right now, I just want to catch this freakin’ Night Hag before she goes after someone else.”

  “Agreed.” Cody turned onto a narrow road that wound up and down through densely forested dunes toward the beach. “But if you want to talk about it, I’m here for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  That brought on a brief awkward silence. We passed the WATCH FOR PEDESTRIANS street sign over which someone with an irreverent sense of humor had plastered a sticker substituting the word Presbyterians, and turned onto the dirt two-track that led to the camp, which was nestled deep in the woods.

  It was one of those places I’d known about all my life but had never visited, mostly because, well, I was neither a Presbyterian nor a camper. “Have you been out here before?” I asked Cody.

  “Sure,” he said. “Caleb and I used to ride our bikes out here and explore during the off-season when we were kids. Only during the day, though. You never did?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Guess I wasn’t the adventurous type.”

  “It’s a great piece of property.” Cody concentrated on driving down the rutted path, which had steep drop-offs on either side. “It’s been some kind of Presbyterian back-to-nature camp for over a hundred years. I hate to think of it being sold for development.” He spared me a quick glance. “Your hell-spawn lawyer who may or may not work for Hades isn’t nosing around it, is he?”

  “No,” I said. “As far as I can tell, it’s just properties around Little Niflheim.”

  “Interesting.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I said. “I was thinking disturbing.”

  “That, too.” Cody passed a couple of maintenance buildings and pulled into the first clearing of hard-packed dirt that served as a parking lot. Illuminated by the truck’s headlights, various rustic signs indicated where additional tracks led deeper into the woods toward a dismaying number of cabins and lodges scattered throughout the grounds. “Any idea where to start?”

  “You tell me,” I said. “You’re the nose.”

  “Just thought you might have some insider fey intel.” He cut the engine and grabbed a flashlight. “Let’s have a look and a sniff.”

  It was seriously dark out there, the kind of pitch-blackness that you forget exists away from the pervasive streetlights of civilization. I have great night vision—the one tangible bonus of my infernal heritage—but it takes a minute or so for my eyes to adjust, especially in darkness this impenetrable. Hel’s sawmill had nothing on this. Cody swung the beam of his flashlight around, sniffing the night air.

  “Do you actually know what a bogle smells like?” I asked, trying to avoid looking at the beam. The faster my eyes adjusted, the better. I felt like Jodie Foster fumbling around in Buffalo Bill’s basement in The Silence of the Lambs.

  “Not exactly,” he admitted. “I never noticed any traces of eldritch presence when I was out here as a kid, but then, I wasn’t old enough to hunt yet. I figure I’ll recognize it when I smell it.” He trained his beam on the nearest track. “Let’s try down there.”

  We followed the track for a quarter of a mile or so, trees looming out of the darkness as my eyes slowly grew accustomed to the lack of light. Every few yards, Cody paused to inhale in short, sharp bursts.

  “What did the, uh, hellebore fairy say again?” he asked me. “To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what a bogle is, let alone where to look for one.”

  “You know, neither am I. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I always thought bogle was just another name for hobgoblins.” I was beginning to shiver in the cold and wish I’d worn the Michelin Man down coat instead of my black leather motorcycle jacket. Served me right for succumbing to vanity, I guess. “All Ellie said was that the bogle’s haunt was in the woods but it prowls the grounds here.”

  “Let’s go back,” Cody said decisively. “Try another trail.”

  “You’re the tracker,” I said.

  We hiked back down the stretch of frozen, rutted mud to the clearing and struck out on a different track, trudging up an incline. I could hear the steady crash and hiss of waves breaking in the distance, and guessed we were heading west toward the lakeshore. Lake Michigan sounded cold.

  Halfway up the incline, Cody held out one arm. “Hold on,” he said, nostrils working. “I smell something.”

  “Bogle?” I asked.

  He glanced at me, phosphorescent green flashing behind his eyes. “I’m guessing yes. Smells like moldy old leather and bracken.”

  “Sounds like a bogle to me,” I said. “But what do I know?”

  C
ody grinned. “Let’s check it out.”

  The wind picked up as we climbed higher, the sound of waves growing louder. All around us, trees creaked and groaned, branches scraping against one another. It was all very Blair Witch Project. I wrapped my arms around myself against the cold, trying not to think about the fact that that movie scared the crap out of me.

  Atop the incline, the woods gave way to another clearing surrounded by outlying buildings. In the center was a jungle gym made of plastic timbers and wide tubes that looked surprisingly sinister in the darkness. Anything could be lurking in those seemingly innocuous tubes. With my right hand, I reassured myself that dauda-dagr was secure in the sheath I wore belted around my waist.

  Standing in the clearing, Cody turned his head this way and that, testing the air. “It’s been here,” he said. “A lot. But I can’t tell which scent trail is fresh.” He gave me an apologetic look. “I’m going to have to shift to track it, Daisy.”

  “A wolf’s gotta do what a wolf’s gotta do,” I said. “Just try to remember that if you plunge into the woods, I’m going to have a hard time following you.”

  “I’ll try.” He shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to me. “Here, put this on. You might as well stay warm. Be careful—the keys to the truck are in the right-hand pocket.”

  “Duly noted,” I said. “And thanks.”

  Cody’s jacket retained the warmth of his body and a trace of his scent, pine and musk and Polo. Engulfed in it, I watched him undress with unself-conscious efficiency, removing his off-duty shoulder holster and his Timberland boots, folding his clothing, and setting it alongside the flashlight on a rough-hewn wooden bench the Presbyterians had thoughtfully provided in the vicinity of the jungle gym.

  For a moment, his naked human body was pale and luminous in my night vision, his skin stippled with gooseflesh.

  Then he shifted.

  It happened in the blink of an eye, one form flowing into another. Cody’s wolf form was long-limbed and rangy, with tawny gray fur and alert amber eyes filled with inhuman intelligence. I’m not saying it was animal intelligence, not exactly, but it definitely wasn’t human. Cody-the-human and Cody-the-wolf overlapped, but they weren’t the same being.