Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  It felt awfully sudden, and the thought of spending the night at Cody’s gave me butterflies in the pit of my stomach, and not in a good way. “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you have any scary movies on hand?”

  “My cousin Joe’s got the whole Saw franchise on DVD,” he said. “I’m sure we can borrow it.”

  Oh, gah. “That would fit the bill.”

  “So?”

  “Can we get hoagies from the Sidecar?” I asked.

  Cody gave me a smile filled with rueful affection. “Yeah, Daise. We can get hoagies.”

  My tail twitched. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  To make a long story short, it didn’t work. It wasn’t for lack of trying, that’s for sure. After I grabbed an overnight bag from my apartment and filled Mogwai’s bowl, we picked up a couple of hoagies from the Sidecar, then swung by Cody’s cousin’s place to borrow the first two Saw movies, which we watched in Cody’s den, sitting a self-conscious distance apart on his couch. Let me say upfront that I’m not a fan, but if anything was going to give me nightmares, three solid hours of torture porn on top of a big, greasy hoagie ought to have done it.

  It didn’t.

  Between the bogle hunt, the heavy food, the torture porn, and my conflicted emotions, I was so worn out that by the time I went to bed, I slept solidly through the night in sheets that smelled like laundry detergent and a lingering trace of Cody’s scent. He’d insisted I take the bedroom while he crashed on the couch. It wasn’t the soundest night’s sleep I’d ever had—my dreams were restless and uneasy and filled with disturbing images, but I couldn’t call them nightmares, and beneath them, I was aware of Cody’s reassuring presence in the next room.

  And once again, I awoke to a phone call.

  Fumbling on Cody’s nightstand, I found my phone and answered, croaking a sleepy “Hello” into my phone.

  “Daisy?” It was Sandra Sweddon, who was a friend of my mom’s, a volunteer in the community, and a member of the local coven. “Sorry to disturb you so early, honey, but I’m over at the Open Hearth Center.” She lowered her voice. “Sinclair told us about the, um, situation. I’m afraid there may have another incident. A serious one.”

  A jolt of adrenaline brought me more fully awake. “Another Night Hag attack?”

  “I can’t be sure,” she said. “Old Mrs. Claussen passed last night. Mind you, she was very sick. But I heard the nurse who was on duty last night telling another nurse about hearing Mrs. Claussen cry out in the middle of the night, before she passed. She was saying ‘Get her off me, get her off me.’”

  I swore. “Is the night nurse still there?”

  “No, she’s gone home.”

  “What about Mrs. Claussen’s, um, remains?” I asked. “Did the M.E. take her?”

  “No, she’s here,” Sandra said. “They’re just waiting for Doc Howard to come by and sign the death certificate. She had advanced liver cancer, Daisy, so they’re not considering it a suspicious death. But I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I wrapped myself in a big plaid bathrobe hanging from a hook on Cody’s bedroom door and went into the living room to wake him. The call hadn’t awakened him and he was still sprawled on the couch, sound asleep, a crocheted blanket tangled around his limbs. I allowed myself a wistful moment to gaze at him before calling his name.

  He woke with a start, jerking upright and baring his teeth. His face softened at the sight of me. “Daise. No luck?”

  “Bad luck,” I said. “It sounds like she struck somewhere else last night. And this time it was fatal.”

  He ran his hands over his face and through his sleep-disheveled hair. “Tell me.”

  I filled him in on the details.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t sound good,” he agreed. “I’ll call the chief and ask him to meet us there. We’ll see what the magic watch has to say.”

  Beneath Cody’s plaid bathrobe, my tail lashed with pent-up fury. “Goddammit! I really wanted to catch her.”

  “I know.” Standing, Cody laid his hands on my shoulders. “It’s not your fault, Daisy. You did everything you could. But you can’t force your subconscious to cooperate.”

  “I’m not going to stop trying,” I informed him.

  He gave me a faint, sleepy smile. “I never imagined you would. Nice bathrobe, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” I fought the sudden urge to reach up one hand and caress the bronze stubble on his cheek. “Let’s get moving.”

  I’d been to the Open Hearth assisted-living facility a few times as a teenager, tagging along when my mom helped Mrs. Sweddon out with her volunteer work, planning activities for the residents. One year Mom even sewed costumes for a pet parade that the seniors talked about for months. As Cody and I pulled into the parking lot, I felt ashamed that I hadn’t been back since.

  It was a nice enough facility as such things go—or at least as far as I knew, since it was the only one I’d ever visited. There were gardens surrounding it and a three-season room in the rear of the complex looked out into woodlands where the staff hung bird feeders. There were plenty of windows to admit a good amount of natural light, and all the residents had their own cozy little rooms, which were decorated with paintings donated by Pemkowet High’s most promising art students.

  Still, it was a place where people came to spend their final days, and there was no getting around that knowledge.

  Sandra Sweddon greeted us at the door. “This is Nurse Luisa,” she said, introducing us to a pleasant-looking woman in pink scrubs and a name tag that read LUISA MARTINEZ. “I’m sure she can answer any questions you have.”

  Nurse Luisa shook our hands, her expression slightly bewildered. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”

  “That’s okay,” I assured her. “We just have a few quick questions. Can we speak privately?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you want to take this, Daisy?” Cody asked me. “I’ll stay here and wait for the chief.”

  “The chief of police?” Nurse Luisa paled a little. “Is that necessary? I’d really rather not alarm the residents.”

  “It’s just a courtesy visit, ma’am,” Cody said. “Chief Bryant likes to pay his respects to the deceased.”

  Nurse Luisa gave him a look that said News to me, but she escorted me to an office and closed the door behind us. “Can I ask what this is all about, Ms. Johanssen?”

  “It may be nothing,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to wait until the chief arrives to discuss it. Can you tell me how Mrs. Claussen died?”

  “Well, Dr. Howard will make the final call after he examines her, but she appears to have suffered an acute myocardial infarction,” she said. “A heart attack.”

  I fished a notepad out of my messenger bag. “Is that unusual for someone in her condition?”

  The nurse shook her head. “She had a mild coronary incident earlier in the year,” she said. “Normally I’d say it was a blessing in disguise.”

  I jotted down “previous heart attack,” mostly just because taking notes made me look more professional. “Why?”

  “Because in Mrs. Claussen’s case, the alternative was a slow, protracted death from liver failure,” she said.

  “So why is it that you’re reluctant to say a sudden death was a blessing this time?” I inquired.

  Nurse Luisa pressed her lips together. “The look on her face.”

  “Which was?”

  “Terrified,” she said briefly. “That and what Connie said.”

  “Connie’s the nurse who was on duty last night?” I asked. She nodded. “What’s her last name?”

  “Adams.”

  I wrote that down. “And what did she say to you about Mrs. Claussen?”

  “Connie said she was passing her room at around four o’clock in the morning, and she heard Mrs. Claussen saying, ‘Get her off me, get her off me.’”

  “Did she investigate at the time?” I asked.<
br />
  “No,” Nurse Luisa said. “Not until the morning. You must understand, it’s not uncommon for residents to have nightmares or talk in their sleep. Unless there’s a medical issue, we try to respect their privacy. Connie waited a moment, and when she heard nothing further, returned to the office.”

  “Was Mrs. Claussen prone to nightmares?”

  She hesitated. “She’d had incidents in the past, yes. Lately it was hard to say. The medication she was on to manage her pain kept her fairly heavily sedated, but some patients do report nightmares as a side effect of opiate drugs.”

  “So she could have been having nightmares,” I said. “But she was too sedated to complain about them?”

  “Or possibly to remember them,” Nurse Luisa agreed. “Or to distinguish between reality and a bad dream.”

  An assistant knocked on the door to let us know that Chief Bryant had arrived. I closed my notepad and put it away. “Thank you. If you don’t mind, we’d like to take a look at the body.”

  In the foyer, the chief greeted me with a cordial nod. Nurse Luisa led us through the sunlit common room, where seniors looked up from their backgammon games and jigsaw puzzles—which, ew, reminded me of creepy Jigsaw from the movies last night—to speculate about our presence in loud whispers, to the residence halls, pausing outside room 14. It had a plastic nameplate with IRMA CLAUSSEN on it. The nurse swiped her keycard and opened the door.

  Cody and I followed the chief inside. It was a modest room without a lot of personal effects—a few photographs atop a low dresser, a potted ficus tree in the corner. Mrs. Claussen’s body lay atop the bed, loosely wrapped in a clean white sheet that had been placed beneath her. Striding over to the bed, Chief Bryant gently folded the sheet back from her face.

  “We closed her eyes,” Nurse Luisa said behind us, a slight tremor in her voice. “We did our best. We always do.”

  I made myself look.

  Last night, I’d watched a number of actors and actresses meet their demise in a variety of sadistic and gory scenarios. Irma Claussen’s death was infinitely more real and infinitely more affecting. She looked old and shrunken beneath the sheet, her fragile, liver-spotted skin tinged with yellow. At a glance, it wasn’t obvious that she’d died in a state of terror. The Open Hearth nursing staff had done a good job of closing her eyes, of trying to coax the muscles of her face to soften from a rictus of terror.

  Still, the impression lingered. It was there beneath her sunken eyelids, there in the rigid muscles that bracketed her mouth and corded her throat, there in the swollen, crabbed hands raised in a defensive posture.

  She had died afraid. Very, very afraid.

  Chief Bryant fished the dwarf-wrought watch out of his pocket and held it dangling over Irma Claussen’s body. The watch began to rotate on the end of its chain, twirling like a gyroscope, the hands on its face spinning backward.

  Night Hag.

  The fucking Night Hag had scared this poor woman to death. A wave of helpless rage burst over me. Overhead, some old ducts creaked ominously in protest.

  “Daisy,” Cody said in quiet warning.

  The nurse glanced back and forth among the three of us. “What is it?”

  I gritted my teeth, trying unsuccessfully to wrestle my anger under control, to tie it up in a box to be opened later. “Cody, can you fill her in and tell her what she needs to do?” I said to him. “I think I need to step outside for a moment.”

  He nodded. “You’ve got it.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Chief Bryant said. “I want a quick update on where we are with this thing.” He laid one meaty palm briefly on Irma Claussen’s brow, murmuring, “Godspeed you, ma’am.”

  Outside in the parking lot, the cold air helped cool my temper. The chief listened impassively in his warm, fleece-lined uniform jacket while I told him the latest. “Why can’t Hel just banish the bitch herself?” he asked when I’d finished. “She’s a goddamn goddess, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But it doesn’t work that way. See, Hel only has complete authority over her own subjects in Little Niflheim. Here, aboveground, she has to rely on an agent of her authority to maintain her order.”

  “You,” he said.

  “Me,” I agreed. “I can banish the damn thing in her name, sir.” Tears of frustration stung my eyes. “I just have to catch it!”

  “All right, all right.” The chief patted my arm in an awkward gesture of affection. “Keep it together, Daisy. This thing’s turned serious, and it’s going to be hard to keep a lid on it after this morning. I need you to find this Night Hag and fast. Do whatever you need to do. All right?”

  I took a deep breath. “All right.”

  “Believe me, I don’t like this any better than you do.” In the wintry November light, Chief Bryant looked old and tired, deep lines etched into his heavy features. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re talking about manslaughter here. A woman’s been killed in my town, on my watch, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. So I’m counting on you, Daisy.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you do.” The chief gave me one last pat. “Good girl. Keep me updated.”

  “Will do.” I watched him lumber toward his squad car, wishing I had the faintest idea what to do next.

  Seventeen

  I was still standing in the parking lot, watching the chief’s taillights dwindle and trying to collect my thoughts, when a British motorcycle that looked like it belonged in a period piece about World War II sputtered into the entrance.

  “Hey there, Miss Daisy.” Pulling up to the curb outside the Open Hearth Center, Cooper knocked the kickstand into place with the heel of his boot and shoved a pair of vintage touring goggles onto his forehead. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Lovely to see you, too,” he said mildly, dismounting from the bike. “With the big man out of town, I’m filling in on Good Sam duty.”

  “Good Sam duty?” I echoed.

  “Oh, aye, himself didn’t tell you?” Cooper’s angelic blue eyes were shrewd in his thin face. “Community outreach and the like.” He nodded at the facility. “There’s been a death here, don’tcha know? Got the call a little while ago. I’m here to console the bereaved and offer solace to those in need.”

  I eyed him uncertainly, trying to determine whether or not he was serious. “Someone from the center called you?”

  “Your doubt wounds me, m’lady.” Cooper rubbed his hands, clad in fingerless black leather gloves, together briskly. “It cuts me to the quick. Yes, someone did. But I confess, I can take no credit for the Good Sam program. That was the big man’s doing.” He assessed me, his pupils doing a quick wax-and-wane. “May I ask why anger hangs about you like a thundercloud?”

  I told him.

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Nasty creatures, those.”

  “Any suggestions?” I inquired.

  Considering my question, Cooper rubbed his hands together again and blew on his fingertips. “As I recall, you’ve been hexed before, Miss Daisy. If you’re in need of a nightmare fit to make you soil your bedsheets and summon a Night Hag, why not ask that witchy lad with whom you were keeping company to oblige? Him and his coven?”

  A spark of hope kindled inside me. “They can do that?”

  He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “They ought do.”

  If he’d been anyone else, I would have hugged him. “Thanks, Cooper. That’s a great idea.”

  “So it is.” We gazed at each other across the gulf that divided us. Cooper cleared his throat. “I ought to be venturing within to offer my services. Are the residents greatly distraught at the loss of one of their own?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure,” I said. “I think they may be more excited about the fact that Chief Bryant paid a call.”

  “It was ever thus,” he said in a philosophical tone. “Let’s go see if I can be of use, shall we?”

  Inside the Open Hearth Ce
nter, Cooper was a big hit. The residents might not have been unduly grieved by the loss of Irma Claussen—I had the impression that most of them, being unaware that she died in fear, regarded her sudden passing as a blessing—but they had their share of pain and suffering, sorrow and regret.

  And, too, there was the boredom of their circumscribed existence, dull routines alleviated by visits from friends and loved ones, visits that were always too short and too seldom. I’m not saying the staff and volunteers didn’t do a great job of planning activities—from what I could see, they did—but those couldn’t compete with a visit from a real live member of the Outcast, a youthful-looking lad who was willing to listen to the trials and tribulations of old age and illness, to flirt with the ladies and banter with the gentlemen, his eyes glittering in his too-pale face as he siphoned off a measure of whatever negative emotions afflicted them.

  Cody, of course, didn’t like it. “I wouldn’t trust him with my grandparents,” he grumbled.

  “No one’s asking you to,” I observed.

  “Mr. Ludovic expressed every confidence in Mr. Cooper.” Nurse Luisa watched him interact with the residents. “I’d say it appears justified, wouldn’t you?”

  “Were you the one who called him?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Under Mr. Ludovic’s direction, the assistance of the Outcast has been invaluable here.”

  “He’s feeding on mortals without their permission,” Cody said quietly. “That’s against the rules.”

  The nurse gave him a sharp look. “You used the Outcast for crowd control during the recent hauntings, didn’t you, officer?”

  “That was a matter of public safety,” he said. “It was for the common good.”

  Nurse Luisa gestured at the residents. “And we make decisions regarding their care and the common good of the community here at Open Hearth on a daily basis. How many of them do you think are truly capable of giving informed consent? Half the time, someone else holds their power of attorney.” She shook her head. “As far as I’m concerned, if one of the Outcast can give them a measure of comfort and gladness above and beyond what modern medicine allows, they’re doing God’s work whether the Lord acknowledges it or not.” She crossed herself. “And if it brings those poor, doomed souls solace to know they’re doing good work in this world, all the better.”