“You know,” I said to him, “you don’t have to come running or send Cooper to check on me every time I have a little emotional blip.”
“A . . . blip.” The word sounded funny in his mouth. He looked down at the contents of my bag and Emmy’s charm strewn across the sidewalk, then back at me, arching one evocative eyebrow.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I handled it. By the way, this is my friend Jen. Jennifer Cassopolis, Stefan Ludovic. And . . .” I looked around for Jojo, but she’d made herself scarce. “Um, never mind.”
Stefan dismounted from his bike in one fluid motion, took Jen’s hand before she could react, and bowed slightly. “It is a pleasure, Miss Cassopolis.”
Jen gave me an uncertain look. With a sister in thrall to a vampire, she tended to be wary of predatory eldritch species, although a bit less so since learning that Cody was a werewolf. It makes a difference when you’ve known someone since high school.
“It’s okay,” I said to her. “Stefan’s got centuries of self-discipline under his belt.”
She relaxed. “Nice to meet you.”
Releasing her hand, Stefan nodded at the items on the sidewalk. “This is the work of the sorceress Cooper encountered last night, I take it?”
“Yep.”
He met my gaze again and this time his pupils did the wax-and-wane thing. “This is a grave breach of protocol, Daisy Johanssen. For an outsider to enter a community such as ours and give insult to a vested agent of the resident deity is tantamount to a challenge.”
“Yeah, I figured.” I prodded the pile of dirt with my toe. “Don’t worry. I plan on confronting her.”
Stefan inclined his head. “I remain in your debt. My services and my forces are at your disposal.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’d like to try to handle this discreetly.”
He smiled at me, those unexpected dimples forming in the creases of his smile. “I can be discreet.”
I flushed and cleared my throat. “Um . . . yeah, no doubt. But it’s complicated. She’s, um, actually kind of my boyfriend’s sister.”
“Or more accurately, her kind-of boyfriend’s actual sister,” Jen added, not entirely helpfully. I shot her a quick glare. She responded with a “What?” face.
“As you wish, Hel’s liaison.” Thank God, Stefan chose to ignore our silent but not exactly subtle interplay. “The decision is yours, of course. When it’s convenient, there’s another matter I would discuss with you.”
“Oh, right.” Belatedly, I remembered that Cooper had mentioned it last night. “Sorry, I’ve been distracted.”
“For obvious reasons,” he acknowledged. “Call me when you’re less distracted.”
Sometimes the whole cryptic eldritch thing could be a bit much. “Can’t you just tell me now?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “It’s not something I can tell you, Daisy. It’s something I wish to show you. I believe it will help in the work we undertook together.”
Oh. “Okay. Will do.”
He inclined his head again. “Until then.”
Jen and I watched him return to his Vincent Black Shadow, straddling it with easy grace before putting his wraparound sunglasses back on, kick-starting the motorcycle, and chugging away.
“Damn,” Jen said. “Just . . . damn! You weren’t kidding.”
“Nope,” I said. “I was not.”
She punched me in the arm. “I think he’s into you. So what’s this work you’re doing together? What’s his story anyway? I thought ghouls—excuse me, Outcast—were all gross redneck bikers that fed on the pathetic emotional dregs of skanky meth-heads.”
“Ow!” I rubbed my arm. “I don’t know. He hasn’t told me his story yet. But he doesn’t allow drugs on his turf. And he told me once that ghouls in America tend to come from areas where . . . I can’t remember exactly, but something about a conjunction of extreme ignorance and extreme faith. I think it’s different for some of the old ones from back in ye olden times.”
“Huh.”
“He said he could teach me to deflect my emotions,” I said. “That’s what we were working on.”
“I think he’s into you,” Jen repeated. “Did you even bother to ask him what his story was?”
“Yeah, I did,” I admitted. “It was, um, a little too soon in our acquaintance. That’s a big question, you know?”
“I guess. So, Mr. Ludovic,” she intoned, “tell me, exactly what did you do to get kicked out of heaven and hell?”
“Something like that,” I agreed.
“I wonder, though,” she mused.
I wondered, too. But right now I had more pressing matters to deal with. Stooping, I finished gathering the scattered contents of my messenger bag. I wrapped up the graveyard dirt, coffin nail, and tooth in the tissue and stuffed it gingerly back into the leather sack, ready to dump it back out at the first twinge of pain. I wouldn’t even have bothered if the nail wasn’t already poking holes in the tissue. But it seemed that Jojo had spoken the truth, and the charm was well and truly broken.
“So what happens now, Daise?” Jen asked me.
I took a deep breath, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “First, I need to tell Casimir that he can call off the coven. Second, I need to talk to Sinclair before I confront Emmy. I can’t leave him out of this. He needs to decide where he stands.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Jen offered. “Because I’ll be there if you do.”
“I know.” I gave her a quick hug. “You’re the best. This, I think I can handle. But I couldn’t have gotten through this morning without you. Don’t tell anyone how badly I freaked out, okay?”
She returned my hug, then did the lock-the-lips-and-throw-away-the-key gesture. “I’ll take it to the grave, Hel’s liaison.”
It was the first time Jen had ever called me by my title, and I have to admit it felt a little weird. Not bad, just . . . weird.
“Thanks,” I said. “Consider yourself the first member of my own personal Scooby Gang.”
Like most everyone else our age in Pemkowet, Jen and I had grown up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “That would be a lot cooler if I wasn’t totally the Xander.” She smiled wryly. “No skills to offer but loyalty and a smart mouth.”
“Yeah, and life would be a lot easier if I had Slayer super strength,” I said. “But we make do with what we’ve got.”
“True,” Jen agreed. “And it could be worse. We could be stuck with Stacey Brooks as our unlikely mean girl ally Cordelia.”
I shuddered. “Perish the thought.”
Seventeen
As soon as Jen left, I hustled back to the Sisters of Selene to update Casimir. Beneath his heavy makeup, he flushed with anger. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut for the space of a few breaths, his long, crimson-lacquered nails digging into the counter.
“Daisy, I am so sorry,” he said when he’d collected himself. “I jumped to a conclusion when I should have taken the time to do the research.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I lost my temper and it made me careless. I should never have left my bag unattended, not with dauda-dagr in it. And you warned me that you didn’t know a lot about obeah.”
“That’s no excuse.” His face was grim beneath his bouffant wig. “But it may mean she’s not as powerful as we thought. I’ll tell you, the law of threefold return’s going to bite her in the ass, and I wouldn’t mind helping it along. Shall I start working on a counterspell, darling? Something nice and vengeful?”
“What?” I blinked. “No! Jesus, Cas! You’re the one who’s always warning me not to be tempted by the dark side—which, by the way, just makes me think about it when I wasn’t. Anyway, I need to handle this myself.”
Pursing his lips, he considered me. “I suppose you do. All right, hold on a moment.” He went over to unlock a glass display case and rummage inside it, coming up with a small silver medallion etched with a Star of David inside concentric circles and various squiggly markings, along with a loop so it could be worn as a pendant. “Here. This is your basic Seal of Solomon. It’s the same seal I used in the working earlier. It should give you a measure of protection from hostile spells.”
“I’m a little short on cash,” I admitted. I was always short on cash.
Casimir reached for my hand and plunked the medallion into it. “Don’t worry, it’s not the most expensive amulet I carry, honey. And they’re more effective when they’re given as a gift. Take it with my blessing and wear it in good health.”
“Okay, okay!” I undid the clasp on my necklace and threaded the Seal of Solomon onto the chain. When I was done, it nestled beside the Oak King’s talisman, clinking companionably against it in my cleavage. “Thanks. I’ll, um, record the favor in my ledger.”
He eyed me. “You keep a ledger?”
“I do.” I stated it with a tone of authority, or at least I tried to. “In the interest of maintaining Hel’s order, of course.”
“Good for you.” It must have worked, because there was a note of respect in the Fabulous Casimir’s voice.
I really needed to get started on that database. Too bad I knew nothing about creating databases. For now, I’d just have to settle for making mental notes, because I had more pressing matters to attend to.
After leaving Casimir’s shop, I went back to my apartment to take a quick shower and change my clothes. Since there was no point in trying to compete with Emmeline Palmer on the basis of style, I went practical instead, with a working wardrobe of jeans and a black scoop-neck T-shirt. Pants weren’t as comfortable as skirts since they confined my poor tail, but I’d found that people tended to take me more seriously in them.
