Poison Fruit

  “Just like that?” I asked ruefully.

  “Ah, well.” Lurine’s expression of deliberate neutrality shifted to something more complicated, a hint of the millennia-old monster surfacing behind the gorgeous mask of a B-movie starlet. “I didn’t say it would be easy. But patience is a virtue worth practicing, especially in the face of the unknown.” She paused. “Did Hel offer any insight as to who might be behind this?”

  I shook my head. “Hel suspects that Hades, or the Greek Hades, as she likes to call him, is acting on behalf of another’s interests. Beyond that, she refused to speculate. Any thoughts?”

  “When it comes to the Olympians, none worth voicing,” Lurine said with disdain. “The mere thought of them makes me restless.” She shivered, then wriggled herself upright with serpentine grace, her entire body undulating. “In fact, I think I’d like to go down to the lake for a swim.” She winked at me. “Want to come watch?”

  Um, yeah. Totally.

  I flushed. “I’ll pass.”

  Extending one hand, Lurine tugged me off her couch. “Your loss. How is your love life these days, cupcake?”

  I thought about my upcoming date with Stefan. “Interesting.”

  “Interesting,” she echoed. “Care to clarify?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm.” Lurine cocked her head slightly, contemplating me, then flicked her tongue like a snake, leaned forward, and kissed me.

  I was too startled to react. It wasn’t much more than a light, friendly peck on the lips, and coming from anyone else, it would have been almost innocuous. Coming from anyone else, it wouldn’t have resulted in my lips getting numb and tingly in a not-unpleasant way, followed by a rush of euphoria that warmed my skin all over and set the blood to singing in my veins. All I could do was blink at her in a stupefied manner.

  “That’s better,” Lurine said with satisfaction, as though she’d just fixed my lipstick or wiped a smudge off my cheek. “You need to get out of your head, cupcake. Stop worrying so much.”

  I blinked a few more times.

  “It’ll wear off in a minute or two.” She gave me an affectionate pat on the head. “Don’t feel you need to mention this to your mother, okay?”

  I ran my tongue around the inside of my tingling lips and tested my voice. “Um . . . okay.”

  “Good girl.” Lurine patted my head again. “Oh, and tell that tall hunk of a ghoul that if he hurts you in any way, I’ll crush him to pieces. Slowly. All right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Apparently she’d figured out what interesting meant, or at least I assumed that’s what she meant. It was hard to think clearly. It still felt like there were firecrackers going off inside me, in a good way, if that makes any sense.

  “Okeydokey.” Taking my arm, Lurine steered me toward the foyer. “Edgerton, will you bring Miss Johanssen’s coat?” she called down the hallway. “I’ll be out at the lake for a while.”

  By the time Lurine had escorted me to my Honda, the blissful fizzing in my blood had subsided and I felt more or less normal, though I couldn’t help but regard her with a new wariness.

  Standing in the driveway, Lurine rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t give me that look. You needed a jolt, baby girl. You’ll make yourself crazy obsessing over things that are beyond your control.”

  “You could have just slapped me and told me to snap out of it,” I said mildly. “It would have been less disconcerting.”

  She gave me a wicked smile. “Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

  I couldn’t help but smile back at her. Lurine was what she was, which wasn’t human and definitely wasn’t safe. “Oh, fine. Do you want a ride to the end of the driveway?” It was, by the way, a long driveway.

  “No, I’ll walk.” Lurine gave me a gentle shove. “Go home. Call your friends, go out for pizza and a movie or something. Do something fun.”

  Driving home, I had to admit, Lurine had a point. For the first time in days, I wasn’t thinking about killing Janek Król, or that damn class-action lawsuit, or who was behind Elysian Fields, or the fear that I was capable of destroying the world.

  No, I was thinking about the faint tingling sensation that lingered on my lips and that vivid rush of ecstasy.

  Gah! It must be something like the way certain snakes’ venom paralyzed their victims, or maybe more like those hallucinogenic toads that people licked—which, okay, wasn’t exactly a flattering comparison.

  Whatever it was, I was pretty sure that all of Lurine’s victims over the millennia had died happy.

  Hell, no wonder her dead octogenarian millionaire husband had left her his entire fortune! He’d probably considered it a fair exchange for the occasional peck on the lips. It was a good thing she’d just wanted to give me a jolt. If there’d been actual tongue involved, I’d have been on the floor.

  Yep, I was definitely distracted.

  Score one for Lurine.

  And I definitely wasn’t mentioning this to Mom.

  Thirty-two

  I ended up taking Lurine’s advice, sort of. When I got home and checked my phone, I found a text from Sinclair, which led to an impromptu meeting of the Scooby Gang out at his place.

  And yes, that included our new unlikely mean-girl ally, Stacey, who looked like she’d been crying for days, all red-nosed and puffy-eyed. Like I said, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

  It turns out that Sinclair had called his twin sister, Emmeline, for insight on using obeah magic to influence the outcome of a lawsuit, a development that made me profoundly uncomfortable. The fact that Sinclair was consulting her on dark magic was . . . worrisome. I was surprised they were even on speaking terms, but apparently they’d reached some sort of understanding when Sinclair went to Jamaica to lay his grandfather’s spirit to rest.

  At any rate, it was a moot point since dear Emmy didn’t think there was a damned thing we could do on the magic front, as the trial would take place in a distinctly mundane setting. The nearest federal court was the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, some forty miles away. No offense to Grand Rapids, which is a perfectly charming place in its own right, but a city whose chief claims to fame were that it was the office-furniture-manufacturing capital of the United States and the hometown of President Gerald R. Ford was definitely not conducive to magic.

  “According to Emmy, Pemkowet should have spent years building an intimidating reputation,” Sinclair reported in a wry tone, “so that a judge would be afraid to rule against us. But even if we had time . . .” He shook his head, his beads rattling faintly. “I don’t see how we could pull it off outside Hel’s sphere.”

  “If we could find out where the judge assigned to the case lives, I could send Bethany to pay him a visit,” Jen suggested, only half joking.

  “I can find out,” Lee volunteered.

  “Hello?” I stared incredulously at my friends. “In the first place, vampires need to be on underworld territory to feed. As below, so above, and all that. Vampiric hypnosis won’t work in Grand Rapids any more than obeah will. In the second place, shouldn’t we be finding a way to protect the judge? I kind of feel like you’re going all Dark Willow on me,” I added to Sinclair.

  He frowned. “Say what?”

  “Never mind.” I waved a hand. Now was not the time to enlighten Sinclair on the finer points of Buffy the Vampire Slayer references. “But seriously, what about trying to protect the judge from Dufreyne’s powers of persuasion?”

  “Same problem,” Sinclair said. “Any spell we cast wouldn’t be effective outside of Hel’s turf.”

  “It’s not fair!” Stacey burst out. “I was just doing my job! And I’m the one the Tall Man tried to chop into pieces!” She blew her nose into a ratty piece of tissue. “Stupid curse of the Cavannaughs! If anyone should be suing, it should be me.”

  Okay, that didn’t entirely make sense, but since she was right about the attempted chopping, I let it slide. “What about a protection charm?” I asked Sinclair. “Stefan has a pendant that casts a glamour, and i
t works for a day or so away from an underworld before the magic fades. I know—he let me borrow it last summer.”

  Sinclair looked intrigued, but skeptical. “This trial’s likely to last a lot longer than a day, Daisy.”

  “At least it would be worth a try,” I said. “Dufreyne said I’d be called as a witness. I’m sure he’ll call Stacey, too. If one of us could slip a charm into the judge’s briefcase or something, maybe it would help.”

  “Or you could get caught, arrested, and held in contempt of court,” Lee pointed out. “As long as they’re setting legal precedents, why not charge you with attempted supernatural tampering?”

  “You’re not helping,” I informed him.

  He shrugged. “I’m just being realistic. We don’t even know if it’s going to be a jury trial or not. If it is, that’s twelve more people you have to worry about, right?”

  “Yeah, but it’s the judge who has the final say on the terms of the settlement,” Jen observed. Over the course of days, everyone in Pemkowet had become an armchair expert in class-action lawsuits, mostly based on gossip, anecdotes, and something someone thought they remembered hearing Nancy Grace say on television. “Even if the jury voted to award the plaintiffs the full forty-five million bucks, the judge has to approve it. Or he could decide we’ve got ten years to pay it.”

  Stacey sniffled. “If you think anyone in Pemkowet’s going to vote to approve a ten-year millage for this, you’re delusional.”

  Jen shot her a look a lot like the one she’d given Stacey back in high school when she’d threatened to cut all her hair off. I didn’t blame her, although Stacey was probably right.

  “It would be a risk,” Sinclair mused, still thinking about the charm. “A big risk for something that might only work for a day, and probably wouldn’t make a difference in the long run.”

  “Is there any way one could create some sort of magical battery or generator?” Lee inquired. “Something that would allow magic to function in a limited way in a mundane environment?”

  Sinclair shook his head again. “Not that I’ve ever heard.”

  I had, though. A faint spark of hope kindled inside me. “Dufreyne,” I said. “When he told me his powers of persuasion worked everywhere, he said he carried the underworld inside him.”

  Everyone stared at me.

  “So it might work,” Sinclair said slowly, a grin spreading across his face. “A hell-spawn’s presence in the courtroom might be enough.”

  I smiled back at him. “Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “It would. At least it’s worth a try. I’ll call Casimir and the coven so we can strategize.”

  “Is that our cue to leave?” Stacey asked him, a slight edge to her tone. “I’m not sure about the others, but I know I’m not coven-approved.”

  Sinclair hesitated, his brow creasing.

  Okay, I’ll admit it, there was a part of me that wasn’t sorry to see that there was trouble in paradise; but there was another part that was all too aware that Stacey’s habitual bitchiness was a defense against her insecurity, which was at an all-time high right about now.

  “It can wait until tomorrow,” I said to Sinclair. “There’s time. I think we all need to take a step back and calm down, maybe do something normal for a change. Order some pizza, watch a movie.”

  His expression eased. “You’ve got a point. I don’t know what I was thinking, turning to Emmy for advice. You’re right—we should be focusing on protection rather than influence; the right-hand path, not the left.”

  I knew exactly what Sinclair was doing. He was continuing on the path I’d set him on when I’d asked him to curse me, but that’s not what I said. “Is that like the path of light versus the path of darkness?” I asked him instead.

  “Yeah, that’s the terminology the coven uses,” Sinclair said. “Same idea, fewer racial overtones.”

  “It’s an old term in the craft,” Lee offered. “Its usage in Western culture dates back to the nineteenth-century occultist Madame Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society.” He shrugged at the startled glance Sinclair gave him. “What? Lots of us in the gaming industry are knowledgeable in all sorts of arcana.”

  Jen raised her hand. “As a left-handed person, I’d like to lodge a protest against the whole right-equals-good, left-equals-bad analogy. Why not say that up equals good and down equals bad?”

  “As the representative of an underworld deity, I take offense,” I said to Jen with a straight face. “That’s so . . . directionist of you.”

  “How about four legs good, two legs bad?” Stacey suggested. It drew blank looks. “Um . . . Animal Farm, remember? We read it in ninth-grade English?” She flushed. “I know, it’s stupid. I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t quite get your jokes.”

  “Sometimes our jokes aren’t funny,” Lee assured her. “If you ask me, if we don’t want to offend anyone, we’d have to use nonsense words, like zig equals bad, zag equals good.”

  “Really?” Jen nudged him. “Zig equals bad? Now you’re discriminating against the Spice Girls?”

  He blinked at her. “Huh?”

  All three of us girls, including Stacey, sang the chorus of “Wannabe” in unison. “I wanna really really really wanna zigazig ha!” We burst into laughter; probably more laughter than the situation warranted, but it felt good.

  “Oh, God!” Jen wiped her eyes. “I remember Bethany and me dancing around her bedroom, singing into our hairbrushes. I must have been all of seven years old.”

  “Me, too,” Stacey admitted.

  Sinclair let out a groan. “Enough with the Spice Girls. Didn’t someone mention pizza?”

  I got up to fetch the menu from the pizza place. It was tacked to the refrigerator with a magnetic clip, just like it had been when Sinclair and I were dating, which gave me a bit of a pang . . . but that was my own fault.

  Half an hour later, the women voting in favor of The Princess Bride, the five of us were lounging around the living room eating pizza and watching Buttercup’s heart break at the news of Westley’s death at the hands of the Dread Pirate Roberts. Given that our group contained a pair of exes, an uneasy triad of former high school nemeses, and one slightly paranoid genius, it was surprisingly companionable.

  I tried to picture Stefan in our midst, and couldn’t do it. I wondered what, exactly, it was that Stefan saw in me. I really didn’t know if there was room in Stefan Ludovic’s centuries-old reality for an impromptu Spice Girls sing-along.

  Maybe I’d feel differently after our big date on Saturday, but honestly, I couldn’t picture that either. It sounded like a setup for an eldritch joke: A ghoul and a hell-spawn are on their first date . . .

  Where would we go and what would we do? I didn’t know if Stefan even had a car. I’d never seen him on anything but a motorcycle.

  One way or another, I guess I’d find out.

  God, and I’d have to figure out what to wear, too.

  Thirty-three

  Sinclair called me with an update on the protection charm idea the following morning. “Casimir thinks it’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try if you’re willing to take the risk of planting it on the judge.” He paused. “Are you sure about that, Daise? Stacey won’t risk it. She’s under enough pressure as it is.”

  I swallowed, my stomach lurching at the prospect. “Yeah. I don’t know how, but . . . yeah.”

  “Okay,” he said. “The coven will meet tonight to discuss it. It will have to be something small and easily concealed, like the Seal of Solomon charm that Casimir gave you last fall.”

  “No offense, but that thing didn’t actually prevent your mom from putting the obeah whammy on me in the cemetery,” I reminded him. “Do you really think it will be effective against Dufreyne?”

  “It’s just the vessel,” Sinclair said. “We’ll take advantage of the fact that we’ve got a whole moon cycle to, um, amplify its power.”

  “Pimp my charm?” I suggested.

  He gave a low chu
ckle. “Something like that, yeah. Rituals, spells, herbs, white-light casting, maybe some of Mrs. Meyers’s knotwork . . . I don’t know. Casimir’s already doing research. Do you need the details?”

  “No,” I said. “I just need it to work.”

  “That depends on whether or not you’re right about Dufreyne’s personal underworld providing enough juice for magic to function in his vicinity,” Sinclair said. “That, and you not getting caught.”

  My stomach lurched again. “Right. Keep me updated.”

  “Will do.”

  It might be a long shot—okay, it was definitely a long shot—but at least it was something. Better a half-baked plan than nothing at all. Well, except for the nauseating fear of getting caught—but I’d worry about that later. At the moment, I had far more mundane things to worry about, like the fact that I didn’t have a decent winter coat, which came home to me when Stefan called on Saturday morning to confirm our date and suggested that we attend the East Pemkowet Holiday Stroll that evening, followed by dinner at the Market Bistro.

  Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t anything quite so . . . quaint. It left me slightly dumbstruck.

  “You want to do the Holiday Stroll?” I said dubiously.

  “Why not?” Stefan asked in an equable tone. “Is that not the sort of thing you enjoy, Daisy?”

  “Well . . . yeah.” That was an understatement. I loved the Holiday Stroll as much, if not more, than the tree-lighting ceremony. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it was this Saturday.

  “So?”

  “It’s totally corny,” I warned him. “I mean, it’s totally Stars Hollow.” Oh, for crying out loud! Stefan wasn’t going to get a Gilmore Girls reference. “I’m just saying I don’t think you’d be into it.”

  There was a brief silence on the other end. “I am not entirely sure I follow your meaning,” Stefan said carefully. “But this Holiday Stroll appears to be a charming local custom.”