“I did,” I said. “It’s not her. It might be something more literal.”
He steepled his fingers. “There’s
Argiope aurantia
, also known as the writing spider, rather fetching specimens with bright yellow and black markings. I had one in my garden a few years ago. I named her Agatha.”
“Not Charlotte?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Mr. Leary cracked one eye open at me. “The full name of the eponymous heroine of
Charlotte’s Web
was Charlotte A. Cavatica, a reference to
Araneus cavaticus
, also known as the barn spider.”
“Oh.”
He closed both eyes again. “
Argiope aurantia
’s web has a distinctive jagged vertical lattice pattern in the center, and legend has it that the writing spider weaves the name of a member of its human household into the lattice as a warning of said member’s impending demise.”
I shook my head. “Not that literal, I don’t think.”
“Fascinating how many local superstitions revolve around our own mortality, isn’t it?” he observed. “I’m thinking of writing a book.”
This time I kept silent, hoping to keep him from pursuing that particular tangent.
“Very well.” Mr. Leary sighed. “West African folklore gives us tales of the trickster Anansi, tales which spread throughout the Caribbean in various permutations. I believe the Lakota people have a similar deity whose name escapes me at the moment, while the Navajo creation myth features Spider Grandmother. In Islamic lore, there is a tale of a spider that spun a web across the mouth of a cave to protect the prophet Muhammad. Additionally, I suspect there may be some farther-Eastern spider lore with which I fear I’m unfamiliar. I’d have to consult my library.” His eyes snapped open. “Is any of this of assistance?”
“I suppose we could be talking about a trickster,” I said. “Can you think of any likely reason for one to be in Pemkowet?”
“No.” Picking up his gin rickey, he took a long sip, eyeing me. “But then, there are a good many unlikely creatures in Pemkowet.”
“True.”
Mr. Leary took another drink, easing one of the ice cubes into his mouth, crunching it with relish, and swallowing. “And yet, since you ask, I must confess that I do think it quite unlikely.” He set his glass back down on the coaster with the careful, controlled motions of a practiced drinker. “By and large, it appears that lesser deities retain a measure of cultural affiliation. That being the case, I cannot see why an African or a Lakota trickster god would venture into the domain of a Norse goddess.”
“Yeah, I know,” I agreed. “Pemkowet’s a bit on the homogenous side.”
“Alas, our lack of diversity is one of the few shortcomings of our fair community, at least in terms of ordinary mortal culture and ethnicity.” He regarded me with an owlish look, or the way I imagine an owl might look if it were wise and slightly drunk. “And although you most pointedly did
not
ask, I will say that I am wholly unaware of any connection between mythological spider lore and drowned young men. If I were you, I’d be looking for a naiad.” His voice deepened, taking on an oratorical resonance. “Think ye of Hylas, the noble companion of bold Heracles—charming Hylas, whose hair hung down in curls!”
I smiled. “Thank you, I will. I appreciate it.”
Mr. Leary saw me to the door. “You’re welcome to visit anytime. In the meanwhile, may you continue to be well, Daisy.” He hoisted his glass to me. “Indeed, given your particular ontological dilemma, may you continue to be
good
.”
That one, I think I got. Stretching on tiptoes, I kissed his cheek. “I’ll do my best.”
Twenty
O
utside Mr. Leary’s cottage, I checked my phone. No messages, and it was only a bit after four thirty in the afternoon.
Okay, so spider deities were a probable no-go. Mom had said her reading was likely to be pretty literal.
Mr. Leary’s writing spider might be a little
too
literal, but we had a literal bottle, and a definitely involved bartender with a literal spider depicted on his literal shoulder. We had missing but implicated ghouls, and according to the cards, we were still looking for a pair of crossed arrows and the elusive mermaid
La Sirena
, an alluring woman in distress.
Right now, none of it added up.
And speaking of ghouls . . .
I was in serious need of some girl talk. I really, really wanted to talk to Jen. If I could get her to accept my apology, at least it would be a start. I thumbed my keypad, composed a message, then changed my mind and deleted it.
Instead, I called her mother. “Oh, hey! Hi, Mrs. Cassopolis. It’s Daisy.” I cradled the phone under my ear. “Is Jen still at work? Can you tell me where she’s working today? I need to talk to her, and she’s not picking up.”
Bless her heart, she did.
I drove over to the summer home on the lakeshore where Jen was working alone, banging on the door until she answered. Her expression was sullen. “I don’t want to talk to you right now, Daise.”
“Hear me out?” I pleaded.
She hesitated, then tossed a rag at me. “I’m running behind. The family’s due back any minute. Help and I’ll listen.”
“Deal.”
I followed Jen upstairs to the master bathroom. Without speaking, we fell into a familiar rhythm. I set about polishing the chrome fixtures while she tackled the sunken Jacuzzi bathtub. It felt like being back in high school, when I’d helped her out plenty of times, except in high school, we would have been looking through the client’s cupboards in search of sex toys, giggling uncontrollably if we happened to find any.
“Look,” I said to her reflected back in the mirror. “I’m sorry. I was wrong, and you were right. I shouldn’t have intervened. And I wasn’t exactly a neutral third party.”
“Not
exactly
?” She shot me a look over her shoulder, brushing a wisp of glossy black hair out of her eyes. “You were all over him in the patrol car.”
“I wasn’t
all over
him! I just . . .” Realizing I wasn’t helping my case, I bit my tongue. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve had a crush on him for ages. I should have told you.”
“Yeah, you should have.” Jen pointed with one rubber-gloved hand. “Mind scrubbing the toilet?”
I exchanged my rag and polish for a brush and a bottle of toilet-bowl cleaner. “I’m sorry,” I said for a third time. “Truly. I don’t know how else to apologize for it. Help me out here?”
Jen detached the showerhead and sprayed down the tub. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she asked over the sound of the water.
“About Cody?”
“Duh.”
I scrubbed diligently at the faint rust-colored ring in the toilet bowl. “I don’t know. I guess . . . it just felt safer not to.”
Jen shut off the water, then turned around and sat on the edge of the tub. “See, that’s what hurts, Daise. Since we’ve been friends, when have I ever not had your back? Since when can you not trust me?”
I flinched away from the genuine pain in her brown eyes. “It’s not you—”
“—it’s me?” she finished bitterly. “Yeah, where have I heard that before?”
I sighed. “It’s not what you think.” Closing the toilet-seat lid, I perched on it. “Cody’s a werewolf.”
She stared at me, lips parted. “You’re telling me Cody Fairfax is a fucking
werewolf
?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m violating the entire eldritch code of honor to tell you that Cody Fairfax is a fucking werewolf. That’s why he dropped out of basketball when his hormones went into overdrive. That’s why he cut classes at least once a month. That’s why the chief never schedules him for duty during a full moon. And that’s why he never dates anyone for more than a month or two, which is why I didn’t want you to go out with him, because I knew you’d only get hurt.”
“It still wasn’t your call to make,” Jen said automatically.
“I know.”
She peeled off her rubber gloves. “Why’s he such a closet case?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s complicated. His whole clan—”
“His whole
clan
?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The whole Fairfax clan. I think they’re pretty secretive by nature, but they’ve got reasons for it.”
“It does explain a lot about them,” Jen said in a thoughtful tone.
“I know, right?” I stuck the toilet brush back into its container. “Look, that’s why I didn’t want to talk about Cody. I didn’t trust myself not to tell you, and it wasn’t my secret to tell.”
“You didn’t trust me to keep it?”
I spread my hands. “I’m trusting you now, aren’t I?”
She made a face. “
Now
, yeah.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “And for the thousandth time, I’m
sorry
. I’ve got a lot going on, okay? I didn’t expect all this to come up. I didn’t expect the Vanderhei kid to drown. I didn’t expect to be working so closely with Cody.” My tail lashed with pent-up agitation, and I felt pressure rising in the air around me. “And that whole ‘it’s not you; it’s me’ thing? It’s true. He meant it. Turns out werewolves only mate with their own kind, so if it’s any consolation, I’m no more eligible than you are. And there’s this guy I just met, this other guy, Stefan—actually, he’s a ghoul, but before you—”
“Daise,” Jen interrupted me. “You’re babbling.” She glanced uneasily about her. “Calm down before you burst a pipe.”
Taking a deep breath, I envisioned myself pouring out a glass filled with my roiling emotions. “Okay, okay. So this ghoul, Stefan—”
Downstairs, the front door opened. “Yoo-hoo!” a bright, cheery woman’s voice called, accompanied by the sounds of a family returning from a day at the beach. “Hello! Are we just about finished here?”
“On my way out, Mrs. Kleinholtz!” Jen called back downstairs to her. “Sorry—just running a little late!”
I helped Jen scramble to pack her cleaning supplies into a plastic carryall, then followed her downstairs, where the highly manicured and impeccably tanned Mrs. Kleinholtz blinked in perplexity at my choice of attire—I was still wearing the linen sheath dress I’d put on this morning—but insisted on tipping me alongside Jen nonetheless, pressing a ten-dollar bill into my hand.
Outside, Jen cocked her head at me, her expression soft and open for the first time since we’d fought. “Look, I’ve got to go home and shower. Do you want to meet at the Shoals in an hour and get a drink? Talk?”
I did. I
so
did.
But
dauda-dagr
was fraying a hole in my straw satchel, and I had promised Cody he could give me a lesson in handling edged and pointy weapons this evening. More important, I needed to tell him what Stefan had discovered, and what I’d learned—or hadn’t learned—from Mr. Leary.
“I can’t,” I said reluctantly. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”
Jen sighed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
At that moment, my phone rang. Glancing at it, I saw it was Cody. “I’m sorry. I have to take it.”
I thought Jen might bail on me, but she waited while I confirmed with Cody that I’d meet him at his place in half an hour.
“Okay,” I said after I ended the call. “I really, really am sorry. I should have put our friendship before the eldritch code, and I didn’t. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t put it before this investigation. There’s a lot at stake. And if we don’t get to the bottom of it fast, it’s going to get ugly.”
“I know.” Her face was somber. “Everyone’s talking about it. Are you in trouble, Daise?”
“Honestly?” I asked. “Yeah, I think maybe so. But I’m not sure what kind.”
“Anything I can do?” Jen asked steadily.
“Yeah.” I smiled at her. “You can accept my apology. That way at least I won’t be checking my phone every ten minutes.”
“Okay, okay!” She blew out her breath, setting wisps of hair dancing around her face. “Look, I’m not quite ready to hug it out yet, but if you want to talk later, call me. I have to admit, I’m curious. I mean, seriously? A
ghoul
?”
Gah!
I really wished I had more time. “I’ll call you,” I said. “Thanks, Jen.”
“You’re welcome.” She got into her car, an old Chrysler LeBaron convertible with God knew how many miles on it. “Daise?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful,” she said in a serious voice, turning over the ignition. “Okay?”
“I will.”
Jen’s hand hovered over the gearshift. “And listen, I won’t say anything to anyone about Cody. But if you really like him, I think you should go for it. All these rules and codes . . .” She shrugged. “They’re kind of stupid, and they get in the way. Sometimes you’ve just got to follow your heart, you know?”
“Maybe,” I said ruefully. “This isn’t the time for it. Like I said, there’s a lot going on. But so far, there’s no evidence he feels the same way.”
She put the LeBaron in gear. “Well, think about it.”
Twenty-one
I
drove home and changed into jeans and a scoop-necked T-shirt, then drove out to Cody’s place.
Collectively, the Fairfax clan owned a big tract of property out in the countryside that bordered the county game preserve. Exactly how they divvied it up, I wasn’t sure, but Cody had his own place with a couple acres of woodland within shouting distance of his brother Caleb’s place. His mother and father’s house was a little way down the road, and beyond that, I thought there were an aunt and uncle, as well as a few cousins and their families.
“Hey, there, Pixy Stix!” Cody greeted me from the front porch as I pulled into his driveway. “C’mon up.”
Oh, crap.
He looked different in his own element, more at ease in his skin. He wore faded old blue jeans that fit him in all the right ways and an equally faded plaid flannel shirt, washed until it was paper-thin and soft, worn open over a white wifebeater tank top with Timberland boots on his feet.
In other words, a poster boy for a woodsy “Men of Pemkowet” calendar.
“Beer?” he asked as I approached the porch, dangling the neck of a bottle from one hand.
“Yeah, thanks.” I accepted it with gratitude, trying to ignore the way his damp, freshly washed bronze hair curled around his ears. I tipped the bottle and took a long drink, slaking a thirst that had plagued me since I’d visited Mr. Leary. “Any luck this afternoon?”
“No. You?”
“Yep.” I handed him the folded paper Stefan Ludovic had given me. “Jerry the bartender confessed to giving the kids Ray D’s number. No answer at the number, but that’s it. And that’s the bartender’s home address.”
Cody scanned it, his topaz eyes intent. “Did he say why?”
I nodded. “Drugs. He claims he was just looking to pass the buck and get rid of them.”
He looked up at me. “You believe it?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Neither does Stefan. That’s why he fired Jerry and gave us his address. He thought we might want to have a talk with him.”
“Oh, Stefan, is it?” Cody’s voice was light, but there was an edge to it.
I took another swig of beer, eyeing him. “Uh-huh. We’re on a first-name basis now. He came to report in person. Caused a bit of a commotion downtown.”
He ignored my comment. “What about Al?”
“Al’s in custody.”
Cody exhaled. “Good. I’m glad to hear it.” He tapped the paper. “Did you give this number to Detective Wilkes to trace?”
“I left him a message,” I said. “And I also paid a visit to Mr. Leary to run down any possible mythological spider leads. There’s nothing that fits the bill. He told me to consider Hylas and look for naiads. That we’ve already done. So I think we’re looking at Jerry Dunham and his spider tattoo, Cody.”
He frowned at the paper. “But for what?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I double-checked the autopsy results and confirmed toxicology was negative for drugs.”
“Could have been a deal gone south,” he mused.
“Could have been,” I agreed.
“Oh, fuck it.” Cody refolded the piece of paper and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. He grinned at me, baring his teeth. They were very white and very strong, and maybe a little more pointed than usual. The slanting sunlight of early evening caught his eyes, making them blaze to amber, gold-flecked life with a hint of green behind them. “I’m tired of this case. I’m tired of
talking
. Let’s have some fun for a change, Daisy Jo. Did you bring the dagger?”
“Uh-huh.” I patted my fraying satchel.
Cody beckoned. “Let’s take a look at it in my workshop.”
I followed him through his house, which was exactly what I would have predicted: small, rustic, tidy, wood flooring, and lots of plaid fabric. His workshop was in an outbuilding behind it.
As long as I was predicting, I would have guessed Cody dabbled in carpentry. I would have been wrong. “You work with leather?”
“My family collects a lot of hides,” he said dryly.
I picked up a half-finished bag from the workbench. “You make
purses
?”
He scowled and took it from me, setting it aside. “It’s a messenger bag, and yes. I sell them online, okay? Now, let’s see that dagger.”
Easing
dauda-dagr
from my satchel, I laid it on the workbench. The runes running the length of it seemed to flicker in the sunlight, while the keen edges were faintly blue. The leather-wrapped hilt was shiny with wear, but the rest of it looked like it might have been forged yesterday.
“God, it’s gorgeous,” Cody murmured. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I assume it spells out its name, but I haven’t learned to read runes yet.”
“Death day, right?” he asked. I nodded. “It’s a perfectly balanced blade by the look of it.” He glanced at me. “Can I touch it?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Reaching out with one reverent hand, Cody closed it around the hilt, and let go quickly. “Jesus! It’s
freezing
!”
“It is?” I hefted it experimentally. “It’s cold, but I wouldn’t call it freezing.”
He shook out his hand, then showed it to me. There was a reddened imprint of
dauda-dagr
’s hilt on his palm and fingers. “At a guess, I’d say it’s not meant for anyone but you to wield.”
I winced. “Good to know. Sorry!”
“Not your fault.” Cody studied the dagger. “It didn’t come with a sheath?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s see if we can’t improvise something.” He spread a piece of muslin on the worktable. “I’ll make you something more permanent later.”
At his instruction, I laid
dauda-dagr
on the muslin and traced a pattern. It actually wasn’t that dissimilar from helping my mom with her seamstress work. Once we had a workable pattern, Cody transferred it to a piece of soft deerskin and set about cutting and stitching with practiced expertise.
“This won’t last long,” he said, poking one big-ass curved needle through the leather. “The hide’s too soft. But it will do for now, and I’ll use the pattern to make something better with a heavyweight hide.”
I watched his strong, capable hands at work. “Are you going to make me a belt to go with it?”
“Sure, if you like.” Cody grinned at me. “I could even make you a bag with a built-in sheath for everyday wear.”
“Really?”
“I do custom work on commission.” He handed me the deerskin sheath. “See how that fits.”
I slid
dauda-dagr
into it. “Perfect.”
“Excellent.” He beckoned again. “Now let’s go out back and play.”
In the grassy clearing between the house and the woods, Cody proceeded to instruct me in the finer points of knife fighting, of which there were surprisingly few.
“First and foremost, if you think you’re going to need to use it, draw it before you
know
you do,” he said. “Because if you get attacked, you won’t have time to draw it.”
“Did they teach you that at the police academy?” I asked him.
“No.” He adjusted my stance. “Knife-hand foot forward, rear foot at a forty-five-degree angle. Left hand up to shield your chest. With your right hand, hold the dagger like you’d hold a hammer.”
I obeyed. “Where, then?”
“When Caleb and I were kids, there was a guy in the neighborhood who was an ex-marine.” Cody circled me in a predatory manner, setting my tail to twitching in an involuntary reflex. “We used to bug him to teach us stuff.”
I peered over my shoulder at him. “I would have thought you and your brother had your own . . . defenses.”
“Not as kids,” Cody said. “That came later.” Coming around in front of me, he showed his teeth in another cheerful grin. “The second-most-important thing? Get them before they get you.”
If he hadn’t warned me, I wouldn’t have known it was coming, but he did, which was why when Cody charged me, I was able to turn to one side, hook his leg, and execute a perfect takedown, following him to the grassy ground and placing the sheathed edge of
dauda-dagr
against his throat.
“Duly noted,” I said sweetly. “So what’s the third-most-important thing?”
Cody’s taut, hard-muscled chest heaved beneath mine as he drew an indignant breath, which I must admit felt pretty good. His face conveyed a mixture of dismay and amusement. “You said you didn’t know anything about fighting!”
“No,” I corrected him. “I said I didn’t know the first thing about handling edged weapons, which is true.” I withdrew the sheathed dagger and sat upright, straddling Cody’s lean hips. And yes, that felt pretty damn good, too. I smiled at him. “When
I
was a kid, I was a star pupil in Mr. Rodriguez’s Li’l Dragonz tae kwon do class four years in a row. Mom thought it would be a good way for me to get out my aggression.”
Cody laughed. It was a good laugh, full-throated and deep, his topaz eyes sparkling. “Was it?”
Reluctantly, I climbed off him. “Yeah, actually. It was.”
“Okay, my bad.” He bounded to his feet and shook himself all over. “Shall we try it again?”
We did.
It was fun, it was sexy, and it was educational. By the time we finished, I was a lot more comfortable handling
dauda-dagr
. I was also tired enough to collapse on the ground. I hadn’t exactly kept up with my Li’l Dragonz training in the past decade or so.
“You’re not half-bad, Daisy.” Lying on his back, Cody folded his arms behind his head. “How did you become Hel’s liaison, anyway?”
“She asked me,” I said simply.
“Really?”
I nodded. “Really. I’d already started helping out the chief with a few cases. It came to her attention, and she summoned me. She gave me the choice. I took it.” Surreptitiously, I scratched my rune-marked left palm. “I said yes.”
Cody turned his head toward me. “Why?”
The sun was hovering low above the tree line, gilding the bronze stubble on his cheeks and throat. His gold-flecked eyes, so close to mine, were wide and questioning. The clean fragrance of pine hung in the air.
“Because I wanted to believe there’s some purpose to my existence,” I said softly. “Because I want to side with order and good. You know?”
He nodded. “I know.”
It was a moment.
And maybe it could have been more, except it was the exact moment that Cody’s brother Caleb arrived with his family in tow.
“I forgot to tell you,” Cody said in an apologetic tone. “I thought it might be nice. Take a little downtime with family, grill a few steaks. You don’t mind, do you?”
On the one hand, I did; on the other hand, if my initially reluctant partner in crime fighting wanted to introduce me to his family, I wasn’t going to object. Rising and retrieving my satchel, I stowed
dauda-dagr
away. “No, of course not.”
Caleb Fairfax was several years older than Cody and a bit broader, with thick rusty auburn hair, and, as I remembered, he was indeed rocking the muttonchops. On him, they looked good. Or okay, anyway. If Cody was laconic, his brother was downright taciturn. Not in an off-putting way, just in the manner of a man inclined by nature to silence.
His wife, Jeanne, was slight and delicate, with straight, sleek light brown hair that framed her face in an old-fashioned look. The faint tingle of otherness in her aura identified her as eldritch, but if I hadn’t known, I’d never have pegged her for a werewolf. Dryad, maybe, but definitely not a wolf.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Daisy,” she said in a grave little voice with a trace of an accent when we were introduced.
“You, too,” I said, shaking her hand. “You’re not originally from Pemkowet, are you?”
“No.” She flushed slightly, glancing at Cody, and then away. “Montréal.”
“Oh.”
“We met at a gathering of the clans,” Caleb said quietly.
Just like Cody had met the only woman he’d dated in earnest, Caroline Lambert, shot by a hunter. I felt . . . awkward.
“It’s okay,” Cody said. “Hey!” He tousled the hair of a pair of boys who looked to be about five and six. “Meet my favorite nephews. This is Stephen and this big guy’s Elliot. Boys, this is my friend Daisy.”
Both boys stared at me with an intense focus that was unnerving in such little ones, their nostrils flaring and twitching in unison.
“Hi, guys,” I said to them.
Elliot, the older of the two, tugged at his mom’s sleeve. When Jeanne leaned down, he whispered in her ear. “That is not a question we ask in polite company,
mon chou
,” she said in her Québécois accent.
At an educated guess, I figured he’d asked her what I was. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”
Jeanne gave me an apologetic look. “Forgive me, but your particular nature . . . I am not sure I’m ready to discuss it with them yet.”
Oh, great
. A Canadian werewolf on the down-low was playing the morality card with me. My temper stirred.
She placed a slender hand on my arm. “I mean no offense. You understand that explaining such matters to children is complicated?”
I shrugged. “My mom never had a problem with it. But then, she wasn’t ashamed of me.”
Phosphorescent green flashed behind Jeanne’s mild hazel eyes. Yep, now I could see the wolf.
“Okay, no one said anything about shame,” Cody interjected. “C’mon; let’s go up to the deck. Let the boys play while we fire up the grill.” He gave me a warning look. “Sound good to you, Daisy?”
“Yeah.” Tip the mental glass, pour away the irritation. “Sounds great.”
Elliot tugged at his mom’s sleeve again and whispered another question in her ear. This time, Jeanne’s expression eased. “Yes, of course. It’s perfectly safe.” She made a shooing gesture. “Go, go play.”
The adults retired to the deck, where Cody fetched a round of beers before firing up the grill. I sat with his brother and sister-in-law, who watched indulgently as their young sons played in the glade.
I understood why Elliot had asked whether it was
safe
. The boys didn’t play like human children, not exactly. They chased each other, tussling and scuffling and rolling on the grass, accompanied by yips and yelps and playful growls.
“They’re cute kids,” I said to Jeanne. “Very . . . energetic.”