Poison Fruit

One

Pemkowet in November is a study in neutral hues. Don’t get me wrong—it’s still a beautiful place, but you have to work a little harder to see the beauty. Except for the dark green pines, the trees are naked and barren. It’s overcast more often than not, a sullen gray sky reflected in the gray waters of the Kalamazoo River.

Still, it makes you appreciate the subtler charms that it’s easy to overlook on a bright summer day: the tawny expanses of marsh grass waving gracefully along the shallow verges of the river, the elegant yellow-gold traceries of willow branches draping toward the water.

And of course the dunes, the vast sand dunes, rendered more majestic without the foliage of cottonwood, oak, and birch trees that disguises their scope in the growing season. Those dunes are what make a little town in southwest Michigan such a popular tourist destination. Well, the dunes, the white-sand beaches on the shores of Lake Michigan, and the eldritch community—and, last month, the hauntings.

I was glad that was over. It had been a close call, but the gateway between the dead and the living was closed. The annual Halloween parade had been a debacle, but it hadn’t turned into a cataclysmic bloodbath. Talman “Tall Man” Brannigan’s remains had been laid to rest once more, and the local coven had sealed the mausoleum with all kinds of protection spells just in case.

And I was still Hel’s liaison, authorized by the Norse goddess of the dead, who presided over the underworld that lay beneath the sweeping dunes, to maintain the balance between her rule of order and the mundane authorities. It helps that I work for the Pemkowet Police Department. Technically, I’m a part-time file clerk, but the chief calls me in to consult anytime there’s eldritch involvement in a case.

That’s me: Daisy Johanssen, girl detective.

Well, except that at twenty-four, I can’t really call myself a girl. And, perhaps more significant, there’s the fact that I’m only half human.

My mom’s a hundred percent human and one of the nicest people you’d care to meet. No one here holds it against her that at nineteen years of age she inadvertently summoned my father, Belphegor, lesser demon and occasional incubus, with a Ouija board.

Obviously, she wasn’t originally from Pemkowet. Well, obvious to anyone who was, at least. I consider myself a local, and no local would risk fooling around with a Ouija board. When you’re sitting on top of a functioning underworld, there’s just no telling what could happen.

The problem is that the Pemkowet Visitors Bureau promotes paranormal tourism while downplaying the possible risks, and as a result, we get tourists who are unaware of the very real dangers they might face—like the spectators at the Halloween parade last month, who weren’t expecting to encounter the reanimated corpse of an infamous axe murderer.

Or like my mom, who was vacationing here on spring break with some college girlfriends.

If you’re wondering what sort of special powers my demonic heritage gives me, the answer is pretty much none, which is because I refuse to claim my birthright.

There’s a good reason for it. If I did, it would breach the Inviolate Wall, which separates the divine forces of the apex faiths—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, all the big -isms—from the mortal plane. And a breach of the Inviolate Wall could ultimately unleash Armageddon.

At least that’s what I’ve always been told. It’s conventional wisdom around these parts.

Oh, and two weeks ago, one of the Norns laid some major soothsaying on me and informed me that someday the fate of the world might hinge on the choices I make.

No pressure, right?

When I asked her for advice, she told me to trust my heart. The problem with that—I mean, aside from the fact that it sounds like a line of dialogue from a Lifetime movie—was that my heart was in a serious state of confusion, which is why I’d been spending an inordinate amount of time that November mooning over the subtle glimpses of beauty to be found in the bleak, dun-colored landscape instead of confronting actual issues. And if one of the issues hadn’t decided to man up and acknowledge the fact that we had things to discuss, I’d probably still be mooning.

Mooning, by the way, is a particularly apt term when there’s a werewolf involved.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my heart leaped when my phone rang and Cody Fairfax’s name popped up on the screen. I hadn’t seen him since Halloween night, and I was pretty sure he’d been avoiding me on purpose, not entirely without reason.

I let the phone ring a few times before I answered. “Hey.” I kept my tone casual in case Cody was calling on a police matter. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m off duty today. And I just thought . . .” There was a long pause. “We need to talk, Daisy.”

No kidding. It had been well over a month since we’d had what I’d categorize as earth-shattering sex. I hadn’t made a secret of the fact that I’d had a crush on Cody since we were kids riding the school bus together. Cody hadn’t made a secret of the fact that there was no possibility of a real relationship between us because I was an unsuitable mate for a werewolf. Kind of ironic, since he was in the eldritch closet, so to speak, but there you have it.

My temper stirred and my tail twitched. Um, yeah. I don’t have any demonic powers, but I do have super-size emotions that occasionally cause bad things to happen, especially when I lose my temper . . . and I have a tail, of a more modest size. “Are we really going to have this conversation on the phone, Cody?”