Poison Fruit

“You knew that, Daisy,” she said, not flinching at the word rapist. “We’ve talked about this before.”

“It’s just that it’s a pretty huge decision for a nineteen-year-old girl to make in the face of that much opposition,” I said.

“Grandma and Grandpa stood by me,” Mom reminded me. “It made a big difference.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t thrilled about it, were they?” I usually saw my grandparents a few times a year. We didn’t have a bad relationship, but it wasn’t exactly a warm one, either. They did their best, but it was obvious that they’d never been entirely comfortable having a granddaughter with an infernal temper and a tail.

“No,” Mom admitted. She was silent for a moment. “Daisy, what I told you was always the truth. I did decide to love you no matter what. But teenaged girls have some grandiose fantasies, too. I thought . . . I thought maybe I’d been chosen by fate. That I could rise above what had happened to me, that if I raised you with love and kindness and taught you to avoid temptation, one day, if you were ever faced with the choice between good and evil, you’d choose good, and that somehow, it would make a tremendous difference in the world . . . And show your father he messed with the wrong girl,” she added in a harder tone. “That was part of it, too.”

I looked at the cards spread on the table, one left unturned. “Do you think that’s what this is about?”

“Oh, honey!” She sighed, making the candle flames dance and sway. “I don’t know that I’m any wiser than I was at nineteen, but I think the world’s a more complicated place than I did then.” She smiled a little. “For example, I never imagined you’d grow up to be the right-hand woman of the Norse goddess of the dead, protecting Pemkowet from things like the Night Hag.”

I smiled, too. “Neither did I.”

“Do I think this is about some epic showdown between good versus evil? No.” Mom shook her head. “I don’t believe in those kinds of absolutes anymore. Even your father must have some good in him to beget a child like you. But if it was just the cards . . . well, I’d say what I said before. They’re just cards. But the Norns and the Sphinx, too?” She glanced reluctantly at the spread. “I think there’s a serious conflict coming, and your choices will play a significant role in it.”

My skin prickled and I shivered. “What about the outcome?” I asked. “What does the last card say?”

I think we were both a little bit afraid of what we might see, bracing ourselves as Mom turned over the final card in her spread: La Estrella, the Star.

I looked uncertainly at my mother.

“Hope,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “It means hope.”

      Twenty-four

I spent Thanksgiving night at my mom’s place.

After a reading that intense, neither of us really wanted to be alone, so we blew out the candles, turned on the lights, curled up on the couch, and popped the first disk of season two of Gilmore Girls into the DVD player.

I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of the third episode, waking only briefly when Mom tucked a blanket over me.

“Sweet dreams, Daisy, baby,” she whispered, kissing my forehead. “No nightmares.”

It worked. Nothing like a mother’s love to keep the nightmares at bay. Well, other than getting sexed up by a werewolf.

In the morning, the shadow of my nightmare returned to hover over me, anchored by the image of El Mundo reversed, the world turned upside down. I held the radiant image of La Estrella between me and my fear, kindling it like a mental shield.

Hope.

I could live with hope. Especially if it was all I had going for me.

Everything was still quiet in town, at least on the eldritch front. On the mundane front, things kicked into high holiday gear. By the time I wrapped up a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers and drove back to my own apartment, the decorative harvest-themed banners lining the bridge between East Pemkowet and Pemkowet proper had already been exchanged for banners depicting sprigs of holly and candy canes. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that Amanda Brooks had workers out there at the stroke of midnight preparing to usher in a new holiday season. The official tree-lighting ceremony was scheduled to take place that evening in the park beside my apartment.

I didn’t mind, not really. I know it’s almost mandatory to complain about the crass commercialization of Christmas, but secretly, I kind of like all the pageantry; which is why, after I’d placated Mogwai with some leftover turkey in penance for abandoning him overnight, I called Jen to see if she wanted to come downtown for the tree-lighting ceremony.

Well, that and I wanted to find out how her Thanksgiving with Lee and his mother had gone.

“In a word?” Jen said. “Unpleasant. But then, that pretty much sums up Mrs. Hastings. How was yours?”

“Interesting,” I said. “At least in terms of flavor profiles. For the record, lemongrass and chorizo? Not the best combination.”

She laughed. “How many cookbooks were involved?”

“Four,” I admitted. “So are you coming to the tree lighting?”

There was a sound of muffled conversation as she conferred with someone else. “Sure. Sinclair says if the weather holds, there might be a surprise. He’ll finish his last tour of the day and meet us there.”

“What kind of surprise?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She sounded a little annoyed. “But he promised it would be a nice one. You know how it is with Sinclair and the nature fey. Right now, he’s thick with that damned hellebore fairy in the backyard.”