Stacey appealed to me. “You did say the Night Hag couldn’t actually kill people in their sleep, didn’t you? Just scare them?”
“Um, yeah. Possibly scare them to death.” I sighed, turning to Jen. “Look, it’s a good idea and ordinarily, I’d agree with you, but there are a couple of problems. One, Casimir doesn’t have a whole lot of inventory yet. If there’s a run on it, someone who really needs protection could be left in the lurch. Two, I don’t want to start a panic. Apparently, this whole Night Hag thing is sunk deep in humanity’s collective unconscious, and I’m afraid if people knew, it would trigger a lot of false alarms.”
“And you just want to catch the bitch,” Jen observed.
“Exactly.”
“Gotcha.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Stacey Brooks watching our exchange with a slightly wistful expression, and it occurred to me that she hadn’t known what it was like to have a BFF since high school. The rest of the mean-girls coterie—which, by the way, was one of the vocabulary words Mr. Leary had drilled into me—had moved on without her, taking jobs outside of Pemkowet after college. All Stacey had left to cling to were the remnants of our juvenile antipathy, which was also another one of Mr. Leary’s vocabulary words.
Well, that and apparently my ex-boyfriend. The clinging, that is, not the vocabulary word.
I finished my mocha latte. “Is now an okay time?” I asked Sinclair. “I’d like to keep moving on this.”
“Absolutely.” He glanced at Stacey as he rose. “I’ll text you later, all right?”
Stacey lifted her chin. “Absolutely.”
Oh, yuck. Just shoot me.
During the off-season, Sinclair only ran tours on Saturdays and Sundays. Since it was a weekday, the fairies were off duty at his regular stops, so he suggested that we rendezvous at his house instead. Mercifully, Stacey had to get back to the PVB, so it was just the two of us. After accidentally crashing Jen and Lee’s sort-of date, I’d insisted on buying them another cup of coffee—or more accurately, another short cappuccino and another cup of chai tea. Jen shot me an evil look behind Lee’s back, which I ignored. I had the feeling she actually was interested in Lee, but she just needed a push to admit it to herself.
And if I was wrong, it was fair payback for the UR HAWTT! text.
I followed Sinclair out to his place, where the old double-decker tour bus he’d bought on craigslist was parked in the driveway, advertising PEMKOWET SUPERNATURAL TOURS in vivid red, green, and yellow.
“Come on out back,” Sinclair said, heading around the corner of the house.
Since he’d begun working part-time for Warren Rodgers at the nursery, Sinclair had discovered an affinity for herbs and he had big plans for the backyard come spring, but right now, it was pretty sparse, mostly hard-packed dirt with brittle patches of dead grass and some weeds along the back fence.
“Ellie!” Sinclair called softly. “Ellie, can you come out for a minute?”
A clump of straggly dark green weeds stirred, and a fairy emerged from it. Her skin was a pale chartreuse, and a cape of pointy dark green leaves hung from her shoulders, trailing on the cold ground and concealing the translucent wings folded on her back. She narrowed cat-slitted yellow eyes at me with disdain. “Who is she and why hast thou brought her here?”
When it comes to Sinclair, fairies get a little possessive.
“Hi,” I said, holding up my left hand so she could see Hel’s rune etched on my palm. “I’m Daisy.”
The fairy sniffed. “Thou most certainly are not.”
Fairies also have a tendency to be very, very literal. “Not a daisy,” I said to her. “It’s a human name, too. I’m Hel’s liaison. Will you answer a few questions for me?”
“Why?” Her yellow gaze darted back and forth between Sinclair and me.
“Please, Ellie?” Sinclair said. “It’s just a few questions.”
She hesitated.
“I’ll record it in my ledger,” I said. “One favor owed to Ellie the, um . . .” I had no idea what in the world kind of fairy she was.
“Hellebore fairy,” Sinclair supplied.
“Right,” I said. “One favor owed to Ellie the hellebore fairy, recorded in my ledger.”
Ellie’s yellow eyes glowed with avarice. I’m telling you, that ledger was a useful tool. “Very well. Ask.”
“I’m trying to catch a Night Hag who’s preying on humans,” I said. “I was told to ask the fey. Do you know how I can do that?”
“Thou art asking one now,” she pointed out.
Like I said, literal. Fighting the urge to grit my teeth, I rephrased the question. “Do you know how I can find and catch a Night Hag?”
Ellie shook her head, the leaves of her cape stirring. By the way, I don’t know exactly what hellebore is, but if you ask me, it probably looks a little like a shaggy marijuana plant. “I do not.”
“Do you know who would be able to tell me?”
“A bogle.”
God, it was like playing a game of Twenty Questions. “Do you know where I can find a bogle?” There was another long pause. I flashed my rune-marked palm at her again and put on a stern voice. “Ellie, I’m working to uphold Hel’s rule of order. If you’re withholding information from me, not only will there be no favor recorded in my ledger, but there will be a transgression. A serious one.”