“But . . . ?”
“I don’t know if it would work on Emmy,” he admitted. “I can’t ban her from my heart, which means the binding may not hold against her. And if she truly believes in her heart that she’s doing the right thing, it wouldn’t work anyway.” He shrugged. “But safeguarding the house is only the first step. I need to learn to protect myself.”
“You don’t think Kim’s magic bath did the trick?” I teased him. “How about the nice scarf Mrs. Meyers knitted for you?”
Sinclair gave me a look. “Hey, now! Are you making fun of my prayer shawl?”
“Not at all.” What Mrs. Meyers had produced was a lightweight scarf striped in the pan-African colors of red, green, gold, and black. It actually looked rather dashing looped around Sinclair’s neck. “I just didn’t know knitting was a kind of magic.”
“Neither did I.” He stroked the scarf absentmindedly. “But it makes sense. Knots are a form of binding. It’s the intention that it’s done with that makes it effective, and I can feel hers in this.”
“A blessing in every stitch?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Believe me, that kind of focused intention is hard to maintain. I’ve been working on visualization techniques. It’s tough.”
“Like a shield?” I asked, hoping maybe we could compare pointers. Or maybe, truth be told, that I could show off a little. I’d held my own in the House of Shadows and I’d kept up my daily practice, including several more sparring sessions with Cooper out behind the Wheelhouse. I was proud of my progress.
But Sinclair shook his head. “Not exactly. More like an orb of white light. And chakras,” he added. “I don’t even know if I believe in them, but did you know Mrs. Sweddon can actually manipulate her entire aura? It’s pretty amazing.”
“Huh.”
He stretched out his hands, regarding them. “So far, my favorite part is working in the nursery with Warren. I’d forgotten how much I liked working with plants.”
“So no tattoo?”
Although I asked half as a joke, Sinclair took the question seriously. “I stopped by the shop and took a look at their portfolio. It’s all beautiful work, but nothing felt quite right, you know? I think for that kind of commitment, it has to be right. Mark and Sheila told me it would be better to wait for my personal sigil to reveal itself than to choose something just for the sake of getting some protective ink.”
I glanced involuntarily toward the altar. At this point it was pretty sparse, containing a pair of white candles, several seashells, including a conch with blue beads glued to it, and a small dried starfish. The conch shell was missing a few beads and one of the starfish’s brittle arms was broken. I had a feeling those items had been in his possession for a long, long time.
Sinclair followed my gaze. “Yemaya’s symbols. Could be an element of a sigil, but not a whole. Not anymore.”
I’d done a little research since he’d mentioned being dedicated to her at the coven meet and greet, enough to know that Yemaya was one of the orishas, Yoruban deities whose worship was imported into the Caribbean via the slave trade. It appeared she was a benevolent goddess associated with the sea, a sort of oceanic mother-of-all. There was a wealth of information available about her role in what Mr. Leary called the syncretized religions like Santería. Obeah, not so much.
Some of the more fabulous depictions I’d found online reminded me of Lurine in her true form. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out she’d served as the inspiration somewhere back at the dawn of time.
Anyway, I kept that thought to myself. “You’ll figure it out,” I said. “Don’t worry. You don’t need a tattoo to face down your sister, Sinclair. Not with the whole eldritch community of Pemkowet behind you.”
He took my hand and squeezed it. “Thanks, Daisy.”
I squeezed his hand back. “I mean it.”
Both of us glanced down at our clasped hands, then let go and scootched a few more inches apart on the couch by mutual accord.
Sinclair turned the volume back up on the TV and reached for the popcorn, settling in to watch a coven of teenaged witches turn on one of their own. “You do know this movie is ridiculous, right?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “I know. But sometimes ridiculous is exactly what you need to make it through the day.”He laughed. “True dat.”
Twenty-eight
At the beginning of the following week, Lee finally unveiled his database to me. Not only that, but he actually suppressed his paranoia and made the bold move of divulging his address and inviting me to his house. I’d half expected to find that he was living in his mother’s basement after all, but in fact he’d purchased a place of his own, a newish construction nestled in the woods across from the river on the west side of town.
There were a few items of geek-chic memorabilia on display, like a detailed replica of the Enterprise from Star Trek and a life-size copy of a British police box, which I knew just enough to identify as the TARDIS from Doctor Who, but not as many as I would have guessed, and he had a surprising number of pieces of Native American art from the Pacific Northwest, which fit well in the woodsy environs. I guess he’d become a bit of a collector in Seattle. Six years was a fair amount of time; Lee had probably developed facets I had yet to discover.
As for the database? It was awesome.
It didn’t look like a database. It looked like the interface for a video game, with extensive, colorful graphics and a Norse rune–inspired font that managed to be at once decorative and easy to read.
At the top of the page, there was an ornate scroll bearing the words The Pemkowet Ledger. Beneath it were avatars for every category of eldritch being, with fields to enter proper names, dates, location, description, strengths, weaknesses, transgressions, favors. There was an interactive map with links to the pinpointed entries. There was a calendar that automatically logged documented incidents in the past by date, as well as providing the ability to enter projected incidents in the future—like, say, the next satyr rutting cycle—complete with alerts to be sent via pop-up, e-mail, and text.
Using the phooka incident as an example, Lee showed me how it all worked. “See here, if someone was missing in the Columbine Creek area”—he hovered over that section of the map with his cursor—“it pops up. Or if you thought maybe there was something significant about the date, and you wanted to refer to previous years . . .” He clicked on the calendar, flipping backward through the months. “You can search by date or you can check it out this way, which is more visual. I thought that might be useful when looking for patterns.”
“Totally,” I said. “Did you program full-moon cycles into it?”
Lee shot me an offended look. “Of course. Now, if you know what you’re looking for, you can go directly to that entry.” He brought up the phooka’s listing. “Otherwise, you can search by keyword.” He clicked on a search box. “Abduction, missing person, victim’s name—anything you can think of. Everything’s linked and cross-referenced.”
“It’s amazing,” I said sincerely.
“Thank you.” He appeared mollified. “Up here, see where it says vault and penalty box?” He clicked on PENALTY BOX, where a red X appeared next to a link to the phooka’s entry. “Those aggregate entries from the favors and transgressions fields. So if you need to call in a favor in a hurry, maybe see at a glance who’s on the black list or who you’re in debt to, you can.”
“I would never even have thought of that,” I admitted. “Damn, Lee! You really are a genius.”
“Yeah, I know.” He smiled, getting up from his chair. “Go ahead, log in to the admin panel and take it for a test-drive.”
I spent half an hour playing with the database. It felt more like ten minutes. It was just so easy—easy to navigate, easy to enter data, easy to search. And frankly, the graphic element made it fun.
“You’ve got it, Daisy,” Lee said, returning from his kitchen to peer over my shoulder. “I did my best to make it idiot-proof.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No offense.” He proffered a bottle of what looked like iced tea, keeping another for himself. “Kombucha?”
“Sure.” I accepted it, twisted off the cap, and took a sip. I wasn’t about to tell him I had no idea what kombucha was. It must have been something else Lee got into in Seattle, since it hadn’t made inroads into southwestern Michigan yet. In case you’re wondering, it’s basically tea, only it’s fermented with a mass of yeast and bacteria. I looked it up later. For the record, it tastes like a lot like iced tea, only sort of fizzy and tart, and I’m glad I didn’t know more at the time. “So, hey! How come other developers don’t make software that looks this cool?”
Lee shrugged. “It’s not cost-effective in terms of R and D, not to mention the amount of memory and bandwidth it takes to run. But since that wasn’t really an issue, I approached this like I was designing a game. Database programmers usually don’t think like artists or storytellers. That’s the beauty of video games. They combine the best of all those elements.”
“Did you design the graphics yourself?” I asked him.
“No.” He took a swig of kombucha. “I used an illustrator I’ve worked with before. I didn’t tell him anything about the project,” he added. “I just sent him the specs. But if you need additional graphics, just let me know.”
“I will.” It occurred to me that between the designing and the outsourcing and the hosting, Lee really had invested a lot in this project. “You really went above and beyond, Lee. I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, well, I promised,” he said. “And you delivered.”
“Just don’t ask again,” I said. “That’s not a favor I can grant twice. Hel’s tolerance only goes so far.”