“That’s right,” I said, nodding.
“Well, another way we can delay things is to lodge some protest on religious grounds.”
“How’s that?”
“You protest against the DNA testing of your dog on the grounds that’s it’s against your religion.”
I looked at him as if he were trying to sell me the ShamWow and the Slap Chop for only $19.99 plus shipping and handling. “My religion has no objection to DNA testing. We didn’t know what the hell DNA was in the Iron Age.”
Hal shrugged. “They don’t know that.” Neither of us would ever get an award for ethics. “The Iron Age, eh?” Hal had been trying to guess my age for a good while, and I had carelessly given him another clue.
I ignored his query and frowned skeptically. “Will that argument work?”
“No, the judge will throw it out on the grounds that your dog cannot possibly share your religious views or something like that, but it will delay things for a good long while, long enough for you to figure out where to hide Oberon if, as you say in this entirely hypothetical situation, you can’t do it magically.”
“Good show, old sod,” I said in a cheerful accent straight out of Piccadilly Circus. “I knew there was a jolly good solicitor in you somewhere.”
“Oh, bugger off,” Hal replied in kind. “Just hide and lie and keep it simple for everyone, all right?”
I grinned at him. “Will do. Where is the Pack going to run next full moon?”
“In the White Mountains near Greer. Did you want to come along?” Occasionally the Pack would let Oberon and me run with them, and it was always a good time. The only touchy part was my status within the group, because werewolves are obsessed with status. Magnusson didn’t like to have me along, because technically he’d have to be submissive to me—if I gave a damn about such things—and alphas aren’t comfortable showing any kind of submission in front of their packs. I couldn’t blame him, of course, so we worked out a compromise where I was a “friend” of the Pack, a guest on equal footing with every member, essentially outside their hierarchy, and that kept everyone’s hackles from rising. But it also meant that Hauk, not Magnusson, had to be my lawyer. As a second, he was already submissive and did not have to worry about debasing himself by serving my legal needs.
“I would love to, but it falls around Samhain, and I have some of my own rituals to attend to,” I said. “I thank you for the offer, though.”
“My pleasure.” He extended a hand across the table to me. I shook it and he said, “I’ll take care of this bill and let Leif know you want to see him when he wakes for the night. You call me if you need anything else. And stay away from that redheaded bartender. I don’t know what she is besides trouble.”
“That’s like asking a bee to stay away from flowers.” I grinned back at him. “Thanks, Hal. Give my regards to the Pack. Come on, Oberon.” We both rose and headed for the door. Granuaile waved at me and smiled.
“Come back soon and see me, Atticus,” she called.
“I will,” I promised.
Oberon said as we exited and I unlocked my bike.
Perhaps if we had a better sense of smell, we would, I said. Nature clearly favored your kind in that regard.
When I returned to the store and told Perry he could take off for lunch, Emily the witch was already there waiting for me, drinking a cup of chamomile tea Perry had made for her. He wasn’t skilled behind the tea station, but he could boil some water and pour it on top of pre-made sachets as long as I labeled them carefully.
“Back so soon?” I said. “You must be eager to begin.”
“True enough,” she said. She stood from the table and minced over to me in her affected Barbie-doll stride. She waved a check at me before placing it in my hand and saying snarkily, “Here’s your danger pay, though there’s nothing dangerous about making some tea. I never figured Druids would be so avaricious.”
I took it from her hand and made a show of examining it carefully, because I knew it would annoy her. She’d deliberately tried to provoke me, and one cannot sass me with impunity. I saw her face flush and knew she wanted to say something about my dilatory manner, but she wisely kept her mouth shut and contained herself to huffing.
Eventually I said, “This appears to be in order. I will begin your treatment because your coven has done right by me in the past, but if this fails to clear the bank, then of course that will be a breach of contract.” Now, that was just unnecessary—even insulting—for me to say, but she was such a snot I felt she deserved it.
“Fine,” she ground out, and I smiled and went behind my counter to begin brewing her tea. I worked in silence for a while. We were the only people in the store, and neither of us was in the mood to make small talk. Oberon picked up on it.
he said.
You speak the truth, my friend. But I’m as guilty as she is. We are not being very nice to each other.
If that was really what she looked like, sure, I said. But in reality she’s probably pushing ninety or so, and besides, I don’t trust witches.
No, she knows you’re here. She can see through the camouflage. But I think she’s hiding something from me, and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Never mind. Just listen. Once she drinks the tea, she will try to surprise me with something. She is waiting for the contract to be fully in effect before she says anything.
I knew I never should have let you watch The Wizard of Oz.
When Emily’s tea was finished steeping, I set it on the counter for her. “Drink it as is,” I said. “No sweeteners, and nothing sugary for at least three hours afterward. Be careful from this day forward not to eat anything for three hours before drinking this tea either. Insulin will interfere with metabolizing the medicinal compounds in the tea.” That was complete bunk. I just made that up to mess with her. “And it will take a couple of hours for the results to show up, so don’t go hopping into his bed right away.”
“Fine,” she said, and she began chugging the tea as if it were an Irish Car Bomb, completely disregarding the damage the hot liquid might do to her tongue and throat. She really wanted to get this over with. She slammed it down forcefully, as if it were a shot glass instead of a teacup, and she smiled malevolently at me.
“And now, Druid, now that you have entered into a contract from which you cannot withdraw without severe consequences, I have the pleasure of informing you that the man you’re rendering impotent with this brew is none other than Aenghus Óg.”
Chapter 9
Now, that was a pretty good bomb to drop on me. It raised all sorts of questions, foremost among them, “Where is Aenghus Óg right now?” If he was already in town and diddling the local witches to pass the time, then my paranoia was well justified. It meant he was far more directly involved in last night’s mischief than I had thought. And it meant something else, which Emily was obviously waiting for me to realize: Providing her with the agent for his humiliation would make Aenghus Óg duty-bound to kill me as soon as possible. He would no longer feel comfortable in taking the occasional pot shot at me from a distance; he’d have to actively hunt me down and make me pay.
Yep, storm clouds are thrice cursed. First the Fae found o
ut where I was hiding, then my dog killed a human, and now I’d earned the very personal enmity of a god who had been content for centuries to simply let his minions slap me around.
Emily wasn’t going to get an expression of even mild concern from me, though. She wanted to see terror in my eyes, but I walled that all off and pretended she was talking about someone harmless, like Snuffleupagus or Captain Kangaroo.
“So you’ve come to me to make him wilt like lettuce?” I said. “You could have done the job yourself by shedding that skin and showing him what you really look like.”
Wow. I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. Her eyes bulged with the offense, and she whipped her right hand toward my face for a slap. Now, a slap from a normal woman I could handle. Heck, I’d suggest I needed one after saying something like that to a regular college kid. But a slap from a witch is simply not permissible, because sure as the moon rises full once a month, she’d use her nails to scrape some skin off my cheek, perhaps even draw some blood, and then she’d have me. A friend of mine fell prey to precisely this sort of trick centuries ago, and it had poisoned me against witches ever since. She had goaded him into saying something rude, slapped him and left marks on his face, and then that very night his heart exploded inside his chest. I don’t mean he had a heart attack: His heart had literally blown apart as if someone had planted explosives in it, long before gunpowder was invented. Some other Druids and I had taken him to the grove and done a rudimentary autopsy to see if we could puzzle out why he’d dropped dead so abruptly, and we found this crater inside his rib cage. That’s when I realized he’d been killed the moment she slapped him.
I’d never avenged him—the witch got away—and it still stung centuries later. That’s why Emily’s attempt to slap me got a very violent reaction: I knocked her arm down by crossing my right hand over my face, then I backhanded her really hard, much harder than I should have. I shouldn’t have hit her at all; I should have just backed up out of her reach, but I tend to flare up when people try to kill me—which was what she was trying to do, make no mistake. She squealed and staggered back a few steps, holding her nose.
I had broken it, and I sort of felt like an asshole even though she had planned to do much worse to me. While she was still in shock and processing what had happened, I took the opportunity to try to talk her down from escalating it. “You offered me violence and I defended myself. I know that a slap from you would have meant the end of my life, or at least the threat of it, and I could not permit that. And if you are thinking about using magic against me in my own shop, I would remind you that discretion is sometimes the better part of valor.”
“And I would remind you that I am not powerless. Radomila will hear of this!”
“That’s fine. I’ll show her my security tape,” I said, gesturing to the video camera mounted on the wall above the register, “which clearly shows you swinging first. On top of that, you have now given me cause to believe you are a close associate of an old enemy of mine. I’d be within my rights to treat you as hostile.”
“Go ahead and try something!” she challenged, eyes blazing.
“I don’t need to try anything,” I chuckled. “I’m in control here.”
“You go on thinking you’re in control, Druid,” she spat, heading for the door in a fury, her flip-flops flapping noisily. “You’ll soon find out you are very mistaken.”
“See you tomorrow for tea,” I waved cheerily as she slammed through my door.
Oberon said after the door closed and we were alone.
“Don’t worry about her,” I said, grabbing a spoon and moving quickly around the counter. “She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.”
Oberon asked. He followed me out to the floor, curious. I had squatted down on my haunches, examining the carpet.
“Ah, there we go.” I found a droplet of blood on the carpet that hadn’t soaked thoroughly into the weave; it was not much, but it would be enough. I scraped it off the surface and walked toward the door, peering through the glass window to see if Emily was visible. She was getting into her car, parked across the street a short distance north, a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle. She would have to turn over her left shoulder to see me, so I darted outside, telling Oberon I’d return in a moment, and kicked off my sandals. I sank my toes into the same narrow strip of grass that had helped me heal my arm the day before, and I chanted a binding as I drew power from the earth. Emily felt the draw somehow, whipped her head around, and saw me standing there. I showed the spoon to her and smiled; her mouth dropped open in horror as she realized how careless she had been. I saw her lips move and her brow furrow in concentration, so I had no time to waste. I licked her blood off the spoon and completed the binding just in time. She flicked her fingers at me and I knew she had just hurled something my way, but all I felt was a gentle breeze.
A couple of seconds later her upper body was thrown painfully forward into her steering wheel, which caused the car’s horn to beep. Ha! She had tried to blow the spoon out of my hand—and knock me down in the process, off the grass strip and my source of power. Clever. But not fast enough. The binding I had performed was actually a ward, which meant that any spell she sent against me would rebound against her. The only way she could get out of it would be to get herself some new blood.
She leaned back slowly and clutched her chest. Probably bruised a rib or two. On top of a broken nose and wounded pride, she’d had a rough day visiting the local Druid. It made me wonder what she’d been told about me. Did she know how old I was? Did she think I was some sort of lame-assed neo-Druid, mucking about with holly branches and mistletoe? She turned around to stare daggers at me, and I gave her a jovial wave, then blew her a kiss. She flipped me off—a gesture that had zero cultural relevance to me—and then started up her Beetle and screeched away toward University Drive.
Chuckling to myself, I reentered the store, and Oberon came over and nuzzled against my legs, which was somewhat startling when he was in camouflage. I searched and found his head and gave him a good head rub for a minute or so. “Yes, you’ve been very patient, haven’t you?” I said. “Tell you what. Next time we go hunting, we’ll head down to the Chiricahua Mountains. That’s south of here and I think you’ll like it.”
“Mule deer. Maybe some of those bighorn sheep, if we get lucky.”
“Probably not until this business is over,” I admitted. “I know it will be a long wait for you, but I promise we’ll do nothing but hunt once we go. The trip will be for you. But that’s not to say you’re going to be totally bored in the meantime. We’ll probably get attacked at any moment.”
“Well, it’s more likely going to be after we leave the store.”
Oberon’s ears perked up and he turned to the door.
A customer walked in, looking for a copy of The Upanishads, and after that a fairly steady stream of people were either browsing or buying something. The lunchtime lull was over, and soon enough Perry came back to help out. After giving a regular his customary cup of Daddy’s Little Helper (my code for a tea designed to promote prostate health), the phone rang. It was a call from one of Radomila’s coven.
“Mr. O’Sullivan, my name is Malina Sokolowski. May I speak to you about what occurred between you and Emily this afternoon?”
“Well, sure. But I cannot speak frankly right now. I have customers in the store.”
“I understand,” she replied. She had a warm voice and a faint accent that had to be Polish, judging by her name. “Let me ask you this: Do you consider the contract between you and Emily to still be in effect?”
“Oh, absolutely.” I nodded as if she could see it. “Nothing happened to nullify that.”
“That is reassuring. Would you mind terribly if I accompanied her for tomorrow’s tea?”
“I suppose that would depend on your intentions.”
“I will not fence with you,” Malina said. What was this coven’s obsession with fencing? “My intention is to defend Emily in case you attack her again.”
“I see. And, according to Emily, how many times have I attacked her so far?”
“Once physically and once magically.”
“Well, at least she got that part right. But in both cases, Malina, it was she who initiated the attack. I was able to redirect both attacks against her; hence the injuries you have no doubt seen.”
“So it’s her word against yours,” she sighed.
“Yes. And I understand that you must take her word against mine. But you must understand that she told me her lover is a sworn enemy of mine. By doing so, she has allied your entire coven with him.”
“No, that’s unthinkable!” Malina objected. “If we were allied with this individual, then we would not be trying to humiliate him.”
“Why are you trying to humiliate him?”
“That is a question better answered by Radomila.”
“So put her on. Is she there?”
“Radomila is indisposed.” For normal people, that would mean she was taking a shower or something. In Radomila’s case, it probably meant she was in the middle of a complicated spell involving tongue of frog, eye of newt, and maybe a packet of Splenda.
“I see.” A customer with greasy black hair hanging over his face came up to the counter with a bulk bag of incense sticks. “Look, I have to go. You’re welcome to come with Emily tomorrow, but it would be best to counsel her to keep silent around me. I can make her tea in silence, and she can drink it in silence; that way no one will get offended or injured. If you’d like to stay behind afterward, perhaps we can talk without coming to blows.”