by Kevin Hearne
Leaving my service was the immediately obvious option, but we didn’t know if that would work or not. It might work—it was even probable—but we couldn’t know for sure. The curse may have fallen upon him irrevocably. Another possible salvation for him would be for me to shuffle off my own mortal coil; presumably the curse would be broken if I wasn’t around. That didn’t sit well with me, however. To begin with, there were inks to craft and hazelnut lattes to drink and people to be helped. There was also this librarian who quietly made my heart sing like no one had since my dear departed wife, and I wanted to listen to its song some more.
Better to follow Brighid’s advice and eliminate the curse by eliminating whoever cast it.
Mrs. MacRae finished up and pushed a piece of note paper my way. Her fingernails were painted a bright orange, matching her scarf.
“There ye are, sir. Four titles to get ye started.”
[Thank you so kindly, Mrs. MacRae.]
“Always a pleasure, Mr. MacBharrais. See ye next week, then?”
[Absolutely.]
I nodded farewell to her and took my list of titles to the stacks in search of a clue. I subscribe to the theory that answers cannot hide from us forever if we seek them long enough.
Keeping a hobgoblin happy takes a little work, but it’s always worth it. A happy hobgoblin tends to mess with yer life less, and might even save it. Buck had probably saved Eli and me from taking a bullet to something vital in Virginia. He’d most likely saved me again in Gargunnock. But besides all that, if ye ever have the power to make someone’s dream come true and ye don’t, then what kind of a selfish shite would ye be?
So Nadia and I cooked up a plan, and on a Friday evening, after the day shift went home—or, more likely, to the pub—I Signaled Buck to come down to the shop.
“What’s all this, then?” he asked when he arrived. Nadia and I were at the whisky table, enjoying a dram. On the table next to the decanter rested a narrow cardboard box, taped shut.
“Got a gift for ye, Buck,” Nadia said. She whipped out her straight razor and cut the tape sealing the box. “G’wan, then.”
“What is it?”
“See for yerself.”
He pulled back the flaps and removed some wadding until the contents were revealed, and then his eyes bulged in wonder and his mouth dropped open. “Whoa. Are ye serious? Are these ma labels? Stones and bones, these are ma labels!”
He pulled one out to admire it. The logo was a diamond shape inside a circle with text layered over it:
Buck Foi’s Best Boosted Spirits
THE SWEETEST STOLEN HIGHLANDS WHISKY
HONORING THE LEGACY OF HOLGA THUNDERPOOT
SINGLE BARREL
AGED 10 YEARS
90 proof
We grinned at him and Nadia said, “We have pallets of bottles in the basement and a mixer, so ye can dilute it down from cask strength to ninety proof. One barrel should get ye about two hundred bottles if ye do it right.”
“So all we need is the barrel?”
“That’s right. Ready tae get in the wizard van and pull off a whisky heist in the Highlands?”
“Hells yes! Let’s pour out a fine dram for Lhurnog!”
He popped out of the office before we could say anything else, and Nadia and I laughed. He was probably already at the van in the parking lot, dancing about and waiting for us.
We took off to the Highlands and picked a distillery that we knew would have a ten-year barrel lying around. It was dark when we arrived, but I got out with my derby hat on—a new one, since the undine had ruined my old one—and walked next to the van so that we wouldn’t be caught on any security cameras approaching the building. I unlocked the warehouse door with a sigil. Buck chose the barrel and rolled it out to the van with a huge grin on his face. We got it loaded up and drove it back to the office, with Buck singing happy songs about the joys of stealing whisky.
On Monday morning, unbeknownst to Buck and shortly after the distillery discovered the theft, no doubt, a very well-dressed faery would visit the distillery with a suitcase of cash Nadia had put together. Using Gordie’s passwords that Saxon had supplied, she’d drained all his illicit trafficking accounts and was now laundering it through our agency, replacing the twenty thousand I’d had to pay Saxon and much more. Hatcher’s dirty money would be cleansed, and apart from giving Nadia a well-deserved bonus for saving my arse, we’d use it for agency business, a little scheme I’d thought of to help trafficking victims and to make one victim, anyway, a very happy hobgoblin without burdening us with the weight of guilt. The cash in the case would compensate the distillery for two hundred bottles of whisky and then some.
When we got the whisky back to the office, it was near midnight, but Buck couldn’t sleep until we’d watered the barrel down in a mixing tub and filled at least one bottle, sealed it, and put a label on it. He beamed at it, laughed, and then wept as he hugged it to his breast.
“It’s just so beautiful,” he cried. “Thank ye, MacBharrais. And thank ye, Nadia. Why did ye do this?”
[You’ve earned it,] I replied. [You’ve been a good hob, and I appreciate your service.]
“And I appreciate the respect ye’ve shown for ma property since that first misunderstanding,” Nadia said. “Plus, stolen whisky is the best whisky.”
“It really is, in’t it? Awright, shall we go upstairs and have a toast before calling it a night? I know ye must be tired. I’ll bottle the rest and share it with the Fae Court later.”
Back in my office, Buck cracked the seal on the bottle he’d just finished and poured us each a dram. He lifted his glass.
“A toast! Tae inks and sigils and straight razors, tae good bosses and wizards on lizards, tae outsmarting evil when ye can and kicking its arse when ye cannae do that, and tae distillers of fine spirits everywhere. Sláinte!”
I treasure such fleeting moments as that, little beacons of pure joy and contentment that last for a few seconds before passing into memory. They’re always worth living and working for.
I’d let Buck distribute his whisky in the Fae Court and enjoy that high, and then we’d sit down and I’d tell him he might have only a year to live. It would ruin his day and he’d be justifiably angry with me, but I swore that together we’d figure out how to make sure he had plenty more days of heists ahead of him.
For Weegies
Glasgow, you are brilliant. Thank you so much for being you. And that goes for the rest of Scotland; Kimberly and I loved our visit and cannot wait to return. You are, in short, magical, and the perfect setting for a modern fantasy. Should any reader ever wish to visit Glasgow, the locations mentioned (such as Gin71 and The Citizen and the mural of St. Mungo on High Street, to name a few) exist in reality and deserve a gander. The Mitchell Library has a fine section on the occult on the fourth floor, and I wish I could visit it every Thursday as Al does.
Incredible thanks to Amal El-Mohtar and Stu West for their Glaswegian expertise, and to Stu in particular for his advice on how the language should appear here. There are so many variations in the language and choices had to be made, but those choices are all on me. Anything that might seem off about the language is my fault and not his.
Gratitude to Charles Stross for some general conversation about phone hacking (again, if anything’s wrong it’s my fault) and to Victoria Schwab for introducing me to eighteen-year-old Bunnahabhain.
Thanks to Fran Wilde for her extraordinary kindness in showing me around Philadelphia.
My general gratitude and appreciation for fountain-pen manufacturers is boundless. Thank you for continuing to make such beautiful writing instruments.
Very specific gratitude goes to the Del Rey team for being absolutely spiffing publishers: Metal Editor Tricia Narwani, Alex Larned (yes, the namesake of the evil doctor), Julie Leung, Melissa Sanford, Ashleigh Heaton, D
avid Moench, Keith Clayton, and Scott Shannon have all worked on this book, even though it’s just my name on the cover, and they deserve infinite tacos and beer.
I consulted many works on the creation of inks in preparation for this work and used only a small fraction of the information gleaned; there’s a remarkable history of chemistry and invention behind the medium of all our writing systems, and it’s a very deep rabbit hole, if you like exploring such things. There are literally thousands of recipes out there. For an accessible overview, I suggest Ink by Ted Bishop. It will in turn provide an extensive suggested reading list, if you want more.
Regarding human trafficking, the volume I mentioned in the novel, In Our Backyard: Human Trafficking in America and What We Can Do to Stop It by Nita Belles, is an excellent starting point to understand how the sordid business is conducted, since it is so often glossed over in media stories and we are left to make frequently erroneous assumptions. It too will provide a bibliography for further research.
Thanks to Simone Alexander for her expert insight into the working conditions and safety of sex workers. Lastly, thanks so much to you for reading. Whether you’re new to my work or a longtime reader coming from the Iron Druid Chronicles or my other series, I appreciate you giving Ink & Sigil a go and I hope you’ll spread the word if you had fun. I wish you good health, an outstanding season for your football team, a ride in a gallus wizard van, and all the whisky and cheese your gob can handle.
By Kevin Hearne
THE SEVEN KENNINGS
A Plague of Giants
A Blight of Blackwings
THE IRON DRUID CHRONICLES
Hounded
Hexed
Hammered
Tricked
Trapped
Hunted
Shattered
Staked
Besieged
Scourged
THE IRON DRUID CHRONICLES NOVELLAS
Two Ravens and One Crow
Grimoire of the Lamb
A Prelude to War
First Dangle and Other Stories
OBERON’S MEATY MYSTERIES
The Purloined Poodle
The Squirrel on the Train
The Buzz Kill (in the anthology Death & Honey)
By Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
THE TALES OF PELL
Kill the Farm Boy
No Country for Old Gnomes
The Princess Beard
About the Author
KEVIN HEARNE hugs trees, pets doggies, and rocks out to heavy metal. He also thinks tacos are a pretty nifty idea. He is the author of the Seven Kennings series and the New York Times bestselling series The Iron Druid Chronicles and is co-author of The Tales of Pell with Delilah S. Dawson.
kevinhearne.com
Twitter: @KevinHearne
Instagram: @kevinhearne
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