Hexed

by Kevin Hearne

  My doubts about whether Cold Fire would work on a fallen angel were soon allayed: The bubbling mess inside Basasael’s wounds began to spread all over his body, so that his legs and arms were roiling like maggots running rampant under a corpse’s skin. The next second, he tried to curl inward on himself in a mockery of the fetal position, and then he exploded in a slimy mass of purulence and gore. His tarlike substance polluted the courtyard, covering grass, trees, steel, and cement alike with the remains of the partially digested teenager splattered liberally amongst the mess. The falling rain was a benediction now, for the earth had been cleansed of an ancient evil, but it would never be able to wash this away before school got out, much less before the cops got here.

  “That’s right, son!” Coyote shouted at the remains. “You don’ come into my house an’ ’spect to live!”

  “By Balor’s evil eye, what are we going to do about all this goo?” I said.

  “What’s this ‘we’ you talkin’ about, Mr. Druid? Ain’t my demon, an’ it ain’t my mess.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I can’t get any ghouls out here now to clean it up. People are gonna have to deal with it and rationalize it away somehow. They can call the Ghostbusters to take a sample o’ the ectoplasmic discharge or whatever. Or they’ll have to bring in Mulder an’ Scully, because there ain’t no CSI on the planet that’ll ever be able to explain this.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about, Mr. Druid.”

  I didn’t care to explain. I just pointed at the carnage and said, “This right here will be the birthplace of a thousand conspiracy theories about aliens an’ most likely a sign of the comin’ apocalypse. You watch, it’ll be in the Weekly World News.”

  Coyote shrugged. “Hey, I don’ care. It’ll be a damn funny story whatever they come up with.”

  “We should get the arrows,” I said. “Better not leave them lyin’ around.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Coyote replied. I put my sandals back on before venturing out to wade amongst the hellish mess, then joined Coyote in tracking down the arrows. Police officers began to stream into the courtyard, but we kept our mouths shut, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to hear us or see us, except as a flicker of movement they’d dismiss as a trick of the rain.

  Once the quiver was full again, we dodged around a few police officers and administrative types to get back to the office door. I remembered one last detail before we left the scene: I had to get rid of any blood that may have dropped after Basasael stabbed me. I found a few drops near the wall, not as much as I’d feared; it had mostly been soaked up by my shirt. I grabbed a few handfuls of water from the continuing runoff and washed it away, erasing evidence for the coming forensics specialists and leaving nothing behind for witches.

  The bell rang, signaling the end of class and beginning of lunchtime. Since the school was in lockdown, the kids would remain in class and simply go hungry for a while. But they’d be safe now.

  Feeling pretty good about ourselves, the two of us walked back through the office building to our stolen SUV waiting in the drop-off zone. It was surrounded by police cars. Oh well.

  We kept the camouflage on and walked south, thoroughly drenched and starting to get cold. “There’s another high school just south o’ the freeway,” Coyote explained once we were a safe distance from the office, lazily gesturing down Crismon Road. “It’s called Desert Ridge. Parkin’ lot full o’ unattended cars there to steal.”

  “Think I’ll just call myself a taxi at that convenience store there,” I replied, pointing to a friendly red-and-white logo glowing dimly through the rain. “I’ve caused enough grief for high school students today. These poor Skyline—what are they?” I couldn’t think of their mascot, and I turned back to their marquee sign to check. It said HOME OF THE COYOTES, and I swore in Old Irish with such prolixity my father would have been proud.

  Coyote was already laughing and putting distance between us. He knew I’d be annoyed at being tricked, and I was.

  “Not in your house, eh? Did one of the Diné even die back there?” I challenged him. “You lied to me about that maiden gettin’ eaten, didn’t you?”

  “Yep, only white people died.” Coyote grinned wickedly. “But I didn’t wanna let you wait aroun’ until one o’ my people became his breakfast, because I do have some o’ my people at this school and I did wanna protect ’em.”

  “So you put me at tremendous risk? I wasn’t really ready to confront this guy. I wanted to take him on at my place of power on my own terms.”

  “Now don’ be mad, Mr. Druid. I helped you take care of a big problem. You mighta not made it if it weren’t for me.”

  “Yeah, what about that? You took your sweet time getting ’round to helpin’ when he came after me.”

  “Well, y’know, I just couldn’t resist doin’ it the way I did it. You know how people are always threatenin’ to shove this or that up someone’s ass, but they never really do it? Well, now there’s a new story gonna be told ’round the fire: ‘How Coyote Shoved an Arrow Up a Fallen Angel’s Ass.’ Can’t wait to hear myself tell it! An’ don’t you worry, Mr. Druid, I’ll make sure to include how I got the best o’ you!” He melted into his animal form and trotted off into the rain, yipping his merriment and grinning back at me over his shoulder.

  Chapter 10

  I spent most of the cab ride home muttering about thrice-cursed trickster gods, but by the end of it I was smiling in spite of myself. I wasn’t the first guy who’d been tricked by Coyote, and I wouldn’t be the last. I’d actually gotten off pretty lightly, walking away with nothing more than a flesh wound.

  Lunch with Oberon was unusually relaxing, perhaps because I’d rid myself of a large piece of unfinished business. My hound had five Weisswurst sausages, and I had peanut butter and orange marmalade on wheat with a glass of milk. Oberon wanted to discuss what he’d seen in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, how Nurse Ratched was really the Man and how Wavy Gravy would have shown her a thing or two if he’d been there. He wanted to talk about where Chief Bromden went at the end, whether I thought he went back to the Columbia River or whether he might have gone out to fight against the Combine. He also, very somberly, wanted to talk about end-of-life decisions.

  he said,

  I didn’t know what to say. Chief had smothered McMurphy with a pillow. I unexpectedly teared up just thinking about it and scratched him behind the ears. Then that wasn’t enough, so I squatted down and gave him a hug. Oberon didn’t know it, but he had already outlived every Irish wolfhound that had ever walked the earth. The tragedy of his magnificent breed is their fairly short life span, only six or seven years. But I’d been giving Oberon the same blend of herbs and magic that kept me looking and feeling twenty-one instead of twenty-one hundred, a brew I jokingly called Immortali-Tea. Oberon was now fifteen and had no idea that he should have been dead years ago, not running around with the energy and strength of a three-year-old adult. Okay, buddy, I finally said.

  Before I could descend further into maudlin sentiment, my cell phone began to play “Witchy Woman,” an Eagles ringtone I’d downloaded especially for Malina’s calls.

  I walked out to my backyard before answering it, deciding to recharge a bit while I spoke with her. She thanked me for the shipment of bloodwort and made polite noises about its superior quality; I made polite noises back, thanking her for her business; and I thought all the while that it was good to be back to our formal relationship. Then she got down to the business I wanted to hear.

  “We were able to confirm in last night’s ritual that die Töchter des dritten Hauses are here in the East Valley, but we were sadly unable to pinpoint their precise location.”

  “Then you have both my congratulations and condolences. Any ideas on why you couldn’t get a clearer picture?”

  “Perhaps our effectiveness is reduced with only six of us left. Perhaps they
have cast some sort of cloak about themselves that we are unable to penetrate. Most likely it is a little bit of both,” she said. “We will try again tonight. Did you try divining their location yourself?”

  “No, I haven’t had the time to use my own methods,” I said. “Kind of had a busy morning. I ought to have some time to try after work.”

  “I doubt you will have any time at all. We also performed our divination ritual to locate the Bacchants and had much more success. They are here—twelve of them, to be exact—and they plan to begin causing mischief in Scottsdale this evening. Saturnalian orgies will ensue unless you intervene.”

  “Is it truly important I intervene tonight?” I hadn’t heard anything more from Laksha, and I might not have an effective way of doing so. “What lasting damage could one night of true bacchanalia really do to Scottsdale?”

  “Mr. O’Sullivan. Bacchanalia will spread disease. It will ruin marriages and other relationships, causing untold emotional distress and greater economic damage through divorce. It encourages a lifestyle of reckless behavior and moral turpitude, and participants often become criminals in short order.”

  “That sounds like a weekend at the Phoenix Open.”

  “I am not joking. People occasionally die from their exertions, which we clearly cannot allow. And, besides that, the Bacchants will significantly increase their numbers if unchecked, and you will have a bigger problem the longer you wait.”

  “Well, wait a second, you said before that these Bacchants have been in Las Vegas for years.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Well then, why isn’t Vegas all jacked up? Oh.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think the question answered itself. I beg your pardon.”

  “Granted. They will be at a nightclub called Satyrn on Scottsdale Road. It’s fairly upscale. You will need to make an effort to appear a little less scruffy.”

  She was baiting me, but I wasn’t going to bite. “Will you say scruffy one more time for me, please?”

  “Scruffy. Why?”

  “I’m trying to learn your accent.”

  Her voice grew chilly and her accent became more pronounced. “I’m sure you have much more important things to do, as do I. Good day.”

  I grinned as I put away my phone. She was funny when she got herself in a snit.

  Biking to work actually took some effort on my part, drained as I was from using Cold Fire. I’d have to spend the night recuperating in the backyard to recharge my depleted cells.

  The widow waved to me as I trundled past.

  “Did ye see Mary, then?” she called.

  “Sure did!” I gave her a thumbs-up. “I’ll come sit with you after work and tell you all about it.”

  “Ah, that’ll be grand!”

  The book side of Third Eye Books and Herbs doesn’t need much of my personal attention anymore. With automated inventory control, the computer orders another copy for me whenever I sell something. Perry Thomas, my employee for more than two years and the cheeriest Goth kid I’ve ever met, could almost run the whole thing for me. He was always restocking Karen Armstrong’s books, because they tended to move pretty well, along with books about Wicca and primers on Taoism or Zen Buddhism.

  What Perry cannot do is run the apothecary side of things, except on the most basic level: If I point to pre-made sachets of certain proprietary blended teas and say, “Add hot water,” he’s all over it, and he happily serves my arthritic customers who come in every day for a shot of Mobili-Tea. But he cannot mix herbs on his own, cannot recognize when we’re low on one herb or have too much of another, and he’s simply not allowed to sell bulk herbs to anyone, because he’s incapable of warning them about the herbs’ dangerous properties.

  He greeted me with a wave and a “ ’Sup, Atticus,” when I jangled the bells above my door. He was restocking some books that predicted the end of the world based on what loinclothed Mayan mystics said fourteen centuries ago.

  Granuaile was sitting behind the apothecary counter, headphones jacked into a laptop and practicing her Latin as I had asked. Only at it for a week, she was already able to trade basic sentences with me. She didn’t hear the bells tingle due to the headphones, but she saw me peripherally after a moment and flashed me a smile of about 1.21 gigawatts.

  I quickly reflected that the Diamondbacks’ bullpen had been remarkably shoddy last season and they had better find a solution before spring training began. Brighid be thanked, Granuaile was now fully dressed and seemed unaware that she made me dizzy at times.

  A couple of ASU professors were drinking tea at one of the tables and talking politics. A small, hairy man amused me for a while with the questions he asked Perry. First he wanted to find something about the Elder Gods (he’d clearly been reading too much Lovecraft), then he wanted a book about howling dervishes, not whirling dervishes, and then wondered if we stocked anything about the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. Perry showed him what we had in each case, but nothing seemed to satisfy him, and he finally purchased only a dollar’s worth of sandalwood incense. Such is life in retail.

  “Three people are coming in around four o’clock for interviews,” Granuaile said as I began making sachets of my most popular teas. “They all sound inordinately excited about ringing up books and boiling water.”

  “It’s a glamorous career, no doubt about it,” I replied. “Are you missing Rúla Búla already?”

  “A little bit,” she admitted. “Not that you’re not keeping me busy”—she waved at the computer screen that was coaching her on conjugating some Latin verbs—“I just miss the people and the atmosphere.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Think they’d let you come back and work once a week, and let me come back and spend my money there?”

  Granuaile shrugged. “I can ask.”

  “Do, please. Oberon and I are missing the fish and chips.”

  The bells above the shop door chimed and two rare sights entered my shop. I think my mouth may have dropped open. A tall, lanky, elderly gentleman with a high forehead and round spectacles, dressed in black save for a white priest’s collar, was followed by a shorter, younger, rounder fellow in traditional Hasidic garb. Perry greeted them with a friendly hello, and the older fellow immediately asked to see the proprietor.

  “That would be me,” I said. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Is this a joke?”

  “I beg your pardon?” the older fellow inquired politely, a faint smile on his narrow face. He sounded like an English butler.

  “You know, a tall priest and a short rabbi walk into a pagan bookstore …”

  “What?” He looked down at his companion, seeming to realize for the first time that he was quite a bit shorter and in fact of a different religious order than he. “Oh, gracious, I suppose it must seem amusing at that.” He didn’t seem amused, though.

  “How may I help you today?” I asked.

  “Ah. Yes. Well, I am Father Gregory Fletcher, and this is the Rabbi Yosef Zalman Bialik. We were hoping to speak to Atticus O’Sullivan.”

  “Well, hope no more.” I grinned at them. “You’re talkin’ to him.”

  I laid on the college kid’s informality pretty thick. These fellows didn’t look right to me, and until I knew what they were after, they weren’t going to see anything but the façade I presented to the general public. Their auras were perfectly human, but they churned with lust—not the carnal kind; rather, the lust for power—and that wasn’t consistent with peaceful men of God. Plus, the rabbi’s aura betrayed the slim white interference of a magic user.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. You seem rather young for a man of your reputation.”

  “I didn’t know I had a reputation amongst the clergy.”

  “In some …” the priest paused, searching for the right word, then continued, “… small circles, we have heard of you.”

  “Really? What kind of circles?”

  Father Gregory ignored my query and responded with another. “Well, if you’ll forgive the direct qu
estion, were you involved in an unusual situation in the Superstition Mountains about three weeks ago?”

  I looked blankly at him, and then at the rabbi, and told a whopper. “Nope, never been out there.”

  “On ne gavarit pravdu,” the rabbi said in Russian, speaking for the first time. He is not telling the truth. Father Gregory responded fluently in the same language, telling Yosef to be quiet and let him handle things. If they thought I couldn’t understand Russian, I didn’t want to disabuse them of the notion.

  “Hey, I’m an American,” I said, “and the only language I speak is English, and not too good neither. When you speak that other stuff, it makes me think you’re sayin’ something rude about me.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Father Gregory said. “Were you perhaps at Skyline High School this morning?”

  That question nearly triggered a flare of my nostrils. It took me to new heights of paranoia, and I struggled to maintain my mask of indifference. I knew that word of Aenghus Óg’s death had gotten around, but nobody should know about the fallen angel yet except Coyote and the Virgin Mary, and I hardly thought either of them would stop to chat with these guys.

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know where that is. Been here all day.”

  “I see,” Father Gregory said, clearly disappointed. Rabbi Yosef was seething silently and turning a bit red. He knew I was shoveling shit on their boots. The priest decided to change the subject. “I’ve heard you have quite the rare-book collection. May I see it?”

  “Of course. North wall, over there,” I pointed to a group of large china cabinets full of books, all locked away and lacking any recognizable organization.

  The rare-book trade is another part of my business Perry can’t handle, but there’s so little commerce in that area that no one complains when I’m not around to handle it. The books I have are extraordinarily rare—as in there are only one to ten copies in existence, because they’re handwritten grimoires and scrolls full of real, honest-to-Dagda spells and rituals for magical masters only.