K Stewart - A Devil in the Details

“You still need to get your mother a present, while you’re out,” she reminded me.

“I’m gonna call Cole, see what he got her. I don’t want to duplicate.” If my baby brother had ponied up for something big, maybe I could just split the cost with him and it could be a joint gift. I really suck at this whole gift-giving thing.

I got the girls out the door and on the way to Mira’s bookstore, but I really wasn’t happy about it. Mira should have stayed home and regained her strength today. Nice to know my wife listens to me.

I went to pull on some real clothes and get my hair under control. The day’s T-shirt said I’M MEAN BECAUSE YOU’RE STUPID. Add jeans and a ponytail, and you had the all-purpose uniform. I tucked my cell phone into my pocket. Ivan hadn’t called back, and I was starting to get worried-well, more worried than before. The scrying was ominous, at the very best, and no matter what I’d told Mira, I didn’t think Miguel had survived that battle.

I was no shrink, but even I knew that worrying without action accomplished nothing. Since I could take no action at the moment, I decided to run errands instead. Regardless of Miguel’s fate, work was still work and staying alive was pretty high on my priority list. I’d start that process by getting my gear back from Marty. The rest… Well, everything else pretty much had to wait until I touched base with Nelson Kidd.

I didn’t figure he’d wimp out. It took guts to come so far and admit so much. People like that don’t cave. I didn’t expect anyone to back out once they’d asked me for help, but I always gave them the choice. Who knows, someday someone might surprise me.

To occupy my mind, I made a few more ticks on my mental to-do list. If Kidd was still willing to go through with it, I’d be summoning a demon tonight, and that required advance planning. You don’t just walk into a demon summoning unprepared. I’d done that. To say it didn’t end well is the edited- for-TV version. I’m damn lucky to still have my soul and all working organs and appendages.

Once upon a time, when Mira and I were still in college and we lived in the only ratty apartment we could afford, we had some bachelor neighbors. They were rowdy, uncouth, and basically good guys. Eventually, we got older, moved out of the mold-infested apartment building, started doing the whole grown-up responsible shtick. But we never lost touch. Marty and Will are still my two best friends in the world, and I exploit them shamelessly.

Marty is a walking anachronism. He’s a welder by trade, but a blacksmith by passion. He wears a kilt whenever he can get away with it. The man doesn’t even own a TV. I mean, do you know how hard it is to not only find a blacksmith, but one who knows more than horseshoes and yard ornaments? It’s a dying art. We’re a dying breed, both of us men out of our time. That’s probably why I get along with him so well.

It was a fifteen-minute drive to his house, and in that time I crossed from neatly mowed suburbia into nearly rural territory. Yards in this neighborhood bordered on fields and pastures, and the once- paved streets had long since gone to gravel. The last event of note here happened last summer when some cattle got loose and spawned a seven-mile low-speed chase. (Rumors of my alleged involvement in that bovine escape are highly exaggerated.)

I parked in the front yard and waved to Marty’s wife, Melanie, as she pulled out of their drive. “He in bed yet?”

She rolled down her window. “Nah, he’s out in the shed. There’re pancakes left in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks, Mel!” I must look positively emaciated. People are always trying to feed me.

Marty worked nights, so I had even odds of catching him before he went to bed for the day. It seemed to be my lucky day so far. I could hear the static spit of the arc welder as I walked around the house to the workshop.

A detached garage in a previous life, the shed had been converted into the manliest of manly domains, a refuge for all who revel in testosterone. The back corner was largely taken up by the forge and anvil, but there were also four motorcycles and one lawn mower (don’t ask) in various states of disassembly, an arc welder, and most important, a beer fridge.

I didn’t bother to knock. He wasn’t going to hear me.

Duke greeted me first. The young brindle mastiff rose from his pile of shop rags near the door and padded over, his tail swaying happily. He was the product of my neighbor’s last litter, and Marty had been more than happy to take the runt. If Duke was the runt, I didn’t want to see his siblings. At only seven months old, he was still growing to be the size of a large horse in short order. I couldn’t wait to see what he weighed in at, fully grown.

Despite his impending hugeness, he had the sweetest temperament I’d ever seen in a dog. It never fazed him when Anna pulled his ears, crawled all over him, stepped on one of his enormous paws. The big wimp would turn and run from any unexpected noise, and he cowered at the sight of the Chihuahua next door.

His doggy breath was warm on my hands, and it was an effort to keep him from bathing me with that huge pink tongue. I scratched his ears, and he rumbled in contentment, leaning against my thigh hard enough to almost knock me over. “You spoiled thing.”

Marty, bare chested but welder’s mask firmly in place, was working over something I didn’t even recognize. It takes a real man to weld with no shirt on-or an idiot. He was possibly both.

The welder threw off strobes of light, casting his extensive tattoo sleeves in strange dancing shadows. The stylized Celtic wolf on his right forearm almost looked as if it were snarling at me. I shielded my eyes from the glare, looking away. The welder hissed and spat a few more times until I heard the knobs on the power supply being dialed down. Marty, his helmet perched atop his head now, smirked at me when I dropped my hand. “Wuss.”

“Bite me. You’re wearing a mask.”

“I’ve eaten, thanks.” He laid the helmet and torch aside, then ran a towel over his shaved head. I still can’t figure out why, when a guy thinks he’s going bald, he shaves his head. It didn’t keep me from seeing the hints of gray in his black beard. And he was two years younger than I. I resisted the urge to check my own facial hair for signs of aging. “Go lie down, Duke.” Obediently, the mammoth mutt padded off to curl up on his bed again. “You’re here for your stuff?”

“Yeah, if it’s ready.”

“It’s ready. Not sure I wanna give it to you, though.” He cast me a disgruntled look as he rose from his stool. He was built like a fireplug, short and stocky with muscle mass attributed to long years of work at the anvil. In all truth, although I towered over him in height, I wouldn’t want him getting his hands on me in a fight. I firmly believed he could break me in half. “What the hell did you try to do-chop down trees with it?”

It is a fact of life. Marty’s swords are his babies. Mistreat them at your own peril. “You knew it was going to get used when you gave it to me, man. And it’s held up to everything I’ve thrown at it.” Yes, Marty knows what I do. But he’s never seen it. I think there’s a large leap to be made between knowing and seeing. He couldn’t fathom the things that sword had been through.

He grumbled under his breath and tossed a jingling duffel bag at me. It hit me in the chest hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. “The chain was easy enough to fix. There’s a set of new leg guards in there, too. Trying to see if I can get the plates whittled down enough to be useful.”

I glanced into the bag long enough to be certain he hadn’t affixed metal plating to the rest of my armor. “I can’t move in that stuff, man. Binds me all up.”