Kevin Hearne: Tricked

Oberon and I found a field of red clover and we flopped down onto our backs for an epic wriggling session. Wriggling around in clover is one of the finest perks of walking the world as a hound. It’s not the same when you do it as a human.

Oberon sneezed and then we rested, legs in the air, enjoying the sun on our bellies.

he said.

I asked.

Oberon said, rolling right side up, ears perked, bath and story forgotten.

I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to run when you no longer have to do it.

For Alan O’Bryan,

who bravely stands in front of my word vomit

and tells me to clean it up.

He is an outstanding alpha reader

and the finest of friends.

This is not a trick.

Since the first three books came out blam-blam-blam, I never really got a chance to say thanks to the readers. So I want to thank you , first, for your support of the series, and for buying books, period. Authors don’t get to keep writing unless readers buy ’em, and this book wouldn’t have been possible without you buying Hounded way back when and telling your friends to go buy it too. Many of you have said howdy to me on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, and on my blog, and I appreciate you taking the trouble! You’re all very kind.

My family is incredibly supportive and pretends not to notice when I walk around talking to my imaginary friends; thank you for the love.

Tricia Pasternak is my editor at Del Rey, and I think she’s five kinds of brilliant. We agree on things like the greatest Metallica song ever recorded and the potential for mayhem inherent in a bag of marshmallows. She is my shepherd through the Valley of the Shadow of Doubt, and I am so grateful for her encouragement, guidance, and the unseen work she does to make each book the best it can be.

Thanks also to the scads o’ fabulous people at Del Rey who contribute to the series’ success: Mike Braff, Nancy Delia, David Moench, Joe Scalora, Scott Shannon, April Flores, and Gina Wachtel, among many others.

Evan Goldfried, my agent at JGLM, deserves bounteous thanks for all his advice and help.

Thanks to Detective Dana Packer in Rhode Island for tips on how to fake a death scene. Anything that sounds stupid or implausible is entirely my fault, and if you try to fake a death in her jurisdiction she will find you.

Sincere gratitude to Tammy Gwara for uncomfortable conversations about poison chemistry. She will probably never come over for dinner at my house now.

Mihir Wanchoo is a font of Indian stories, so thanks to him for the heads-up on the very interesting history of Indra.

To the Confederacy of Nerds — Tooth, Martin, Andrew, Alan, and John — thanks for the laughs and the Insanity Points.

As in my other books, I do try to set these fictional events in the real world as much as possible. However, this particular story inserts two more drugstores into Kayenta than it currently has; the town’s pharmaceutical needs are handled by the Tribal Health Office. While the Double Dog Dare Gourmet Café in Flagstaff is entirely fictional, you can visit the Winter Sun Trading Company, Macy’s European coffeehouse, and Granny’s Closet “for reals.” They’re all spiffy places, and writing about them took me back to my happy college days at NAU.

The Navajo creation story, the Diné Bahane’ , is a constantly changing and evolving work meant to be performed orally by a singer and tailored to the audience and purpose for the ceremony. The written versions, therefore, often differ significantly in the details — and my fiction, while based on a couple of well-documented accounts, should definitely not be viewed as an authoritative source on the subject, nor should the ceremonial procedures depicted herein be construed as genuine. In some versions of the story there are five worlds instead of four, but since four are taught at Diné College in the Navajo Nation, I went with that. My source for the two Coyotes, the spirits of First World, and more was the version Hastin Tlo’tsi Hee (Old Man Buffalo Grass) told to Aileen O’Bryan in 1928, originally published as Bulletin 163 of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in 1956, but now available under the title Navaho Indian Myths; I also consulted the work of Paul G. Zolbrod, Diné Bahane’ , published in 1987 by the University of New Mexico Press.

I’m indebted to Karen, Mervyn, and Leah Harvey for helping me out with the pronunciation of words in Diné bazaad , the Navajo language, which you see at the front of the book. Any errors are of course mine and not theirs.