Kevin Hearne - Hexed

“Just about. Will you agree to leave in peace and inform me in advance of your visits in the future?”

“Yes.”

“And my promised reward for killing Aenghus Óg? Rather than becoming your consort, I would like your forgiveness for today.” I released her from Fragarach and lowered the sword to the table but kept my hand on the hilt. “I look forward to your next visit and hope it will be much more congenial than this one.”

“I shall not break hospitality again,” Brighid said as she rose to her feet. “But neither shall you hear again an offer like you heard today. All of this,” she cupped her breasts briefly, “could have been yours, Druid, but no more. Think on that the next time the Morrigan is gouging out pieces of your flesh.”

She made sure I saw plenty of what I’d be missing on her way out the door. Damn, damn, damn.

Sure, Oberon. What’s up?

He reared up and put both his paws on my shoulders and gave me a sloppy lick in the face.

There were multiple missed calls on my cell phone. Some were from Granuaile, some from Malina, and a couple from Hal Hauk, my lawyer. I called my lawyer first.

“Atticus! Tell me you weren’t involved in this Satyrn Massacre business,” he said without preamble.

“Satyrn massacre?”

“That’s what the papers are calling it. Capital M.”

“Oh. Well, look, why don’t you come over,” I said, because anyone could be listening.

“Gods of light and darkness preserve us. Don’t move, I’ll be right there,” he growled, and then hung up.

Granuaile was next. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to define your terms.”

“You’re still in one piece and everything still works.”

“Then yes, I’m all right.”

“Good. Thought you’d like to know that priest and rabbi came in again.”

“They did?” I frowned. “What did they want?”

“They asked me to open the rare-book case. I told them I couldn’t.”

“Right, because you can’t.”

“Right. They looked pretty pissed. And then they asked all these questions about you. Religious stuff, like whether you were a Christian or a Jew or a pagan, and whether you practiced your religion faithfully.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I said those were questions better answered by yourself. They wanted to know when you’d be back, and I had to tell them I really didn’t know.”

“Well, hopefully I’ll be in before the day is through. Can Perry and Rebecca run things tomorrow?”

“Sure. What do you want me to do?”

“Latin, of course, and get your job back at Rúla Búla.”

“Already got it. All it took was a phone call and some groveling to Liam.”

“Excellent! I want you to come over in the morning so I can see about doing something for your personal protection. I haven’t done a divination recently, but I’m getting one of those hunches.”

“The paranoid kind?”

“What other kind is there? Hey,” I said, my voice dropping and lilting with dulcet, honey-bunny tones, “can I tell you one of the many reasons I love you?” This wasn’t an abrupt flowering of love between us. It was a code phrase, one that Granuaile herself had suggested.

“Look, sensei,” she’d said upon her return from North Carolina. “I don’t know if things are going to get crazy again like they did with Aenghus Óg, but if they do, we need a way to communicate alibis successfully over the phone. You can’t just send your lawyer over every time you need to work something out. You might not always have time. The cops might get to me before he does. I might be out of town when you need me. And that whole business was so messy, so much could have gone wrong. So we should plan ahead and Be Prepared, you know, like the Boy Scouts.”

“Fuck the Boy Scouts,” I’d said. “Be Prepared was my motto before there were any streets to help little old ladies across.”

“Oh. Right.” Granuaile had paused, and when I failed to fill the silence, she asked, “Does that mean you already have a plan, sensei?”

“No, I’m just establishing my primacy over the Boy Scouts.”

Granuaile’s lips quirked upward. “Duly noted. I have a plan, sensei, if you’d like to hear it.”

“Of course I would. Thinking ahead like this is why you’ll make a good Druid. Seriously,” I added, because we were still too unfamiliar with each other for her to see through my customary curtain of wit.

“Thank you.” Her cheeks had colored faintly at the praise. “Well, you have to assume these days that all your cell-phone calls are being listened to, and maybe your home and business phones too. That means you have to say what you mean in code. But if the code is too obscure or in a foreign language, they’ll flag your ass for suspicious activity and put you on a no-fly list—”

“Beg your pardon,” I interrupted. “Who are they ?”

“The government. The cops. The Men in Black. Maybe even the Boy Scouts. Them.”

“Ah. Please continue.”

“So we need a simple code, and I was thinking that since we’ve already pretended that we’re romantically involved in one alibi, we should stick with that concept in future situations.”

“We should, eh?” The beginnings of a smile played at the corners of my mouth.

“Just pretending,” she’d emphasized, her cheeks flushing more hotly. “Then we can call each other as necessary, throw out a code phrase, and then lay the alibi down.”

“What’s the code phrase?”

“Oh. Um. Well, it’s a question in keeping with the pretense of our relationship. It’s ‘Can I tell you one of the many reasons I love you?’ And then the other person says, ‘Sure,’ and then you just explain what we did last night and where and so on, putting in something cute or lovey-dovey for verisimilitude, and bam! You’ve slipped an alibi right past the ears of the military-industrial-authoritarian-douche-canoe complex.”

I had raised my eyebrows and nodded appreciatively. “Hey, that’s not bad,” I told her. “It’s even a turnoff to eavesdroppers when you get all sickeningly sweet with your voice. Listening to other people be ooey-gooey with each other is a guaranteed recipe for nausea. So let’s call it a plan and hope we never have to use it.”

Now that we had to use it, only a week after she’d brilliantly made the suggestion, Granuaile picked it up with only the slightest of pauses. “Sure you can, Atticus,” she said, her voice turning syrupy. “Anytime you want to tell me why you love me, I’m all ears, baby.”

“Well, you know how last night we went out to that park north of Indian Bend Road that has the lights on all night, and we hit baseballs for Oberon to chase? I just thought it was special how you picked up the baseballs all covered in drool and bite marks when I know you hate that kind of thing.”

“Well, Oberon’s sweet,” Granuaile replied. “We were out there a long time. How many balls do you think we hit?”

I was so proud I could have popped. Such a clever mind. “We had a dozen,” I replied. “And don’t forget, those two bats are still in the trunk of your car.”

“Oh, they are? I don’t remember, are those yours or do I need to return them to someone?”

So quick. She knew precisely what to ask. When I’d first agreed to make her my apprentice, it was partially under duress, but now I could see that I was wildly fortunate. “Those are mine. The wooden ones are mine, the Wilsons. The aluminum bats were the borrowed ones; I’ve already returned them.”