Kevin Hearne - Hexed

Leif chuckled wryly and shook his head. “The world will never plumb the depths of your paranoia.”

“I hope not, because then it might catch me unprepared for something. What does he smell like?”

Leif wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Like a chili dog with mustard and cheap light beer. His blood courses with grease and alcohol.”

Oberon said.

“All this sniffing of blood reminds me that I have yet to drink tonight,” Leif said, “so I think I will leave you to your healing and your own personal witch hunt, now that my duty is done. But, ere I go, will you at least consider joining me and others in an alliance against Thor? Dwell on its benefits for a time, as a personal favor to me.”

“All right, as a favor to you,” I said, “I will consider it. But, honestly, Leif, I do not wish to give you any false hope here. Killing Thor is an honor I dream not of.”

Icy glares from vampires are far icier than icy glares from people. And when the vampire giving you an icy glare is originally from Iceland , you are confronted with the archetypal origin of the term, and you shouldn’t be surprised if your core body temperature drops a few degrees. Leif threw one such glare at me for a few seconds, then said quietly, “Are you mocking me? When you quote Shakespeare, it is often to mock someone or to point out their folly.”

Oberon said.

“No, Leif, I’m just under a bit of stress here,” I said, gesturing at my sweating face and the still-steaming amulet dangling from my neck.

“I think you are lying.”

“Come on, Leif—”

“Forgive me, but our association has allowed me some small knowledge about the way you think. You quoted Juliet just now. Are you suggesting I am something like Romeo here, Fortune’s fool, perhaps, driven to a rash and ill-considered confrontation with Tybalt out of revenge for Mercutio’s death? And you think perhaps I will end tragically, like Romeo, if I pursue this course of action against Thor?”

“That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all,” I said, “but if that were my intent, I would have chosen to speak as Benvolio rather than Juliet: ‘Part, fools! You know not what you do.’ ”

Leif stared at me, utterly still, the way only vampires and pet rocks can manage. “I’ve always preferred Hamlet, ” he finally said. “ ‘Now could I drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.’ ” He spun on his heel and moved quickly—perhaps a bit too quickly for a normal human—to the door of his sleek black Jaguar XK convertible parked in the street, where he muttered a sulky “Fare thee well” before leaping in, gunning the engine, and screeching off in an un-dead hissy fit.

I know. But I slipped in some T. S. Eliot and he didn’t catch it. Hopefully next time I won’t be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I’ll do better . I was still hunched over awkwardly, trying to prevent the amulet from falling back to my chest, and I needed to do something about it—but I didn’t want to do anything in front of Mr. Semerdjian, who was doubtless still watching me.

Oberon, I want you to go across the street and park yourself on the edge of his lawn, sort of off to one side, and stare at him .

That’s it. I need you to distract him, is all. Ever since you left him a present that one time, he’s been terrified you’ll do it again. It’s the gift that keeps on giving .

It was a shame that Mr. Semerdjian and I didn’t get along. A slightly pudgy Lebanese gentleman on the wrong side of sixty, he tended to get excited quickly and loudly and would probably have been great fun to watch a baseball game with. We might have gotten along famously if he hadn’t been such a jerk from the moment I moved in—which is kind of like saying the drowning victim might have lived if only he had been able to breathe water.

Deal. We’re still going for that run too .

Oberon was referring to an unfortunate incident during which a park ranger had died and Mr. Semerdjian had tried to lay the blame at our door.

Nope. Leif took care of all that with his patented vampiric mindwipe . That thought led me to reflect that having a vampire around was pretty handy sometimes; I hoped Leif wouldn’t remain angry with me for long.

Oberon trotted across the street, and the space between the blinds abruptly widened as Mr. Semerdjian abandoned all attempts at subterfuge.

While the two of them were engaged in an ocular tête-à-tête, I drew power from the earth and summoned a thick but very localized fog. Arizona is legendary for its dry air, but in the first week of November with a storm rolling in, it’s not that hard to find some water vapor to bind. While that took time to condense, I shifted my concentration to healing my burned skin and made better progress now that the amulet wasn’t cooking it faster than I could heal.

Since the amulet was still far too hot, I walked hunched over to my garden hose and turned it on, checking to see if the fog had rolled in properly before continuing. I could still see Oberon, who was sitting underneath a streetlight, but not the windows of Mr. Semerdjian’s house, so that was good enough. I held one hand up in front of my face to protect it from steam, then turned the hose on the amulet.

It hissed and spat and the expected steam geysered up, but after a few seconds it noticeably began to cool.

Oberon called.

That’s fine. Just stay still and stare at him. Wag your tail if you can manage .

I heard Mr. Semerdjian explode out of the house in high dudgeon. “Get out of here, you filthy mutt! Shoo! Go away!”

If he comes at you with it, growl at him .

I heard Oberon growl menacingly, and Mr. Semerdjian’s peremptory commands abruptly changed to shrill pleas a couple of octaves higher.

“Ahhh! Nice doggie! Stay! Good dog!”

Go for it . The amulet was cooling down rapidly now; a few more seconds would allow it to rest on my chest again without doing further damage. Oberon barked viciously, and Mr. Semerdjian’s panicked voice immediately leapt to Mariah Carey territory.

“O’Sullivan! Call off your dog, damn you! O’Sullivan! Get over here! Where did this fucking fog come from?”

Satisfied, I turned off the hose and stood up, letting the amulet fall back against my chest. It wasn’t fully healed, but it was getting better and I had the pain firmly under control. I walked leisurely across the street to where Oberon was still sitting.

“Here now,” I said calmly as I coalesced out of the mist into a wan column of light next to my hound. “What’s all the fuss, Mr. Semerdjian? My dog is simply sitting here, offering you no violence whatsoever.”

“He’s off his leash!” he spluttered.

“So are you,” I observed. “If you hadn’t advanced upon him in a threatening manner, he never would have growled at you, much less barked.”

“Never mind that!” Semerdjian spat. “He’s not supposed to be running around loose! And he definitely shouldn’t be on my property! I should call the police!”

“I believe the last time you called the police on me, you got cited for falsely calling 911, did you not?”

Semerdjian’s face purpled and he shouted, “Just get off my property! Both of you!”

Step backward into the street with me until we disappear from his view , I told Oberon. Now . We retreated, keeping our eyes on Mr. Semerdjian as we let the mist envelop us, and I imagined what it must look like to my neighbor: He watched a man and his dog walk backward in tandem without the man giving the dog any audible command, until they vanished like spectres into vapor.