Kevin Hearne - Hexed

He answered me in one of those condescending this-is-for-your own-good voices. “There will be a reckoning for the time you have spent associating with infernal powers, but we recognize that you follow the old path of the Druids.”

My eyebrows shot up. They knew what I was after all. “And where does it say that Druids associate with infernal powers? Because we don’t.”

“It was Druidic magic that opened a portal to hell in the Superstition Mountains,” Father Gregory asserted. “And you were there.”

Bloody Aenghus Óg. “Yeah, and I killed most everything that came out of that portal. That was my only association with those powers, okay? I destroyed them.”

“And the demon at Skyline High School?”

“That was the fallen angel Basasael. Also slain by yours truly.”

The priest paled even faster than he blushed, demonstrating remarkable facility in cutaneous blood flow and its constriction. “You slew a fallen angel?” he nearly whispered.

“On ne takoi sil’ny!” Rabbi Yosef growled from underneath his jacket. He is not that strong . Well, I’m strong enough to make you look like an idiot, I thought. He looked close to getting himself free.

“Yes, I did, Father. So, look, I’m willing to let you guys walk out the door with nothing lost but a knife and a little bit of dignity, but I don’t want to see you again. You’re not welcome here, and I’m never going to show you my books. I don’t sell them to fanatics of any stripe. Let’s just live and let live. When it comes to hell, we’re on the same side, anyway. Can we agree to that?”

“I cannot speak for everyone,” Gregory said, casting a meaningful glance at the rabbi squirming in front of him. “But for my part I am satisfied.”

The rabbi finally got one arm free of his jacket, and the other quickly followed. He immediately began to chant in Hebrew and trace a pattern in the air with his hands. I flipped on my faerie specs to watch. As he spoke and moved his fingers, tiny points of light in various colors hovered and then connected themselves in a gossamer threadwork. I saw already that it would be a spell based on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, so I let him proceed. As soon as he finished and tried to execute it, the shop’s wards would recognize it and shut it down. The priest glanced at me nervously as his colleague chanted, wondering if I was going to do anything, but all he saw was my air of unconcern.

“Ha!” the rabbi cried when he finished. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, fists clenched and held out at nine and three like he was driving a big rig, waiting for something to happen. Maybe he thought an angel would appear and kick my ass, or grant him strength, or give him a special brownie. After a couple of seconds of expectant heaving of the breast, he opened his eyes, turned his head, and saw me smirking at him.

“Nice try, Rabbi Yosef.” I released the binding on the priest’s clothes and said, “You’re free to go, Father Gregory. If you ever return, I will not be so polite or forgiving. This is your only warning.”

“Understood,” the priest said, clambering creakily to his feet. He shook out his arms and then took a few uncertain steps toward the door. “Come on, Yosef,” he said.

“Oh, the rabbi will join you outside in a few moments.” I smiled. “We have something to discuss in private, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Father Gregory checked with the rabbi to make sure this was okay with him. The beard nodded first, and then the rest of the head followed. The priest stepped out, and the bells above the door jangled noisily in the silence.

“The father seems like a forgiving man,” I said once we were alone, “but somehow I get the impression that you’re the sort to carry around a grudge. Am I right, Rabbi Yosef?”

“If you have no traffic with hell or other abominations, then I will have no traffic with you,” he grumbled through a jaw clenched in anger. “But I have taken your measure, Druid man. You traffic with these things all the time. You are unconcerned by werewolves. I am sure that bookcase is full of unholy works. And I would not be surprised to find you acquainted with witches and vampires. It will not be long before I am duty-bound to confront you. But it will be my job, not a grudge, that brings the hammer down.”

“Ah, it’s your job that makes you act like such an asskitten. I get it now. You think you’re one of the good guys and I’m one of the bad guys. That’s okay, I’m used to it. But remember that I have your number, Rabbi—it’s ten—and the height of my ambition for many years has been to be left alone. Please do not disturb my peace again.” I released the binding on his pant legs and gestured to the door. “You’re free to leave now.”

He leapt to his feet and leered at me, then took his time about brushing off his knees and picking up his coat and hat, just to demonstrate that he wasn’t scared of me at all. Still, he said nothing more, and his beard remained motionless as he pushed open the shop door violently and exited into the late-afternoon sun.

I locked the door behind him and flipped the OPEN sign to say CLOSED. First I gathered three pounds of yarrow, packaged it for Malina, and called a courier to come pick it up outside and deliver it as soon as possible. Then I turned off the shop lights and retreated to the Eastern Philosophy stacks, out of sight of the windows. I sat on the ground and crossed my legs underneath me, resting my hands on my knees. There I spent a good three hours laboriously updating my personal wards to defend against Kabbalistic magic—something I never thought I’d need to worry about—and also reinforcing the quick protection I’d tied to my shop’s interior wards and copying them into my exterior defenses.

There were still many unanswered questions about those two—primarily regarding their shadowy organization and how they knew anything about my activities out here—but at least I had some solid leads now. They were religious zealots out to save the world from evil as they defined it; one of them had something living on his face; and I had a very interesting knife to give to the Tempe Pack.

I strongly suspected that the rabbi would be watching my store, either to follow me home or to attempt some sort of skulduggery, so I had plans to foil him.

My shop, to all appearances, has only the single entrance. There is no back door, no fire exit, no other means of visible egress than the single glass door with a dead-bolt on it. That would never satisfy a paranoid sort like me. I needed an escape route in case something big and nasty or official arrived. In a closet marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, next to the bathroom, I had a steel-rung ladder bolted into the wall that led to a trapdoor in the roof. Said trapdoor couldn’t be opened from the outside, in both practical and magical terms. I was the only one who could budge it.

To give the rabbi the slip, I climbed the ladder with the silver knife between my teeth, pirate style, and crept out onto the roof, staying low in the early-evening shadows. I cast camouflage on myself and shed my clothes, regretting the necessity of leaving my cell phone behind. I tied one end of a piece of string around my key ring and the other end around the hilt of the knife. That done, I bound my form to the shape of a great horned owl and firmly gripped the string in my talons. I then cast camouflage on it, the keys, and the knife and lifted off, silently, invisibly, into the Tempe night. I didn’t fly straight home but rather lit high up in the branches of a large eucalyptus tree near Mitchell Park. I spent a good quarter hour just looking around to see if anything had followed me, on both the mundane and the magical planes. How the rabbi could have possibly followed an invisible bird he didn’t know to look for was beyond me, but paranoia was my standard operating procedure.