Kevin Hearne - Hammered

She set down her glass and looked at me sharply. “Good-bye?”

“I’m buggering off, I guess,” I said. “I plan on coming back, but there’s a chance I might not, so I wanted to say a couple of things first.”

“Where ye goin’ to, lad? Didn’t ye jest come back from somewhere?”

“Aye, but I have to return for another job, and it’s more dangerous than the first one. Granuaile’s got Oberon with her right now and they’ll be gone for a few days, but when she returns she’ll leave Oberon with you, if that’s all right.”

“Well, how long d’ye think ye’ll be gone?”

“At least a week, but up to three months. If I’m not back after that, I’m not coming back.”

“Oh, now I’ll be worryin’ about ye,” she fretted. “I’ll be watching me Wheel of Fortune and some daft man will buy a vowel, and it’ll be an A , and then I’ll wonder where that mad boy Atticus is and what frightful things he’s up to now.”

“You didn’t used to think I was mad,” I said.

“Well, that was before ye went around losin’ yer ears and growin’ ’em back again, growin’ so fast it’s like one o’ those bloody Chia Pet commercials.”

“Heh!” I grinned.

“Oh, aye, did ye think that I didn’t notice? I might have a gamy leg, but there’s nothing wrong with me eyes.”

“Nothing wrong with you at all, Mrs. MacDonagh,” I said, and my smile was bittersweet. “You’re a rare girl.”

“Tish, I’m hardly a girl anymore.”

“At heart you are. You have a soul as light as a flower petal and a conscience as clear as crystal.”

“Oooh, you’re spreadin’ it on thick, me boy,” the widow chuckled.

“Perhaps,” I admitted, tilting my head from side to side in an expression of equivocation. We listened to mourning doves cooing in the grapefruit tree for the space of a few heartbeats, and then I turned to her in all seriousness. “But it’s been an honor knowing you. That’s no lie, not even the white kind. I’ve known many people, you understand? Untold thousands in my long life. And you … well. The world is better for you having lived in it. I wanted you to know.”

The widow reached over and patted my hand. “Oh, Atticus, that’s awfully sweet of ye t’say.”

I covered her hand with mine and squeezed it gently. Then I sighed, relaxed, and enjoyed the cool burn of whiskey on the rocks tumbling down my throat.

Saying good-bye properly afforded me a measure of peace. It was a binding of a different sort, absent of the earth’s power, but still hard proof that there is magic yet in the world.

My hours with the widow passed quickly. I remained with her until sundown, when Leif called me. He and Gunnar picked me up at the widow’s house in a rented Ford Mustang GT, since the three of us wouldn’t fit into either of their two-seat sports cars. I noticed that it was black instead of silver: Leif must have paid for it.

The tableau made me miss Oberon. He would have had some comment to make about the three-way olfactory deathmatch in the car: Industrial Air Freshener vs. Wet Dog vs. Bouquet of Ancient Corpse. I wished the widow well, gave her a kiss on each cheek, and squeezed myself into the diminutive backseat. Gunnar’s hackles were raised already.

“Buckle up, he drives like a maniac,” Gunnar advised me. He and Leif were both dressed more practically than they had been the night before, but they still managed to look slightly ridiculous and out of touch. Gunnar had eschewed silver, presumably because he would not be seen by his pack anytime soon. He wore a blue-and-white-striped rugby shirt, which was tight across the chest and shoulders, and a pair of jeans over those clunky tan work shoes one sees on construction laborers. Leif looked fine—black leather jacket, black T-shirt, and black jeans—until you got to his footwear. His jeans were tucked down into lug-soled combat boots that rose to mid-calf and zipped up the side. Without the boots, he could have passed for a hip graphic designer; instead, he looked like an aging wannabe punk rocker who failed to realize his youthful days of rebellion were long past. He also wore the first jewelry I’d ever seen him wear: a necklace with a finely wrought silver pendant dangling in the center of his chest. It was Thor’s hammer, the ancient pagan symbol worn throughout Scandinavia at one time the way Christians wore crosses.

“What Mr. Magnusson means is that maniacs drive like vampires,” Leif explained. “The esteemed leader of our law firm fails to give me proper credit.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve already given you credit for running four red lights,” Gunnar said.

Leif ignored this. “Where to?” he asked me.

“Swing by my house; I need to pick up a quiver of arrows there.”

“Very well,” Leif said, and he accelerated gently, almost funereally, and I felt a smile coming on. He was making a point to Gunnar, and I had no doubt he would proceed at this snail’s pace until Gunnar told him to speed up.

Gunnar was nearly out of patience by the time we made it down to 11th Street, but I was glad we were going as slowly as we were. Once we turned the corner, Leif braked the car and stared down the street. He and Gunnar both sensed something. I flicked on my faerie specs and then I saw it too: Someone with major mojo was messing with my house. The magical spectrum showed me a shining white humanoid standing near my mesquite tree, gesturing with his hands to encourage ivy to shoot out of the ground and engulf my house. Judging by the sheer amount of white noise in his aura, he was probably a god. Waiting in the street, two leopards harnessed to a chariot pricked up their ears at us. They had a bit of white magical interference around their auras too.

“Hey, Leif, you know what? I don’t really need those arrows. Back us up and get us out of here.”

“Is that—”

“Don’t say his name. It’s the Roman deity of the vine.”

“What’s he doing here?” Gunnar snarled. Leif shoved the Mustang into reverse and drove it like a vampire. The tires squealed loudly as he backed onto Roosevelt Street. The leopards growled, and the glowing white figure turned and saw us. So much for the idea of a quiet exit.

“He’s after me, obviously. He—”

“Where do we go?” Leif interrupted.

“Hit U.S. 60 and head east.” Leif stepped on it and we shot south toward the freeway at criminal speeds through the neighborhood, giving me one last glimpse at 11th Street in the process. I turned off my faerie specs and the white figure resolved into Bacchus, currently leaping toward his singular mode of transportation. He wasn’t the effeminate pretty boy of Caravaggio or Titian, and he certainly wasn’t the pudgy baby of Guido Reni’s imagination; he was more the sturdy, well-muscled figure of Poussin’s Midas and Bacchus , except his skin was mottled in madness and his eyes burned with rage. Perhaps on a better day he’d look a little more smooth and androgynous, but he was not feeling the languid sot right now; he was visiting us as the primal avatar of apeshit wrath, arms and neck traced in either veins or vines, I couldn’t tell which.

“I think we got us a chariot race, boys.” I was proud of myself for staying so calm. What I wanted to do was scream, “GO! FUCKING GO, GO, GO!” But the three of us were all supposed to be badasses. Besides our lives, there were serious testosterone points at stake here. None of us could betray a moment’s concern or we’d be mocked mercilessly by the others.