around on two legs.
While the widow was happily occupied admiring impossibly fit men and women grooming her landscape, I retired to the backyard with Gunnar and Granuaile.
“Please have Laksha remove the cloak on this now,” I said to Granuaile as I placed Fragarach in her hands and dispelled the binding that kept it close to me. “And you,” I said to Gunnar, “make sure she doesn’t take off with my sword.”
Granuaile’s eyes bugged. “You think Laksha would do that?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ve been wrong before, and I’m just paranoid, okay?”
The alpha male scowled at me. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to get something out of my house,” I said. “I’ll probably be back in less than ten minutes. If I’m not, send someone to check.”
Magnusson nodded, and I began stripping off my clothes.
“What are you doing?” Granuaile asked uncertainly.
“Same thing you’ll be able to do in about twenty years or so,” I said, pulling my keys out of my pocket and carefully laying them down on top of my jeans.
“You mean get naked? I can do that now. Wow,” she sniggered, “you need to get some sun.”
“Shut up. I’m Irish.” I drew power from the earth through my tattoos and enjoyed Granuaile’s gasp of astonishment as I turned into a great horned owl. I snapped up my key ring in my beak before launching myself into the sky on silent wings.
“Show-off,” Gunnar called after me. He was just jealous. People don’t gasp appreciatively when he changes form in front of them; they scream.
It was less than a minute’s flight, as the owl flies, to my house from the widow’s. The police sitting in the patrol car outside my house looked supremely bored. I spiraled down into my backyard for a landing and took a nice long look around before changing back into human form. My wards were still in place, and no one was watching, so I grew myself some opposable thumbs and entered through my back door. The slip of paper with Radomila’s blood on it was still locked up in my bookcase, precisely where I had left it. I punched a hole through one corner and threaded it onto my key ring, then returned to my backyard. There I bound myself back to an owl, picked up the keys in my beak, and enjoyed the short flight back to the widow’s house.
Granuaile was seated in the lotus position inside a circle she had traced in the dirt, Fragarach laying across her lap, cradled at either end by her hands. She was chanting something in Tamil, so I was fairly certain that Laksha was in charge.
Gunnar Magnusson was still in human form, but his hackles were up, if you know what I mean. He looked mightily relieved to see me.
“How long has she been at it?” I asked in a low voice once I had the use of my vocal cords again. My clothes were still laying where I had left them, but I didn’t feel especially anxious to put them back on yet. Switching forms so quickly left me feeling a bit twitchy and sensitive, and I didn’t want the abrasion or confinement until I absolutely had to have it. The widow rarely came out to her backyard, and I could see no reason why she would with all of that fine beefcake parading before her.
“Only a couple of minutes,” Magnusson grumbled, almost a whisper. “But it feels like an eternity. That witch creeps me out, Atticus. Do you trust her?”
“No, I never trust witches,” I said. “But I do trust her to do this job. It’s an ego trip, or rather a professional pride sort of thing. If she can undo the cloak Radomila set on my sword, she proves she’s better than Radomila.”
“Do you need her to prove that, or is this just for her?”
“It’s for me,” I replied. “Radomila, not Emily, is the witch who’s really holding Hal and Oberon. If we’re going to take on her whole coven, we’re going to need a serious witch of our own who’s at least the equal of Radomila.”
“Is that the entire point of this exercise? Didn’t you want that cloak on there?”
I shook my head. “Not anymore. Yesterday Radomila proved that she still has a connection to this sword that she can use against me; she was able to show Aenghus Og how to bind Detective Fagles in such a way that he could sense the cloak, and thus see my sword, even through my camouflage spell. What if she could do more to the sword through that link? Turn it against me as I wield it, perhaps? I cannot take that risk.”
“No, you can’t,” Magnusson agreed.
“Besides, the entire reason I was cloaking it was to keep it hidden from Aenghus Og and his allies. Since he knows where I am now and Brighid told me she wants me to keep it, there’s no more reason to hide. It’s actually going to help having its magic in the open, Gunnar. Because that means Aenghus Og and the coven will be focused on me and the threat I represent. They won’t be worrying about you and the Pack circling around behind them…”
Magnusson allowed himself a feral grin.
“… but they will know you are most likely coming,” I continued. “They would be stupid not to prepare themselves. So you, in turn, must be prepared. They will have silver, Gunnar. Guaranteed.”
The alpha male’s grin melted into a snarl, and his features began to ripple as his eyes flashed bright yellow.
“Whoa, whoa! Calm yourself. Now is not the time, my friend.” I placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and continued to make reassuring noises until his face stopped running like hot wax and the lights in his eyes faded to their normal brown. I heard some howls and barking in the front yard, though. Not all the Pack members had as much control as Gunnar, and he had almost lost it as the alpha.
“I am sorry,” he gasped, short of breath and sweating. “But we have been provoked past all endurance.”
“I know. But tell the ones who changed in the front to come back here and leave the widow alone.”
“It is done,” he said. Shortly thereafter, three agitated werewolves were circling the two of us but studiously keeping their eyes lowered.
I moved carefully to my clothes and started putting them on, explaining as I did so. “The widow is going to need to see a familiar face at this point,” I said, “because she just watched three of your pack make the change, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That she did,” Magnusson confirmed. “Can she be trusted?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “Two days ago she watched me kill someone, and she offered me her backyard as a place to hide the body.”
“Truly?” Magnusson raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s a fine woman.”
“The very finest.” I grinned as I pulled on my pants and dropped my keys, along with the scrap of paper, into my pocket. “But she’s probably a bit scared right now. When the witch is finished,” I nodded over to Laksha- Granuaile, still chanting away in a trancelike state, “ask her from me to step away from the sword and allow you to take possession by my request. If she refuses, send a wolf to let me know immediately, but do not attack her. Just keep her from leaving.”
“You want me to send a werewolf to bark at you like Lassie?” Magnusson looked outraged.
“Fine, come tell me yourself, then.” I rolled my eyes as I pulled on my shirt. “Hopefully I’ll be back in time to make the point moot.”
I sprinted around the side of the house to the front porch, where the widow was yelling at the remaining werewolves, including Dr. Snorri Jodursson, to get their damn spooky selves off her lawn.
“Mrs. MacDonagh, it’s okay, they’re perfectly safe-”
“Gah! Atticus, yer not one of them, are ye?” The widow raised her arm in front of her throat.
“No,” I assured her. “I’m not.”
“Some of yer friends turned into bloody big dogs right before me eyes!” She took a couple of deep breaths and clutched at the railing for support.
“I know. They won’t hurt you, though.”
“G’wan, now!” she scolded me. “Yer not goin’ ter tell me it’s the drink talkin’?”
“No, what you saw was real. But it’s okay.”
“Why? Are they Irish?”
“They’re Icelandic, for the most part. The younger ones are Americans.”
