“Those two guys are already more annoying than the police,” I said to Hal after I assured Granuaile I’d be right there.
“What two guys?”
I quickly related to him all the details I knew, which were few, and that I needed assistance in gathering intelligence on them. “Do you have a super-sneaky way of siccing a private investigator on these guys so that it can’t be traced back to you? I definitely don’t want any member of the Pack or friend of the Pack to get involved. I’ll pay for the investigator.”
“Absolutely,” he said as he watched me leap onto my bike. “Mind if I drop in to take a look at them in a couple minutes, pretend to be a customer?”
“Um. Well. If you want.”
“You think I shouldn’t?”
“It’s just that I seriously have no idea what these guys are, except strange. I don’t want to put you at risk.”
Hal snorted. “Whatever. I’ll follow along in case you need my giant hairy muscles to throw them out.” He pressed the fob on his keys to make his car alarm chirp.
“All right,” I said, unwilling to argue about it. I sent a mental farewell to Oberon as I pedaled away, pumping my legs as fast as they could go. I’d be there in less than five minutes-plenty of time for me to think about what I was heading into.
For the same two men to return twice in the same day looking for me at my place of business told me that they didn’t know where I lived, and that was perplexing considering how much else they seemed to know about my whereabouts. And the urgency with which they wanted to see me indicated that they’d completely exploded my dumb-college-boy facade. The rabbi had already seemed to know it when they left the first time, but somehow between then and now they must have obtained proof of my magical mojo, which meant they probably realized how rare those books in my bookcase truly were. Whatever they wanted, I was already feeling like I wanted the opposite.
It was three in the afternoon, that dead time of day, and no one was in the store besides Granuaile, Rebecca, Father Gregory, and Rabbi Yosef. It was Perry’s day off.
“Mr. O’Sullivan, we have been waiting-” Father Gregory began, but I let him talk to the hand as I addressed my employees.
“Both of you scoot for the rest of the day-on full pay, of course. And, Granuaile, don’t forget to stop by Target before you go home. Sporting goods, you know,” I said as a reminder. We needed to follow through on the alibi right away, since Geffert was pursuing it.
“Got it, sensei.” Granuaile winked at me, and she quickly gathered her things and jangled out the door, a worried-looking Rebecca close on her heels.
“What do you want?” I asked the rabbi when the door had closed. He was clearly the boss and the badass of the two; the priest was a Public Relations man.
“We want to examine your rare books,” he said in his clipped Russian accent.
I shook my head. “They’re not for sale.”
“For research purposes,” Father Gregory interjected.
“What kind of research?”
“Magic and the occult.”
“I’d suggest a library for that kind of thing.”
The rabbi was about to respond when his eyes shifted to the door. Hal walked in, and the rabbi’s eyes bulged and his face twisted into a snarl. It seemed something malodorous was about to hit the fan, and I’d already had enough of that. I quickly confirmed that the rabbi was wearing natural fibers and crafted a binding between his jacket sleeves and his sides, so that his arms would be frozen in place. The rabbi was fast, though: As I was speaking the binding, he whipped a silver throwing knife out of his jacket and shouted, “Die, wolf!” in Russian. The binding took effect as he reared back his arm to throw, and the result was that he abruptly sank the knife into the carpet by his foot and Hal didn’t die.
Lots of snarling and spitting ensued, but I wasn’t finished. I needed to talk to these guys without weapons being thrown, so I bound the priest in the same way I did the rabbi. After that I doubled down and went to work on their legs, as they shrilly demanded that I desist. I bound the fabric of their pants from their knees to the tight weave of my store’s carpet, which had the effect of dragging them abruptly to a kneeling position somewhat painfully. They let me hear all about it.
Hal was understandably upset that a complete stranger had been ready to kill him on sight, but I really didn’t want him to get more involved. Gunnar was already steamed at me, and if I got Hal killed, he’d probably eat me like a Lunchable. I stepped between Hal and the two shouting, kneeling men and held up my hands. “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re closed for the rest of the day. If you’d just come back tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll be able to help you then.” If I could make the men believe I didn’t know Hal or what he was, so much the better. I nodded at Hal and tried to reassure him with my eyes that I had this. He nodded reluctantly back at me, his eyes a bit yellow, and left the shop without a word. No doubt there would be a quick investigation into these men now.
As Father Gregory and Rabbi Yosef loudly insisted that I release them or face dire consequences, I turned to them and said, “You know, I think you guys might be the worst customers ever. Not only do you badger my employees and force me to interrupt an incredibly relaxing day to come deal with you, but you try to murder another customer when he walks through the door and then complain when I prevent you from committing a capital crime. Come on, Padre,” I said to Father Gregory. “What would Jesus do?”
Quivering impotently and with flecks of spittle forming on his lips, he bellowed, “He’d rain fire down upon you for consorting with minions of hell!”
“Whoa, slow down, there, Father. I think you’ve made several giant leaps of logic and faith and I’m not following. First, I don’t know any minions of hell. Second, I don’t consort with anyone, because I’m not fond of that word. And, third, have you ever actually talked to Jesus? Because I have, and he’s not really a rain-fire-down- upon-bookstores kind of guy, just so you know. Now, who are you guys, really?”
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” the rabbi seethed.
“Well, yeah, hence the nature of my query.” His beard seemed to be unusually active for a collection of facial hair. When a fully bearded man is talking, you expect a certain amount of twitching about the edges as his jaw moves around. But when the rabbi stopped talking, his personal topiary kept moving. “Hey, do you have some roaches living in your beard, or what?” The movement stopped as soon as I mentioned it. I turned on my faerie specs and it looked like a normal beard. The silver knife, though, thrust into the carpet, drew my attention. It was glowing with some extra juju but, oddly enough, only on the hilt, not the blade itself.
“Nice knife you got there, Rabbi,” I said, squatting down to examine the juju a bit more closely. The red pattern it made connected ten dots in a familiar sequence, then repeated as it wrapped around the hilt. It was the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
“You may have it if you let us go,” the voice said from the vicinity of the beard.
“Wow, no shit?” I said. The rabbi didn’t strike me as the negotiating type, so he must have hoped I’d just pick it up and say it was mine. The spell on the handle must do something nasty if anyone but the rabbi touched it.
“Yes, think of it as a gift.”
“My mom told me to beware of hairy men bearing gifts.”
Father Gregory said at his stuffy English best, “It’s supposed to be Greeks bearing gifts.”
I paused to regard him coolly. He was an odd fellow, considering he was clearly a British native and at least partially successful in the Catholic hierarchy yet also fluent in Russian and playing second violin to a Jewish guy who treated him like a trained show dog. Perhaps because of that, he demonstrated a desperate need to be right. Or righteous. Or both.
“My mom didn’t know the Greeks existed,” I told him. “She was worried about cattle raiders coming out of what is now County Tipperary.”
“Cattle raiders? But that was before St. Patrick’s time. How old are you?”
“Don’t you know already? You pretend to know everything else about me,” I replied. “Shut up for a second while I check this out.”
I wondered if the magical wards in my shop could snuff this Kabbalistic enchantment without much fuss. I’d never had the opportunity to test them against this kind of magic before, because they were designed to protect the
