“Sure. Besides, you don’t like witches, right?”
‹Well, no. But neither do you. Except now you’re ready to trot over to Malina’s gingerbread house because she said so-and right after someone tried to off you, I might add. Have you thought that maybe you’re making her day here? Do you feel lucky?›
“I guess I know which kind of Eastwood movie you’d like to watch.” I got Oberon set up in the living room with a Dirty Harry flick and then took off on my bike, sword strapped to my back in plain sight, heading for Malina’s condo near Town Lake.
Ever since I’d started to carry Fragarach around regularly-just in the last few weeks-I had noticed an interesting phenomenon: Hardly anyone thought it was real. Most people took a look at the guy on a bike with a sword and assumed I was still living with my mom and harboring an unhealthy obsession for anime. Or they supposed the sword was a prop for a role-playing game or some other fantasy, because the idea of carrying a sword for personal defense in an age of firearms caused them too much cognitive dissonance. While I paused at the stoplight on Mill and University, one citizen even inquired if I was on my way to the comics shop.
Malina lived in the Bridgeview condos, a twelve-story tower of glass and steel built just after the turn of the century in Tempe’s rush to develop the Town Lake district. She and the rest of her coven owned the entire ninth floor-though now there were six vacancies. Granuaile, my apprentice, lived on the eighth floor, directly underneath the condo of Radomila, the coven’s erstwhile leader. I thought it would be wise to check on her before knocking on Malina’s door, so I rang her bell.
“Who is it?” her voice called through the door. “Oh, it’s just you.”
She answered the door in something scanty, and I experienced a moment of panic as prurient thoughts pushed aside the innocent inquiry I’d been planning to make about her safety. Granuaile was not plain; she was a tall, lithe redhead with green eyes, a mouth that looked delicious, and an extremely sharp mind. The latter was most important, for otherwise she would not be my apprentice. It was difficult to dwell on her mind, however, when so much of her athletic build was on display-more than I had seen to date, in fact. She usually dressed very modestly and I appreciated it, because it kept my thoughts of her (mostly) innocent. But now that she was dressed in a low-cut pale-green nightie, all slinky and clinging to her shape-
Baseball! Must think of baseball. Not the curve of her… curveball! Randy Johnson has a wicked slider too. Oh, how I would love to slide-
“Atticus? What’s wrong?”
“Huh? Oh. Um. Hi.” I’d been reduced to monosyllables by a nightie.
“Why are you looking up? Is there something above my door?” She took a step closer to me and leaned over to see what I was looking at and, oh, my-
“There’s some tit, uh, titillating wallpaper up there! Yes! Fantastic interior decorating here, I just noticed.”
“You’ve seen it before. What’s going on?”
Just the facts, Atticus. “Someone attacked me tonight and I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said, trying to remember who held the record for stealing second base.
“Oh, well, yes, I’m fine. Who attacked you?”
“Still trying to find out. It was a magical attack, not a physical one. Actually, there was a physical one too, but that was a demon, and an elemental killed it for me so that’s all right, the ghouls are on their way, but I’m not sure my neighbor’s ever going to be the same, though you don’t have to worry about Oberon, he’s fine.” Sweet honey of Dagda, now I was babbling.
“What?” Granuaile said.
“Look, there’s no time to discuss it; just lock yourself inside and close all your windows. I’m going to put a ward on your door to keep you safe tonight while I go deal with this.”
“You think someone’s going to attack me?”
“No, no, it’s a precaution only. Now get inside and close the door-shoo. But open up the shop for me tomorrow; I won’t be in ’til after lunch.”
“All right,” she said uncertainly. She turned, and I looked at the ceiling so that my peripheral vision would not drag my focus downward. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Sleep well,” I said as the door closed, shutting that body away from my eyes, and I sighed in relief. “Damn, I need a cigarette after that. And I don’t even smoke.”
Druid’s Log, November 1: Buy attractive apprentice some shapeless, ugly clothes as soon as possible; maybe convince her to shave her head as well. Tell her all the cool Druid initiates are doing it.
I didn’t need to put a ward on Granuaile’s door, since I had placed one there a week ago without telling her, right after she returned from North Carolina and confirmed she still wanted to be an initiate.
After taking a couple of deep breaths to regain my composure and focus on my purpose, I used the stairwell to head up to the witches’ floor. I had no illusions that I would catch them unawares; they probably knew the moment I’d entered the building, much less ascended the stairs to their floor. I took a moment to mutter a binding on all my hair and skin, to make sure none of it escaped to fall into the hands of a witch. I had to be careful with my magic usage here; nine floors up from the earth, I had a limited supply of energy upon which to draw, just what was stored in my bear charm. I can’t really sling magic around the way witches can, in any case. In a situation like this, my sword would serve me better. Fragarach (the Answerer in Irish) wasn’t simply a sharpened piece of steel: The Tuatha De Danann had given it a couple of bonus utilities when they forged it ages ago, and I intended to employ one of them now.
I drew it from its scabbard, thereby breaking a state law or two about deadly weapons, and opened the door to the ninth floor. The hallway was clear and uncomfortably silent, the lights dimmer somehow, and the air close and quiet like the dark, stuffy space underneath a blanket. On the other floors, where trust-fund college kids and young professionals lived, you could hear muted music and laughing and The Daily Show’s mockery through the doors. The witches were having none of that.
“It’s Atticus,” I called as I rapped my knuckles on Malina’s door. The percussive sound seemed to offend the hallway’s sense of decorum, and the quiet chastised me as it dropped into my ears like cotton balls. I stood presenting my left side to the fish-eye peephole, so that my sword arm was hidden from view.
While I waited for her to answer, I thought of how stupid I was being right then. Oberon’s words rang in my ears, along with the shrill voice of paranoia in my head. Meeting the witches on their own turf without a nonaggression treaty and without support of any kind was really asking for it. I still didn’t know quite what they were capable of; if Malina was to be believed, they had held this territory against all comers for nearly thirty years. The threshold could be booby-trapped or enchanted. I could be walking into a cage fight with a demon. Hell, she could open the door with a Glock 9 in her hand and put a bullet in my ear, or throw a cat at me, or call me a damn hippie.
She did none of those things. I heard the locks tumbling open-regular, everyday locks-and then she stood before me with red-rimmed, puffy eyes and said, “Waclawa’s dead.”
It took me a moment to process that she’d said someone’s name. I know forty-two languages-many of them extinct now-but Polish isn’t one of them, and in general I’m not that great with the Slavic tongues. Waclawa, I recalled, was one of the names on the list of Malina’s coven members.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “How did she die?”
“The police will probably call it spontaneous combustion,” she ground out bitterly, “but there was nothing spontaneous about it.” Malina wore a diaphanous purple tunic over a white camisole. She had on a black skirt that fell to her knees and hugged her hips; her legs were sheathed in black tights, and she wore pointy high-heeled ankle boots of jet suede. Her lips were painted a soft pink, and now they were pressed together in regret. I marveled again at her hair-gentle waves of blond silk that one simply never sees except on silver screens, framing her face and spilling down past her collarbone. Normally her skin was white and smooth as marble, inviting caress, but now it was flushed and blotchy because she was upset. She opened the door farther and gestured. “Come on in.”
I didn’t move. “Forgive me, but I need two questions answered first.” I moved my sword into view but did not raise it or threaten her with it. “Will you answer?”
Malina’s eyes flicked down. “If I answer incorrectly, then I get the sword?”
“No, the sword makes sure you answer correctly. It’s kind of special that way.”
Malina narrowed her eyes. “What sort of questions?”
“Nothing about your coven’s secrets, nothing personal. They regard my immediate safety only.”
