by Kevin Hearne
We waltzed through customs in Philadelphia and met Eli Robicheaux outside of baggage claim, since it was a good rendezvous point. We took off our hats as we exited so that he’d be able to see us. He was dressed sharply now in a grey pinstripe suit and entirely unnecessary sunglasses, and a toothpick lolled in one corner of his mouth. His eyebrows rose above the glasses in disbelief as he took in Buck.
“Really? You contracted a hobgoblin?”
[Hi, Eli. Yes, I did.]
“Aren’t they…?”
“Wot? Small and pink?” Buck supplied.
“More trouble than they’re worth?” Eli finished.
“Oi, I’m worth a bloody lot.”
“I hope so. I imagine you’re hungry for some real food?”
We were. Eli led us to the parking garage and loaded our carry-ons into his car, a nondescript sedan, and drove us to a Mexican restaurant called El Vez. Such establishments were scarce in Scotland and Eli knew it, so he was making an effort to give us a rare experience.
“Can’t walk away hungry from a place like this. The chips and salsa will take care of you before you even get to the main course.”
The interior of El Vez immediately delighted Buck.
“Wow, what is that thing on top of that thing?” he asked, pointing toward the bar. “Whatever it is, can I have one?”
The bar was circular, and rising from the ranks of tequila bottles and other liquors in the center of it, a pedestal at head height displayed a magnificent bicycle designed like a low-rider chopper, the frame a hot pink with a golden banana boat seat and gold handlebars and wheels. There was even a tube of white neon in the center of the frame to really make it pop.
[Maybe,] I said. A hobgoblin on a bicycle might be amusing.
We were led to a booth against the wall opposite the door, and said wall supported hundreds of small dioramas filled with Día de los Muertos scenes. Tiny figures of skeletons dressed in clothing, all of them singing or dancing, holding instruments or flowers or any number of things. All were exquisitely painted in great detail.
“I don’t understand what I’m looking at here,” Buck said. He was standing in the booth as we sat, because if he sat down, he’d probably disappear underneath the top of the table. “How did these tiny humans die?”
“They’re not real,” Eli explained. “That’s art. It has to do with honoring one’s ancestors in Mexican culture.”
[You did a contract with them, didn’t you?] I asked Eli.
“You mean Santa Muerte and the government of Mexico? Yeah, I renewed that recently.” Eli’s territory was all of North America except for the southern states; Diego took care of the South plus the Caribbean nations, Central and South America.
El Vez offered many different guacamoles, so we ordered three to start plus some chips and salsa and a round of margaritas.
“What am I lookin’ at now?” Buck said, eyeing everything uncertainly since the cuisine was entirely foreign to him. “Is that green stuff smashed peas?”
“Smashed avocados. It’s called guacamole. Take a chip and scoop up some and eat it.” Eli demonstrated. Buck watched us carefully, wary of a trick, then he tried it and his eyes lit up.
“Hey, it’s no bad.”
“Right?” Eli said.
“Wot’s the red shite there with bits in it? Chunky pasta sauce?”
“No, that’s salsa. Tomato-based, but with peppers, onions, and cilantro, usually, instead of basil, garlic, and oregano.”
“Sounds boring.”
“It’s not. Try some on a chip.”
[Just a bit, now,] I typed, because he probably wasn’t used to jalapeños, but I was too late. He had loaded up a chip with salsa and crammed it into his mouth as I hit PLAYBACK.
After the first couple of crunches, when the flavor hit his tongue, Buck looked pleased. But then horror suffused his features as the capsaicin in the peppers took effect and began to burn the tissues of his mouth and throat. I’d tried to warn him, because he’d probably never had anything with a little bit of spice to it, and moderation would have been wise.
He coughed and grasped for his water glass, his wee hands shaking, and some of it spilled and leaked down his chin and neck as he tried to put out the fire in his mouth.
“Gods below!” he gasped, slamming down the water, then fell back into the booth, his eyes rolling up. “Aww, yess. Aye. That’s. That’s the. Stuff.”
“Holy shit, what is happening right now?” Eli said. Buck’s skin had turned red instead of pink and he was sweating and trembling a bit, but now he had a faint smile on his face as he kept mumbling affirmations.
“This is beautiful. You’re beautiful. I’m beautiful. I mean, pure beauty, right? Full of it.”
[I think he might be high on salsa,] I said.
“Oh, aye,” Buck said. “I like Mexican food. One bite is perfect.”
Eli pointed to him and said, “That shit right there is not fair.”
“Hey, MacBharrais, can we get salsa in Scotland?”
I nodded, and he started giggling.
“That’s pure magic, mate. And all these dancing lights in the air. Where’d they come from? How’d ye do that?”
There were no dancing lights in the air. Eli shook his head. “Enjoy the ride, man. Al and I have business to discuss.”
[We do. What have ye found?]
“Well, I walked into the CIA with a mask and a stack of authority sigils, making folks use their swipe cards and such, until I found someone who could tell me who Simon Hatcher was. And lemme tell you, it is some nerve-racking but giddy shit to walk into Langley and get what you want. I should have found out who killed Kennedy while I was there. Anyway: Simon Hatcher runs counterintelligence ops in the European theater, mostly against Russia. He’s in charge of several code-named ops and has access to a budget. Meets your criteria, so he’s probably your guy.”
[Do you know what the ops are for?]
“No, I didn’t have enough sigils to get details on everything. But I wrote down the names of the ops. They’re about as balanced as a seesaw with an anvil on one end.”
[What were they?]
“Shit like Summer Shoelace and Delinquent Maraschino. They have these random generators make those up, you know? Wildest one was Obstreperous Roquefort.”
[Roquefort? Like the cheese?]
“Man, never mind the cheese. Somebody in the government typed obstreperous into a name generator. I had to look that shit up. Do you know what it means without looking it up?”
[Roquefort is a French word. A French cheese.]
“So?”
[Bastille is a French name. A place, actually.]
“Yeah, I knew that. Storming the Bastille started the French Revolution. Doesn’t matter, man. I told you, those op names are randomly generated.”
[But Simon Hatcher did not choose the name Bastille randomly. My point is that Obstinate Roquefort is probably a meaningful op to him.]
“It’s Obstreperous. You don’t know what it means either. Good.”
[I know what it means. I tried to type it, but autocorrect is a bastard.]
Someone screamed in the booth behind my head, and I whipped around to see what the matter was. A woman was simultaneously trying to escape the booth and flail at something on her table, possibly trying to kill it. I was thinking it was an insect or a spider until she withdrew, and I looked at the table and saw three tiny Día de los Muertos figures sprawled among the plates and overturned glasses.
“They were moving!” she told me, apparently deciding that I needed an explanation. “They jumped off the wall onto the table! I swear!”
A low roll of giggles and snickers behind me told me exactly what had happened: a brief enchantment of animation from a mischievous hobgoblin. I nodded once to the lady, affirming her story but saying nothing
, and turned back to my table. Buck Foi was lying prone in the back of the booth, holding his belly as laughter shook him and tears streamed from his eyes.
[That wasn’t very nice,] I told him.
“Wot? Aw, come on. No harm done.”
[She’s going to have nightmares and probably require therapy.]
“She already has nightmares, and if there’s anyone on the planet who doesn’t require therapy at this point, I’d like tae know their secret. Yer bringin’ me down, ol’ man. I need another hit of salsa.”
Buck clambered unsteadily to his feet and reached for the salsa bowl, but I knocked his hand away, shaking my head. The hobgoblin wasn’t going to accept that, so he leapt onto the table, past my reach, and snatched up the bowl, tossing some of it down his throat.
“Auggh! Gods! Gah! Kack! Ugh! Oh. Aw. Yeahhh.” He toppled backward off the table and crashed onto the floor, nearly senseless. We asked for our bill and I had to half-drag Buck out of there, since he couldn’t keep his feet. Eli just kept apologizing to the bewildered staff of El Vez and left a huge tip. It was a shame we had to leave early; the food and drink were really good.
“Remember what I said about hobgoblins being more trouble than they’re worth?” Eli said.
I nodded at him outside, ruefully. Buck had embarrassed me again.
“You’ve got a home address for Hatcher in Reston, right?” At my nod he continued, “We can catch a train down to D.C.—ride’s about two hours—then get a rental car and be at his place an hour later.”
[A late-night visit, then? Or more likely in the wee hours of the morning?]
“Yeah. He should be home, right? Easier to talk to him there than trying to talk to him at work.”
[Let’s go. I mean, after my hob sobers up.]
“We need to prepare some sigils anyway, I’m thinking.”
Eli took us to his place in the East Falls neighborhood. He had a flat—sorry, they call them apartments in the States—in Dobson Mills.
It was a lovely place, furnished in a hybrid style, like so many American things, that blended modern elements with Tuscan finishes on the moldings and edges.
I’d hoped to meet Eli’s apprentice, Leonard Fort, but he was attending classes at college and wouldn’t be around until the next day at the earliest.
I met Eli’s family instead. His wife, Patrice, was a personal trainer and greeted me in gym clothes with her curly hair tied up with a scrunchy. Their two children, Camille and Pierre, waved shyly, then stared at Buck, wondering what they were looking at. They were sitting down to dinner as we entered and asked if we wanted to join.
“Welcome, Al. Did you eat already?”
[Yes, thanks. Please don’t trouble yourself.]
“We’re going to go back to my study and work on a few things,” Eli said. “We have a late night ahead.”
“You do?” Patrice’s brow furrowed in concern.
“Yes. I’ll explain later. But this is Buck. He’s a little out of it at the moment. Don’t touch him or make a lot of noise, okay, kids?”
Buck chose that moment to fart squeakily, and Camille and Pierre nodded, their expressions suggesting that they had no intention of going anywhere near Buck.
We deposited my stoned hobgoblin on the sofa and he instantly passed out, drooling on the cushions. Eli’s pet, a curious English bulldog named Dumptruck, hauled himself up to the couch, sniffed Buck, and began to hump his leg. Eli and I started to object but then exchanged a glance, got out our phones, and snapped a couple of photos for later use.
“You’re just gonna stand there and let him do that?” Patrice said to Eli. “Dumptruck! Stop!”
“We’ve gotta teach that hobgoblin about karma, and he won’t learn if we don’t record this,” Eli said. “You shoulda seen what he did at the restaurant. Near scared this poor woman to death. Made a mess for the employees.” His voice got all low and furry, the way it does when people talk to dogs. “You’s a good boy, Dumptruck! Yes, you’s a good boy!”
Camille and Pierre giggled, and Patrice sighed.
“G’wan outta here. Go on, you two. That’s a terrible example to set.”
We chuckled and went down the hall to Eli’s ink room. It was similar to mine in the sense that there were lots of jars and cubbyholes and shelves, but it had a different aesthetic, almost more of a showroom than a work space. Eli had painted the walls a pale yellow and used a dark wood for the shelving so that the ingredients and inkpots were displayed almost like curios.
[Do you have the ink all ready for a Sigil of Reckoning Truth?]
“No, but I have the ingredients to make it. Certain Authority works just fine for most things.”
[This isn’t most things, unfortunately.]
“You got that right.”
Eli pointed out an extra stool for me while he pulled down the ingredients for the Ink of Veracity, which included dust from the wings of the Madagascan moon moth.
[When did you get the moth dust?]
“Traded Shu-hua for it. She wanted dust from the cecropia moth, and I took a trip out to the Rockies to get some. Went camping with Patrice and the kids. It was nice.”
While he got to work on that, he told me where to buy train tickets online, and I got us three seats for the train departing at ten P.M. I hoped Buck would be capable of functioning by then. There was no extant research on how long it took a hobgoblin to shrug off a salsa high.
When Eli pronounced the ink was ready, he drew up five Sigils of Reckoning Truth—far more than we would need. Two were for his later use and two for mine, which was kind of him.
[Do you know if Hatcher has any family?] I asked him. [What are we walking into?]
“I was gonna ask you the same. I have no clue. I just looked into him at work.”
I looked up the address Codpiece had given me on a map app and switched to satellite view. Hatcher’s house looked from above like a fairly posh spread for a government employee.
[Looks like new construction. Big lot. He’s got a pool with a waterfall and spa.]
“So either he has a spouse raking it in, or he’s inherited a load of cash, or…yeah. Maybe he’s recently come into a windfall.”
[And we already know he’s used to dealing with numbered accounts, because he’s Bastille. He might be legitimately well-off from something. Or he might be using laundered money to live large.]
“We should go in there prepared for trouble. If somebody in Tír na nÓg is helping him, then he might have some Fae protections around his place.”
[Druidic wards?]
Eli nodded. “I’m not saying it’s super likely. But we should be ready for it.”
[Do you have your monocle? I didn’t bring mine.]
Brighid gave every sigil agent a monocle that let them see a good portion of the magical spectrum. Incredibly useful but easy to lose or break, so we didn’t travel with them.
“Yeah. I hate pulling that thing out, because I look damn stupid wearing it, but it’ll be dark. Probably looks great on you, though. I bet nobody would look twice. You’d be just another Monopoly guy. Maybe I’ll let you use mine.”
We dragged Buck off the couch at nine-thirty and splashed some water in his face to wake him up, after a bit of shouting and shaking failed to do the trick. He blinked a lot and cursed and looked bleary but otherwise seemed all right.
[Do you have a headache?]
“I’ve got you, have I no?” he said.
We bundled him up to protect him from iron and headed to the train station. Buck was largely silent, trying to recuperate from his lethargy, and after a few minutes I snapped open a Sigil of Hale Revival for him and he felt much better.
“Why did ye no do that earlier?” he complained.
[I don’t want this to become a habit. There need to be consequences.]
“I suffered e
nough! I had the weirdest dream. There was a bulldog or sumhin havin’ a go at ma leg.”
Eli chuckled. “That wasn’t a dream.” He pulled up a photo on his phone and showed it to Buck. “I think I’m gonna make that my new wallpaper.”
“Aw, ye’re a gobshite, both of ye!” he said. Eli just laughed while I composed a response.
[What’s shite is using your magic in a way that humans notice. Stealing whisky and sausage leaves no trace of magic, and that sort of thing is allowed all day. What you did in the restaurant, however, broke the rules.]
He lowered his head. “Aye. I hear ye. I don’t think I should take any more salsa trips in public.”
We agreed on that, and then we filled him in on what we were about to do. Once we arrived in D.C., the cab driver at the station looked at us uncertainly but consented to taking us to Reston and waiting for us once Eli flashed a Benjamin at him.
Hatcher’s residence was indeed far above his CIA pay grade. In the wan illumination of the streetlights, we could see that there was an awful lot of stone and groomed landscaping that I was fairly certain Hatcher wasn’t maintaining himself. This sort of purchase should have raised flags somewhere, unless he’d carefully disguised what was going on. Or maybe such flags didn’t get raised anymore in the general corruption of the United States—I wasn’t up to date on their political bollocks except that it was a miserable cock-up on all three shifts, much like the UK except in the details.
Eli gave me his monocle and I scanned the grounds in the magical spectrum. There were wards on the walk leading up to the front door, confirming that Hatcher was getting help from someone in Tír na nÓg. We’d alarm him if we attempted to enter that way. Doubtless he’d have wards on the back entrance as well, which we’d be able to handle like the ones in front, but at least there we wouldn’t have to break and enter in full view of the cab driver and the neighbors. Some plausible deniability would be good.
There was a sigil to handle basic wards and dissolve them, which Eli employed in the backyard. The sigil did nothing, however, to dispel or dissuade the troll guarding the premises.