by Kevin Hearne
I opened the door for Oberon and let him walk in. Watch out for people. Table’s to the right, next to the window.
Granuaile startled a bit when she felt Oberon brushing past her legs to wrap himself around the center of the table but otherwise gave no sign that she had a huge Irish wolfhound lying on her toes. I carefully sat down, tucked my legs underneath the chair, and then scooched forward.
We ordered coffee, eggs, and a whole lot of meat sides. While we waited for our food, I returned to the paper and read aloud the article about my death.
TUBA CITY — Authorities are flummoxed by a strange murder scene in a small patch of desert in Tuba City, where the remnants of a man were found on Thursday.
The body of Atticus O’Sullivan, age 31—
“Thirty-one?” Granuaile interrupted.
“Well, that has to be based on the driver’s license they found. I was twenty-one, according to the license, when it was feloniously issued to me.”
“Ah, okay,” Granuaile said, nodding in understanding. “Continue.”
The body of Atticus O’Sullivan, age 31, was found mutilated and dismembered near a water tower. Examination of the area suggests that eight to ten different people were at the scene and possibly involved in the killing — one of them barefoot.
Friends identified the body based on hair and tattoos.
“Huh.” I paused and looked up from the paper. “I wonder who identified me.”
“It doesn’t say?”
“No. It goes on, though. Check this out.”
The FBI has jurisdiction over murders committed on reservation land. Though agents could not be reached for comment, authorities in Tempe noted O’Sullivan’s recent troubles with the law.
Detective Kyle Geffert of the Tempe Police Department said, “Mr. O’Sullivan was shot by Tempe police a couple of months ago and was on the scene at the Satyrn Massacre in Scottsdale. Also, one of his employees died rather suddenly last November.”
“Gods Below, can you believe that guy? He makes it sound like I killed Perry and deserved to be shot.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly endear yourself to him during that investigation,” Granuaile pointed out.
“I know, but there’s no call to go around smearing me now that I’m dead,” I said.
“You might want to keep your voice down,” Granuaile said in low tones, her eyes darting significantly to the tables nearby.
“Good point.” Seeking validation for my own point that Geffert was out of line, I said in a hushed whisper, “Oberon, don’t you have anything to add?”
“We haven’t even gotten the first orders yet.”
“What else does it say?” Granuaile said over the rim of her coffee mug. The sun streaming through the window left golden highlights in her red hair and lit up her green eyes. The light dusting of freckles high on her cheeks was unspeakably charming and …
“Atticus?”
“Hmm?”
“The article.”
“Oh, yes.” I raised the paper to hide my embarrassment.
Shh. I have to read this.
O’Sullivan was the owner of Third Eye Books and Herbs in Tempe. The current manager, Rebecca Dane, was shocked to hear that her employer had passed.
“The last time I saw him, he said he was going on vacation to the Antipodes,” she said. “I have no idea why he’d be in Tuba City.”
Regular customer Joshua Goldfried noticed a change in Mr. O’Sullivan’s behavior in the past few months. “Ever since the middle of October, it always seemed he was nervous about one thing or another. He was always so good about being here, but he started to disappear for days at a time.”
Mr. O’Sullivan was shot by a Tempe police detective in late October in his store and subsequently sued the city for $5 million. Hal Hauk, attorney for Mr. O’Sullivan, confirmed that the City of Tempe had just agreed to settle Mr. O’Sullivan’s lawsuit against them for a seven-figure sum.
“Whoa. Does that mean you’re rich?”
“I’m already rich. But, regardless, I instructed Hal to give my share of the settlement to the family of Detective Fagles. Wait, it gets good here.”
Mr. O’Sullivan’s murder was among the bloodiest and most brutal of any in Arizona history. While the murder itself may have been committed by a single person, the dismemberment and mutilation of his body afterward was undoubtedly performed by a group of people wielding different bladed and blunt weapons.
Mr. O’Sullivan was seen wearing a sword in Tempe by multiple witnesses before his death. Authorities from Tempe and Tuba City refused to speculate on a motive for the killing and denied that there was anything like a sword-based Fight Club organization.
Granuaile laughed at that.
Our food arrived as we shared a chuckle over the article. As plate after plate was set down, I kept scanning the newspaper.
“Anything else?”
“Nah, it just continues to imply that I must have done something naughty to deserve this. What’s really interesting is that it doesn’t mention the bodies of Týr or Vidar. Or any evidence of the Morrigan’s orgy.”
“I beg your pardon?” Granuaile’s fork froze halfway to her mouth, and those green eyes, though still lit by the sun, carried a cool steel warning in them. I took heed.
“As I was leaving,” I explained, “the Morrigan mentioned her desire for an orgy in the mud. I don’t know if she actually had one or not, but she certainly seemed intent on it.”
“An orgy with whom?”
“She was hoping to attract the locals,” I said, leaving out the part where she originally hoped to attract me. “But now I’m wondering if she went through with it. She probably ate Týr and Vidar instead. She does that, you know, when she’s in crow form. She eats dead bodies.”
Granuaile blanched. “Ew. Gross.” She looked down at all the sausage and bacon sides waiting on the table. “Kind of puts me off my appetite a bit.”
Ah, right you are. Sorry, Oberon.
I camouflaged a plate of meat and then pretended I was picking something up off the floor when I was really putting something down for Oberon. He’d find it by smell, no problem.
“How could she put away two fully grown men, though?” Granuaile asked, in spite of herself.
I shrugged. “I never stick around to watch, and I never asked. It’s a mystery.”
After breakfast, it was errand time. We each rented a post-office box and then spent a tedious hour setting up bank accounts under our new identities, using what remaining cash we had. Armed with addresses and bank accounts, we each got new cell phones. Then I put in a call to the offices of Magnusson and Hauk, my attorneys. To get past the receptionist and actually talk to Hal, I had to identify myself as a “close friend of Atticus O’Sullivan” and stress that I was a new client who wished to put Mr. Hauk on retainer.
“This is Hal Hauk,” he said, his voice distant and bored.
“Mr. Hauk. My name is Reilly Collins.” Hal knew very well who I was. He was the one who’d given me my new driver’s license, birth certificate, and Social Security number. He knew I’d be calling at some point to set up a “new” relationship once I got settled. This entire charade was for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. “I’d like to put you on retainer and meet with you for a consultation, if that’s possible.”
“Where are you, Mr. Collins?”
“Kayenta. I’d like
to see you today.”
“Impossible for me, unfortunately. However, I can send an associate to see you this afternoon with all the necessary paperwork to get started.”
“Can we see this associate here well before sundown?”
“Hmm. It’s something of a drive, so we could probably make mid-afternoon if we hurry.”
“Please hurry, then, Mr. Hauk. I have an important engagement at sundown.”
“All right. I’ll send Greta.” Greta was a member of Hal’s pack who seemed to get stuck with all of Hal’s odd jobs. She wasn’t a lawyer, but she was utterly trustworthy and utterly unimpressed with me. “Where shall she meet you?”
“The sub place on the main highway. We’ll buy her a sandwich with extra meat and everything.”
“That’s extremely kind of you,” Hal said drily. “She will be thrilled.”
We made good-bye noises, I gave him my new number to pass on to Greta, and I snapped the phone closed with satisfaction. “That’s good. Once we give him power of attorney, he can start moving funds from my other accounts.”
“How many accounts do you have?”
“Hundreds, scattered around the world under various names. I got into the practice thanks to Aenghus Óg. The constant need to flee meant that I needed safe places to run, which often meant cities, and surviving there meant I needed funds. Hal knows about twenty of them.”
“Do you really need so many now that Aenghus Óg is dead?”
“Eh. They’re not doing me any harm. They’re just sitting there earning interest. Might need them down the road.”
Granuaile conceded the wisdom of this. “What are we doing next, sensei?”
“We have most of the day to wait until Greta can get here. Let’s do some training for you and some play for Oberon.”
We drove to a small undeveloped area in the township boundaries that supported a few rabbits and some extremely skittish ground squirrels. Oberon had a blast terrorizing them while I walked Granuaile through some martial arts forms that required a straight back and neck.
Kayenta was a dry place and a simple one. Austere, even. But I could see myself being happy there, if only the world would let me.
Chapter 13
There was a span of years in the 1980s during which I marveled at the almost supernatural powers of Steve Perry. While he sang for Journey, he made people believe in themselves, weep over long distance relationships, and inquire at transit stations about midnight trains. Together with his bandmates, he fully explored the hidden depths and nuances of the word whoa—teasing out shades of meaning and connotations that I would have been hard pressed to discover, even with two thousand years of attention to the problem — and I’m willing to bet that the pathos with which he imbued the syllable na shall never be equalled in the history of the human race.
He was a god of rock. He nearly solved all the world’s problems with nothing but power chords and anguished cries into a microphone.
But his power to uplift the spirit did have a limit — a limit shared, I might add, by every other band — and that was the inability to ameliorate the soul-destroying visual discord of corporate fast-food franchises. Some acquaintance or another would periodically drag me into one of the horrors, and, under the malign influence of a décor scheme that assaulted my retinas with primary colors, Steve would be singing “woe” instead of “whoa” on my Walkman. His sound could not tame the visual fury of paper-wrapped cheeseburgers dressed in angry red ketchup and a lonesome pickle chip.
I should have remembered that before I suggested the sub joint on the highway as a good place for Greta to meet us. It was decorated in lurid yellow and a shade of green that I felt was unnecessarily belligerent.
“Ugh. This place hurts my eyes,” Granuaile said. “It’s offensive.”
A camouflaged Oberon chimed in.
What’ll you have?
Nope, sorry. Sandwich with double meat.
We had no sooner sat down with our sandwiches in a screaming-yellow booth than Greta entered and squinted at the glare.
“Damn,” she said, pausing at the door and wincing. “It’s ugly in here.” She was dressed professionally and carried a brown leather courier bag slung over her left shoulder. Her hair had grown long since I’d last seen her, and she had it plaited into a thick braid. Seeing us, she lifted her chin in a terse greeting and came over to our booth, slipping the bag off her shoulder and into the seat we’d left her. She promptly put out her hand, palm up. “Boss said my early dinner’s on you.”
Granuaile’s mouth gaped, but I’d half-expected this sort of behavior. Greta had never particularly liked me, and I expected she liked me even less since I’d taken a trip with her alpha, Gunnar Magnusson, and come back with his crushed body. I nodded and put a couple of twenties in her hand.
“So generous,” she sneered, and went to stand in line without thanking me.
Granuaile bent close and whispered urgently, “Atticus, what the hell—”
“Patience,” I said, interrupting her. “You do know that wolves have fantastic hearing, don’t you?”
“Oh,” she said in a tiny voice. “I’ll just eat my sandwich.” I smiled at her in thanks.
Sorry, buddy, I said, properly chastised. I got a bit distracted. I unwrapped his sandwich for him and set it down on the floor on top of the paper. There was no one else in the shop to see me do this, besides Greta.
Greta returned with two double-meat foot-longs and a drink. One of them was a double roast beast, and she pointedly unwrapped it and put it on the floor for Oberon. It was a snide way to let me know she knew he was there, despite the camouflage. No doubt she’d smelled what he was having and ordered another. Our booth was out of sight of the employees, so she didn’t have to hide what she was doing.
“My hound thanks you,” I said. “As do I.”
“He is very welcome,” Greta said. “I am sure he’s quite hungry, after all,” she added, a faint accusation in her tone. Granuaile narrowed her eyes at Greta but said nothing. I carefully kept my expression neutral.
Greta quickly, efficiently demolished her turkey sub, glaring at us all the while with unconcealed hostility. She was here on the orders of her new alpha, and she would do whatever he asked of her, but he hadn’t asked her to be pleasant, so she wouldn’t be. Since I was outside the Tempe Pack, she could throw all the challenging stares she wanted at us. I could practically feel Granuaile seething next to me, and I hoped she wouldn’t rise to the bait Greta was dangling. I shot her a quelling look, pressed my hand down in the air to suggest she keep a lid on it, and she nodded, message received. I’d have to coach her later on how to handle werewolves.
Finished sinking our subs, we crumpled the paper wrappings noisily and threw them away. Greta opened up her courier bag and began pulling out documents along with a pen. No friendly chitchat, just business.
“Fill these out with your banking information and so on. Sign at the bottom,” she said.
Seeing that she would volunteer nothing, I began to ask her questions as I filled in blanks. “How is Rebecca Dane doing with the bookstore?” I said. I’d given Hal instructions to sell it to her for the random sum of a buck seventy-two.
“Perfectly well. The same regulars visit the store as before.”
“How is Leif?”
“He’s back.�
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I looked up from the documents I was signing. “No kidding? He looks the same?”
“I wouldn’t say that. But he smells the same. Dead.”
Something in her tone didn’t sound right. “What’s the matter with him?”
Greta shrugged. “Can’t say. He’s not a happy vampire. Probably because he has a lot more company these days. He’s not the only vampire in town anymore.”
“I’ve heard something along those lines. Why doesn’t he take them out like he did before?”
“Says he can’t do that this time. The politics have changed.”
“Vampire politics?”
“He would hardly care about human politics, so yes. He wants to see you, but of course we didn’t know where you were until you called this morning. Shall we tell him where you are when he wakes up tonight?”
“Um, no,” I said. If the vampire politics had changed, in practical terms that meant Leif was no longer in charge. If he wasn’t in charge, then Leif might have to share anything he knew with whoever was. “Definitely do not tell him where I am. Don’t even tell him my new name.”
Greta looked surprised. “You don’t want to see him?”
“I didn’t say that. I’d simply like to meet on neutral ground. Tell him to meet me at Granny’s Closet tomorrow night, around eight-thirtyish. That’s in Flagstaff.”
“Sure, I know Granny’s Closet,” Greta said. “Great wings there. Cold beer.”
“Indeed. What can you tell me about how my death is being handled?”
“By whom?”
“I want everything you know.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. We carefully did not take offense. “Hal has been busy dealing with the FBI. They’ve taken quite an interest in you now that you’re dead. They’re especially keen to know about your life before you showed up in Arizona as Atticus O’Sullivan, since you don’t have a credit history or any other records before that time.”
“Oh, if only they knew the size of that particular iceberg.”
This earned me a brief flicker of a smirk. “Naturally, Hal knows nothing about your life before you became a client of the firm and wouldn’t share it if he did. Detective Geffert, however, has been eager to share everything he possibly can.”