by A. J. Aalto
Gold. Did I have anything gold? I hadn’t ever been a jewelry kind of girl. I scanned the shelves behind the bar. “Got Goldschlager?”
“I only have wine. Red or white.”
“No, you don’t.” I shook my empty glass at him. “What are you trying to pull?”
“Okay, I don’t.”
“You have gin. And rum. And rat bile.”
“I’m out of rum.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m looking at the bottle of Kraken over your shoulder.”
“I only have wine. Red or white, you choose!”
“Nope. I’ll have absinthe.” I brought out one of the jiekngasaldi coins that were in the pocket of Harry’s coat. Too bad they weren’t gold. The clurichaun snatched it up anyway.
“You’ll have absinthe,” he said as he reached for the bottle.
I continued, “With one ice cube, a spritz of club soda, and a sprig of mint.”
“That was nicely done, Dr. B.,” Declan said.
“Give her a minute to fuck it up,” Batten said, reaching reflexively for the glass that appeared magically in front of him. I leaned over and slapped it out of his hand.
“Dipshit!” I shouted, pointing as the red wine spilled like blood and rolled off the edge of the bar to patter on the floor. Batten’s eyes widened, but he wasn’t just looking at the spilled drink, he was looking down at my legs with a bemused frown.
“It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” I told the vampire hunter. “You wanna spend a few hours on the naughty fairy’s floor?”
The clurichaun chortled guiltily. I wasn’t about to reprimand him; he was doing what clurichauns do. It was our job to sidestep his little games. I was assuming Batten wouldn’t have needed this warning, but apparently, I was wrong.
I gave Batten my sternest glare. “Watch what you’re drinking and where, Kill-Notch.”
Declan exhaled hard. “I hadn’t noticed him pour anything for him. Sorry, Dr. B.”
“I think Batten can take responsibility for his own hands.” I tiptoed exaggeratedly to the chair where my go-bag was, dug into it, and took out white sage leaves and salt. The clurichaun poured absinthe for me and slid the glass across the bar, doctoring it as I had asked, perhaps out of morbid curiosity. I pranced back to my seat, and then realized I was prancing. I frowned down at my knees, which were tingling.
“What the hairy knobgobble?” I shook my right leg like I was trying to clear the circulation, and my left leg did a little hop without my permission. I tried to walk around my bar stool, but all I accomplished was a tight, prim bit of step-dancing, with far more coordination than if I'd tried those moves while sober. “What is this, now?”
“Stop prancing around, Twinkletoes,” Batten suggested.
“I can totally do that,” I lied, and sat instead. My knees did a little jiggle and I crammed them together hard. Focus, Marnie. Witchy stuff first. Settle my dancing shoes later.
I stirred my herbs into the absinthe and set the glass in front of Declan. “Friendly actions, bend my way/the Lady’s magic hold Her sway/ By day and night and powers three/ This is my will, so mote it be.”
“That’s beautiful, Dr. B.,” Declan said.
“Okay, hit me,” I told him.
“Right,” he said, and slapped me across the face.
“What was that for, you brogue-spitting fuckknob?” I wedged my lips together into a grim line.
Batten held up a finger in a hold-on gesture, took my Beretta Cougar out of my holster, and put it safely in his waistband. “Just in case he hits you again.”
I sighed at Declan. “Hit me with the potion, numbshit.”
“What potion?” he asked eagerly, then looked at the absinthe. “Oh, yes!” Picking up the glass, he doused my face. The ice cube bounced off my eyebrow, dropped to the floor, and skittered away.
“Owwwwwww! That burns like a motherfucker. I'm being licked to death by a licorice whip.”
“Probably should’ve taken the ice out,” Batten remarked.
I blinked rapidly and wiped my face. “Be right back. Don’t do anything else balls-stupid, either of you. No drinking.”
I fancy-pranced my way to the bathroom, swinging open the creaking wood door and letting it slam behind me. With stinging absinthe dripping into my eyes, I rolled out some toilet tissue and dabbed just my eye area, careful to leave the rest of my face wet with potion. I checked the mirror; there was a sage leaf plastered in the middle my forehead. Point: me, because I’m a badass genius sometimes. A glorious, prancing genius.
I took a cleansing breath and began to summon psi. I didn’t know how receptive the spriggans would be to my arrival, but I was sure that with some extra luck, the spell would hold, and they’d find my proposal appealing.
I minced back into the bar with only a handful of kick-twists along the way, only to find Batten and Declan spread-eagle on the floor. Batten’s head was resting on my go-bag. The boys were staring at the ceiling, their mouths hanging open in matching expressions of mindless entertainment. I wondered what they were seeing.
I pointed accusingly. “Gareth, what happened?”
The clurichaun shrugged wildly but produced a wooden pipe from beneath the bar, gave it a puff, and blow a glittering blue smoke ring into the air.
Magic smoke. A far different brand of smoke than had been in Junior’s den. “First magic dancing ale and now this?”
Granger chortled. “You specifically said 'no drinking'.”
Batten giggled like a toddler getting tickled. “Yes, ‘tis I who sniffed the fairy puffsnuff!”
“Feelsh-sho good on m’tasters and m’smellers...” Declan was curled in the fetal position, face scrunched in concentration, poking Batten’s meaty shoulder desperately. “But…but…what even are nose buds?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “There’s no nose buds, you idiots. You got magic smoke in your face and you’re both stoned off your asses.”
Batten rolled onto his left side and indicated to his butt, or his waistband, but probably his butt. “I have your gun. It will cost you one smooch to get it back.”
“Pass.” I pinched my lips into a thin line. “Give them some fairy wine and sober them up, please.”
Gareth flapped my itinerary. “You have a quest to finish.”
“Since when do you care about my quest?”
“Since you arrived in my pub and didn’t demand I release my patrons. You’re different than most. You do the unexpected.”
“Well, I was going to make the suggestion, but, you know…” I glanced around at them. “We all have our quirks. Nobody’s perfect.”
“It weren’t my idea,” Gareth said. “The spriggans like a full house for their band.”
“Of course they have a band,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Lemme guess: Professor Pfaffenzeller and the Pollinators?”
He didn’t answer. I’m pretty sure it had never occurred to him to care about the name of the spriggan band. “Me, I prefer a quiet night at the pub. Not good for business, but neither is this. At least with an empty pub, I can sit and smoke.”
“Maybe my friends and I can get rid of your spriggans, and you could release your patrons?”
“I can’t fix your friends until you get the pod o’ gold.” He pointed at the itinerary. “It says you have to get it. Rules are important. It doesn’t list companions or helpers.”
“I wish you were a leprechaun. Clurichauns are crap. You bite donkey balls,” I informed him, following that up with a hot exhale meant to display my frustration. I should have full-on harrumphed, but Batten was still giggling, and it was stealing my thunder. I kicked Batten’s boot tip. “Since when do you say ‘smooch’?”
Kill-Notch showed me a big, goofy smile. “I like you more than I should,” he confessed.
“Oh, goody,” I drawled, dialing my face to serious-business-mode. “All right, barkeep. I’ll get the treasure and scatter the spriggans, or my name isn’t Glenda Hasenpfeffer.”
Gareth said, “You must get the p
od o’ gold.”
“I know, I need to—wait, what did you say?”
“Maybe you can also get me one?”
“A pod.”
“Yes.”
I blinked at him rapidly. “Not pot?”
“No, pod. P-O-D pod.” He pointed at the rear entrance, a heavy steel door without windows.
It’s not a spelling mistake. I tried to march out the back door and found myself prancing like a kid pretending to ride a galloping horse. The door let out into a snow-heaped garden surrounded on three sides by arching blackthorn trees, great winter thistles, and grassy things that looked like giant cattails. Scattered among them were dry, gold-colored seed pods. Lilith’s Heart pods were rare and exceedingly valuable in the world of kitchen witches; Thrice Round the Circle, my regular herb supplier, never had them in stock, though it was listed for a few thousand dollars per pod. Here, there were hundreds of them. The deep yellow seed pods were covered in hoary frost. In the far corner, there was an old wooden outhouse with a crescent moon carved in an aged door warped by the elements that didn’t look like it would close properly anymore. The boards that made up the walls were gaping; no privacy would be had in that privy, not that there was anyone in the garden to peek in on someone taking a constitutional.
Pods. Gold pods. And suddenly, helpfully, my brain remembered that besides copper and platinum, there was gold in the circuitry of Harry’s old iPhone. Gold for gold.
I pranced back inside and tapped the bar for another absinthe. This one wasn’t for a spell; this one was to fortify me against the cold and the wee monsters. I had bad memories of demanding that Batten pollinate me the last time I dealt with spriggans
“I take it back, Gareth Granger. You’re not crap and you don’t bite donkey balls. You’ve been a big help, sir,” I told the bartender. “A huge help. I will try to get two pods.” I shimmy-flung my way over to my bag again and retrieved the iPhone.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?
I thought about the yipping noise I’d heard earlier. “You wouldn’t happen to have a Do-It-Yourself Escape-A-Lycanthrope kit, would you?”
“What is a ly-can-?”
“A werewolf. Actually, in this case, a werefox.”
“Oh! Yeah, sure.” He reached under the bar and produced a whistle on a red, green, and black lanyard with a rooster print that I recognized as belonging to a soccer club: the Glentoran Colts. He showed it to me. I must have looked unimpressed, because he put it to his lips and gave it a little puff. I heard nothing. Then he placed it in the palm of my gloved hand.
I scratched the back of my neck with my other hand. “This is a whistle.”
“Yep.”
“This is a dog whistle.”
“Uh huh.”
“I saw these at Snarf Mart on sale for three dollars.”
“Aw, man,” Gareth said. “I paid full price.”
I looped the lanyard over my neck, doubting it would help, but figuring it probably couldn’t hurt. The clurichaun seemed pleased that I’d accepted it, which did cause me a moment’s concern. The stoned guys gurgled something that sounded like good luck. I didn’t bother muttering look who screwed up because neither of them would remember it when they sobered up. “It’s all good,” I told myself, thrumming with my protection spell. “Who needs them? Not Glenda. Glenda’s got this.”
I pranced back out into the garden.
Chapter 24
The thorns were intimidating, but not as much as the rustling noise coming from the frost-tipped high grass. “See, this is why I need a flamethrower and a robot army,” I muttered to an audience of zero. “But nooooobody listens to Marnie.” I took Harry’s old iPhone out of the back pocket of my jeans. Would I have to crack it open to show them the gold, or would they believe me? There before me was about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Lilith’s Heart; it made the witch in me want to weep at the plentiful bounty of it. It was one of the most powerful psychic boosters of all time; if you were iffy about performing a spell, adding even a single shaving of it nearly assured you success; the problem being that it tended to favor black magic over white or green.
Rescue-artifacts, I remembered the Overlord saying. How was the herb harvest a rescue? Was I supposed to liberate this patch from the spriggans by claiming the pods? Or was I supposed to free the patrons inside by giving the clurichaun back his yard and his pub? I didn’t need the Lilith's Heart (Well, not a lot of it, my traitorous hedge-witch brain reminded me) and, thanks to Harry’s wealth, I didn’t need the money that would result in my selling it to my suppliers. I only needed one pod for the quest.
I crouched near the grass and waited, hoping the glamour spell currently drying to a tight sheen on my face would make me seem a like friendly, appealing creature to approach, instead of a dancing-legged DaySitter who reeked like a drunken anise salesman.
There was a rustle directly in front of me and a little green man strode out, puffed up self-importantly, chin up. He was about the size of my hand. I was not fooled by his size; his species was savage and had excellent reflexes. If I wasn’t careful, the spriggan’s razor-sharp teeth could tear a chunk off my face before I even saw him coming.
The other two came out curiously, wide black eyes darting between their leader and me. They were smaller than him, and happier in the background.
I showed the biggest one the old iPhone. “Hullo, Professor Pfaffenzeller. I come to make a trade. I have gold in here. And you have gold right there. Gold for gold.”
Pfaffenzeller squinted at me suspiciously, cocked his head, and studied the contraption in my gloved palm. I turned it over for him to see all sides, demonstrated putting an earbud to my ear. This excited him. His tiny butt wiggled as his stumpy legs brought him two steps closer to my bent knees, and he looked up, fascinated, as I slid the volume up a bit. I offered him the spongy earbud. He gave it a sniff, then a lick, then took it between his two green hands and propped it against the side of his face. I turned on a song, volume low. He vibrated, jerking with surprise, and chattered at the two others, who came forward eagerly, having decided I was safe enough.
I took a slow, deep breath and mentally thanked the Dark Lady for my prior experience with spriggans. The iPhone played some of Harry’s French classical chamber music. I stayed in a crouch, patient to let them explore the concept of music in the device. They’d played music it in the pub before, but they looked at the iPhone, patting it with happy hands, as though it were a magic box with prophetic voices. Out of curiosity, I tapped it a couple of times, skipping to Harry’s newest favorite music, Korean pop, and a band called Girls’ Generation, whose infectious but nearly incomprehensible “Run Devil Run” streamed from the earbuds. Most of the song was in Korean, but I wanted to see what would happen when the singer flipped to English. In the meantime, it made me smile to watch them shake their tiny booties to the beat.
When the band said “run, devil, devil, run, run,” I told them very seriously, “The devil is a woman wearing a black latex cat suit. She wants to steal my soul. That’s what devils do.”
Professor Pfaffenzeller nodded once, seeming to agree. I couldn’t read his black eyes, but he handed the iPhone over his shoulder to Captain Tuschoff and Doctor Von Nockelstein, and displayed the seed pods with a sweeping arm. Was this an invitation to take one?
I said respectfully, “Thank you for dealing with me, Professor Pfaffenzeller. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.” I eyed the seed pods. Now, how was I going to take one, and convince the spriggans to move to another living space? I had relocated a Stonecoat boggle from a pit mine, but had involved a lot of bonking and slobber and some impromptu cross-country rugby. This was apt to be sharper and pointier, if much tinier. Before I could broach the idea of convincing them to fuck off, politely or otherwise, the Blue Sense slammed into me from between my shoulder blades. Something angry was approaching, and fast.
A yipping bark. The back door thumped open and I didn’t even wait to face it; I bolted f
or the outhouse, pelting in an awkward, hurried step-dance across the frozen ground. Damn prancing legs! Come on! I whipped open the door, spun in, and slammed it behind me. The slide-lock was rusty and since the door didn’t line up with the frame, it barely fit. Heart thudding, I thumped the lock with the heel of my gloved hand several times to wedge it over securely.
“Shitspitter!” I gasped, pressing against the door when a thud rattled the lock. There was a sound like furry paws scrabbling against the wood.
I shook my gloved fist in the air, not that he could see it from my hidey-hole in the outhouse. “Folkenflik!” I shouted, and it sounded like a curse. Not tall enough to look out the little crescent moon cut-out in the door, I hopped several times before jumping up on the bench seat, avoiding the hole. I leaned over to press one eyeball up against the cut-out and peered at the activity outside. A familiar lithe shape in liquid-black latex cat suit stepped out of the back door of the Stout Ginger Prince.
Sayomi. She looked smug. She had my coat— Harry’s navy wool coat —over her shoulder like a cloak. Why hadn’t she gotten the same tricky clurichaun bullshit as I had? Fickle fairies. While her fox paced back and forth eagerly in front of the outhouse door, mouth open and huffing steamy canine breath, Sayomi produced a small metal can, popped the cap off, and started spurting liquid all over the gold pods. The stink of butane hit my sensitive nostrils over the smell of Folkenflik’s unwashed fur. She reached in my pocket and took out Harry’s cigarette pack, dumping out the engraved lighter inside. She flicked it with her thumb and set light to the closest grass, stepping back delicately as the patch caught fire with an impressive foomph!
I grabbed at the door with my fingernails angrily, trapped by the threat of a lycanthrope bite, wanting badly to kick Sayomi Mochizuki in the throat. My go-bag was inside, under Batten’s head. So was his. My gun was in Batten’s waistband. That was probably really dumb, considering he was stoned off his ass. Where was the clurichaun? Where were the damn spriggans? If they were having a miniature rave while this bitch torched my quest pods, I was going to stomp on their itty-bitty asses.