“We’ve had reports of a man who’s missing his right ear riding around Tempe with a sword.”

“Really? Whoa. Guess that dude shoulda been more careful with his sword, eh?” I chuckled a few times at my own lame joke but looked down meekly when no one laughed. “Sorry. Nobody ever thinks I’m funny.” Suited men were looking underneath furniture and behind picture frames to see if any swords were concealed there. One of them reported that he’d found a large assortment of edged and blunt weapons in my garage.

“Any swords?” Geffert asked.

“Not yet, just knives.”

“Keep me posted.” He turned back to me and asked, “Mr. O’Sullivan, would you mind telling me where you were last night?”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Hal interjected.

“Nah, it’s okay,” I told Hal, and then I said to Geffert, “I was chillaxin’ with my girl and my pooch. We were hittin’ baseballs in the park, and I took my sword off so I could swing away, you know? But damn if some douche didn’t come by and jack it when I wasn’t looking. I was goin’ apeshit, dude, and I’m still pissed. If I ever catch who did it, he’ll have to deal with my kung fu.”

“I thought you said you lost your sword. Now you say someone stole it?”

“I might be remembering it wrong. I do that sometimes. I lose time when I’m in a ninja trance, and I don’t recall doing things.”

The detective’s mouth opened a bit, and he stared at me as if I were a talking slime mold. I looked down and shuffled my feet a bit. “Or maybe it was all those drugs I did when I was younger. Sometimes I black out.”

Geffert nodded slowly and looked at Hal. Then his eyes abruptly narrowed and he asked, “Mr. O’Sullivan, what do you do for a living?”

“Ninja training.”

“That’s your source of income?”

“Oh. No, I own a bookstore.” This guy had to know who I was already. Since Hal and I were suing the Tempe Police Department for shooting me last month—an unpleasant episode that was entirely Aenghus Óg’s fault—there was no way they got a warrant to come in here without very carefully reviewing everything they had on me.

“Would you say your bookstore is a successful enterprise?”

I ignored him and let my eyes lose focus at a point over his right shoulder.

“Mr. O’Sullivan?”

“Huh? What, dude? I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

Geffert spoke slowly to make sure I understood. “Do you make a lot of money at your bookstore?”

“Oh. You’re talking about Benjamins. Yeah, dude, I have plenty.”

“Enough to pay for very expensive lawyers?”

“Well, duh,” I said, pointing at Hal, “he’s standing here, isn’t he?”

“Why does a bookstore owner need lawyers like Magnusson and Hauk?”

“Because Tempe cops keep shooting me for no reason and searching my house for shit I don’t have, and then they act all surprised when I actually have both my ears.”

That made the detective clench his jaw for a moment, but to his credit, he didn’t respond. He served up another question instead. “You mentioned playing baseball with your pooch. Would this be an Irish wolfhound?”

“Yes, but it’s not my old one. He’s still lost or run away or whatever. This is a new one. Just got him a couple weeks ago—he’s all registered and got his shots and everything.” I had done precisely that to sell the fiction that my old dog was really a new dog. Again, thanks to Aenghus Óg, Oberon was wanted for a crime that should have been laid at Aenghus’s door. Luckily, it’s far easier to get a new ID for a dog than it is for a person. Bureaucrats at Animal Control don’t suspect people of getting fake IDs for their pets. They take your form and your check and give you a shiny set of tags for the collar, and that’s it.

“Where is he?” Geffert asked.

“In the backyard.”

“May I see him?”

“Sure, whatever, dude.” I waved at the back door, and Geffert walked through it to see this new dog of mine.

The Man is coming. Remember, you’re a meek little guy, turbo-tame.

"I see him. Looks like he sells trucks. I already don’t trust him. But I’m going to give an Oscar-winning performance of meek."

I peered out the kitchen window to see Geffert approaching Oberon, and my hound was as good as his word. His tail twitched hopefully on the ground, he ducked his head, and then he turned over on his back, presenting his belly and neck with his front paws hanging limply near his chest. This couldn’t possibly be the man-eating animal the police were looking for in connection with a park ranger’s death.

Wow, what a performance! Where did you learn to do that? Oberon usually squirmed around during his belly rubs, and he sometimes closed his mouth gently over my arm. He never stayed that still and passive, believing as he did that belly rubs should be an interactive experience.

"This is what all the tiny dogs do at the park when they see me coming."

Geffert didn’t rub Oberon’s belly at all. He just squatted down to check the tags on his collar to confirm that they were recent. He stood back up and looked speculatively around the yard.

"Guess the Man is a cat person. We should play a prank on him." Geffert started pacing around the herb garden, looking closely at the ground to see if any of it was recently disturbed.

Like what? I don’t know if I can top your Oscar-winning performance.

"I’m sure you’ll think of something."

Hal stepped up next to me with an update on the search. “They’re being much more polite this time, putting everything back once they move it. He hasn’t mentioned removing you anywhere for questioning yet, so I don’t think he will unless they find a sword.”

I heard a clatter coming from the living room and went to investigate. A female detective had managed to spill my DVD collection all over the floor. It seemed like an excellent opportunity to burnish my character as a pathetic guy forever trapped in an adolescent fantasy land. “Oh,” I said, widening my eyes and then shifting them guiltily, shoving my hands into my pockets, “if you find any p**n in there … it isn’t mine.” The look she gave me was three parts disgust and two parts revulsion. “I swear.” I edged away and carefully didn’t smile until I was back in the kitchen. Hal chuckled quietly.

“You are so full of shit,” he whispered.

“Hey, the care and feeding of an alter ego is an art form,” I replied in the same low tone. “Here comes the detective. Watch him ask about the scorch marks.”

Geffert strode through the door with a frustrated frown and seemed to notice the blackened portions of my cabinetry for the first time. “What happened to your kitchen, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

“Oh, that.” I rolled my eyes. “You know those little cooking torches you use to set your crème brûlée on fire? Well, I was using one of those last night on my tasty dessert and bangin’ my head to some old school hair bands, you know? And the torch was still on as I was doing all these fist pumps and stuff and I didn’t realize it.”

Geffert scoffed openly. “You unknowingly caused all this damage with a miniature acetylene torch?”

“Well, when you’re rockin’ out with the Crüe, it’s like a religious experience, dude. I had my eyes closed. Haven’t you ever communed with the sound gods like that before, where you can feel the shredding in your bones?”

Geffert just shook his head and flipped open a notebook. He wanted Granuaile’s name and address to confirm my alibi for last night. I told him she’d have the bats in her car but neglected to tell him that he could find her at my shop right then. Another detective walked up and said they hadn’t found a sword anywhere yet, and the blunt weapons in the garage were covered in dust and showed no signs of recent use. They shuffled everything around for another hour but found nothing that would implicate me in last night’s Satyrn Massacre. I spent the time outside, watering my herbs and giving Oberon a proper belly rub, while Hal kept a wary eye on them. I also sank my toes into the grass and finally paid attention to the lacerations and bruises the Morrigan had given me. By the time they finally drove away, asking me politely to remain in town while they conducted their investigation, I felt good as new and fully recharged.

Hal and I popped open a couple of Stellas, clinked bottlenecks, and toasted a good bamboozle. Oberon got a few extra treats for his thespian activities, and when I inspected my DVD collection, I discovered that the female detective had actually alphabetized it for me. I got to feel good for about three whole minutes, and then my cell phone rang.

“Atticus, any chance you can get over here now?” Granuaile said. “Those two guys are back, and they say they’re not leaving until they speak with you.”

Chapter 16

“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 façade. 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.