“Eoghan Ó Cinnéide,” my escort says, “may I present Flidais, of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and Perun, thunder god of the Slavic people.”

I’d been right about the woman. The huntress was wearing a knife at her hip inlaid with green stone, something Siodhachan had mentioned in his story. “It’s an honor,” I say, giving them both a tight nod. It might have been more proper to bow or take a knee or something, but if they truly want their arses kissed, they’ll have to force me to do it.

“Pleased to meet you, Eoghan,” Flidais says, her face a polite mask. It’s a bit pink and puckered here and there, as are parts of her arms; she had been burned by Loki and then driven mad by Bacchus not so long ago, but her physical recovery was almost complete and she wasn’t drooling on her boots. Perun smiles underneath his beard at me.

“Is honor to meet another Druid. I am liking Irish peoples very much.”

“You’ve been visiting for a while, then?” I knew that Loki had set fire to his plane and he was something of a refugee, but I wondered what he would say to a stranger.

“Yes, I am guest here.” Just the basics, then.

Flidais takes his hand and says, “He’s my guest.”

“Oh,” I says, understanding. Siodhachan hadn’t told me about this relationship, so it might be a new development. Or perhaps he thought it wasn’t important. Knowing Flidais’s reputation, I could imagine that Perun had been a very recent guest of hers in the forest, and the leaf in his hair indicated that he’d had a good time. She had to have seen the leaf before this moment, though—it couldn’t be missed—so she had left it there on purpose. But what purpose, exactly? Was this merely a practical joke on her lover? Was she marking him as hers? Or was this a pointed message, either to me or to our hosts? Since Fand was her daughter, Flidais might enjoy making her uncomfortable with small tokens of promiscuity. I wouldn’t find out unless I waited and watched, so I says, “Well, peace and balance to you both.”

Flidais sees that I notice the leaf and say nothing. She winks at me with her right eye, so that Perun can’t catch it, before giving me a pleasant grin. “Manannan and Fand await us in the dining room,” she says. “Shall we go?”

“You are in for meal of memory,” Perun assures me, and saws the air with his thick hands. “No one sets a table like Fand and Manannan.”

He’s not exaggerating. I’ve never seen so much food, and there’s only the five of us at the table. The strangest thing is that it all seems to be for display instead of for eating. We each get a faery who puts full plates in front of us and takes them away after a couple of bites, only to produce a new dish to sample—but none of it comes from the food already on the table. The plates are brought out from the kitchen. Another team of faeries is in charge of drinks, keeping our glasses full of whatever we wish.

“We will bring any libation you desire,” Fand says as soon as I’m seated, and though I don’t know what the fecking hell a libation is, I guess that it means a drink. I decide to test her on it.

“Can I have a shot of whiskey, something aged at least twenty years?” Siodhachan told me such drinks are rare and expensive because people typically can’t wait that long to drink what they’ve distilled. But Fand is sincere.

“We have nothing so old here,” she says, “but it will be fetched immediately from Ireland.” She turns to find a faery dressed in her livery and nods at him. “Please bring us a selection as soon as you can manage.”

The faery, who I guess is some kind of steward, bows deeply and says, “Yes, my queen,” then withdraws, presumably to pop off to earth to steal me a few bottles.

Distractions aside, once I’m settled at the table it’s difficult not to stare at Fand. She possesses a rare beauty, though it’s a bit cold, like the sharp peaks of snowy mountains against a pure blue sky. And the more I think about it, the more apt it is. Mountains inspire no sexual desires in me whatsoever—a blessing to be sure, because I can’t think of anything so useless as humping a mountain—but I’m always ready to stare at them and be grateful that they are there to be seen. Fand is like that. Stunning and inaccessible.

I tear my attention away from her with some effort and address Manannan. He’s making an effort to appear relaxed, but he’s gripping his flagon a bit too tightly for that. It’s full of something delicious that Goibhniu brewed, so he can’t be disappointed with his beer. Something is bothering him and he would rather be elsewhere. “What’s occupying your time these days, Manannan?” I asks him.

He snorts. “Better to ask what isn’t. I’m looking after the sea and the dead. Also searching the oceans for evidence of Jörmungandr and trying not to bash in the heads of Poseidon and Neptune, who are supposed to be helping but are failing.”

“Ah, I’ve heard the Olympians can be difficult.”

He snorts again. Dinner will be a festival of snorting at this rate. “That’s putting it very mildly,” he says. “They’re ignoranuses.”

I don’t know what that word means, but Perun doesn’t either, and he asks about it before I can.

“An ignoranus,” Manannan explains, “is someone who’s both stupid and an arsehole.”

“This is great word!” Perun exclaims. “I know many peoples who fit this word in perfect way! Very useful!” He turns to me. “Do you agree, Eoghan?”

“I do. I’m sure to use it myself. Shall I assume, then, Manannan, that you’ve had no luck in finding Jörmungandr?”

“Not yet. He must have reduced his size considerably. But he will have to bulk up if he wants to do any damage, so we must keep looking to have the earliest possible warning.”

The faery steward returns with several bottles of very good stuff and presents them to me, but he saves the best for last. It’s a bottle of something called Knappogue Castle 1951, which he says was distilled in Tullamore and aged in sherry casks for thirty-six years before being bottled in 1987. Now that we’re in 2022, fewer than a hundred bottles are left in existence. It’s the rarest Irish whiskey available, and I remember hearing of it. Rúla Búla in Tempe had a bottle at one point. Siodhachan told me he bought a shot of this for the Christian god, Jesus.

“Aye, I’ll have that. Just leave me the whole bottle, there’s a good lad.” Because if you’re going to drink stolen whiskey, you might as well have the stuff that gods drink.

Seeing that I’m pleased, Fand favors the steward with a smile and a nod. “Well done.” The faery is so overcome by this small scrap of praise that he looks on the verge of tears as he bows and backs away.

“What do you do, Fand,” I asks her as I pour myself a shot, “while Manannan is out doing this and that?”

“I manage the estate. And I see to numerous errands on Brighid’s behalf. Right now many of the Fae are out looking for signs of Loki, and I’m coordinating the search.”

“Has he been spotted?”

“He’s proven to be as elusive as Jörmungandr, unfortunately.”

“Huh.” I savor the golden burn of the whiskey in my throat and consider. “Has anyone tried to divine him? Or Jörmungandr?”

“We get nothing,” Flidais says, and Fand agrees.

“What about people in his own crowd? I’m new to the Norse, and maybe I don’t know their capabilities, but doesn’t this Odin have some way of finding him?”

Manannan answers. “He has a throne called Hlidskjálf, from which he can see most anything, but he cannot see into Hel. Mist cloaks her entire realm.”

“And you’d know a thing or two about hiding in mist, wouldn’t ye?” I says, grinning at him.

Before Manannan can answer, Flidais says, “We are quite anxious to meet Loki again.” She nods with a cold promise that the meeting will be unpleasant. “Believe me, when I find him, he’ll have an arrow through his throat.”

“I believe ye with all me heart,” says I, and I pour another round and hold up my glass, proposing that we drink to the swift yet painful death of Loki.

“Da! Swift and painful death!” Perun booms, his beard quaking with emotion, and the others chime in and we turn up our glasses with enthusiasm.

I should pause to add that I’m not in the habit of drinking to anyone’s death. Usually I’m fond of drinking to peace and health, or drinking for no reason at all. This seemed like a special occasion, though.

Conversation continues to swirl around courses of food and drink, and I mentally record it all to sift through later.

Actually, that’s probably not what I’m doing. The information I’m taking in is more like a giant load of shite that I’ll sculpt into the truth. An ugly truth, no doubt, of considerable stench. And a bit wobbly on its feet, because that’s what I am after drinking half the bottle and eating more than I ever have in me life.

When a faery has to save me from flopping facedown into a slice of pie a couple of hours later, I know it’s time to leave. I bet it’s a universal truth: You eat your pie or go home.

I deliver slurred compliments on the hospitality of my hosts and lurch unsteadily from the table. I manage to grab the remainder of the bottle as two faeries help me out of the castle. They have the good sense to lead me to the reeking pigsty, where my stomach forcibly ejects its contents into the mud.

“Ah, thash mush bedder,” I tell them. “Have ye goddanywadder?” I lean against the fence and wait for one of the faeries to return with a skin of something that isn’t whiskey. Perun and Flidais appear outside the gate, wish me farewell, and wander off in their own drunken stupor to the eastern pasture. While me poor head spins like a hound getting ready to sleep, I ignore the remaining faery and start letting the evening’s events slush around in the old skull. My dinner companions weren’t a group like last night’s, where I could easily dismiss them all as the mind behind the secret war on Druidry—for if you’re trying to kill the only two Druids around at the time, what else is it?

When the faery I sent away returns with some water, I tell him and the other to piss off, I’m recuperating, and I can’t do it with them hovering about. Left alone, whiskey in one hand and water in the other, I try to stagger with dignity back to the trees and away from the stink of the hogs. The staggering part is easy; the dignity is tougher.

On the show Hal let me watch, that detective Holmes narrows his eyes or talks too fast to demonstrate that he’s being brilliant and solving the case. Or he lies down on a couch with patches on his arm that deliver chemicals to his brain. These particulars serve to make him look like a clever addict, but it’s not a very keen insight into the workings of genius. Or the workings of Druidry. What Sherlock does is train his mind to remember details, access them as needed, and then spy the hidden pattern in them. It’s like spotting animals in clouds: The vapor’s the same for everyone, but sometimes you’re the only person who can see what’s floating there, because you have the proper angle and the imagination to see it. And that’s the magic of Sherlock Holmes—his talent for synthesis and discovery. Anyone can train the mind to absorb and recall; that’s the bulk of a Druid’s apprenticeship, after all. Making sense of it is another skill entirely, and I’m not sure if my thinking, outdated by two thousand years, will be any help here—especially when it’s swimming in whiskey.

I drink half the skin of water and pour the rest over me head to achieve something like a refreshed buzz instead of minimal consciousness, and I think: The trouble with this group is that they’re all sufficiently sneaky to have pulled it off. Manannan’s out there in the sea all the time now, supposedly, but who’s to say he really is? Fand’s faeries can’t keep track of him out there, and he can shift where he likes. And Flidais disappears for long stretches into the woods or even to other planes—no one knows where—and she has all the guile of a hunter, as well as a thunder god at her side these days.

Three more steps bring me to the edge of the trees ringing the estate, and it’s there, quicker than I had any right to expect, that the answer jumps out of my fogged mind and shouts “Balls!” at me.

When Siodhachan first explained the subtleties of modern cursing to me, he was careful to stress the importance of vowels. “There is a time for fecking and a time for f**king, Owen,” he said, “and a wise Irishman knows which is which.”

I don’t know if I’m wise, but I do know when the situation demands a vowel change. “Well, f**k me standing,” I says to the trees, before I use them to shift back to the woods outside Sam Obrist’s place. “What are we going to do?”

They don’t have an answer for me, but the way they’re swaying in me vision suggests that there’s a mighty wind blowing. Either that or it’s the whiskey’s fault.

Chapter 20

I would have returned to my cabin in Colorado, except that Owen was going to show up eventually near the house of Sam Obrist after his trip to Tír na nÓg, and I had to return the rental car in Flagstaff anyway.

After Jesus had bid me farewell and gifted me with the glasses and the remainder of the tequila, I wasn’t any closer to figuring out how best to proceed. I had more doubt than resolve, and a faint but growing worry about Granuaile. As it grew dark Friday night, I thought perhaps I should give her a call. I shifted back to Arizona, where there was cell service, and was about to punch in her number when she texted me and told me not to worry about her. She was still in India, and it was Saturday morning there. I didn’t know how things had turned out with her dad, and she said not to worry about that either, so I was left with the luxury of time to decide what to do next.