“Yeah,” I said, smiling at him, “being bound to Gaia will do that. Hey, uh, you got a little schmear there—”

“Oh! Thanks for telling me.”

We set about the scheme immediately. It would take us hours to scan and get the files out, and before the day was through, Werner Drasche would definitively know I had them. The Hammers of God would have a short window in which to act.

“If you move to catch the ones in this hemisphere before sundown,” I said, “that will be your best chance. The ones in Europe—the really old and powerful ones—are going to hear about the security breach while they’re awake and have a chance to move tonight.”

“We must take what the Almighty offers us, then.”

“Well, caution your people too,” I warned him. “There may be traps waiting at these addresses instead of vampires. I would vastly prefer this strike to be an unequivocal win for the good guys. Just once.”

“May it prove so,” the rabbi said, a quirk in his beard indicating that he might be happy. “Even if we fail to slay a single one, I am glad we met today, Mr. O’Sullivan. It confirms that I have done right to choose a calmer, quieter path. This great good we are about to do would not have been possible had I clung to my zealotry.”

I supposed that was a polite way of saying we couldn’t kill vampires together today if he had killed me twelve years ago, but I wasn’t about to say anything to make him feel more guilty about his past than he already did. I couldn’t judge him; the gods knew I had more to atone for in my long life than he did. We parted amiably and traded phone numbers like old friends.

With the vampires suitably placed in tumult by my actions and perhaps some of them facing a final mortality very soon thanks to the Hammers of God, I went shopping. There was an arcane lifeleech doubtless on the way, and I had preparations to make. Though you never want to be Nigel in Toronto, I would have to become him one last time if I wanted to take care of Werner Drasche. And, with luck, I would never be haunted by that chapter of my past again.

First I visited the Herbal Clinic and Dispensary on Roncesvalles for a few things and then traveled to Jerome’s on Yonge Street for a suitable costume—well, formal wear, which felt like a costume every time I crawled into it and cinched a tie around my neck. I was advised by the haberdasher that ascots were making a comeback, and I said, no, no, they weren’t, he’d been terribly misinformed. I did manage to pick up a gold pocket watch and a shaving kit while I was there—both essential to reprising my role as Nigel.

We took all to a hotel downtown, where in my room, under the glare of a white bulb attacking yellow wallpaper and a sulfurous curdled granite countertop, wearing an expression of acute chagrin, I shaved off my goatee while Oberon tried to comfort me with his improvised singing.

“In a beefless hotel! Where a man’s got a beard to lose!

Ain’t no gravy nowhere! Cause he’s got the Nigel blues!”

“Oberon, I appreciate the thought, but you’re not helping me feel any better about this.”

“I was just about to start in on my howling cat solo. That always makes me feel better.”

“Please don’t. Have mercy on me.” I washed and toweled off my naked chin and began step two, using my purchases from the Herbal Clinic, one of the hotel’s plastic cups, a few drops of Everclear, and a stir stick intended for coffee.

“Whoa, hey, what’s that you’re doing there? That’s not something nasty I have to drink, is it?”

“No, it’s not a tea. It’s a tincture. Remember when the Herbal Clinic let me use their mortar and pestle?”

“Yeah. They asked you a lot of questions.”

Yes, they’d been quite curious and I’d lied and told them it was for a salve, but in truth the blend of herbs would spur my beard growth for a short time. When I needed to age rapidly or grow something ridiculously ursine in a few days instead of waiting a few months, I used this mixture, which I altered with a little bit of alcohol and Gaia’s magic—much in the same way that Immortali-Tea was a blend of fairly common herbs with a little help. Taking an eyedropper and being very careful about where the drops fell, I applied the tincture to my cheek halfway down my jaw on either side. I’d have a few weeks’ growth of hair there in the morning, muttonchops straight out of the nineteenth century. Once I got all dressed up in my formal costume, pocket watch in my gray pinstriped vest, and slicked-down hair—I would look like the lad I’d been in 1953 who got into so much trouble.

“It’s just something to help me get into character. It’s a role I haven’t played for seventy years.”

“What’s this Nigel thing all about anyway? You still haven’t told me the whole story.”

“Oh, you want a story, do you? Well, we are in the bathroom and you are quite dirty from all that mud you picked up in Ethiopia…”

Oberon’s tail began to wag. “Do I get a bath-time story about historical Atticus?”

“Go on, hop in, and I will tell you why you never want to be Nigel in Toronto.”

“Okay!” Oberon’s entire back half began to sway back and forth, and he accidentally tore down the shower curtain in his haste to get into the tub. “Uh, that thing was ugly,” he explained. “And in the way.”

CHAPTER 2

Asgard is an alien place, nothing like you see in the movies or comics or fantasy paintings. Except maybe it has a watercolor feel to it, pigments splashed on stark white paper with sharp defined edges and everything blending in the middle. Atticus described it a bit like that—the light is strained and cold and sere, unlike Tír na nÓg, which has the visual warmth and richness of a John William Waterhouse painting. I really don’t belong here and I cannot wait to leave.

Orlaith and I are stuck, however, until I can remove Loki’s mark from my arm, and Odin represents my best chance of making that happen.

He told me the mark is a sort of cloak keyed to Loki’s genetic signature—but the god of lies can see through that cloak if he wishes. Hel and Jörmungandr have the mark, too, and that’s what’s keeping them hidden from the gods, frustrating Odin and Manannan Mac Lir and everyone else trying to divine their locations. But Loki knows where they are at all times, just like he knows I’m in Asgard now. He would dearly love to know what I’m doing here—he said as much and threatened Orlaith in an attempt to get me to explain my first trip, when I’d come to ask for Odin’s help.

The allfather said at that time that he would need Loki’s genetic material to dissolve the mark and it was my task to procure some. That’s when I returned to the cabin in Colorado, to find Loki waiting for me. He thought to surprise me, but our cabin was well warded against fire and I was able to surprise him instead. I gave Loki a tomahawk in his back and a swift blow to the jaw, and he gave me blood and teeth and a measure of vengeance for what he did to me.

The unfortunate upshot is that our cabin in Colorado is not safe anymore; Loki knows about it now, and the new place in Oregon won’t be ready for days or possibly weeks. I suppose it’s working out as it should: Atticus is hunting down the man who killed his friend in Alaska, and I have much to occupy me here. Not in terms of active tasks, since there is little to do but wait for Odin to craft a solution, but rather in terms of personal growth: I need to construct a new headspace, and I must decide whether to erect a literary scaffolding in a language where I already have some fluency, such as Russian, or to learn something entirely new. Frigg was kind enough to grab a selection of works for me from “some library on Midgard,” and I am reading a copy of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground now. I find myself agreeing with a passage here and there: Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. That isn’t bad at all, but after the ecstatic optimism of Walt Whitman, he’s a bit like plain oatmeal to my taste—fiber-rich and good for you, but lacking a certain joy. That may be true of almost everyone, though, compared to Whitman. Regardless, I will have to read more extensively in the language before I make my decision. If I’m going to take the trouble to memorize something, I want it to be transcendent and worthy of echoes in my head.