Besieged

“Time-out,” Granuaile said. “Wasn’t there something you could have done about the potato famine?”

“That was the first I’d heard of it, honestly, five years in progress by that time. It wasn’t something an elemental would have shared with me. The Irish had grown dependent on a monoculture of potatoes, a mold arrived to feast on that monoculture, and that’s why we should always grow a wide variety of cultivars. But of course Americans are ignoring that lesson now and growing a single potato for all of its French fries. French Frymageddon is coming, I promise you. It would have come already except for the tons of pesticides they’re using to keep the crop viable.”

<I’ve always appreciated that you feed me a wide variety of meats, Atticus,> Oberon said. <But now I understand that eating the same thing is not only boring, it’s dangerous. I’d better not have any more of this brisket tonight.>

“You’re full, aren’t you?”

<Yeah, that too.>



The first thing I did when I returned to San Francisco was visit the impressive bookstore of Mr. Still on Portsmouth Square to look up something, and then I took a room at the American Hotel for an indefinite stay. Fragarach was stowed in the manager’s tall floor safe, which contained quite a few rifles in addition to the expected collections of wealth. I was careful to wear my new pair of uncomfortable shoes to prevent any of the Fae from tracking me via the effervescent joys of happy plant life—normally not a consideration, but my plane shifts in and out and in again to San Francisco had probably alerted Aenghus óg that I was interested in something near there. All he had to do was inquire of Sequoia if something was wrong and she’d tell him about the escaped demon. Either he or one of his minions could very well show up at Stefano Pastore’s murder scene and begin the hunt for me even as I hunted for this demon—which meant the quicker I resolved this, the better. But horrors loosed out of hell never behave in such a way as to make my life easier.

I arrived in gloves to hide my tattoos; a burgundy satin waistcoat with a gold pocket watch ticking away inside; a ridiculous tie with a sunburst pin; all covered by charcoal-gray pinstripe coat and pants and topped with a bowler. My hair was straightened and greased and combed into a reddish oil slick, and I made sure to wax my mustache and coo approvingly at my bristling sideburns. In lieu of my sword I carried a cane, which would do as a short stave if it came to fighting but which gave the appearance that I was nursing an old injury like a trick knee.

That’s what I looked like when I stepped into Pastore’s murder scene for the second time, but there were two men standing over the body, muttering about how damn strange it was. I froze in the doorway and gasped to draw their attention, but added, “Oh, bollocks,” to signal immediately that I wasn’t American. “I’m too late.”

The two men rounded on me, one of them dropping his hand to his gun. He relaxed when he saw one hand on my cane, the other clutched in a fist over my heart, as if I was shocked by the scene.

“Who are you?”

I dropped my left hand on top of my right over the handle of the cane and gave a name befitting my disguise as an English toff, voice stiff as if I’d been laundered with the queen’s own starch: “Algernon Percy, Fourth Duke of Northumberland, expert on the occult and much too late to stop Mr. Pastore there from doing something terminally stupid.” Algernon Percy really was the name of the Duke of Northumberland at the time, though I doubt he looked much like me beyond the fact that we were both rather pale, and he certainly was no expert on the occult. But should the sheriff take the trouble to verify the name of the current duke, at least he wouldn’t catch me that way. I’d lifted the name straight out of a recent history of England’s military exploits that I found in Mr. Still’s establishment, working on the theory that officers were often noblemen, and, sure enough, the good duke was an admiral or some such.

“You know this man?”

“I do. And who might you be, good sir?”

“Sheriff Jack Hays,” the man with a star on his coat said, his voice carrying a bit of a Texas drawl. He had a broad forehead and eyes like coal, which glittered with a hint of diamond in them. His hat was in his hand, and I noted a thick wave of dark hair sweeping about his ears and a square jaw to hang his beard on. He kept his neck shaven, though at this point he had a day or two’s growth on it and it looked as if it would fight with a square of sandpaper to see who was rougher. He nodded over to the other man, a clean-shaven, sunburned lad with straw-colored hair, who wore a star on his coat as well. “This here’s my deputy, Kasey Princell.”

“It’s my very good fortune to meet you both. I do hope I can be of some service to you, since I’ve traveled around the earth chasing after this fellow.”

“What can you tell us about him?” Deputy Princell asked. He wasn’t from Texas; the vowels and inflection were different, had more of a lilt than a drawl to them, and that was the beginning of my education in American Southern accents. I found out later that he was from eastern Kentucky, in the Appalachians.

“He’s an Italian occultist, and I don’t mind telling you I’ve had a devil of a time finding him—if you’ll excuse the pun.”

The lawmen squinted at me, which I supposed meant they hadn’t caught the pun at all. “I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that,” Hays said. “I’ve seen my share of dead men, y’understand, but I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this.” He looked down at the body. “Choked to death an’ then his guts pulled out. Or maybe it was t’other way around. Overkill either way. And then there’s all these things on the floor. Salt and candles and whatnot. Looks like some kinda magical fixin’s if I had to guess. I dunno. Would you know anythin’ about that?”

“I would. I would indeed. May I come in?”

“Sure. Just don’t step in any o’ this mess.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I moved forward and surveyed the scene, pretending to take it all in for the first time. “Hmm. Yes. A bit diabolical, eh?”

“I dunno. Who do y’think mighta had it in for Mr. Pastore?”

“Well, we are clearly looking for whoever broke the circles of binding and protection and gave the demon a free shot at the deceased.”

“What now?” Hays said.

“Did you just say ‘demon’ or—Jack, what the hell is going on?” Deputy Princell said.

“Hell is precisely what is going on here, Deputy,” I replied. “You see the evidence of it before your eyes.”

“Maybe you better explain what you’re seein’ that we’re not,” Hays said.

“These circles you see here, the Hebrew and the Greek, the black candles, the silver dagger—what you called ‘magical fixin’s’—all of it was used to summon a demon. And it was a successful summoning.”