It seemed I had plenty of fences to mend with my lawyers. It would be futile to call Leif; for one thing he was hiding from the sun at this time of day, and for another he’d want me to go after Thor in exchange for his help with the Bacchants.
Though I didn’t want to do it, I placed a call to North Carolina, dialing a number Granuaile had given me when she returned from there last week. It was the number of Laksha Kulasekaran, an Indian witch who now went by the name of Selai Chamkanni. The name change was necessary because Laksha’s spirit now inhabited the body of Selai, a Pashtun immigrant from Pakistan who had been in a coma for a year after an auto accident. Since Selai had already become an American citizen years ago and had convenient documents and bank accounts already in place—and, more importantly, no desire to awaken from her coma—Laksha slipped out of Granuaile’s head and into Selai’s, thereby acquiring such accoutrements as a house and a husband.
The husband was foremost in Laksha’s mind when I asked how she was adjusting to her new life.
“He is disturbed that I emerged from a coma with a strange accent and a new sense of independence but so thrilled that I seem to have lost all sexual inhibitions that he’s willing to overlook my disrespect.”
“Men are so predictable, are they not?” I grinned into the phone.
“For the most part. You have managed to surprise me so far,” she replied.
“I’d like to invite you back to Arizona for a short while.”
“See? That is most surprising.”
“Killing Radomila and half her coven has left something of a power vacuum in the area, and some undesirable things are rushing in to fill it. I could use your help, Selai.”
“Please, when we are in private, continue to call me Laksha. What kind of undesirables are you dealing with?”
“Bacchants.”
“Real Bacchants?” Her voice sharpened. “Genuine maenads from the Old World?”
“They’re coming here by way of Las Vegas, but, yes, they are that kind.”
“Ah, then that sword of yours will be of no use against them.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Could you catch a plane out here? I will pay for it.”
“You will pay for much more than the plane,” Laksha said. “You want me to bring karma to these Bacchants, am I correct?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “My old archdruid would have said the only good Bacchant is a dead Bacchant.”
“But by doing so I will increase my bad karma, and I have a dire karmic debt as it is. You will owe me a great service in return.”
“I can pay you a significant sum of money.”
“I do not speak of money. I will require a service of you, as you are requiring a service of me.”
“What kind of service?”
“The sort that you can perform and I cannot. I will call you from the airport when I arrive and explain then. It will probably be late in the afternoon or the evening by the time I get there.”
“That’s fine. I will look forward to seeing you, Laksha.”
I tried to think of what service a scary body-snatching witch might require of me, but after a few seconds I dismissed it as idle speculation when I had other things to do. I called my apprentice to give her instructions for the morning.
“Atticus? Are you all right?” she asked when I called her. “You kind of worried me last night.”
“Sorry about that,” I said, blushing in embarrassment and glad she could not see. “I was demented after fending off a demon attack. I’m going out to kill another one—a big one—with Coyote, but I should be back after lunch. Couple things I need you to do. Got a pen?”
Granuaile snagged something to write with and took down Malina’s name and address for the yarrow delivery. “Don’t go yourself; make sure it’s a courier.” I didn’t want my apprentice unwittingly delivering her hair into one of Malina’s glass jars. “Then have Perry show you where we keep the applications—I need to hire some more help. Thumb through those, make some calls, and line up a few interviews for later this afternoon. If they’re still unemployed, they should be available.”
“You seriously need more help? It’s been dead in here.”
“I’m going to be gone more often. That dead patch of land out by Tony Cabin needs my attention. It won’t come back for centuries without my help.” Aenghus Óg had killed many square miles of the earth by opening his portal to hell, and while he would be paying for it by spending eternity burning there, the land was still barren and cried out for aid.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Won’t you need a car for that, though?”
“Nope. You get to drive me, so you’ll be gone more often too.”
“Okay, now it makes sense.”
“That’s what senseis do. While I’m gone and it’s dead in there, work on your Latin, using that software I bought you.”
After ringing off with Granuaile, it was time to rummage around in my garage. It held all sorts of things instead of a car—shuriken, sai, a couple of shields, fishing tackle, and plenty of gardening tools. It was also where I stored my bow, a modern compound number with ridiculous pull on it. I couldn’t draw it without magically boosting my strength; I figured it should give the demon something to howl about. I also found a quiver full of carbon steel arrows and set them next to my bow near the front door.
With an hour to kill before Coyote was due to arrive, I jogged up Roosevelt Street with Oberon to visit the widow MacDonagh and pay some attention to her lawn.
It was only nine in the morning, but she was already out on her porch sipping a glass of Tullamore Dew on the rocks and reading a hard-boiled mystery novel. Her weathered face split into a wide smile when she saw Oberon and me trotting up her driveway.
“Ah, me dear lad Atticus!” she cried, setting down her novel but not her glass. “Yer a fine bloom o’ spring on a cloudy fall day, an’ that’s no lie.”
I chuckled at her poetic greeting. “Good mornin’, Mrs. MacDonagh. You could lift a lonely man’s heart from fifty leagues away.”
“Tish! I’ll have to be bakin’ ye some brownies for that spot o’ blarney there. ’Tis yerself that’s good for the heart. Come here and give us a hug.”
She rose from her rocking chair, glass in hand, and opened her arms to me. She was wearing a white cotton dress printed with a blue floral pattern, and a navy shawl was draped about her shoulders; it was finally getting chilly in Tempe, and it looked as if a cold rain would soon fall to renew the desert. She patted my back as we embraced briefly and she said, “I can’t imagine such a handsome lad as yerself bein’ lonely fer any reason, but it’s God’s truth that I’m that happy to see ye whenever ye stop by—Oh, hello, Oberon! That’s a colorful bit o’ clothing yer wearing.” She scratched behind his ears, and Oberon’s tail thumped against her porch rails. “Ah, yer a good hound, aren’t ye?”
"Tell her I’m a Peace Dawg, but I think her cats are closely allied with the Man. I’m going to stick it to them."
“Can I get ye somethin’ cold to drink, Atticus? A finger o’ the Irish, perhaps?”
“Oh, no, thank you. I must be off soon enough to fight some hellspawn, and I can’t be impaired in the slightest.” The widow had abruptly learned that I was a Druid shortly after she learned that werewolves weren’t just the stuff of legend. When most people are confronted with a paradigm shift like that, their clutch burns out and they need a new mental transmission. The widow, however, had hardly lost any speed, taking it all in stride and even mothering me a bit when I showed her my missing ear. She’d given me a tube of smelly ointment from Walgreens, unaware that I could make much better for myself from scratch.
“Ah, fighting more demons, are ye? Well, won’t Father Howard be pleased to hear that?” she chuckled. She moved back to her rocking chair and invited me to take a seat next to her.
“Father Howard?” I frowned. “You’ve told your priest I’m a Druid?”
“Tish, I’m still not that daft, me boy. And even if I were, it’s not like he’d be believin’ me. To him I’m no more’n that saucy Katie MacDonagh what comes to Mass mellow ev’ry Sunday; he won’t be payin’ me no never mind regardless o’ what I say.”
"Going to church drunk—I mean mellow—that’s pretty groovy. If the magic bus came through here now, I bet she’d hop on."
“You think Father Howard discounts you, or takes you for granted?”
“Oh, g’wan with ye now! Of course he doesn’t!”
“Okay, sorry, but I had to ask.”
The widow’s face fell and she stared out at her lawn. “Well, now, maybe he does a bit.” She turned quickly and shook a finger at me. “But only a bit, mind!”
“How so?”
“Ah. Well, y’know I’m the oldest parishioner what goes there. He’s quite the youngster himself, and he’s there to minister to the college lot. Here I am a widow whose soul isn’t in any danger from temptation, so why worry about me then? I’m a settled issue fer him. Now I know it’s probably just me vanity talkin’, but I suppose it’d be nice not to feel taken for granted.”
“Of course. You deserve to feel appreciated.”
“Especially since I might be helping to keep the universe ticking, right? Wasn’t that the gist of what y’were trying to tell me before ye ran over there,” she waved toward the Superstition Mountains, “and got yer ear chewed off?”
“Sorry.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of her coarse phrasing. “I don’t quite follow you. Remind me of what I said.”
“Ye said all the gods are alive. All the monsters too.”
“Oh, right. They’re all alive, except for the ones that are dead.”
"I think you should submit that statement to win the Nobel Obvious Prize," Oberon said.
“And the impression I got was they’re alive because we believe in them, right?”
“Um. With lots of fine print, right.”
“So in a sense it’s we with faith who create gods, not the gods who create us. And, if that’s the case, then it’s we who created the universe.”
“I think that might be taking a big step into the windowless room of solipsism. But I see your point, Mrs. MacDonagh. A person like you with such powerful faith should not be ignored. Why, faithful people around the world have made miracles happen.”
“Really? How do they do that?”
“You’ve heard of people having visions of the Virgin Mary?”
“Sure, all the time.”
“Those are created by faith. You could probably make one happen.”
“All by meself?”
I nodded. “Absolutely. Mrs. MacDonagh, when you think of Mary, what does she look like to you? Could you visualize her clearly for me, describe her to me?”
“Why, sure I can. ’Twouldn’t be a very good Catholic if I couldn’t, now would I?”
“If Mary were to appear on this earth now, what do you think she’d look like?”
The widow seemed pleased to be asked. “Ah, she’d have the patience of eternity in her eyes, she would, and the beatitudes in her smile. I suppose she’d be dressed sensibly for the modern world—to blend in, y’know, something cotton and navy blue.”
“Why navy blue?”
“I don’t know, it’s just what I associate with her. She’s not the flamboyant turquoise type, is she now?”
“All right, go on. What sort of shoes?”
“The sensible kind. But classy, y’know, not cheap tennis shoes made by a poor wee girl in an Asian sweatshop.”
“Would she wear one of those habits, the elaborate headgear you always see in churches?”
“I should think not. It’s hardly the fashion anymore. A simple white headband keepin’ her hair out of her eyes would be the thing.”
“And if she came here, to Tempe, what do you think she would want to do?”
“A saintly woman like that? She’d probably be down on Apache Boulevard, ministering to the homeless and the whores and the methamphetamine addicts—what do they call ’em, that slang term?”
“Tweekers.”
“Right. She’d be helpin’ the tweekers, she would, down on Apache Boulevard.”
"Ever notice how Apache Boulevard is a lot like Mos Eisley? “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”"
When Oberon says things like that, it takes all my will not to dive into a Star Wars nerdfest; I resolutely ignored him, because I had to get the widow in the proper frame of mind. “That’s lovely, Mrs. MacDonagh. Sure she would work a powerful lot of good on Apache Boulevard. Why, if she were down there, she could help me slay this demon from hell by blessing my weapons.”
“That’s right, she could. Wouldn’t that be divine?”
Oberon and I examined her expression and found a tiny smile on the widow’s face, pleasant yet inscrutable. "Does she realize she made a pun?" Oberon asked.
I don’t know. I can’t tell.
"Dude. She’s pranking us right now. She’s totally On the Bus."
“Mrs. MacDonagh, I want you to concentrate, or rather meditate on this—no, I want you to pray that this happens today, right now, putting all your faith into the power of Mary’s miraculous healing and the good work she would do ministering to the addicts on Apache Boulevard. Picture her in your mind as clearly as you can.”