Hexed

churned with lust—not the carnal kind; rather, the lust for power—and that wasn’t consistent with peaceful men of God. Plus, the rabbi’s aura betrayed the slim white interference of a magic user.
    » Oh, I beg your pardon. You seem rather young for a man of your reputation. «
    » I didn’t know I had a reputation amongst the clergy. «
    » In some … « the priest paused, searching for the right word, then continued, » … small circles, we have heard of you. «
    » Really? What kind of circles? «
    Father Gregory ignored my query and responded with another. » Well, if you’ll forgive the direct question, were you involved in an unusual situation in the Superstition Mountains about three weeks ago? «
    I looked blankly at him, and then at the rabbi, and told a whopper. » Nope, never been out there. «
    » On ne gavarit pravdu, « the rabbi said in Russian, speaking for the first time. He is not telling the truth . Father Gregory responded fluently in the same language, telling Yosef to be quiet and let him handle things. If they thought I couldn’t understand Russian, I didn’t want to disabuse them of the notion.
    » Hey, I’m an American, « I said, » and the only language I speak is English, and not too good neither. When you speak that other stuff, it makes me think you’re sayin’ something rude about me. «
    » I beg your pardon, « Father Gregory said. » Were you perhaps at Skyline High School this morning? «
    That question nearly triggered a flare of my nostrils. It took me to new heights of paranoia, and I struggled to maintain my mask of indifference. I knew that word of Aenghus Óg’s death had gotten around, but nobody should know about the fallen angel yet except Coyote and the Virgin Mary, and I hardly thought either of them would stop to chat with these guys.
    I shook my head. » I don’t even know where that is. Been here all day. «
    » I see, « Father Gregory said, clearly disappointed. Rabbi Yosef was seething silently and turning a bit red. He knew I was shoveling shit on their boots. The priest decided to change the subject. » I’ve heard you have quite the rare-book collection. May I see it? «
    » Of course. North wall, over there, « I pointed to a group of large china cabinets full of books, all locked away and lacking any recognizable organization.
    The rare-book trade is another part of my business Perry can’t handle, but there’s so little commerce in that area that no one complains when I’m not around to handle it. The books I have are extraordinarily rare—as in there are only one to ten copies in existence, because they’re handwritten grimoires and scrolls full of real, honest-to-Dagda spells and rituals for magical masters only.
    I also keep many historical secrets in there—secrets that would be a bugle call for Indiana Jones and his ilk, like the supposedly lost Sotomayor manuscript. I nearly geeked out just thinking about it being there. Pedro de Sotomayor was the scribe for Don Garcia López de Cárdenas, a lieutenant of Coronado’s who took eighty days to make a two-week trip to the Grand Canyon. Garcia is famous today for being the first European to see the Grand Canyon, but, according to Sotomayor, they found a gigantic hoard of Aztec gold that the Tusayans (now known as the Hopi tribe) were keeping in trust for their southern friends under assault by Cortés. Garcia and his dirty dozen took the hoard and hid it, and Sotomayor wrote it all down because they planned to come back and get it later, cutting Coronado out of the deal. None of them ever made it back to the New World, however, and Sotomayor’s manuscript » didn’t survive, « so history only has the word of Castañeda—a guy who didn’t go with Garcia and knew nothing about what really happened—that they found nothing but a geological wonder after nearly three months. The gold is still there, on the Hopi reservation, and nobody’s looking for it. I like knowing secrets like that, and I admit that when I’m all alone in the shop sometimes, I rub my hands together greedily and laugh like a one-eyed, black-mustached pirate to think that I have a bona fide treasure map locked up in my cabinet.
    The cabinet looked fragile, but it was a customized job: Behind the wood veneer there was steel plate, and the glass was bulletproof; it was vacuum-sealed to prevent the further decay of the paper and bindings, and the locks opened by magic only. Around the entire thing I had set my