Hexed

start talking until I’d cleaned up. I strode right past it as if it weren’t there.
    › Atticus, did I hear you talking to someone? ‹ Oberon asked sleepily from the couch as I came in through the back door.
    » Yeah, that giant crow in the backyard, « I replied, waving my hand at the window. » Don’t mess with it—that’s the Morrigan. «
    › Oh. I think I’ll stay inside. ‹
    » Good call. «
    I shook my head and sighed as I turned on the shower, waiting a minute for the water to heat up. If the Morrigan had come to warn me about another one of her auguries, I’d have a hard time containing my scorn. But perhaps she’d come to tell me where she’d been for the last three weeks. Or maybe she was ready to work on her own version of my protective amulet, and the bag contained her cold iron.
    The Morrigan slid into the bathroom in her human form just as I was about to step into the shower. She was naked and beautiful, and her eyes were half lidded with desire, and I thought, ohhhh, crap.
    After I killed Aenghus Óg, the Morrigan had graphically communicated that the entire episode had turned her on, and she promised to » take me « soon. People like her from the Bronze Age weren’t shy about sex and never felt they had to pretend they didn’t want it. As a child of the Iron Age, I was only marginally less wanton, if at all, but the Morrigan, for all her beauty, wasn’t my top choice of bedmates. She might look like a fantasy pinup now, but when in her crow form, she ate dead people , and that made me throw up a little bit when I thought about it. I’d been hoping she’d forgotten all about her declaration of desire, but apparently she was determined to make a conquest of me.
    It’s difficult to say no to the Morrigan when she really wants something. Next to impossible, really. And it’s never a good idea to offend a Chooser of the Slain. The politic thing to do—the safe thing to do—would be to give her what she wanted and try to enjoy it. And once the Morrigan decided she wanted to seduce a lad, she could turn on all the wiles of a succubus without that bothersome business of being damned in the bargain. I confess to not putting up much of a fight. I think I might have said, » Hey! «
    The Morrigan is not a creature to take you down slow and easy, though. Over the next few hours, I think I had one moment where I wasn’t at least partially in pain. It was the first kiss—soft and tender and delicious to the point where I thought I might enjoy this after all. But then her nails were scratching me, I got slapped a few times, there was a whole lot more biting than I’ve ever endured, and I lost a handful of hair at one point. And if I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to—like the several times when my phone rang and I wanted to answer it, thinking it was Granuaile calling to ask why I hadn’t shown up for work—her eyes glowed red and she spoke like Sigourney Weaver telling Bill Murray, » There is no Dana, only Zuul. « There’s just no arguing with that tone of voice. In other words, I was fucking scared, and that’s the way the Morrigan liked it.
    In the last hour she began to speak in a tongue older than I was: I think it was Proto-Celtic, a couple of vowel shifts and aspirated consonants away from anything I recognized, and since she didn’t seem to expect me to respond, I let her babble away. It sounded ritualistic, and it gradually dawned on me that we were performing sex magic of some kind, though I had no idea what she was trying to accomplish. She eventually declared herself satisfied and gave me permission to stop. We’d long since moved to the bedroom, and I collapsed, gasping, onto the sheets.
    There really isn’t any postcoital afterglow to speak of after that kind of sex: There’s just a sense of relief that you survived without disfigurement, plus a dire need for Gatorade.
    » Oww, « I whispered.
    » You’re welcome, « the Morrigan chuckled.
    » For the pain? «
    » No, for the ear. «
    » What? « I reached up my hand to where my cartilage niblets had been and pinched my fingers around something there that felt remarkably ear-shaped. » Is this real? «
    » Of course it is. «
    » Is that what you were doing with that chanting and, uh, stuff? «
    » Yes. «
    I was overwhelmed with gratitude. Regenerating my demon-chewed ear had proven to be far beyond my abilities, and now I felt whole again. » Morrigan, thank you so much! That was so nice of you— «
    The