Hounded

Just listen. Once she drinks the tea, she will try to surprise me with something. She is waiting for the contract to be fully in effect before she says anything .
    › Well, then, give her back the check and send her packing! We don’t need to play her witch’s games. They always want to get you and your little dog, too. ‹
    I knew I never should have let you watch The Wizard of Oz.
    › Toto didn’t deserve that kind of trauma. He was so tiny. ‹
    When Emily’s tea was finished steeping, I set it on the counter for her. » Drink it as is, « I said. » No sweeteners, and nothing sugary for at least three hours afterward. Be careful from this day forward not to eat anything for three hours before drinking this tea either. Insulin will interfere with metabolizing the medicinal compounds in the tea. « That was complete bunk. I just made that up to mess with her. » And it will take a couple of hours for the results to show up, so don’t go hopping into his bed right away. «
    » Fine, « she said, and she began chugging the tea as if it were an Irish Car Bomb, completely disregarding the damage the hot liquid might do to her tongue and throat. She really wanted to get this over with. She slammed it down forcefully, as if it were a shot glass instead of a teacup, and she smiled malevolently at me.
    » And now, Druid, now that you have entered into a contract from which you cannot withdraw without severe consequences, I have the pleasure of informing you that the man you’re rendering impotent with this brew is none other than Aenghus Óg. «

Chapter 9
    Now, that was a pretty good bomb to drop on me. It raised all sorts of questions, foremost among them, » Where is Aenghus Óg right now? « If he was already in town and diddling the local witches to pass the time, then my paranoia was well justified. It meant he was far more directly involved in last night’s mischief than I had thought. And it meant something else, which Emily was obviously waiting for me to realize: Providing her with the agent for his humiliation would make Aenghus Óg duty-bound to kill me as soon as possible. He would no longer feel comfortable in taking the occasional pot shot at me from a distance; he’d have to actively hunt me down and make me pay.
    Yep, storm clouds are thrice cursed. First the Fae found out where I was hiding, then my dog killed a human, and now I’d earned the very personal enmity of a god who had been content for centuries to simply let his minions slap me around.
    Emily wasn’t going to get an expression of even mild concern from me, though. She wanted to see terror in my eyes, but I walled that all off and pretended she was talking about someone harmless, like Snuffleupagus or Captain Kangaroo.
    » So you’ve come to me to make him wilt like lettuce? « I said. » You could have done the job yourself by shedding that skin and showing him what you really look like. «
    Wow. I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. Her eyes bulged with the offense, and she whipped her right hand toward my face for a slap. Now, a slap from a normal woman I could handle. Heck, I’d suggest I needed one after saying something like that to a regular college kid. But a slap from a witch is simply not permissible, because sure as the moon rises full once a month, she’d use her nails to scrape some skin off my cheek, perhaps even draw some blood, and then she’d have me. A friend of mine fell prey to precisely this sort of trick centuries ago, and it had poisoned me against witches ever since. She had goaded him into saying something rude, slapped him and left marks on his face, and then that very night his heart exploded inside his chest. I don’t mean he had a heart attack: His heart had literally blown apart as if someone had planted explosives in it, long before gunpowder was invented. Some other Druids and I had taken him to the grove and done a rudimentary autopsy to see if we could puzzle out why he’d dropped dead so abruptly, and we found this crater inside his rib cage. That’s when I realized he’d been killed the moment she slapped him.
    I’d never avenged him—the witch got away—and it still stung centuries later. That’s why Emily’s attempt to slap me got a very violent reaction: I knocked her arm down by crossing my right hand over my face, then I backhanded her really hard, much harder than I should have. I shouldn’t have hit her at all; I should have just backed up out of her reach, but I tend to