Trapped

bronze or other materials besides steel, and if we picked up enough of them, we’d be able to handle a few Bacchants. We’d emerged from the Olympian wilderness near the tiny village of Petra and hired a car from there to drive us all the way to Thessalonika.
    We arrived near dinnertime and got a hotel room, primarily to clean up. I trimmed my beard, which was getting a bit scraggly after weeks of neglect, and felt better without all the hair on my neck. A bit of channel surfing found a station that played old American movies, and Oberon was happy. We left him stretched out on the king bed, watching When Harry Met Sally .
    You’ll love it , I told him before we closed the door. It will reaffirm your contention that human mating habits are stupid .
    › I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming, Atticus. It’s more than a contention; it’s an axiom. I could construct proofs with it. ‹
    Is that a fact?
    › You watch. Someday I’ll have puppies, and I’ll sit them down, or sit on them, and I’ll say, » Given: Atticus and Clever Girl are humans. Given: Humans have mating habits. Prove: Human mating habits are stupid. Proof: Watch them mate. Q.E.D. «‹
    I think your logic broke down there at the end, buddy, but you keep working on it .
    The apprentice and I shared an awkward supper, the unsaid words from the cave remaining unsaid yet hanging in the air between us like little comic book balloons that someone had erased. I cannot speak for her, but my feeling was that our personal drama would have to wait until we had a safe soap opera setting in which to emote. We’d been interrupted twice in getting her bound to the earth, and it was a good bet we’d be interrupted again while those who wanted us dead had a general fix on our location. We needed a change of venue, and she agreed. The only way to do that was to figure out how the Olympians—or Bacchus anyway—had rigged such a trap for us and then dismantle it. We had to go back once more.
    To that end, Granuaile and I received a few stares once we visited the sporting goods store. I had Fragarach strapped on but camouflaged, she had her » walking stick « with her, and we were buying more tent stakes and exotic bladed weapons than one could reasonably expect to use on a camping trip.
    All the knives were under glass, so we had to have a salesperson help us. Niko—the name on his tag—was a youngish lad in his mid-twenties, handsome enough, and extremely friendly with Granuaile and anxious to help, since I kept quiet. His huge mistake was assuming that Granuaile didn’t know anything about knives. Well, maybe that’s ungenerous of me. Perhaps he was simply trying to appear competent when he spoke to her about balance and throwing weights and the like, but it came across as patronizing, and I was irritated even though he wasn’t talking to me. In truth, Granuaile had surpassed me in throwing a good while back; her aim was naturally better than mine, and she’d been practicing steadily for twelve years.
    Evidence that Granuaile found his tone irritating as well came soon enough. She hefted a knife, did a little flourish with it that looked far more complicated than it really was, spun around to the right, and tossed it into the bull’s-eye of a dartboard behind Niko’s head.
    Niko didn’t try to explain anything after that.
    I turned away, partly to hide my amusement and partly to conduct a routine check of my surroundings. Shoppers in thick-toed boots were milling around. There was a whole lot more flannel on display than you’d see in most places, both on the mannequins and on the shoppers. No one seemed to think this was odd or a bad idea.
    There was a pair of clowns in pasty white makeup and bulbous red noses having an animated discussion over two different coils of rope. Their serious expressions didn’t match the lurid grins painted on their faces or the enormous colored wigs on their heads. I wasn’t sure what they could be discussing. Were some ropes inherently funnier than others?
    Their presence was odd too, but it seemed as if Granuaile and I were getting more stares than the clowns were. I could take the Johnny Bravo route and assume we just looked really good in our jeans, but my suspicious nature still thought there was something strange about this crowd. I interrupted Granuaile’s perusal to tell her in Old Irish to tap the stored magic in my bear charm if she wished. I formed the binding and showed her how to draw upon