Hounded

Chapter 3

I have been around long enough to discount most superstitions for what they are: I was around when many of them began to take root, after all. But one superstition to which I happen to subscribe is that bad juju comes in threes. The saying in my time was, “Storm clouds are thrice cursed,” but I can’t talk like that and expect people to believe I’m a twenty-one-year-old American. I have to say things like, “Shit happens, man.”

The Morrigan’s exit did not put me at ease, therefore, because I fully expected the day to get worse from there. I closed up my shop a couple of hours early and headed home on my mountain bike with my necklace tucked inside my shirt, worrying a bit about what might be waiting for me there.

I headed west on University from my shop and took a left on Roosevelt, heading south into the Mitchell Park neighborhood. Before the dams got put up on the Salt River, the area was floodplain land, with very fertile soil. It was farmland originally, and the lots were gradually subdivided and built up from the 1930s through the ’60s, complete with front porches and irrigated lawns. Usually I took my time and enjoyed the ride: I would say hello to the dogs who barked a greeting at me or stop to chat with the widow MacDonagh, who liked to sit on her front porch, sipping sweaty glasses of Tullamore Dew as the sun set. She spoke the Irish with me and told me I was a nice young lad with an old soul, and I enjoyed the conversation and the irony of being the young one. I usually did her yard work for her once a week and she liked to watch me do it, declaring loudly each time that “If I were fifty years younger, laddie, I’d jump yer wee bones and tell no one but the Lord, ye can be sure.” But today I hurried, tossing a quick wave at the widow’s porch and churning my legs as fast as they would go. I took a right onto 11th Street and slowed, stretching out my senses in search of trouble. When I pulled up to my house, I did not go in right away. Rather, I squatted near the street and sank the fingers of my tattooed right hand into the grass of my lawn to check on my defenses.

My house was built in the fifties, a north-facing cottage with a white-posted raised porch and a flower bed in front of it. The lawn in front is dominated by a single towering mesquite tree planted to the right of center, while a driveway on the right leads into a garage. A flagstone path goes from the driveway to my porch and front door. My front window told me nothing, being cast completely in late-afternoon shadow. But by examining my wards through the grass … yes. Someone was there. And since no mortal or lesser Fae could ever break through the wards on my house, that meant I had two choices: Get the hell out now, or go find out which member of the Tuatha Dé Danann had untied my knots and was waiting for me inside.

It could be Aenghus Óg, and the thought chilled me even though it was nearly a hundred degrees outside (Arizona does not cool down to sensible temperatures until the second half of October, and we were still a week or so away from that). But I could not imagine him leaving Tír na nÓg, despite the Morrigan’s insistence that he was on his way. So I checked in with my pet—well, I should say in all honesty, my friend—Oberon, with whom I was specially bound.

How goes it, my friend?

Oberon answered from the backyard. I did not pick up any tension in his thoughts. I rather got the impression that his tail was wagging. The fact that he had not been barking on my arrival was another clue that he thought everything was fine.

I know. Who is it?