October 30

 

Day

 

 

Conor was surprised to hear from me.

“We need to meet today,” I told him.

We made arrangements to have lunch at a coffee shop near me. We’d meet there at two, it would be fairly empty by then. We’d need to talk where we wouldn’t be heard, because we’d be discussing murder.

ó Cuinn was right on time. I knew the waitress—Ricky and I ate here frequently—and asked her for a back booth. The place was quiet, just us and a few other groups closer to the front. Conor ordered black coffee, I asked for an iced tea.

“You look tired,” he said, once the waitress left with our drink orders.

“More than tired…I fought the sidh last night. They got in a few good jabs, but I won.”

The way his jaw dropped would have been comical under other circumstances. “You…you banished them?”

I nodded. He forced his jaws closed. “How…?”

“I improvised. It worked. They clawed me in a few places, but Mongfind left a cure for that, and it worked, too.”

“So…?” He left his question unasked, but I knew what it was.

“Yes,” I told him, before adding, “so let’s talk about the Samhain ritual.”

The grin that crossed his face made him look uncomfortably like the sidh, and for a moment I regretted this meeting.

“Well, that’s brilliant. You know it won’t work without you.”

“Do you have…everything?”

He was about to respond when the waitress brought our drinks. Conor stopped abruptly, averting his gaze, nervous and guilty, and I wondered how he’d possibly stayed out of jail if he’d acted this way with Bertolucci. Once she’d gone, he leaned close and whispered. “Yes, everything’s been arranged.”

“Everything,” of course, included a human sacrificial victim. One I would be required to help kill.

I almost asked him how he’d manage that part—maybe he’d lure a junkie or transient with money; he was slightly built, and I couldn’t picture him physically subduing anyone—but I really didn’t want to hear details.

I know now, of course, that I was an idiot. I should have asked him. If I’d known what he had planned…

But I didn’t, whether from cowardice or simply revulsion. I didn’t ask him who we’d be killing.

“There is one thing only you can bring,” he said.

“What?”

“Recall that the ritual indicates the use of a wand; it’s crucial in creating the circle that will protect us. I can’t supply you with that—you must find your wand on your own.”

“Is that Mongfind or J.K. Rowling?”

He grimaced briefly, then added, “Children’s fiction aside, magicians often speak of wands finding them, rather than vice versa. The wand is most likely found near a special tree, or forested area.”

“Why do you know that? How long have you been studying this stuff?”

He actually reddened at that, revealing a secret passion. “I…it was just a purely academic study. Until…”

“Of course.”

He reached into his jacket and removed a long bundle wrapped in a white handkerchief. “This is mine. I acquired it several years ago, from the area of Tara^[18] in Ireland.” He pulled the white linen away to reveal a surprisingly plain, sturdy foot-long twig. The only unusual feature was a sort of groove that wound around the narrower half. “This is ash. The spiraling around it is the result of vines growing in the trees; finding something like this is quite rare.”

“Have you used it, Conor?”

He looked away, abashed. “Only once…”

“When you summoned the sidh.”

“Yes.”

“Well, at least we know it works.” I enjoyed mustering that sarcasm; I still didn’t like Conor ó Cuinn, despite the fact that we would soon be partners. “So…have you thought about where…this…will happen tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Mongfind specifies that it must occur in a sacred oak grove. There isn’t much sacred here in Southern California, but at least there are plenty of oaks.”

Touche. I had to admire the way he’d just repaid my sarcasm. “Thousand Oaks^[19], perhaps?”

“Actually…yes. I’ll e-mail you directions.”

We sat silently for a moment; when we weren’t discussing the supernatural, we really had nothing in common. After a while, Conor said, “You understand that there is an element of danger to us in this.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the ritual or kidnapping someone to be offered as a blood sacrifice. “Do you mean…?”

“Summoning Bal-sab. That’s why the first part of the ritual calls for the creation of a protected space.”

Of course I’d read Mongfind’s description of encountering Bal-sab, but I realized only now that I’d still thought of it as fiction. A real encounter with a physical representation of Death…do any of us know ourselves well enough to perfectly anticipate how we’ll react when confronted with something genuinely terrifying?

“Then we’ll just have to be sure we create that space well, won’t we?”

That shut him up.

The rest of the meeting was devoted to lunch. We ate quickly and quietly. A last meal? Or the last meal of an old world?

As we finished, Conor asked, “Do you know where you’ll look for your wand? Maybe you’ve got a special park you like, a garden…?”

“I do know, but it’s…neither of those things.”

He realized I had no interest in sharing a private plan with him, and he accepted that without further argument. “Well…tomorrow afternoon, then.”

He left. I followed him out of the restaurant, climbed in my car, and headed toward the 5 freeway. Even though it was just past three p.m., traffic was heavy, and I headed south at barely ten miles an hour.

What will this all be like, if we succeed? Will there still be traffic jams, road rage, smog, hundred-degree fall temperatures thanks to global warming, gas at five dollars a gallon, increasing ranks of homeless, greedy corporate heads, ambitious politician, junkies, cancer, and all the other things that grind us down every day even as we take them for granted?

It was hard to imagine a renaissance in the middle of the SoCal metro sprawl.