“Congratulations on your marriage.” Hexe smiled. “Faro is a lucky man.”
“Not if I get my hands on him!” Chorea replied sharply. “Did you know that bastard ran off and left me on our honeymoon?”
“Oh, Chory, I’m so sorry,” I gasped. “That’s horrible!”
“He ditched me in Crete, two days after we were married.” The maenad gave Hexe a suspicious look. “You wouldn’t have happened to have seen him lurking about?”
“No, I haven’t,” Hexe replied. “But if I run into him, I’ll make sure he knows you’re looking for him.”
“Fair enough,” Chorea sighed, mollified by his response. “So—what’ll it be? The usual?”
Within moments of our nodding yes, the barmaid had a pint of Old Hurdy-Gurdy and a glass of the house red sitting before us. As I lifted my glass to my lips, the person at the table next to us—a Kymeran man with long pumpkin-colored dreadlocks—lit up an elaborately carved meerschaum pipe, adding further aromatic billows to the already smoky room.
A young human woman wearing a beret and a disgusted look on her face leaned out of a nearby booth and tapped the orange-haired Kymeran on the shoulder. “Excuse me—sir? Sir?”
The dreadlocked Kymeran turned in his seat to scowl at her, but did not take the pipe out of his mouth. “What is it, nump?” he growled.
“Sir, do you mind
not
doing that?” the woman asked in a tone that made it clear she was making a demand, not asking a question.
“Doing
what
?” the Kymeran replied, continuing to puff on his pipe.
“Smoking!”
she replied in a voice just short of a shout.
The entire room fell dead silent as every eye in the bar turned to stare at the defiant human. Asking a Kymeran to extinguish his cigarette or pipe on his home turf was right up there with burning a flag, in terms of cultural insult. The dreadlocked wizard took the meerschaum out of his mouth and studied it for a moment, then shook his head.
“I
do
mind, thank you very much.”
The woman in the beret blinked, taken aback by the Kymeran’s lackadaisical response. “Smoking isn’t allowed in bars and restaurants in New York City,” she said with overstated politeness. “What you’re doing is against the law!”
“Who’s gonna arrest me?” The warlock chuckled as he blew a lungful of Borkum Riff in her face. “You and your nump pals there? This ain’t Tribeca or the Village. You’re in Golgotham now, girlie. You’d best remember that.”
The woman and her companions hastily gathered up their coats and left the bar, muttering profanities under their breath. The moment the door closed behind them, the regulars gave a ragged cheer and a few came over to clap the pipe smoker on the back and buy him another round.
Hexe, however, did not seem to find the incident quite so amusing. “C’mon, Tate,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs to the dining room.”
Suddenly there came a high-pitched, yet somehow masculine shriek from the back of the house.
“Put me down!”
Chapter 6
I
turned in the direction of the yell and saw a drunken college student dressed in an Islanders sweatshirt holding a wildly squirming leprechaun over his head as if he were the Stanley Cup, much to the amusement of his equally inebriated companions. Like all of his kind, the leprechaun sported bright red hair and bristling whiskers. However, instead of wearing the stereotypical breeches buckled at the knee and gartered hose, he was outfitted head to toe in scaled-down Versace.
“Don’t let ’im go until he gives you his Lucky Charms!” one of the friends shouted. This particular witticism triggered a round of loud, braying laughter from the surrounding crowd. Since I had suffered my share of mischief at the hands of the local Wee Folk, I will confess to a certain schadenfreude at the fairy-fellow’s predicament.
“That’s racist!” the leprechaun yelped. “Let me go, ye bloody nump!”
“Don’t do it, Jared!” one of the college student’s friends advised. “If you capture one of ’em, they have to grant you three wishes!”
“What are ye,
five
?” the leprechaun snapped as he continued to try and free himself. “None of that shite from the fairy tales is true! Now put me down!”
“No way!” Jared said, shaking his head. “Not until you give me your pot of gold.”
“Are ye daft as well as drunk?” the leprechaun growled. “I don’t carry me gold around on me person. Besides, it’s all tied up in commodities right now.”
“And I say make with the gold, little dude!” Jared laughed, shaking his captive like a piggy bank, as if a cascade of bullion might pour from the leprechaun’s tiny pockets.
Suddenly Lafo was standing in front of the college student, the sleeves of his shirt pushed up to reveal his muscular forearms. “I’ll have no horseplay in my establishment!” he barked, his voice booming like surf against a rocky shore. “And don’t you numps nowadays know enough not to antagonize the Wee Folk?”
“There’s no reason to get all butthurt, bro’,” Jared replied as he set the leprechaun down. “I wasn’t gonna really
do
anything to the little fucker. Me and my friends were just having some fun, that’s all.” The college student turned to offer a conciliatory fist bump to the victim of his bullying. “We’re cool, right, little dude?”
The leprechaun responded by pulling a short shillelagh from the sleeve of his jacket and pointing it at the college student. “So ye want me Lucky Charms, eh?” he asked, his high-pitched voice trembling with rage. “Well, by damn, you’ll
need
them, boyo!
May you feast on hogwash and sleep in filth; may you root with your nose as the farmer till’th!
”
Jared doubled over as if punched in the gut by a phantom fist, and dropped to the floor. The college student’s cries of confusion and pain quickly turned into porcine squeals as his hands and feet transformed themselves into trotters and his nose grew and broadened into a twitching pink snout. He frantically thrashed about as he tried to free himself from clothes that no longer fit his newly acquired physique, which came complete with a curlicue tail.
The sight of the transmogrified student’s distress triggered a chorus of laughter from the Calf’s regulars, who were every bit as amused by Jared’s ordeal as the frat boys had been by the leprechaun’s.
“Oh my God!” one of Jared’s friends wailed. “What did you
do
to him? Turn him back, you little freak!”
“Never!”
the leprechaun snarled defiantly. “And if you ask me, I have improved his appearance immensely.”
“Damn it, Tullamore,” Lafo snapped. “You know I don’t allow spell-slinging in my joint! Last thing I need is the Paranormal Threat Unit breathin’ fire down my neck.”
A couple of frat boys lunged at the leprechaun, but Tullamore was ready for them. He nimbly sidestepped his bigger, clumsier opponents, moving so fast it was impossible to keep track of him. One moment he was thumbing his nose in front of his attackers, the next he was dancing a jig behind them.
The laughter from the Kymerans watching from the sidelines grew louder and nastier each time the disoriented college students tried to rush the toddler-sized Tullamore. Cackling with laughter, the leprechaun jumped onto a nearby table occupied by another group of humans and began frantically step-dancing like a pocket-sized Michael Flatley, sending their drinks flying in every direction.
One of the humans jumped to his feet, cursing loudly as he wiped thick, sticky barley wine off his suede coat. “You’re paying for my dry cleaning, squirt!”
“You’ll have to catch me first, nump!” Tullamore retorted as he flipped him the bird. The leprechaun jumped off the table and landed on the back of the transformed Jared, who squealed in fear and began running in and out between the close-packed tables and booths. Tullamore slapped the pig-boy’s rump with the shillelagh like a jockey going for the winner’s circle as he was chased by Jared’s friends and the man in the ruined jacket.
While the regular patrons of the Two-Headed Calf might have been enjoying the chaos created by Tullamore’s taunting of the humans, Lafo clearly had had all that he could stand. He yanked open the front door and gestured angrily toward the street.
“Take it outside, Tullamore!”
The leprechaun grabbed Jared by his porcine ears and dug his heels into the pig-boy’s haunches, sending his steed squealing out of the bar and into the night, his pursuers chasing after him like an unruly pack of hounds. Most of the Calf’s regulars poured out into the street as well, eager to have a good laugh at the numps’ expense. To my surprise, Hexe got up to follow them. However, unlike his fellow Kymerans, he didn’t seem the least bit amused.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Someone halfway sober has to keep an eye on this before it gets worse,” he explained.
“Wait for me!” I shouted, grabbing my peacoat.
By the time we made it outside, there were at least sixty people, a third of them humans, gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Calf’s bay windows, watching Jared’s friends chase after Tullamore as he rode their buddy up and down the street like a racehorse. Thanks to curious passersby stopping to rubberneck and neighbors pouring out of their nearby homes and businesses to see what all the fuss was about, the crowd outside the Calf grew to well over three hundred in the span of just a few short minutes.
The humans were shouting alternately at the leprechaun to turn their friend back into his true form and at Jared to stop running around, goddamn it. Meanwhile, the Kymeran onlookers continued to laugh and shout encouragement to Tullamore. One of the frat boys lunged at the leprechaun, but Tullamore tugged on Jared’s ears as he would the reins of a horse, wheeling his mount about so he was headed in the general direction of Ferry Street, home to Golgotham’s leprechaun community. Suddenly the man in the suede jacket moved to block his path.
“Ye’ll have to do better than that, boyos, if ye want to catch me!” Tullamore shouted. In the twinkling of an eye, a pair of huge white wings, like those of a swan, unfolded from the pig-boy’s shoulders. The leprechaun dug his shins into his mount’s flanks and with a startled grunt Jared soared into the air with a single flap.
Jared’s dumbfounded friends stood and stared as he sailed away over the rooftops, accompanied by gales of laughter from the assembled Kymerans. “Bring him back, you little bastard!” one of them shouted, shaking his fist at Tullamore’s rapidly disappearing backside. “That’s my roommate you’re flying off with!”
Once he realized the leprechaun was not going to reverse his flight plan, Jared’s roomie turned to face his companions. “What am I going to tell his mother?” he moaned.
A Kymeran with hair the color of lime sherbet stepped forward and clapped the distraught college student on the shoulder. I recognized the wizard as Oddo, one of Hexe’s occasional clients, who came to the house whenever he needed a hangover cured, as he had a tendency to get drunk and sling spells in public—a definite no-no in Golgotham.
“Don’t fret, lad,” Oddo said, slurring his words only slightly. “Your pal will show up in a day or two. . . . Of course, he’ll be a few dozen yards of sausage hanging in a butcher’s window by then. . . .”
“Holy fuck!” the roomie gasped in horror.
Oddo guffawed and slapped his knee, pleased by the shocked look on the college student’s face. “What did I tell ya? The nump fell for it, hook, line, and sinker!” he shouted to the Kymeran onlookers gathered on the sidewalk, who promptly added their belly laughs to the chorus.
“It’s not fuckin’ funny!”
the roomie yelled, pushing Oddo aside.
The wizard staggered backward, more surprised than harmed by the attack. He pointed his right hand at his adversary, the six fingers bent at angles impossible for human digits to duplicate, and made a sharp upward motion, as if hailing a cab.
The college student shot six feet into the air like a marionette yanked offstage by the puppeteer, his arms and legs flailing wildly as he screeched at the top of his lungs:
“Stop it! Put me down!”
“I will—but only after I make sure you and the other numps have learned your lesson about sticking your noses in places that don’t want you,” Oddo replied. He made a twirling gesture with his right hand and the levitating student began to spin like a top, going faster with each revolution.
“Please! Stop!”
he wailed.
“I think I’m gonna—I’m gonna—”
I assume the rest of his sentence was
puke
, because that’s exactly what he did, in copious amounts under high pressure. The cluster of humans directly underneath him nearly trampled one another in their attempt to escape the unwelcome downpour, only to be shoved back by Oddo’s drinking companions, much to the delight of the assembled onlookers, who laughed even louder than before.
In the confusion, one of the humans trying to escape accidentally stumbled into Oddo, causing him to lose control of the wildly spinning college student. The poor bastard went flying like a rock from a slingshot, sailing through the bay window of the Two-Headed Calf with a mighty crash.