Hexed

shouldn’t be surprised if your core body temperature drops a few degrees. Leif threw one such glare at me for a few seconds, then said quietly, » Are you mocking me? When you quote Shakespeare, it is often to mock someone or to point out their folly. «
    › Whoa, he’s got you there, Atticus, ‹ Oberon said.
    » No, Leif, I’m just under a bit of stress here, « I said, gesturing at my sweating face and the still-steaming amulet dangling from my neck.
    » I think you are lying. «
    » Come on, Leif— «
    » Forgive me, but our association has allowed me some small knowledge about the way you think. You quoted Juliet just now. Are you suggesting I am something like Romeo here, Fortune’s fool, perhaps, driven to a rash and ill-considered confrontation with Tybalt out of revenge for Mercutio’s death? And you think perhaps I will end tragically, like Romeo, if I pursue this course of action against Thor? «
    » That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all, « I said, » but if that were my intent, I would have chosen to speak as Benvolio rather than Juliet: ‘Part, fools! You know not what you do.’ «
    Leif stared at me, utterly still, the way only vampires and pet rocks can manage. » I’ve always preferred Hamlet, « he finally said. » ‘Now could I drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.’ « He spun on his heel and moved quickly—perhaps a bit too quickly for a normal human—to the door of his sleek black Jaguar XK convertible parked in the street, where he muttered a sulky » Fare thee well « before leaping in, gunning the engine, and screeching off in an un-dead hissy fit.
    › Dude. If that was a Shakespearean quote duel, he just kicked your ass. ‹
    I know. But I slipped in some T. S. Eliot and he didn’t catch it. Hopefully next time I won’t be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I’ll do better . I was still hunched over awkwardly, trying to prevent the amulet from falling back to my chest, and I needed to do something about it—but I didn’t want to do anything in front of Mr. Semerdjian, who was doubtless still watching me.
    Oberon, I want you to go across the street and park yourself on the edge of his lawn, sort of off to one side, and stare at him .
    › That’s it? Just sit? Because I don’t want to do anything else while he’s watching. ‹
    That’s it. I need you to distract him, is all. Ever since you left him a present that one time, he’s been terrified you’ll do it again. It’s the gift that keeps on giving .
    It was a shame that Mr. Semerdjian and I didn’t get along. A slightly pudgy Lebanese gentleman on the wrong side of sixty, he tended to get excited quickly and loudly and would probably have been great fun to watch a baseball game with. We might have gotten along famously if he hadn’t been such a jerk from the moment I moved in—which is kind of like saying the drowning victim might have lived if only he had been able to breathe water.
    › All right, but I’d better get a sausage out of this. ‹
    Deal. We’re still going for that run too .
    › Wait. He doesn’t remember any of that business in Papago Park, does he? ‹ Oberon was referring to an unfortunate incident during which a park ranger had died and Mr. Semerdjian had tried to lay the blame at our door.
    Nope. Leif took care of all that with his patented vampiric mindwipe . That thought led me to reflect that having a vampire around was pretty handy sometimes; I hoped Leif wouldn’t remain angry with me for long.
    › Okay, I suppose this will be kind of fun. ‹ Oberon trotted across the street, and the space between the blinds abruptly widened as Mr. Semerdjian abandoned all attempts at subterfuge. › I can see his eyes now. ‹
    While the two of them were engaged in an ocular tête-à-tête, I drew power from the earth and summoned a thick but very localized fog. Arizona is legendary for its dry air, but in the first week of November with a storm rolling in, it’s not that hard to find some water vapor to bind. While that took time to condense, I shifted my concentration to healing my burned skin and made better progress now that the amulet wasn’t cooking it faster than I could heal.
    Since the amulet was still far too hot, I walked hunched over to my garden hose and turned it on, checking to see if the fog had rolled in properly before continuing. I could still see Oberon, who was sitting underneath a streetlight,