Hexed_ The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne [61]
“Well, I know how to get some answers,” I said to the door as I scrambled into my bedroom. Oberon met me there with his tail wagging.
“To all my questions,” I said, throwing on a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a green cotton T-shirt. The door thumped again, not as politely as before; there was definitely a note of impatience in the way she knocked on wood. “Now, look, she can obviously hear your thoughts, so I want you to pipe down and head out to the living room and wait. And when she comes in, I want you to stay behind her at all times.” “Just do it, please,” I said shortly, and immediately felt sorry for my arbitrary tone. Usually I enjoy arguing with Oberon. He’s great with the give and take. But he didn’t understand the stakes here, and I couldn’t explain them to him while Brighid was listening in on his side of the conversation. Brighid smirked at me when I opened the door, and it was like one of those cheesy commercials they play during football games: An obscenely beautiful, sultry woman in next to nothing appears mysteriously; a ghost wind generated off camera blows her hair in a way that suggests wild abandon; she pouts sexily at this utterly regular schmoe with a weak chin; and he completely suspends his disbelief that she’d ever be interested in him, because he’s got an ice-cold beer in his hand. The mysterious wind in this case was almost certainly generated by Brighid herself, and it wafted her scent to me, which was just as I remembered it: milk and honey and soft ripe berries. Damn. Now, I’m not a regular schmoe, and I certainly don’t have a weak chin, but I’m as susceptible to beer commercials as the next fella, even though it’s just living vicariously in a pubescent male fantasy. None of those commercials came close to the real, live goddess that confronted me in my doorway. Brighid looked as if she had jumped out of the pages of Heavy Metal. She was wearing several layers of sheer blue material, tied or bunched in such a way as to barely cover her naughty bits, yet providing a tantalizing glimpse of each through the fabric. A golden torc circled her throat, and another accentuated her left biceps, while delicate ropes of twisted metal adorned her wrists. Around her waist were several thin golden chains. Her red hair cascaded around her face in languorous waves like Jessica Rabbit’s, and she had gold thread braided into it here and there. And the pouty come-hither look, achieved by pursing the lips a bit and looking at me with sleepy eyes? She had that down. The ladies in the beer commercials were hot, no doubt, but when a goddess wants to make an effort, no one else can even open the jar of mustard, let alone cut it. Brighid was much more my type than the Morrigan. She didn’t eat dead people in any of her forms, for one thing, and it was she who ignited the fires of creativity and passion within the hearts of all Irish. But even if I wanted to give Brighid whatever she had come for—and I wasn’t sure I did—I realized that the Morrigan had done her best to ensure I couldn’t. The entire cast of the Morrigan’s visit changed for me now that Brighid was standing in front of me. The two of them had never been antagonists, but neither had they been fast friends. A healthy respect and perhaps an unhealthy envy existed between them, a rivalry of equals to see who could be first among them all. What had kept each from the other’s throat before was Aenghus Óg and his cabal, but now that there had been a purge in Tír na nÓg, perhaps the two of them were clawing at each other and I was either a prize to be won or a means to a different