curse bar

“Damn,” I said. “Those are some hard-core faeries.”
Jill sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes glittered brightly. “What did you say?”
I became suddenly aware of the massive redhead by the door rising to his feet.
I swigged a bit of beer and put the notebook back in my pocket. “I called them faeries,” I drawled.
The floorboards creaked under the weight of Big Red, walking toward me.
Jill stared at me with eyes that were hard and brittle like glass. “You of all, wizard, should know that word is an insult to … them.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “They get real upset when you call them that.” A shadow fell across me. I sipped more beer without turning around and said, “Did someone just put up a building?”
A hand the size of a Christmas ham fell onto my shoulder, and Big Red growled, “You want me to leave some marks?”
“Come on, Jill,” I said. “Don’t be sore. It’s not as though you’re trying all that hard to hide. You left plenty of clues for the game.”
Jill stared at me with unreadable eyes and said nothing.
I started ticking off points on my fingers. “Llyn y Fan Fach is a lake sacred to the Tylwyth Teg over in the Old World. You don’t get a lot more Welsh than that leek-and-daffodil emblem. And as for calling yourself Jill, that’s a pretty thin mask to cover the presence of one of the Jili Ffrwtan.” I tilted my head back to indicate Big Red. “Changeling, right?”
Big Red’s fingers tightened enough to hurt. I started to get a little bit concerned.
Jill held up a hand, and Big Red let go of me at once. I heard the floor creaking as he retreated. She stared at me for a moment more, then smiled faintly and said, “The mask is more than sufficient when no one is looking for the face behind it. What gave us away?”
I shrugged. “Someone has to be renewing the spell laid on Wrigley Field on a regular basis. It almost had to be someone local. Once I remembered that the Fair Folk of Wales had a rather singular affinity with goats, the rest was just a matter of legwork.”
She finished off the beer in a long pull, her eyes sparkling again. “And my own reaction to the insult was the cherry on top.”
I drained my mug and shrugged modestly. “I apologize for speaking so crudely, lady. It was the only way I could be sure.”
“Powerful, clever, and polite,” she murmured. She leaned forward onto the bar, and it got really hard not to notice her bosom. “You and I might get along.”
I winked at her and said, “You’re trying to distract me, and doing it well. But I’d like to speak to someone in authority over the enchantment laid on Wrigley.”


Brief Cases, Curses, Page 126-128