Hexed

Chapter 22

“Have you changed your mind about Thor?” Leif asked.

“Yes, yes, yes!” I said as fast as I could, but he hung up on me anyway.

That turned out to be a mistake, though: He’d been halfway to flipping his phone closed on what he assumed would be my negative answer, when he heard my thin, tinny affirmative as it snapped shut. He called me back immediately.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but did you say that you have changed your mind?”

“Yes, I did say that,” I confirmed, “but only if you’re super-duper sweet to me.”

“What must I do in return for your aid?” he asked warily.

“Help me kill some witches in Gilbert.”

“That is all?”

“Well, there’s only two of us and about twenty of them.”

“That is all?”

“They’re pretty mean and they might be dressed like the Go-Go’s. I’m talking Aqua Net and those shirts that hang off one shoulder and everything.”

“It sounds atrocious, Atticus, simply heinous to the nth degree, but I have no idea to what you are alluding.”

“Then how about this? We might literally catch some hell, because they’re baking demon babies in their wombs. Maybe some other surprises, who knows.”

“Fine, fine. When do we do this?”

“Tonight. Right now. Call up your ghoul friends; there will be plenty to eat when we’re finished.”

“And when do we kill Thor?”

“I’m going on a scouting mission to Asgard before the New Year,” I said, leaving out the part where I’d be stealing one of Idunn’s golden apples for Laksha. “After I return—and that should be before the New Year as well—we plan our raid and put our affairs in order. You get your A-team together, whatever badasses you have in your network, and I will get the lot of you into Asgard.”

“Will you give me your oath on this?” Leif asked.

“Dude, I’ll even pinky-swear.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll give you my oath. Just come pick me up in your batmobile.”

Leif hissed his displeasure into the phone. “I have never turned into a bat, no vampire ever has, and that particular myth of Mr. Stoker’s is growing tiresome.”

“If we live through this, Leif, I swear I’m going to make you read some damn comic books.”