“Oh! Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Rabbi, it’s great to see you when you’re not trying to kill me, but … what do you want?”
He picked up his bag and fished out an everything bagel with cream cheese. The bag crackled loudly, and he didn’t speak until he had crumpled it into a ball and set it beside him. “I suppose what I want is fair warning if something horrible is going to happen here. You and horrible go together like pickle spears and sandwiches.”
I could say the same for him, but instead I said, “Nothing will happen. Nothing I’m planning anyway. I’ll be gone in a few days.”
“Then I wish to deliver an apology.”
“You do? For what?”
“For never giving me a snack.”
He hasn’t even met you yet, Oberon.
“That doesn’t matter. It’s only polite.”
We’ll review manners later.
“For my behavior years ago,” the rabbi said. “I did many things for which I may not be forgiven.”
“Like killing the youngest, weakest member of the Sisters of the Three Auroras with your fucking Cthulhu beard tentacles there—sorry, I didn’t mean to get so intense. It’s just that I still have nightmares about that.”
“Understandable. And deserved. It was that episode and the next one, with that man who claimed to be Jesus—”
“Uh, that really was Jesus.”
“As you say.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure he would say it too. And to be clear, Rabbi, his existence doesn’t negate or invalidate—much less eradicate—the existence of your god. Or any of my gods, or anyone else’s. He just is. As is Yahweh and Brighid and Odin and the rest.”
He nodded, and his beard, thankfully, did not move of its own volition. “I can accept that now. I couldn’t back then. It requires a flexibility of thought, yes? A certain openness to the idea that people must walk their own road to salvation and not necessarily follow me on mine. I had taken my faith too far.” He shook his head. “It is difficult for me, now, to think of my younger self. I wince at the memories. I was filled with so much anger and had lost the contemplative peace of Kabbalism. But those encounters with you—and watching, from afar, how the Sisters of the Three Auroras conducted themselves afterward, among other things—caused me to reevaluate. I saw that I was wrong to judge them. I should not have judged them. That is the business of a perfect being, yes?”
“I suppose it is. Does that mean the Hammers of God don’t hunt witches anymore, despite that line in Exodus about not suffering a witch to live?”
He sipped his coffee before answering. “Some still do. I personally do not. But I have convinced many of them that focusing on clear evil—demons walking this plane, for example—is much more morally defensible than pursuing witches who may yet be redeemed.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Yes, I think it is good. I do not know if it will ever be enough to pay for what I did—guilt is a heavy burden. When a man leaps into the fire, how many steps must he take to walk out of it? Have you ever overstepped yourself, Mr. O’Sullivan?”
“Oh, gods below, yes. Horribly. Still paying for some of my missteps. I think there are some I haven’t paid for yet. Trying to make it right, though.”
“What’s the difficulty, if I may ask?”
I made a raspberry noise at the enormity of the question. “I have plenty of difficulties, but right now I’m worried most about the vampires. They all want to kill me, and I don’t think I can talk them out of it. They’re actively pursuing me now.”
The hedge of hair above the rabbi’s eyes dipped, and his mustache drooped in a frown. “There are vampires here? Is this why you are in town?”
“I’m sure there are some here, but I’m in town for this,” I said, pointing to the binder. “The names and addresses of vampires around the world.”
The rabbi froze except for his beard, which began to stir even though there was no wind. I was beginning to recognize that as an emotional tell and I had to suppress a shudder, because semi-sentient facial hair is viscerally disturbing.
“How did you acquire that?” the rabbi asked.
“Using the magic you sensed. I stole this from the bank on Front and York. There are thousands of names here. Maybe tens of thousands—the type is small. I’m not sure which ones are the leaders, though. And I’m also unsure how I’ll make much of a dent in the list before it becomes moot. The leadership will soon know that I have this list and alert everyone to move. But maybe some of them will be stupid enough to keep the same names. I can at least use that to track some of them.”
“Extraordinary.” Keeping his eyes on the binder, his hands moved that sad, smooshed everything bagel to his mouth. The schmear of cream cheese drooped out from the edges and some of it fell, ignored, onto the precipice of his beard, hanging. It bobbed up and down as he ate mechanically, thinking.
“Look at that, Atticus. Totally rude. Didn’t even offer me a bite.”
You just had five bacon sandwiches for breakfast.
“Yes, but what about second breakfast?”
I doubted the rabbi was a Tolkien fan, so I said to my hound, I don’t think he knows about that.
“Perhaps … well. Mr. O’Sullivan, I would like to offer my assistance if you would accept it.”
“You’d come out of retirement for this?”
“Absolutely. Vampires are one of the clear evils that the Hammers of God still fight. We would relish the chance to take advantage of this.”
“We? You’re speaking for all of them?”
“I believe I can safely say they will join us with enthusiasm. They have been finding more vampires recently in any case. Something has been disturbing them, making them move in the open.”
“That would be my doing. I’ve had mercenaries hunting them, and some are trying to hide while others are trying to fill the power vacuum left by those we already staked.”
“Admirable. We are on the same side, then.” He grinned at me, a brief flash of white underneath the hair. “Is refreshing, yes?” He nodded as he spoke, and the cream cheese fell onto his coat. I wanted to point it out to him but also didn’t want to let slip this moment of accord.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “How many of your friends might join in?”
“There are hundreds of us scattered around the world.”
“All right,” I said. “Rabbi Yosef, I’ll make you a deal. We’ll go scan this and you can send the file to your associates. For every thousand vampires the Hammers of God eliminate, I’ll give you five years of youth.”
“How?”
“Immortali-Tea. It’s just natural herbs and some bindings, nothing diabolical about it. You see the results before you.”
“Hmm. We would stake a thousand vampires if we could in any case. It’s our duty.”
“Great, so it’s win-win. I guess you’re not able to sense vampires the way you can sense me?”
“No. Our power comes from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, so they are invisible to us as dead things. And I should stress that we cannot sense you personally, only the use of your magic, which is very attuned to life.”