Witch, Please
Keeping the pistol trained on them, I back up to the table where their stupid freaky book is. I look down on it.
There’s the image of some manner of monster in the relief. It looks original enough to not be a crappy horror-trop
knockoff. Someone put some care into making it. Someone loved it.
I raised the dagger, still in my right hand, and as their protests and shouts poured over I stabbed it down into the
cover of the book, and through the pages, and down into the table. No unholy lights or otherworldly shrieks came.
Nothing happened at all. I just grinned at them.
“You will pay for this,” Engilda said.
“He’s a corrupted minister,” I replied, pointing to David “and you didn’t call it in.”
“I technically did,” said Engilda.
“You can explain that to Hospitallers when they get here, if you think they’ll buy that. Or you can leave now. I’ll
give you a five-minute head start. Less if you don’t tell me where your brew is.”
“We don’t have any-“ Engilda started.
“The fridge,” Gany said.
“Get going,” I say.
*
*
*
Twenty minutes later I’m sitting at the table on my second flagon when I hear a vehicle come up up the driveway. I
don’t here them enter the house because they’re creepily good at silence. One second I’m alone, and the next I’m
surrounded by them. Possibly the brew affected that.
I happen to know the sergeant who’s running the op, and he shakes his head and tells me I should have called them
from the beginning. I smile and say that we both know I’m too dumb for that. He nods and, as his troops secure the
house, he lifts the skewered book by the handle of the dagger and puts it down again. “Nice touch,” he said.
“What’ll you do with it?”
“The dagger will be cleansed and put in the armory. Might be useful someday. The book gets burned.”
“It’s fake,” I said.
“Probably,” he said, “But if idiots think it’s real, it’s trouble.”
“Waddya mean, ‘Probably’? There is no Necronomicon.”
The sergeant just looks at me. I feel stupid again and then go back to drinking. UJ