“Woof,” Roth said. “Looks like somebody had a rough night.”
I shrugged, chuckling. “You could say that. We dropped by a bar last night. I’m not convinced the locals like us very much.”
Roth shrugged back. “They’ll warm up to you eventually. It’s mostly a quiet town, they’re not really used to visitors. Certainly not tourists. I had to pay my dues, too, being an out-of-towner.”
“Oh?” I glanced down awkwardly at my hands, unsure of where to put them, deciding they were best stuck down my pockets in case they wandered. “Not from here, then.”
“Nah. My dad moved here and I thought I’d help him settle down a little. He’s a good guy, deep down, just doesn’t really understand what he actually wants out of life, you know?” He pushed a lock of hair out of his face, his muscles straining again. “Sometimes it feels like he’s the kid and I’m the daddy.”
The daddy. This motherfucker knew exactly what he was doing. I held my expression perfectly still, wondering if I could keep my promise to Gil. Don’t eat the electrician, he said. Well fuck, I didn’t know the electrician was goin
g to be so damn edible.
“Right,” I said. “Parents, you know?”
What the fuck was I saying? My name was Sterling. Being silver-tongued was coded into my DNA, and here I was, babbling like a schoolboy.
“Yeah,” he said, finally selecting a hammer from his toolbox. Wait, a hammer? How was that supposed to help him restore power? “Yeah. Listen, just gonna head in back and check on things, okay?” He cocked one finger at me like a gun, winking. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’ll be right here,” I said, a chuckling, stammering, sweaty mess. I was half-tempted to call Gil and ask him if he’d made some mistake and sent over some local go-go boy instead. Not that I discriminated, but we needed the power back on. Fast. I had to charge my phone, for one thing. Oh, and the guys would probably be happier not to freeze to death. That was important too, I guess.
Roth’s voice came piping out of some back room. “Let there be light,” he said. And so there was, a low, almost imperceptible hum running through the cabin as the lights came back on.
“Nicely done,” I said. Huh. Maybe he knew what he was doing, after all. “A little sacrilegious, too. How charming.”
He came strolling back into the room, depositing his hammer back in the toolbox, grinning. “Eh. I reckon being a god would be overrated.”
Roth looked around the room, now that it was fully illuminated. Bags of chips sat on the coffee table next to half-finished cans of diet soda. An empty phial of blood was sitting on the carpet right by a chair leg. It clinked as I nudged it with my foot, then rolled obediently under one of the couches.
I pushed my hair up out of my face, shrugging. “It’s like a frat house exploded in here. I know.”
He laughed. “Honestly, it doesn’t look all that different from my place. Oh, hey. Cool sword.”
Oh, shit. The katana from Susanoo. I’d totally forgotten about it, left it propped up in a corner of the living room. Didn’t even bother sheathing it. The scabbard was just there on the floor. I rushed to stop him, but he was standing too close. Roth picked up the katana, admiring the blade, holding it up to his face.
“I – I wouldn’t look too closely,” I said.
Yeah, that was way too near his face. I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable zap when he tased himself with Susanoo’s blade through sheer proximity. The god of storms didn’t mess around when it came to enchantments. But nothing happened.
“Beautifully smithed,” he said, eyeing the edge of the sword. “Hmm. But were you planning on cleaning it off?”
He reached for the blade. I stretched out an arm, shouting. “No!”
Again: nothing happened. He stroked two fingers along the flat of the sword, admiring, then grimacing when he found smudges of dried blood closer to the tip.
“See, this is what I mean,” he said. “From the craftsmanship alone you can tell this thing is expensive. Priceless. If you’re going to collect weapons of this caliber, you’re going to need to maintain them better.”
I scratched my scalp, looking at the ground, confused. “I’m sorry? I think?”
He chuckled, carefully propping the katana back up against the wall. “I’m not even going to ask where that blood came from.”
I chuckled back nervously, hoping that mirroring his mannerisms and body language would put him at ease and help him forget about the bloodstains. “You into weapons yourself?”
He shrugged. “I dabble here and there. It’s boring up here in the mountains, you know? Nothing much for a guy to do but polish his shaft. Sword shaft. You know what I mean.”
This son of a bitch.
“Anyway,” he said, collecting his toolbox, “I should get going. Man’s gotta eat and I’m starving. Gonna head home and cook myself up something nice and filling.”