“If I told you it’d be a good idea for you to get out of here, I don’t suppose you’d leave,” he said.
Oh, now I was very curious. “Not a chance. You’re not trying again, are you?”
“Yeah.” He continued on, sprinkling as he went. Smelled like sage, with something else, an herb I couldn’t identify.
I trotted down the steps. “What makes you think it’ll work this time?” Stepping along with him, I followed him around the building, to the east, where he’d started his circle.
He paused before joining the two ends of the circle together. “You want to do me a favor and step outside?” He pointed to the obvious doorway he’d left.
“What if I say no?”
“Kitty. Please.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him say the word please before. At least, he didn’t use it often. He sounded urgent, out of patience. Cormac was the most patient guy I knew—he could go hunting, waiting in a blind for days for his prey to come along. Now, whatever he was doing, he didn’t have time to argue. I stepped out of the circle; he closed it behind me, brushing crumbs off his good hand on his jeans.
“Cormac, what are you doing?” I said, hoping to match his seriousness.
“I’m still working for Detective Hardin, and she’s still got a warrant for that vampire. I just want to see what’s so badass it needs a spell like this to prote
ct against. I think I’ve got it this time. We’ll scare the guy out.”
“You think? And what are you going to do once you get a reaction out of him?”
“She says she can arrest the priest, I’m not going to argue with her.”
Hardin had gone up against vampires before, and she claimed arresting one as her lifelong ambition. Columban wouldn’t wait quietly for her to put handcuffs on him, no matter what anti-vampire weapons she threatened him with, no matter if Cormac managed to break his spell.
Cormac was prepared. He had a whole bundle of stakes hanging in a makeshift quiver off his belt, along with a spray bottle, probably filled with holy water, dangling alongside it. A large gold cross hung on a chain around his neck. All of it, including the sunglasses, protection against vampires.
This was going to get messy.
“I don’t suppose I could talk you out of it?”
He shook his head, expressing exactly what he thought of that idea. “Tell you what, you stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.”
Hardin found us glaring at each other, beside the shrubbery between the church and the rectory.
“What are you doing here?” she said to me.
“The evening’s most popular question,” I said. “Just taking a walk, officer.”
She huffed in disbelief.
Cormac shoved the pouch of herbs back in his jacket pocket and drew a piece of chalk out. “I need you two to not interrupt me during this. You think you can do that?”
“Sure,” Hardin said, and I didn’t say anything.
He knelt and started drawing on the sidewalk, the usual indecipherable arcane marks that went along with this sort of thing.
Pointing at the scribble, I said, “You going to let him get away with vandalism like that?”
She aimed a long-suffering glare at me. “Kitty…”
I crossed my arms. “I don’t think you can arrest a vampire.” Kill, maybe …
“I’m sure going to try. I’ve got two patrol cars for backup on the driveway.” She rested a hand on the radio hooked to her belt. Next to it was a handheld crossbow, loaded.
By this time I thought I’d be numb to the sense of foreboding welling up in my gut. I felt it so often. “Just … Rick’s my friend. You’ll leave him out of it?”