Hail Fellow - A Marshal of Magic Tale excerpt

 

“You know where this place is?” he asked from the seat next to me.

Hail sat in the passenger seat, arm resting on the open window of my dusty old truck as we rumbled along a two lane back road.

The sun winked through leafy treetops, tossing a cascade of flickering lights across the inside of the cab.

Elvis floated behind me in the bed of the truck, whipping on the end of his tether like a kite on a string.

He didn’t yell so much anymore. I suppose the novelty of flying wore off after awhile, but I could feel happy energy radiating off of him in waves of bliss.

“If you’re asking if I’ve been,” I told him. “No. But in a general sense.”

He snapped off a salute.

“General sense.”

“You don’t seem too concerned,” I told him.

He shrugged.

“Not for me,” he tapped his chest and watched the road through the windshield.

“But I consider you a friend, Marshal. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

“Thanks?”

“None needed,” he said. “I called you in on this so you’re doing me a favor. Let’s mark it even and no favors owed.”

Crap.

Some beings are very careful in the way they use words. Favors, gratitude, life debts, hospitality, they were all interwoven.

Hail must have spent a few millennium with the Sidhe, who took it very seriously.

My off the cuff question just evened me out with a prince of darkness.

It put me in a pickle.

If I argued, he would assume the debt was open to negotiation, and I would owe him.

Weird, I know, but if you owe the devil a favor, it can turn into some serious consequences.

And Hail wasn’t even THE Devil, just one of his offspring.

“Sounds good,” I tried to sound a lot more confident than I felt.