2
Snakes are ghastly things. But there was no future in letting them shake me up.
I bent over in my swivel chair and swung my left arm like a flail just below this rattler's raised head. He struck at me, but late, and missed. The swipe I took at him should have swept him over, but he got his coils around me. When I heaved back up straight before my desk, he was as neatly wrapped around my forearm as a Western Union splice.
Enough of his tail was free to make that buzz that means "Look out!" About a foot of his business end stood up off my arm. His forked tongue flicked out over his horny lip, pink and dainty.
"Now, vanish!" I said to the snake. It didn't. Instead the door to my office opened, letting in a little more of the unmistakable smell of the hospital, as well as old Maragon, Grand Master of the Lodge. He was complaining and shaking a finger at me as he came toward my desk. He didn't jump more than a foot when he got a look at my arm. His shaggy gray eyebrows climbed way, way up his forehead in a mutely shouted question.
I wouldn't give the old goat the time of day. When I dead-panned him, he shrugged and lowered himself into the chair beside my desk.
"Thought you hated snakes, Lefty," he said.
"A guy could get used to almost anything, Grand Master," I said. "I found a cobra under my pillow when I rolled out of the sack this morning. A coral snake fell out of the folds of my towel when I went to take a shower. Somebody stashed a bushmaster here in my locker to meet me when I dressed for surgery. I'm getting almost fond of snakes."
Maragon semaphored doubt by squeezing his eyebrows down in a scowl. "Even real snakes?" he protested.
"It's the most artful hallucination I've ever experienced," I granted. "This snake has weight, a cold feel and a scratchy scaliness. This new witch of yours really knows her stuff. I just would have thought..." I dribbled off, raising my shoulders.
"Thought what, Lefty?"
"Oh," I said. "That it was someh