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Hob meets Annalise O’Brien when she is thirteen. The girl sits down in the back of one of his lectures and watches. She doesn’t take notes and she looks entirely out-of-place given her age, but there’s intelligence in her eyes as she listens, a spark of curiosity that most of Hob’s History of the Occult students have lost. She leaves immediately after the lecture, but she comes back the week after that.
And the week after that.
And the week after that.
Hob begins to look forward to seeing her on Mondays.
The fourth week, she lingers after the lecture, waiting for him to finish his conversation with a student before stepping forward.
“It’s not true, you know,” she says, “What you said about the people who were drowned as witches.”
Hob said a lot of things about witches. It’s what the whole lecture was about. It’s what the class is about, really—witches and werewolves and strange immortal beings that totally don’t exist. He’s not exactly sure what thing she’s referring to.
“What’s not true?” he asks.
“Some of the people killed were witches. Most of them were.”
Hob would beg to differ. He certainly hadn’t been a witch. He doesn’t know the first thing about practicing magic, and he doesn’t really want to learn. Magic is meant for beings far more complex than him. He’s learned the virtue of a simple life.
“Don’t worry, though,” she says, “all of the witches who died were the bad sort.”
He hears the unconscious bigotry in her statement. There’s a bad sort of witch, which means, to her, there’s a good sort. He wonders if she’s the good sort. She certainly has strong opinions on witches for someone who isn’t even enrolled in his class.
“I wasn’t aware that there was a good sort of witch,” Hob says, which is a lie. He’s known good witches and bad witches—Fair and Blood both, and some who aren’t either. “What’s your name, young lady? Believe it or not, I haven’t seen you on my roster.”
“I’m Annalise. My mum just got a job here.”
“And your mum is?”
“Penelope O’Brien.”
Ah. The she-devil herself. He should’ve known.
Penelope O’Brien had been brought into the Liberal Arts college to make it more profitable. That meant that she was making major changes in order to “increase student interest in the soft subjects.” What it really meant was that it was making all of their jobs a million times harder. Hob had never been to so many training sessions. They were treating him like a TA when he was tenured. It was annoying.
But none of that is Annalise’s fault.
Hob pretends to read over his roster. “Well, would you look at that? It would seem that your name is right here at the bottom.” Annalise reads over his shoulder as he scribbles her name across the bottom of the sheet.
“Nobody’s going to believe that,” she says with the confidence of someone who has only lived thirteen years on this earth. Hob has met many thirteen-year-olds in his time, and they never seem to change. Young people are always so sure of themselves, even when they’re not.
“Yeah, but who’s gonna tell them?”
Annalise looks at him for a moment, trying to solve the puzzle that is Hob Gadling. She won’t be able to, he knows. He’s an enigma. Only one being can read him like an open book, and he hasn’t seen him since 1889.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Annalise offers him her hand to shake, so professional and grown-up.
Hob shakes her hand with a smile. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
She sits in his class for six more months before her mom catches on and enrolls her in some after-school activity. The last thing Annalise tells him is that it isn’t anywhere near as interesting as Hob’s butchering of history. The comment makes him smile.
Hob meets Gabriel Boutin when he is sixteen. The boy walks into the New Inn and orders a drink that Hob’s never heard of. The bartender, Heather, tells him that this is a respectable establishment that doesn’t serve minors. She confiscates his fake ID. Gabriel flips her off on his way out the door.
A week later, Hob sees the kid again. This time, he’s covered in blood.
He doesn’t even think. He takes off his jacket and places it on Gabriel’s shoulders. It hides the blood on his clothes but not on his face.
Gabriel’s in shock. Hob can tell because he lets him manhandle him into the back of a taxi cab, drag him up the stairs to Hob’s flat, and push him towards the shower. He mutters French to himself the entire time. Over and over again––some mantra that Hob doesn’t understand. His French is a little antiquated.
He finds a small book filled with names in Gabriel’s jacket and dabs the blood off of it while the shower runs. Property of Gabriel Boutin, it reads on the second page.
The kid comes to sometime in the shower. When he steps out of the bathroom he’s dressed in Hob’s robe. There’s a nervous look in his eyes, which flick around the flat––constantly looking for a way out. But he doesn’t flee. Not right away.
“What type of witch are you?” Gabriel asks, lingering in the doorway. Hob can feel his gaze on the book in his hands. It’s important to the young man.
Who are the people written inside the cover?
“I’m not one,” Hob says.
“But you’re not a fain.” At Hob’s questioning glance, Gabriel elaborates, “You’re not human. You don't feel like one.”
“How do humans feel?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Different from you. There’s magick around you––old magick. With a k .”
“There is,” Hob agrees, because he’s certain now that Gabriel is a witch. He wonders if Annalisee would catagorize him as the right sort. He doesn’t really care. Labels like that have always hurt those they’re applied to. At the end of the day, witches were witches. “But I’m not a witch.”
“No,” Gabriel agrees. That seems to reassure him a little. He snatches his book from the table and stuffs it into the pocket of Hob’s robe. “Why did you help me, old man?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.” And Hob always tries to do the right thing these days. He has enough wrongdoings to make up for without adding any more. “Why were you covered in blood?”
“A job.”
“You’re sixteen.”
“So?” Gabriel crosses his arms defensively.
“That’s a little young to be covered in blood,” Hob says. At least it is these days. Gabriel should be in school. He should be falling in love and making mistakes, not running for his life and possibly killing people.
“You haven’t met many Blood witches, have you?” Gabriel asks.
“I don’t know what a Blood witch is,” he lies because he thinks Gabriel will be more comfortable with him not knowing than with the truth. He’d known Marcus Edge before his mother was slaughtered—he knows what a Blood witch is.
“They’re illegal here is what they are.”
And Hob knows that feeling all too well. How long had it been illegal for him to express his love to someone of the same gender because the people in charge saw his desires as wrong? How many years had he spent fighting for equality? Solidarity gained a new definition when his friends were dying all around him.
“Fairborn witches rule England,” Gabriel says. “They’d kill me if they found me.”
“Then why are you still here?” Hob asks.
Gabriel shrugs. “I have a job to do.”
Have, not had. The kid is still on the clock. Hob knows better than to get involved with witches, but when he looks at Gabriel, the boy looks so small. He’s so young. Hob thought they were past the point of children dying in other men’s wars, but he’d been wrong. Gabriel was another child to be sacrificed in the feud between Blood and Fair.
“What’s the job?” Hob asks.
Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “Why?”
“I want to help.”
It’s an honest answer. He wants to help. He wants to stop Gabriel from meeting the same fate as so many children who came before him.
Gabriel considers him. For a moment, Hob thinks that he’ll refuse his help, but eventually, the boy shrugs. “It’s your funeral, old man.”
Hob delivers the package for Gabriel. When he returns to his flat, the boy is gone. There isn’t so much as a note left behind.
Hob meets Nathan Byrne when he is eighteen. Heather is out sick so he’s manning the bar that day. It’s raining outside—the kind of chilly November drizzle that Hob adores. A gust of cold air accompanies the open door. It slams shut behind a trio of teens who don’t really belong in a place like the New Inn. Hob watches them shove themselves into a corner booth. There’s something familiar about two of them that he can’t quite put his finger on. He knows them—he knows that he does—but he doesn’t remember where he knows them from. The one kid he doesn’t recognize slides up to the bar.
“Three pints of beer, please.”
“I’ll need an ID.”
The kid passes him an ID declaring him Nathan Byrne. It says he’s eighteen, but Hob doesn’t really care. He was drinking far younger than that.
“Three pints of beer, coming right up.”
As the words leave his mouth, the bleach-blond boy wraps an arm around his waist and declares, “You better not be ordering me a beer.”
That’s when Hob recognizes him. He hasn’t met many French teenagers in the last couple of years. Gabriel Boutin, the Blood witch he’d welcomed into his home. He looks better than he did last time—happier. Hob doesn’t say anything about it. He doubts the boy remembers him.
Instead, he asks, “What do you want then?”
“Shots,” Gabriel answers. “We’re celebrating.”
“What’s the occasion?”
Gabriel grins. “We saved the world.”
Nathan elbows him in the ribs and glares at the other boy. Gabriel offers him a sheepish smile as if to say he’s not going to believe us. But Hob does. He’s lived through too many apocalypses not to.
“What’s taking you boys so long?” The girl slams into the bar. She takes in the boys before briefly switching her attention to Hob. Recognition flickers through her eyes. “Professor Gadling?”
She’s Annalise O’Brien, Hob realizes after a second. She’s grown a lot, but she’s still as determined as ever. He can tell.
“The one and only.” He pretends to tip an imaginary hat.
Annalise gapes at him. “You look like you haven’t aged a day.”
There was a time when such words would concern him—and they still would if they’d come from someone else’s mouth—but Annalise is harmless… well, as harmless as a witch can be.
“Older people age more slowly,” Hob says with a shrug. "It's on the house since you saved the world and all." He passes Annalise and Gabriel the shot glasses, watching them retreat to their table as he fills up a pint for Nathan.
“Sorry about them,” Nathan apologizes. “They’re still a little hyped up.”
“From saving the world?”
Nathan begins to not but stops himself. “Uh…”
“You see those men in the corner?” Hob points to the angel and the demon sitting in the corner of the pub. Nathan nods. “They saved the world a couple of years ago.”
Hob moves his attention to the group of immortal warriors snacking on fried pickles. “And those folks over there?” Again, Nathan nods. “They’re constantly saving the world.”
The bells above the door jingle as Dream walks in. Hob knows that it’s him without looking. The being fills the room with his presence. Hob isn’t sure how everyone else misses it. He doesn’t take his attention off of Nathan as Dream takes a seat at the bar.
“This is a place for people who save the world,” Hob says, “You’ll fit right in. Trust me.” He sends Nathan back to his seat with his pint. Hob watches him go before turning to Dream with a smile on his face. “It’s good to see you.”
“As it is to see you, Hob Gadling.”
“What did the old man want?” Gabriel asks his boyfriend when he returns with his disgusting beer.
Some days he doesn’t know why he even tries with these two. Their sense of fashion—their underdeveloped pallets—their common sense—are nonexistent. They’d die without him. Probably doing something stupid and heroic.
Nathan shrugs. “Just to tell me that we’re not special. Apparently, everyone in this pub has saved the world.”
“Who?” Annalise asks, appalled. After all, they just saved the world. It’s kind of insulting to be told by an immortal bartender that you're not special.
“Those two.” Nathan points at a darkly colored and pastel-dressed pair.
They’re not human either, Gabriel can feel it. In fact, they feel like… “An angel and a demon,” he says. “Probably the ones that stopped Armageddon.”
“How do you know about that?”
Gabriel shrugs. He’d rather not talk about the things he’d learned under her employ. “Who are the other people who saved the world?”
“That lot.” Nathan points to a group of military types clustered around a table.
“Do you know who they are?” Annalise asks.
Gabriel shakes his head. “They used to be human—like the old man.”
“But they’re not anymore?”
“That’s all I can tell you,” Gabriel says. His eyes glance to the old man, who’s smiling at the goth sitting across from him as if he hung the moon. “Did he say anything about the goth?”
“No.” Nathan shakes his head. “Why? Is he not human?”
Yes is the answer. There is something about the man that is otherworldly. Gabriel doesn’t know how everyone else is missing it. As he watches, the man meets his eyes. There’s a swirling cosmos within them. Power radiates off of the man in waves. He is something older and more dangerous than everyone else in the pub.
Gabriel just saved the world. He’s not going to get his significant others tangled up in whatever’s going on in this strange place.
He turns to his boyfriend and girlfriend and scoffs. “In your dreams.”