Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(23)
Yes. She’s missing what Loki did to me, and my determination to never let something like that happen again. Being at the mercy of an arbitrary, power-mad individual has very little to recommend it—I knew from experience with both Loki and my stepfather—but if she feels that it’s necessary for her own personal growth, then my opinion doesn’t matter. Still, her question and its answer shift my vision a little, allowing me to glimpse what she must be seeing: I’m much angrier and more aggressive than I used to be. And, yes, I have cause—but the tragedy is that I’ve lost that giddy wonder I had when I first became bound to Gaia. There was peace too, which I felt even while being pursued across Europe by Artemis and Diana. It’s all gone now.
“You’re missing why I came to see you,” I say, knowing that she would recognize I wished to change the subject. “I need a way to hide myself from divination and wondered if you knew how I could make it happen.”
Laksha grimaces at me, sucks at her bared teeth, and squints her eyes. “You think I can help you with that? I have absolutely no talent in that kind of magic. If I did, I wouldn’t have been so surprised to see you.”
“But … oh. I guess you’re just my go-to for advice. I had a problem and I came to you first.”
Laksha affects a Southern accent, which she must have picked up while living in Asheville, North Carolina. “Well, ain’t you just sweeter than peaches?” She drops it and continues more seriously, “Advice is easy enough. Go see those Polish witches we dealt with in Arizona, if you know where they are. They put a cloak on your boyfriend’s sword. I was able to remove it, because I’m quite good at destruction, but I could never create something like that.”
“Oh! Duh, I should have thought of them. Yeah, they’re actually in Poland now. Atticus convinced them to get out while they could.”
“And where are you now? Still in Colorado?”
“In transition to Oregon.” I let her know that the most reliable way to contact us is through the Tempe or Flagstaff packs, since we have ties to both.
“I’ll remember that,” she says. “If I leave here I will let you know. But if I do it will be for Mhathini’s benefit, not mine.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She’s still in here,” Laksha says, pointing to her temple.
“She is?”
Laksha nods, a wan smile on her face. “I’m hoping to convince her to stay rather than move on.”
I’m intensely curious—how much of Mhathini is left after the trauma? Is Laksha capable of rebuilding what’s lost? Is she talking to Mhathini regularly inside her head, like she used to do with me? But before I can ask any of these questions, a man shouts and rushes over to our table. Orlaith stands up and growls at him and he pauses, but he doesn’t back away. When Orlaith does nothing more, he spews a stream of annoyed Tamil at Laksha—or Mhathini—and I guess that this must be her father, who has left the house in such a hurry that he forgot to zip up his pants. He also hasn’t shaven or perhaps even showered for a couple of days, yet he is doubtless telling Mhathini how wrong she is to be out in public without a proper escort.
It sets my teeth on edge and I want to growl at him too, but it’s not my place to intervene. Laksha shoots a mute apology at me with her eyes and I wave back in silence. As she rises from the table to leave, I glare at him, daring him to say or do anything that would allow me to give him a proper retort, but he just stares back and then drapes a protective arm around the person he thinks is his daughter, steering her back to his house, where he can belittle her in private.
Though I don’t have anything but American money on me, it worked fine in the market and I give the waitress everything I have, which is enough to pay for a month’s rent or maybe two. I figure somebody here should have a good day.
CHAPTER 7
Damn Siodhachan to a dark and juicy hell for making me shift to an unfamiliar city to tend his perverted hound. I can’t even bring Greta with me as a guide, because he told me once what happened to her old leader, Gunnar Magnusson, when he shifted planes: The poor lad was sick all over his shoes. Werewolves don’t handle plane-shifting well, and I can’t ask her to suffer through that just to let a hound outside for a dump.
Hal Hauk pointed out that I didn’t have to go; he could have called some pack that lived outside the city limits and one of them could have driven into town to take care of Oberon. But Siodhachan asked for me specifically, and, besides, I’m curious about who could have put his bony arse in the hospital. Maybe I’ll get to try out me new brass knuckles on him or her—or it.
So I shift into Queen’s Park in Toronto with a sheaf of printed papers that Hal calls “Google Maps,” whatever the feck that means, and they’re all marked up with arrows telling me where to go to get to the hotel and then a bunch of numbers to call to figure out which hospital Siodhachan is in. Once I find him—Greta says he’s officially using the name Sean Flanagan these days—I have another stack of maps telling me how to get there. I also have a handful of small pieces of paper with the number 20 on them and a picture of an old woman wearing a necklace of white beads. Greta says to me, “These are Canadian,” and that if I give them to people in this country they’ll do what I want. When I asks her if that will work on Siodhachan, she says probably not.