Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(81)

“I’d like to know where that god is, where a vampire will dine in Normandy tonight, and where to find an escaped goddess.”

“Location, location, location. Three questions, three cheeses. All right. Go shopping for me, and that’ll be payment enough.”

“What do you need?”

“Only everything. I got out of Ethiopia with some vegetable rennet, but I lack dairy here and all my other supplies. I’ll make you a list.”

“All right.”

“I mean as soon as you bring me paper and pen. I’m really starved for resources here, except apples. Unless it’s safe for me to return to my home?”

“Not yet. Just tell me what you need and I’ll remember.”

It was a very long list. “That’s going to be a lot of shoplifting,” I muttered, but she heard me.

“You don’t have any money?” Mekera said. “I find that hard to believe.”

“If you go with me, I’ll pay you back.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re determined to get me back into the world.”

“No, it’s not that. I want to help, but I don’t want to steal if I don’t have to.”

“Let’s go, then. I’ll reintroduce myself to my bank.”

It was hours of errands after that, but Mekera was efficient and knew what she wanted and where to get it. In addition to cheese-making paraphernalia, she picked up a few more outfits and plenty of food that wasn’t apples. When she finally got started on her tyromancy, most of the day had burned away.

In the pattern of the curdling cheese she divined the future, the complex patterns revealing truth to her far more clearly than my wands ever could.

She began with Fand: “She’s not on earth. A different plane. A castle surrounded by a fen. Lots of yew trees. Creepy.”

She’d taken up residence in the Morrigan’s Fen? At first I was surprised that the Fae living there would permit it. Those loyal to the Morrigan tended to attack first and never question it later. Then I thought of a reason why they might and privately bet that Manannan was there with her. Mekera confirmed it with the next cheese.

“He’s in the same place.” It made sense; now that the Morrigan was dead, Manannan had taken over her primary role as psychopomp, escorting the dead to whatever afterlife they had earned. The Fae there would accept him as the heir to the plane and protect him—and Fand as well, which I’m sure was her intention.

The last cheese was a longer process, since we didn’t have a name to look for. We instead needed to find a place in Normandy where someone would fall victim to sudden blood loss via the neck. That could mean we’d get a false positive—someone getting their throat slashed—but I was hoping slasher crimes weren’t all that common in Normandy. Or that there weren’t a large number of vampires there.

“It’ll happen in Le Havre,” Mekera said, after studying the curds. “I can get an address: Seven Rue de Bretagne. It’s not a house—some kind of business. But I don’t have a name for it.”

“When?”

“Very soon. Within the hour.”

“Anything about the victim? Male or female?”

“Male. Middle-aged.”

“Thanks! You’re amazing, Mekera. But I gotta go. I’ll be in touch. I hope.”

“What?”

“You’ll be fine. And I’ll pay you back!”

It was an abrupt leave-taking, but I didn’t want to miss Leif. I’d have to shift to someplace outside the city and jog in, no doubt, and when I checked the bound trees nearby, sure enough the closest one was miles out of town to the north.

“We have to move fast, Oberon,” I said once we arrived. “Stick with me and watch for cars when we cross streets.”

<What are you going to do?> he asked. <Is this going to be a duel?>

“I honestly don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe. It’ll be a reckoning.”

It took twenty minutes to get there, with a couple of quick stops to ask directions. The address turned out to belong to a restaurant that didn’t cater to tourists; one either spoke French there or pointed at the menu.

I walked right in with Oberon, shocking the sophisticants dabbing at their lips with linen napkins. “Mon Dieu!” one man said, so startled by my hound’s appearance that he dropped his fork into some delicate sauce, which splashed onto his lap. “Qu’est-ce que ce foutu gros chien fait ici?”

<Hey, did that guy just call me gross?> Oberon asked.

Yes, but that means big in French, as it does in German.

Leif wasn’t in the restaurant—a fairly decent affair, with twenty tables—though there were several middle-aged men enjoying wine. I pushed past a waiter and ignored the exclamations of the staff as I entered the kitchen. No vampire at the sous station; not hiding in the freezer either. The saucier got saucy with me and demanded that I leave, and I told him I was leaving so that he didn’t try to escalate any further. I made for the back door, shouty chefs with kitchen implements trailing after me, and burst through into a dank alley with a foul trash bin and a couple of scooters parked nearby. A thud on the cobbled stones drew my eyes to the right, where I spotted the blond-haired Leif Helgarson, who launched into a cover story in French upon being discovered: “Oh, thank God you’re here, this man needs help! He just—” He stopped and switched to English. “Oh. Hello, Atticus.”