Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(85)
“Listen, Malina, I’d like to find Atticus and ask him about the vampire situation, among other things. But he’s been out of touch and I’m not sure how to locate him at the moment. Might you have any idea how to do that?”
She blinks at me and says, “His cold iron aura shields him from our sight. He’s cloaked every bit as much as you are.”
“Oh, I know. But I thought we could be clever about it and search for where the ruckus is.”
“What do you…? Are you talking about something specific? If so, maybe we could find it. Could you describe the ruckus?”
“No, it’s not specific. I simply think that whatever you find will be vampire-related.”
“We have trouble divining the undead as well.”
“Yes, but I thought that by now they would have recruited a few magical allies. Atticus has been paying some Fae to assassinate them, and they’ve been quite effective. I think the vampires might start paying magic users of their own for protection. So I suppose what I’m saying is, wherever you detect that a large magical signature has flared up recently, that’s where Atticus will be. And if he’s not, well, maybe a large magical signature deserves my attention anyway.”
“Hmm.” Malina taps her index finger on the granite kitchen countertop a few times, considering. Her eyes travel around the room, taking in the witches present. There are six in all, and she nods. “Okay, it’s worth a try if it gets us closer to a vampire-free Poland. There are some here in Warsaw and a few others preying on students in Poznań that we particularly do not enjoy. Anna, will you remain here and give Granuaile her first Polish lesson? The rest of us will try to find the equivalent of a magical ruckus.”
As the other sisters file out to the back acreage, Anna does a little Muppet flail in her excitement to teach me her language. She grabs a pad and pen and starts with the alphabet and sounds. I’ve always liked the letter z, so discovering that Polish has three versions—z, ?, and ?—confirms that I have made the right choice. Time slips by in language acquisition over tea until Malina and the others return. I notice they have little moonshine yarrow blossoms in their hair.
“Rome,” Malina says without preamble. “You need to go to Rome.”
“Why? What’s happening there?”
“Something very strange is going on in the Piazza di Spagna. I’d say it’s almost Rosicrucian, except it feels a bit off.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“The short version is that there are powerful wards around some of the buildings there, but they’re unusually constructed. They’re probably traps. I wouldn’t simply walk in there to see what happens.”
“And these are recent?”
“Yes. We haven’t sensed anything like this before.”
“Okay,” I say, getting up. Orlaith rises with me and wags her tail. “I’m on it.”
“Be extremely careful, Granuaile. Call us if you want to talk about it once you take a closer look.”
“All right, will do.” I thank Anna for the language lesson and take my leave, jogging back to Pole Mokotowskie with Orlaith. I teach her the names for Italian charcuterie on the way, with the result that she can’t wait to try prosciutto and culatello and salama da sugo ferrarese.
“We’ll see what we find first once we get to Rome: a deli or Atticus and Oberon.”
CHAPTER 23
Funerals are a bit fancy now, I notice, since everyone dresses in the best black clothing they have. In me own day ye had one set of clothes, two if ye were doing well, and ye washed them when ye got tired of the dirt and the bugs on your balls, not because somebody died. But Greta gets me some proper mourning clothes, because that’s a sign of respect, she says, so I go along because Hal fecking deserves all the respect I can give—Nergüi too, of course, who entrusted his family to me.
It’s really a hastily arranged memorial service instead of a funeral. Hal left instructions to be buried in Iceland, and Nergüi is to be returned to Mongolia. But the idea is the same: Ye remember the fallen and share why they were important to ye and give what comfort ye can to the family, even if it’s fecking useless and your words can’t possibly mend the hole torn open in their world and the yawning abyss of the future without their loved one. People still need to know that ye would fix everything if ye could.
Since Greta came back, she hasn’t said very much beyond “We’ll talk later” and a few grunts. I don’t have to cast wands to guess that it won’t be a pleasant talk, and I admit me guts are in a twist about it. Since I got pulled back into this time, the only thing that’s kept me from throwing shite at people is Greta. I know that when ye think o’ love you’re supposed to think o’ kissy faces and scented soap and hummin’ happy songs together, but there’s another vital part to it that people rarely admit to themselves: We want somebody to rescue us from other people. From talking to them, I mean, or from the burden of giving a damn about what they say. We don’t want to be polite and stifle our farts, now, do we? We want to let ’em rip and we want to be with someone who won’t care if we do, who will love us regardless and fart right back besides. I’m thinkin’ that maybe Greta could be that person for me. Or she could have been, until the fecking vampires showed up.