Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(92)
“That’s true, Atticus. You’ll own the Oregon property free and clear, and we won’t require much else except maybe beer money.”
“What is this, are you guys tag-teaming me?”
“I don’t know what a tag team is, but we’re not attacking ye, lad. Honest, now. Ye said it yourself: For too long it was just you, and ye couldn’t do a damn thing but survive. But now it’s different, and ye should consider how your duty might have changed with the times.”
“It’s not that different yet,” Atticus replies. “I’m still just trying to survive.”
“As are we all. Perhaps it’s premature to be thinkin’ of the future. I can’t be speakin’ for Granuaile, so I’ll say me own advice is to avoid falling into your old patterns if we get past this vampire bit. Give the options a good think. As for me, I know what I’ll be doing: making more Druids.”
“And I’ll be doing everything I can to make dirty energy so expensive that people will flock to solar and wind. But I’ll also get a day job in Poland, I think.”
“Really?” Atticus asks. “Why there?”
“To immerse myself in the language. And besides,” I say, brightening at the thought, “I like having beer money. I might even bartend again.”
Atticus drops his head, draws his knees up, and wraps his arms around them. His voice is low and muffled. “I remember going to Rúla Búla with Hal when you worked there. He was truly one of the good guys. Gods, I miss him already.”
I should go ahead and admit it to myself: I’m terrible at choosing safe conversation topics.
CHAPTER 26
When I woke up on the beach in Angola, Oberon curled against my side, I felt physically healed but afflicted with an emotional malaise. Or, to be more specific, an unholy horde of Guilt Ferrets. They’re bastards.
The Jewish tradition has a day of atonement, and right then it sounded like a great idea to me. Except that a single day might not be enough in my case. I might need something like a year of atonement. I know that I did not kill Hal myself—or Kodiak Black, or Gunnar Magnusson, or the Morrigan, or innumerable others—but that’s not how guilt works on a mind. It points out a string of cause and effect to saddle you with responsibility that isn’t yours, and then it hops into that saddle, rakes you with spurs, and rides you until you collapse.
Unless you can find some redemption along the way.
Owen hasn’t said anything, but I’m sure he’s feeling the bite of guilt about Fand and Manannan Mac Lir. I shared with him what Mekera told me, in hopes it would help him on his own journey.
“Owen, listen: I know where Fand is,” I said. An odd way to begin a conversation at sunrise, but my archdruid has never cared for niceties. “She’s holed up at the Morrigan’s Fen with Manannan. They’re going to be tough to peel out of there, but I imagine the sooner you move against them the easier it’ll be.”
“How d’ye know that?”
“I talked with a seer who’s quite a sight better than you or me. She told me.”
“Well, it fits. I could see that they were in a swamp, and the Morrigan’s Fen certainly qualifies. Damn good hiding place. I never would have thought to look there. Thank ye, lad.”
I caught a couple of pensive expressions on Granuaile’s face last night, which she claimed represented nothing when I asked. I didn’t know if she was wrestling with Guilt Ferrets of her own but speculated that her renewed fervor to battle the slow poisoning of the earth might be her own method of atonement. Few things shape our lives so strongly as guilt.
Or perhaps she was worried about Loki, with good cause. I’d already known that Loki had found her at our cabin in Colorado, but over last night’s campfire she told Owen and me for the first time the details of what had happened there. Inside the fire ward we’d placed around our cabin, she had beaten him up, put a tomahawk in his back, and pronounced that he was now living under the death sentence of a Druid. There was no doubt that the reverse was also true—he would kill her on sight, if he could. And the same was probably true for us.
I’m sure he had something to do with her worry. When she first asked to become my apprentice, I did all I could to warn her: Magic users sometimes lived very long lives, but they very often died violent deaths. And I showed her that stinking carnage at Tony Cabin, had her look upon the chewed-up head of Emily the corrupt sister, all of which was more powerful than simply telling her, and she still chose to be a Druid. But even being shown rather than told about violence is nothing compared to experiencing it yourself, and I think she was changed by her encounter with Loki in India. How could she not be? I hoped that striking back at him, coupled with the protection of her divination cloak, gave her a measure of therapeutic satisfaction. But the insouciance she possessed when she was first bound and flush with the wonder of Gaia—that might have been crushed like her bones, and she couldn’t bind those feelings together again.
“Before we get into this today,” I said to her, “we should probably think of where to keep the hounds safe. This place is nice, but there isn’t much in the way of fresh water or game. Pretty much a desert up on top of those cliffs.”
“I know a good place,” she said. “Foothills of the Andes. Mild temperatures right now. Nice freshwater lake. Fat, slow llamas nearby if they get hungry.”