Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) (10 page)

“You have given me new information and I’m grateful. I will consider it, I promise you, and act should I feel the need. You are right that I can leave at any time. But you are completely dismissing why I am staying.”

I shake my head, uncomprehending. “No, I don’t mean to be dismissive. I guess I don’t understand.”

Laksha flashes a smile at me over her teacup. “That is both likely and easily forgiven.”

“Help me out a little bit?”

She sips, savors the tea, and puts down her cup. “This is not my meek acceptance of systemic misogyny. I am not in need of your rescue. What I need is to atone for centuries—
centuries,
Granuaile!—of my own cruelty and arrogance. So whether Durga meant for me to be here or not is immaterial.
I
feel I need to be here, to feel what it’s like to be at the mercy of an arbitrary, power-mad individual like I used to be. I am learning. I am becoming empathetic and understanding the horror of how I used to behave. This is where I am on my spiritual journey. Where are you on yours?”

I flinch because the tone of her voice feels like a slap. “I’m not really on one. Gaia is my jam, and she’s in favor of life on earth. That’s about it. Journey’s over, I’m at my destination.”

“You haven’t told me everything. You’re different. Something else has happened to you besides the death of your father. What am I missing? Is it something to do with why you’re holding your arm awkwardly?”

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.

D
amn 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.

It’s midafternoon and the walk from the park to the hotel takes me a half hour or so. I keep asking strangers if I’m heading in the right direction. They’re a friendly and helpful lot, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the old lady on the small pieces of paper.

The hotel is a tall building, which means a lot of stairs for me. Greta says the elevator is faster, but I don’t trust them, because I don’t know how they work. I know how stairs work and that will be good enough.

Siodhachan’s room is on the sixth floor, Hal told me. Room 633. When I reach it, I can hear the television blaring inside and there’s a sign on the doorknob that says
DO NOT DISTURB
. I figure that has to be a joke, since Siodhachan asked me to come here, but I don’t think it’s very funny.

I try the handle, only to discover that it’s locked. I pound on the door and call out to the hound. “Oberon. Open the door if ye can. It’s Owen.” His voice filters into me head.

you
doing here? Where’s Atticus? Wait—how do I know you’re really Owen?>

“Because I can hear ye talk and answer back. I’m here at Siodhachan’s request. He’s been hurt and I’m to take care of ye until he’s well.”

“I don’t know yet, I just got here. Would ye let me in so I don’t have to keep shouting through this fecking door?”

True to his word, the lock disengages and the handle, a short horizontal bar, moves down. I push it open and the giant wolfhound bombards me with questions before I’m even in the room.

“I don’t have details. All he did was text Hal Hauk in Arizona that he’s in a hospital somewhere in this city. So we have to call around to find him. Is there a phone here?”

“Good. When we find which hospital he’s in, we’ll go straight there and get some answers.”

The television is on and showing pictures of people eating way too damn loud. The hound shows me how to turn it off and then we can concentrate in peace.

The phone is an intimidating device and it’s full of instructions on the front, unlike cell phones. But it doesn’t work like it should. Greta said when you use landlines like this, you get a dial tone first and then you dial the number. Except when I start dialing, the fecking thing starts ringing as soon as I punch the first number.

“Room service,” a voice says in me ear.

“What? I’m trying to dial the hospital.”

“Pardon, sir? Is this an emergency?”

“No, not for me. I just need to make a call, and when I started dialing, you answered.”

“Oh, I understand. You need an outside line. Hang up, then dial nine, wait for the dial tone, then dial your number.”

“I hate this fecking century.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I slam the phone down on the voice and pick it up again. There’s a dial tone, but I do what the man said and punch 9. The tone skips a beat, then continues. I try the number for the first hospital again, and this time it works.

Unfortunately, there’s no one registered under the name Sean Flanagan at Mount Sinai Hospital, so the call is a waste of time. I move on to the next number, St. Michael’s. The lady on the phone says, yes, Sean Flanagan is a patient there, but she can’t give me any more information unless I’m a family member. I hang up on her rather than argue. I’ll just go down there and see with me own eyes how he’s doing.

“Right, he’s at St. Michael’s.” Consulting the Google map, I notice it will take us a while to get there. “Looks like a bit of a walk. You need a walk anyway, don’t ye?” I ask the hound.

“Anything ye need to bring? We won’t be coming back here, because I don’t have the key.”

“I should imagine so.” I retrieve it, strap it to me back, leash the hound, and leave the rest. Down the stairs we go, past some rather shocked people in the lobby who didn’t know they made dogs in Oberon’s size.

Once he’s outside, Oberon informs me that he’s going to need to do some “urban fertilization.”

“Is that what ye call it?”

“And what do ye do when ye have to shite in the big city?”

“Hey, I know that already, ye don’t have to tell me!”

“Gods blast it, I was asking ye where
you
shite in the city, not where I should do it!” I might have said that a bit too loudly, because people on the sidewalk look at me out of the corners of their eyes and swerve away from the man talking to a giant dog about where to drop a pound. Maybe I should talk to him the way Siodhachan does, with me mind instead of me mouth. I can do it, but it doesn’t come naturally. I never bound myself to an animal this way.

“Fecal urgency? This is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some bloody strange ones lately.”

The hound eventually takes care of his business behind a hedge we’re passing and then brags about his discretion.

“Well done,” says I, thinking for two whole seconds that I’m going to have some peace before the hound speaks again.

“That’s too bad. I don’t have any food on me.”

I start to object that I don’t have one of those credit cards that people always use to pay for things but then remember that Greta gave me the paper with the old lady on it, and something clicks. I pull it out and show it to the hound. “Hey, do you know if this is cash money?”