Free Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven by Kevin Hearne

the antithesis of magic, and though Laksha might call it maya, what the rakshasa is doing is still magic, regardless of its flavor.
    I remove my necklace and wrap the gold chain around my fist before slapping the cold iron amulet against the boy’s forehead and holding it there. The reaction is immediate and terrifying.
    His roar becomes a screech, and his hands lock around my wrist and try to pull it off, but this boy’s weakened body is no match for me. His mother boils over with worry and she begins to scream behind me. Oily smoke belches out of his mouth, nose, and ears, forming a cloud above the boy’s head, and this is what Laksha had been waiting for.
    “Yes! It’s leaving him! Once it’s all out, thrust the iron into the middle of the cloud!”
    My amulet is not made of an overwhelming amount of iron. I can cast around it, after all, though it always requires extra energy. I’ve tried casting with the amulet off, and it’s far more efficient to do it that way. It’s undeniably a damper on magic, and combined with the noise and smells and the water, it’s enough to break the rakshasa’s hold.
    The cloud of greasy vapor slithers above me—toward the mother, who’s blocking the exit and making all kinds of noise—and once it stops billowing from the boy and he slumps backinto the bath, Laksha urges me to move. Rising to my feet, I thrust the cold iron into the cloud, and it reacts with a sort of jellyfish ripple, then it curls in on itself, like a spider in water, cold tendrils of it closing around my fist. Abruptly, it gushes toward the floor in front of the toilet—directly to my right—and the vapor solidifies from the ground up into a humanoid form sheathed in black. Then the face appears—a nightmare made flesh, with bloodshot eyes and an obscene red tongue lolling over a gaping maw of sharp teeth. It is the rakshasa’s true form, a portrait of corruption like Dorian Gray, temporarily robbed of its ability to shift or cast illusion by cold iron.
    Instinctively, I draw back, but there’s hardly any room to maneuver—the tub is directly behind me. The rakshasa lunges for my face, but a flash of steel darts between us and slides across skin that is quite solid and real, opening a slit that splashes blood onto the floor. The demon clutches its throat and turns those horrible eyes to my left in time to see Laksha drive her knife blade into one of them. It topples backward, its knees buckled by the toilet, and dies, gurgling, in a sitting position—an image that I file under T HINGS I N EVER W OULD H AVE S EEN I F I H AD K EPT B ARTENDING .
    The boy regains consciousness with a gasp and asks for his mother. She rushes to him in relief and shields his view of the room; with an exchange of gestures, Laksha and I silently agree to remove the body. I put my necklace back on but realize I’ll have to leave my staff here for the moment. As we enter the living room, cradling the corpse, it occurs to me that we might be violating some kind of taboo—we may have made ourselves untouchable. I’m not an expert on the caste system or to what extent it’s observed anymore, so I ask Laksha about it.
    “Is it all right for us to handle the dead? I mean, are we tainting ourselves somehow in the eyes of others?”
    “I think she will overlook it,” Laksha replies, tossing her head back to indicate the mother. “And no one else will see. Which is vital. The sight of a real rakshasa will cause panic and draw the attention of the authorities.”
    Seeing that we are headed for the door, Orlaith gets up and moves out of the way.
You’re a good hound
, I tell her. Aloud, I ask Laksha the all-important question.
    “What are we going to do with him? It’s still raining.”
    “That’s a blessing. Everyone is indoors.”
    “There’s no convenient burial ground.”
    “He should be burned far away from here, but that’s not an option. We will choose a place where no one will try to grow anything.”
    That place is