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

a well-worn path between houses, a sort of alley, now a muddy trench. I contact the elemental Kaveri and ask her help in burying the rakshasa’s body, explaining that we might be doing this sort of thing all night to help people. She parts the mud for us far more quickly than I could do it myself, and we drop the dark corpse of the demon into the resulting grave. The mud flows back over him and the problem is solved—no witnesses.
    Orlaith, who had followed us out of the house, is struck with the procedure’s practical application for dogs.
    Your paws do the job admirably on their own
, I tell her.
    “One down,” Laksha says. “Now that we know what works, perhaps we can do the next one a bit quicker. It won’t be long until we draw your father out. And in the meantime we are saving people. This is good karma.”
    A tight smile on Laksha’s face suggests that the last point is perhaps the most important to her. I cannot blame her for wishing to do others well, but I do wish there was a quicker way to find my dad.
    “What did you use as a focus when you tried to divine his presence?” I ask her.
    “The shards of the canister that held the raksoyuj. It was the object he most recently touched.”
    “Ah, but that wasn’t really his. It was a thing of the raksoyuj. Might a different object be more effective, one that was more closely tied to him?”
    “It might,” Laksha agrees. “Do you have such an item with you?”
    “No,” I say, “but I might be able to get one. Let me think about it.”
    Laksha darts into the house to retrieve what I suppose must be called her exorcism kit, along with my staff, and to offer a hurried farewell to the family. I squat down next to my wet hound and scratch behind her ears, trying to think of something that might hold a stronger psychic signature of my dad than the shattered remains of that clay vessel.
    When I was growing up, he’d send me little trinkets and cards for my birthday and Christmas from wherever he was, and I’d go into my room and open them in private and cry because he was always so sweet and loving, albeit from a distance; to me, that was infinitely preferable to the coldness of my stepfather up close. He continued doing this even into my adulthood, never forgetting me, always letting me know that he was thinking of me and that he loved me. From a distance.
    I still had some of his gifts back at the cabin, but the most recent one was more than twelve years old now. The gifts had stopped coming, of course, when I’d faked my death to disappear and begin my apprenticeship in secret. Would any of them have a psychic signature strong enough for Laksha to find, when so much time had passed and he was possessed by something with its own magical defenses? Emotionally I wanted the answer to be yes, but rationally I could not imagine that the odds would be good. Laksha’s approach of killing rakshasas to lure the raksoyuj would probably work better. And it would keep me busy while I worried.
    When Laksha reappears with Scáthmhaide, she asks if I’ve thought of anything useful.
    “No,” I say, shaking my head. “Let’s go play exorcist.”

I have noticed over many centuries of relationships that a corollary to love is worry. They sort of come together as a matched set, and it’s nigh impossible to ditch one without the other. I don’t mean worry in the sense of a constant hand-wringing or an outward show of anxiety but a silent panic, always there but flaring up on occasion until one chokes and cannot see through a sudden veil of tears, panic that what you cherish most will be scarred or lost or taken away forever.
    I worry about Granuaile a lot.
    That’s not to suggest I lack confidence in her abilities. She can handle most anything. But Laksha Kulasekaran is one of the few things she might not see coming in time to defend herself. I’m sure Granuaile thinks Laksha would never hurt her. I used to think that way about Leif