I worried at first that she was breaking Brighid’s offer of sanctuary by having him leave Tír na nóg—he was supposed to stay there, and sanctuary was forfeit if he left—but she said not to worry about it, so I didn’t.
I took her to the Grand Hotel Bohemia and said we’d be looking for the oldest vampire there, if that was a trail she could isolate somehow. She brought a couple of scent hounds with her, cast invisibility on them, and entered the hotel with the admonition to give her a few hours. She’d bind with them and coach them on what to search for. I might be able to do something similar but could never achieve the same link she could and be certain they had picked up the right scent; her hunting experience and skill with animals put her in a completely different league from me. I took Perun and Oberon to the Grand Café Orient, near the hotel. The café was determined to take advantage of the sunny weather in winter and offer outdoor seating. They had umbrellas over the tables to protect against sunburns or sudden rain, but I thought the latter was more likely, considering Perun’s sour disposition. Clouds began to form and whirl directly above us. Tourists walking down the cobbled street looked up at them, a bit worried, and then looked at Perun as if the huge man wearing a blue sleeveless shirt on a chilly day was responsible. He was, of course: If there’s some odd weather rolling in, you can almost always blame it on the big guy flaunting his hairy shoulders. People were trying to be cool about it and not stare, but they couldn’t help themselves. They spotted him dwarfing his chair, looking as out of place as one might expect a thunder god in an outdoor café to look, and smiled or laughed at him. A pair of Spanish tourists thought he was an eccentric local and wanted to take a picture with him, and he obliged, grateful for the attention. It cheered him up a bit, I think.
After they left and we had Czech pilsners in front of us, Perun began to speak of what troubled him. He had seen Granuaile recently and she had suggested that Weles was working with Loki. Apparently Perun’s old enemy had squirreled away another god of his pantheon and a horse used to divine the outcomes of battles. Perun and Granuaile had found the horse—and Weles had found them, and then later Loki appeared briefly, proving the link—but they had not found the god, ?wi?towit.
“I am thinking I go looking for ?wi?towit,” Perun said. “Others of my peoples too. I thought all were burn by Loki, but maybe they live. The Zoryas do. Flidais may help with looking for others if Brighid does not need her in Tír na nóg.”
“I wish you luck with that. But if you don’t mind backtracking a bit: Do you know why Granuaile would concern herself with the horse?”
“She is wanting cloak of divination. Witches in Poland give to her if she give to them horse. Good witches who worship Zoryas.”
Interesting. Either she’d removed Loki’s mark and wanted a cloak until she completed binding cold iron to her aura, or she hadn’t and was hoping the cloak on top of the mark would shield her from Loki’s sight. It was all news to me, and I felt a physical ache in my chest at the thought that I should be with the one I love rather than chasing down vampires. And there was a dollop of guilt on top of it, melting like whipped cream on hot pie, for not thinking of her earlier. I could smell that strawberry lip gloss of hers—or at least the memory of it was so strong that it seemed to be in my nose right then. Oberon was thinking similar thoughts, presumably because the mention of Granuaile reminded him of her hound.
<I miss Orlaith,> he said, and sighed heavily next to us.
Hopefully we’ll get to see her soon, I told him privately, and it meant Granuaile for me as much as it meant Orlaith for him. But it was good to hear that she was taking measures to protect herself. I was doing much the same. Removing Theophilus would theoretically remove his death sentence on Druids—which would never have happened if I had kept running when I should have. I shook my head at the realization that all I did anymore was fight to get back to that place where I had only one Irish god after my ass. Aenghus óg was long gone now, his spirit trapped in hell, but I supposed Fand could fill the role of Irish antagonist quite admirably from her prison.
Perun and I waited at that café for more than a few hours, downing schooners of pilsner and trading stories of older days while Oberon napped, but eventually I was too cold to stand it anymore. The clouds had moved off as Perun’s mood lightened, but the temperature was trending toward icy. “You know what?” I said. “Let’s go shopping. Flidais will find us wherever we are, right?”
“Is right. She does this to me before.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“What do we buy?”
“I need a jacket,” I said, quite nearly shivering. I didn’t want to employ the earth’s energy to raise my temperature when there was a simpler fix. “Maybe we’ll find one for you too.”