Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

seaweed, but privately I thought the Algae Shirts would be a great band name. Incredible merchandising potential.
    Granuaile wanted fish too but wasn’t feeling up to the monkfish, so after asking me for a wee bit of coaching on pronunciation, she ordered
“turbot Hollandaise au citron vert, écrasée de pommes de terre, crème de ciboulette.”
    The waiter, a tall gentleman with heavy eyelids, bobbed his chin and said,
“Oui, mademoiselle.”
    She grinned with victory as he departed. “That was fun to say. I’ve enjoyed all these little phrases I’ve picked up today. I think I should learn French next.”
    “I agree. Let us begin. Repeat after me:
J’ai l’air ridicule quand je ne sais pas ce que je dis
.”
    “Wait. I heard a cognate in there. Something about ridiculous. You’re setting me up to say something stupid, aren’t you?”
    “Auggh! You caught me.”
    She smiled briefly before her expression turned serious. “How long do you think it will take us to cross the channel?”
    “It’s a twenty-one-mile swim, so however long it takes Oberon to dog paddle the whole way. It might be a very long time, unless you think you’d be strong enough to kind of tow him along and speed up the process?”
    She pursed her lips in uncertainty. “I haven’t even tried to swim yet. I have no experience with that form;we haven’t been by the sea in the past few weeks since I’ve been bound. But towing a hundred fifty pounds of wet dog doesn’t sound easy.”
    “Well, it won’t be deadweight. He’s going to be helping. Hopefully we’ll have time to experiment. We’ll use the belts to jury-rig a harness for the weapons first, and then if we can figure out something for Oberon too, great. But if not, we’ll basically swim circles around Oberon to make sure nothing’s coming at us.”
    That earned me a Billy Idol lip curl. “Something’s going to come at us, isn’t it?”
    I nodded. “Odin revealed that it’s Poseidon and Neptune’s job to make sure we never make it to England. I don’t think they’ll content themselves with waves.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “The same thing that Poseidon and Neptune will do. If they can influence the animals of the sea, so can we. You look at them in the magical spectrum and attempt to communicate with them, the same way you made the initial connection with Oberon. Try to convince them that we taste like ass or there’s something shiny waiting for them in the Black Sea or whatever, just don’t eat us.”
    “We’re not going to have access to magic while we swim.”
    “Nope. Whatever I can store in my bear charm will have to last us the entire way across. We should cast magical sight while we’re still in the shallows and keep it on all the way.”
    “We need to make like ten more of those bear charms.”
    “Yeah, it’s tough to argue that. But it might be more important to bind your amulet to your aura first. Everyone who wants to find me can do it now by finding you. The only reason we’re staying mildly ahead of them is because we keep moving. But that’s not sustainable.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “Well,” a cultured voice said, “I found you the old-fashioned way. A wiretap.”
    Our heads swiveled in alarm as our hands reached for weapons. Leif Helgarson, living embodiment of a frenemy, stood stiffly with his hands clasped together in front of him. He was out of reach beyond the neighboring table, but he could get into reach quickly if he wished.
    “Though I admit, I was informed ahead of time which city you would be in. Hal is not so security-conscious as Gunnar was, have you noticed? He should be using a scrambler.”
    What I noticed was that Leif had ceased trying to blend in—not that he had ever been especially good at it. He was wearing a black paisley waistcoat over a white shirt and a candy-apple-red cravat pinned with a pearl. Black skinny pants and shiny, pointy black shoes completed his look, which suggested to me mild mental illness.
    “Since when did you start monitoring calls?”
    “Working with Theophilus has given me access to technologies and methods I would not have used earlier. I have been monitoring all calls running through the cell towers near Hal’s residence and place of business, so thank you for reaching out to him.”
    “It’s not a wiretap if you’re not actually tapping a wire,” I said, in a peevish attempt to reassert control. A small part of me was relieved that Leif wasn’t able to track me