I grab my reward of a single Valkyrie hair which is lying on the floor and leave the daycare. I still carry my phone in one hand, refroze shards of the ice from my scepter in the other. I squeeze the pieces together. It’s not beautiful like it had once been, but I can fix that later. I slid behind the wheel of my Phantom.
“All good?” Thor asks, his thick muscular arms are crossed over his chest and his hammer rests across his lap.
I glare at him though part of me really wants to tell him what a failure this mission has been. I wonder if he already knows.
I sense he’s irritated about me ordering him not to join the fight and he’s pouting on the inside. I am probably one of only a few people that can tell this about him just from his voice.
I, meanwhile, am in no mood to soothe hurt feelers. “Here, hold this.”
Before he knows what I’m going to do, I drop the ice fragment into his hands. Instantly, he starts to juggle it.
“Curse you, Loki,” Thor shouts as he doesn’t know what to do with the ice.
I feel better now.
Until Thor bundles the ice in his fist and chucks the piece out the broken front windshield. It slams into the trunk of a tree, which it shatters. The whole top of the tree comes crashing straight down, then with an eeking sound, falls on top of my Phantom. So much for the paint job and the tender metal of the roof now thoroughly dented along with the hood from Thor’s hammer earlier. I glare at Thor.
“Sorry,” he mutters dumbly.
I reach out and a second later the ice returns to my hand. I return it to the scepter before taking the keys out of the ignition, grabbing the snowman totem, and getting out of the car.
“Loki,” Thor says behind me, “are you mad at me?”
He’s pushing my buttons and he knows it. I slam the door closed with my foot. Using the fob, I pop the trunk. My totem jars are in two padded cases. Though my scepter still needs repair, I send it away for the moment. I can deal with that damage later. Right now, I need my totem jars and nothing else. With a magical push, I tuck the snowman and its dome inside my case too.
Then I go to the passenger side of the car and toss the keys in through the broken front windshield at Thor. “It’s a few months early this year, like Christmas in July. Enjoy your new car.”
With that, I start to walk. Overhead, Huginn and Muninn begin chattering. Oh, what a story the ravens will have for Odin tonight.
I round the corner at the block so I won’t even be tempted to look back to see what Thor has done with the Phantom. Damn, I’m going to miss her and just when I had broken her in. But, maybe I should be seeing this as an opportunity.
I pull my phone and shift both cases to one hand. I dial as I walk. First, I call my bookkeeper; she’s got to transfer money and I’ll need lots of spending cash. Then I call my car dealer to see what he’s got available. Then I call my attorney to make sure the closing on my property has gone as planned and to have him go about making the purchase of my new car. So many human details.
“Hey, Loki!” I hear a shout from behind me.
Thor waves as he drives by in a little orange and black AMC Gremlin.
I wave back. “Looks really good on you, Brother.” I twitch my fingers.
There’s a dismal crunch as Thor hits a telephone pole in the middle of the road. Gee, how did that get there? I have no idea. Really! It sounded like an aluminum can being hit by a baseball bat. Steam pours out of the front of the Gremlin.
“Loki!” Thor growls.
I turn around and give Thor a salute. Then I twitch my fingers again and move the telephone pole safely back where it had come from. Now the Gremlin sits there as though it hit a phantom. Whoops, my bad.
A human drives by and gawks at Thor in his little crushed car. “Get that piece of crap outta the road,” the driver yells.
Yes, I can tell I’ll be paying dearly for that one.
Oh well, it’ll make sure Thor doesn’t pay me a visit for a good long while. A century or two sounds nice. Humans aren’t the only ones who despise family visits.
“Loki.”
Now there is a voice that stops me in my tracks along with wiping the smile from my face and it hadn’t come from Thor. I turn as if in slow motion.
“Don’t drool all over yourself,” Thor calls.
I toss him a glance, but he and the car have already disappeared.
Gelsh blinks at the spot in the road where Thor had been as if not sure she’d seen something. Then she finishes running up to me. “Loki, is it really you?”
I could’ve been brought to my knees with her very words. I catch my reply before it gets out too quickly. After all, I don’t know what she’s remembered if anything, about her life as a Valkyrie or about the incident at the daycare. Wait! Am I doubting my own enchantment now? I wish I’d backed the spell with some Valkyrie magic. Would I possibly not cast a spell strong enough? Never! I laugh at the notion.
Then why the heck is she running after me?
I realize I’m standing there with two black cases in my hands. How embarrassing. I have been caught walking down the road like a common mortal. This is definitely not suave in any way.
“Ah, hi,” I say. Lame! “You’re the girl from the college, the one I also saw at the Ataraxis Tavern.” Lamer!
“Yeah, I meant to call you, but I lost your card.”
Yeah, duh, you were supposed to, I want to reply but I hold back. I should get karma points for that, don’t you think?
She is looking at me with those blue eyes and I know she’s searching for something, answers to questions she can’t even pull from her subconscious mind to know she should be asking. Yet I am asking the only truly relevant question in my own mind: why haven’t the Valkyries come for her? I have to know.
Leaning forward, I put a hand on her shoulder. “Skreli farhausten kjord.”
“God, you really do have boundary issues, don’t you?” she says, stepping back from me.
I blink. Then I blink again. That should have worked. A being is always sent back to the realm where their frequency aligns. That’s the rule. You don’t go changing the rules.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Did you need something from me?”
Now it is her turn to look taken back. “No.” She pauses. “There was just something I needed to ask you. Now I can’t remember what it was.”
“Well,” I say, reaching inside my jacket for a card, “when you think of it, give me a call. Until then, let’s not stand around and gawk at each other.”
For a moment, I think she might refuse the card as she glares at me. I’ve pushed the boundaries. I know it. Flat out rude. I’m tired of finding myself at an all-out loss, thus I have to make a decision to end it. Were we done here yet?
She snatches the card from my fingers and looks at it. “Oy, godboy, I’ll be doing that,” she says with a perfectly snarky tone. “You think I don’t know who you are, Loki, but I got your number.”
“Yes you do,” I reply trying really hard not to smile, though I do point at the card.
She throws me one last seething look that would melt butter on a cold day, then turns and walks away. She twists my card in her fingers.
It’s not the type of card that gets returned to me as a totem to let me know I’m on the job, but I can’t say it’s an ordinary business card either.
She doesn’t look back as she turns the corner to return to the daycare, which I’m thankful for as I have no excuse for remaining here watching her other than I damn well want to. I wonder if she realizes that that Freya’s war cry is returning to her.
That’s when I let myself smile.