Southwark clung to the banks of a rancid river, the smell of which made Loki pull the collar of his shirt up over his nose, though Theo told him that was both rude and conspicuous. Even in the frail light of the gas lamps, the brick houses were dark with soot, and plaster crumbled off the siding, dropping into the streets like rockslides in miniature. Children with charcoal-smeared faces sat along the edges of the collapsing roofs, spitting seeds or possibly teeth at each other. The cobbles bulged at random, like great tree roots were pushing them up from beneath, and the gutters spilled onto the streets, their contents thick and sluggish.

“This is your home, is it?” Loki asked, his lip curling as he stepped deliberately over a spill of rotting produce that had been mashed into the stones. “You must be so proud.”

“Come, now, I’m sure there are more decrepit corners of Yggdrasil,” Theo replied cheerfully. “Not many, but at least one.”

“If there are, I have yet to see them.”

He followed Theo down a short lane, then around the back of a red-shuttered tavern with crooked windowpanes and an upper story that seemed to jut out at a dangerous angle over the first. To Loki’s surprise, the alley was flooded with people waiting to get into the building ahead of them, and the noise of excited chatter echoed off the narrow corridor. Sellers stalked through the crowd, hawking orange slices and biscuits for sale.

Perhaps something had been lost in the translation, but this was not what Loki had expected when Theo had said he was taking him to see bodies. He had thought of a graveyard, or at least a quiet basement. The underground corridor of the museum seemed a more appropriate place for a viewing than this, with the crowds and the noise and an atmosphere of merry excitement. This felt like a fairground.

Theo seemed unconcerned by any of it. He navigated them through the mob of people to where Mrs. S. was waiting for them, sitting on a coal bin and knitting. She hardly glanced up as they approached. “Good to see you weren’t robbed on your way here,” she called as they approached.

“I’m sure His Majesty would have protected me from any roving thugs,” Theo replied. “Or at least protected himself and accidentally saved me as well.”

“Still have your wallet?” she asked.

“Yes,” Theo replied confidently, but Loki saw his hand dart to his trouser pocket. “What are you knitting?”

“A hat for the prince,” she replied, holding up the shapeless bundle of yarn. “Something with horns.”

“What is this place?” Loki interjected.

Mrs. S. flicked her eyes to him. “Didn’t Theo tell you?”

“He said it was a morgue,” Loki replied. “So what are all these people doing here?”

“They’re tourists,” Mrs. S. replied, tucking her knitting into her carpetbag and dusting off her trousers as she stood. “They started putting the dead on display in Paris, and now it’s all the rage in London too. Charge sixpence a head for a prime view of the many ways you may leave this world. The grizzlier the better. This spate of recent mysterious deaths has given them quite a boost.” She nodded at the onlookers. “Perhaps they should pay your people some sort of commission.”

“They all are here to see the dead?” Loki asked. “That’s morbid.”

Mrs. S. shrugged. “That’s human. Come along, boys.”

As they made their way to the entrance, shuffled forward by the flow of the tourists, Loki noticed another group gathered around the doors, this one holding signs in the air or wearing them on strapped boards looped over their shoulders. Some of them were chanting the same message as was painted on many of their signs: LET THEM LIVE. Mrs. S. brushed past them without sparing a glance.

As Loki went to follow her, a woman wearing one of the signs over her shoulders leaped in front of him and shoved a leaflet into his hand. “Those you see presented as dead in these halls are not yet gone to their great reward!” she shouted, sort of to him and sort of so the whole crowd could hear. He felt her spit speckle his face. She must have been near Mrs. S.’s age, with dark hair flecked gray and a small, neat hat secured to it with a pin. Her dark skirt was starting to ride up where her sign had caught the hem. “The police and the papers would have you believe them dead, but they merely sleep!” she shouted, thrusting a leaflet at Theo, who stuck his free hand into his pocket and looked purposefully in the other direction. “To bury these dead would be to bury the living!”

“Come on.” Theo removed his hand from his pocket and grabbed Loki’s arm, dragging him through the door and away from the woman. Loki glanced down at the leaflet. The text was blotchy from her sweaty palms, but the illustration at the top depicted a skeleton reclining in a scrolled frame, one bony hand wrapped around a curled scythe. The bold, striped letters beneath it read DO NOT LET THE LIVING SUFFOCATE IN A GRAVE. THERE IS STILL HOPE FOR THOSE THOUGHT DEAD.

There followed several long paragraphs in a font too small to make out without proper study, but it looked like the woman with the sign had a lot to say on the subject. Loki shoved the leaflet into his pocket, then followed Theo and Mrs. S. into the morgue.

The morgue hallways were so stuffed full of people that Loki had to crane his neck to see into the dimly lit cases, and even then he hardly got a proper view. On each side of the aisle, floor-to-ceiling glass windows separated the spectators from corpses laid out on slabs, tilted so their bodies could be viewed. Cloth had been artfully draped across the bodies in strategic places, with the corpses’ clothes hung on pegs behind them. Dark water dripped from a pipe along the ceiling, presumably cold to keep the bodies preserved. A few policemen roamed on both sides of the glass, though they seemed unperturbed by the spectacle.

Disgust curdled inside him. Though it wasn’t at all the death; death did not bother him. All lives ended—he and Thor had been taught that from a young age. Warriors gave their lives for Asgard every day. Even those who died old and at peace would have been worn down in the service of the realm. Instead it was the indignity of this, the twisted display, the gawkers, the small children with their noses pressed against the glass, smearing their faces as they gaped at open wounds. They were only humans, but in that moment, he wished he could place each of them in a ship and see them off to Hel.

“This is barbaric,” he murmured.

Beside him, Theo was staring at the floor. “At least we have dogs.”

Mrs. S. stopped at the back of the largest group and waited, one foot tapping out an impatient rhythm. As they moved toward the glass, Loki heard someone behind him whisper to her friend, “I’ve been waiting all week to see the living dead.”

He whipped around. “What did you say?”

The girl, short and spotty and still young, started at his attention, but then jutted out her chin defiantly. “That’s what they call them in the papers,” she said. “The ones that’s dead for no reason.” She poked a finger toward the glass. “She should be living.”

The words rang inside him, the memory of what his father had seen years ago the last time he looked in the Godseye Mirror. Leading an army of the living dead.

He felt Mrs. S.’s fingers coil around his arm, pulling him away from the girls. “Take a look, we won’t have long.”

Theo hung back in the crowd, but Loki followed her to the front of the group until they were nearly pressed up against the glass, staring at the woman’s body laid out before them. She was naked, her long hair uncoiled and hanging in limp threads to cover her breasts. In the icy light through the glass, she didn’t look dead at all: she looked asleep. Her skin hadn’t taken on the clammy, pale quality that other corpses did, and there was no discoloration, no sign of sickness or injury. In spite of how reluctant he was to appear interested in this assignment, Loki found himself stepping so close that his nose brushed the glass.

It was only then that he looked down the row of corpses and realized they were all this way—still as sleep and entirely not-dead-looking. There was no blood, no injury, no visible signs of what had felled them. They had nothing in common but death.

He suddenly understood how Mrs. S. had been so certain that it was magic that had killed these people. There was nothing natural here. Nothing human, nothing native to Midgard.

“How many are there?” he asked, his breath fogging the glass.

“Two more hallways full,” Mrs. S. replied. He could see the hard set of her mouth reflected in the glass. “Scotland Yard won’t allow any of them to be buried. They’re keeping them all here for observation.”

“Observation?” Loki repeated. “What are they expecting to observe, exactly?”

“They’re not sure,” she replied. “But because none of the bodies are decaying, some believe that they’re not actually dead. There’s no heartbeat or breath, but they’re not corpses. The police could prove death or life definitively with an autopsy—an examination of a body to determine how they died—”

“I know what an autopsy is,” Loki interrupted, though he hadn’t.

“—but none of the families of the dead have granted permission.”

“Why does it matter if there’s an autopsy?” Loki asked, trying to say the word with confidence, but it felt strange in his mouth.

If his pronunciation had been questionable, Mrs. S. didn’t comment. “Because of their unusual state, it’s the only way these people can be declared officially dead and then buried. And since there’s still some debate as to whether or not they’re actually dead, the coroner can’t legally perform an autopsy without the family’s consent. But no family wants to be the one to volunteer their darling brother or sister or mother or father to be cut open and taken apart if it turns out there’s a way to revive them. So no autopsy, no burial. The bodies just pile up here on display. Groups like that lot outside”—she jerked her thumb over her shoulder the way they’d come—“have got to all the families and convinced them not to authorize an autopsy, because they think they’re not actually dead.”

“You mean the protestors?” Loki asked.

Mrs. S. nodded. “I don’t know how things are done on Asgard, but here it’s preferable not to put a living person in the ground—if they weren’t dead already, they would be then.”

“Yes, I believe that is universally true across the realms, except for a few subterranean dwellers who bury their dead in the sky.”

Mrs. S. laughed softly. Loki could still see her faint reflection in the glass separating them from the body. “Each time I think I have learned the strangest things about this universe, something stranger unveils itself. Sky funerals.” She rubbed a hand over her chin, and he could tell she was picturing it, her mind unspooling.

“How did you find out about all this?” Loki asked.

“We have a man on the inside of the police force,” Mrs. S. replied. “He tips us off. And it’s our responsibility to know these things.”

“Your responsibility by whose authority?”

“Your father’s.”

“And what does he give you in return?” He turned back to the glass. “You’re wasting your time working for aliens, Mrs. S.”

“Well, will you be wasting it with us a bit longer, Your Majesty? I noticed you’re not back in Asgard.”

“My travels have been delayed.” As much as he didn’t want to admit it, to this woman or his father if he was ever allowed back in his realm, he was intrigued. Whatever magic it was that had a hold of these people, he hadn’t seen it before.

“Have they, now?” Mrs. S. asked, and he ignored the amusement in her voice.

“So I suppose I’ll stay and investigate this with you.”

Her reflection smiled. “How very generous, Your Majesty.”