The next days passed in quiet deathlessness.

Amora had promised to preserve her strength and buy Loki as much time as possible to leave the realm. He mostly stayed near the SHARP Society, walking to the British Museum with Theo during the lunch hour to look at the artifacts of Midgardians past. On the days it rained, Loki used a spell to keep them protected from the wind and the mud, and though he knew it was an unnecessary waste of his precious reserves of magic, he enjoyed the way Theo’s eyes widened every time a carriage passed over a rancid puddle and the water bounced from the air before it struck them, like they were encased in a bell jar.

In spite of himself, Loki was starting to enjoy being around Theo. In Asgard, he always preferred his own company to that of anyone else, aside from Amora, and he had hardly expected that a human, of all creatures, would be the one to snare him. But Theo had a quick wit, laughed at his own jokes, read too many books, and knew too much about everything. He chewed loudly but ate slowly, wore his hats low so that his curly hair was smashed into his eyes, and didn’t like walking on the outside of the pavement where the carriages passed. Loki wasn’t sure why he didn’t mind any of these things.

He’d even started to enjoy Mrs. S., in moderation, over dinner after her day at the museum ended and she joined Theo and him at the offices. Gem sometimes came as well, when he wasn’t on patrol, and would finish two plates before any of them had finished their first. Midgardian food was mostly lacking and tasteless, but Loki found himself growing attached to the thick, warm chocolate that could be purchased from coffeehouse windows, and which Mrs. S. even brewed on their little crooked stove in the office. It was dark and bitter enough for him, and it may have been the only thing about Midgard he’d miss.

Mrs. S. told him stories of her work with her husband, both before and after Odin had employed them. Her exploits made some of the Asgardian warriors look like trainees sparring with wooden sticks. She told them about sucking poison from her husband’s forearm after he was bitten by a venomous snake in the Amazon and then carrying him seven miles to civilization on her back. About jungle fevers they had survived, cursed tombs they had raided, caves whose entrances had fallen in behind them, so they had continued walking through them in the dark, not sure if they would die or find light first. She told them about the dogsled teams they had run to collapse on the tip of Norway, where they had first found the artifacts that belonged to Loki’s father, how she had dug them out of the snow as her bare fingers turned blue, afraid that if she left to retrieve her gloves, the snow would cover them again and they’d be lost.

“Why don’t you travel anymore?” Loki asked her one night, as they sat in the back office waiting for Theo to join them.

“It’s much harder to be a professional adventurer as a woman alone,” she replied. “My husband had to secure all the funding and make our travel arrangements and publish any of the papers we wrote after we returned.”

“That’s hardly fair.”

“So little is. Including losing him.” She twisted her wedding ring with a sad smile, and Loki noticed the edges of the band were worn silver and smooth from the repetition of the gesture.

Loki looked down into the dregs of the thick chocolate at the bottom of his mug. “My father should have done more,” he said suddenly. When they all looked at him, he added, “To protect your husband. To protect all of you. It’s not riskless work you do for him.”

“Nothing in life is without risk, my dear,” Mrs. S. replied. “My husband was never one for safety. We preferred excitement.”

“But he shouldn’t have died,” Loki said. “If you hadn’t been employed by my father—”

“You’ll waste your life on what could and should and would have been,” Mrs. S. interrupted. “What if we had never met your father? What if I had never met Mr. Sharp? What if my parents had shipped me off to India when I was a child and married me to a sultan with a menagerie of tigers? What if I had made coffee instead of chocolate tonight? You’ll drive yourself mad considering it all.” She took a sip of her drink, then added, “We knew our job was dangerous. It’s always been dangerous. But it was important as well. That’s the way Mr. Sharp liked it. Dangerous and important.”

Loki wanted to tell her that their work couldn’t have mattered less to his father. Not to be cruel—simply because he felt they had the right to know. A right to know they could put down their knives now and walk away from a fight that could cost them their lives. Already had.

But instead, he finished his drink and said nothing.

The bell over the front door rang, and a moment later, Theo pushed through the velvet curtain. His shoulders were dark with rain, and he threw himself at the stove, pressing his bare hands as close to the heat as he could without burning himself. “Bloody cold out there.”

“Did Gem have anything new for you?” Mrs. S. asked.

Theo shook his head. A few stray raindrops slid from the brim of his hat. “No new bodies.”

“What about the autopsy?”

“Rachel Bowman paid the wife a call, and she suddenly withdrew her permission and has gone to Cornwall to stay with her parents.”

Mrs. S. let out a frustrated sigh through her nose. “Dammit.”

“Who’s Rachel Bowman?” Loki asked.

“The head witch with the anti-burial lot,” Mrs. S. replied, then added, “No offense to any actual witches present.”

“She’s the one who’s rallied all the protests at the Southwark Morgue,” Theo added. “Gem said that any time the police get close to convincing a family to grant permission for an autopsy, Rachel suddenly appears on their doorstep with a bunch of flowers and a very convincing argument about why their dearly departed is probably not departed at all, but rather just waiting to be revived.”

Loki tipped his chair back on two legs and arched his neck. He had been waiting for an opportunity to introduce the idea he and Amora had concocted to cover her tracks. Or rather, he had concocted and Amora had grumbled and sniped at him about. He had a sense she would have continued guiltlessly sucking humans dry of their life force if he hadn’t come along. The only thing that had tempted her into cooperation was the promise of leaving Midgard with him, though where they’d go, Loki still didn’t know. He was taking this plan one step at a time.

“I have been doing some investigating on my own,” he said, his tone light. “And I have a theory as to why you haven’t caught your murderer yet.”

Both Mrs. S. and Theo turned to him. Theo was still caved around the stove.

“Do you wish to enlighten us further upon it, or are you simply stating a fact?” Mrs. S. asked.

Loki let his chair fall forward, the legs clattering against the wood floor. “You haven’t caught a murderer because there isn’t one to catch,” he said. “You don’t have a killer, you have a virus.”

“A what?” Theo asked.

“A disease,” he clarified. “Whatever this spell is that’s striking these people down, it’s not being cast upon them by some rogue sorcerer. It’s spreading like any other plague in London. You don’t have a magical murderer, you have an epidemic.”

“Does magic spread in that manner?” Theo asked.

“It can,” Loki replied. “Several years ago, one of Asgard’s provinces had a plague of magic. It bubbled up from the ground—unlikely here because of the lack of magic present in the atmosphere—but it caused those who caught it to claw their own eyes out. Anyone who came into contact with them or tried to stop them was struck with the same affliction.”

He was, of course, lying. He’d never heard of a magical plague. But Theo looked suitably horrified.

“So if that is the cause, what can we do to stop it?” he asked.

“You cut out the cancer,” Loki replied. “You locate the source and remove it.”

“So how are people catching this magical plague?” Mrs. S. asked. She looked less convinced than Theo. Her eyes were narrowed at Loki, her face unreadable.

“Most likely it passes from the already infected corpses. Those bodies in Southwark need to be taken from the city. They need to be buried.”

“That won’t do us any good if the source of this magical virus is still present in London,” Mrs. S. said. “How do we find that?”

Loki took a breath. “I think I found it.” Mrs. S. raised an eyebrow. Stay calm, he chided himself. Lying is easy. Lying is natural. Lying is a native tongue. “The Enchantress, at the Inferno Club.” At the stove, Theo raised his head. Loki didn’t look at him as he went on. “She was a sorceress on Asgard once, but here I think her magic may have turned toxic from too long on Midgard. She told me she used her sorcery to read cards for that chimney sweep who died—the one we found last week. That’s why he had her card.”

“So she uses her powers at the club to mimic spiritualism?” Mrs. S. asked. “And that poisons anyone who comes into contact with her?” When Loki nodded, she asked, “Have you told her? Since you two have been chumming it up and you never felt the need to mention it to any of us.”

“I told you I was going to the club.”

“And you reported very little after,” she countered. “And told none of us you’d gone back.”

Theo looked down at his hands but stayed silent.

“We were friends,” Loki said, meeting Mrs. S.’s beady gaze. “She trusts me. If I had involved any of you, she might not have. I couldn’t risk it.”

“You could have kept us informed.”

Loki shrugged. “I don’t work for you, Mrs. Sharp. I work for my father, and I did what I thought was best for his investigation here. The Enchantress likely doesn’t know she’s poisoning the humans she’s using her magic upon.”

“So we tell your father, return her to Asgard, and see if the deaths stop,” Mrs. S. said. “Simple.”

“She isn’t allowed to return to Asgard,” Loki said. “She and my father have quarreled. But I could take her elsewhere. I know her. She wouldn’t want to hurt humans. If we tell her, I know she’ll help us stop it.”

Mrs. S. swiped a finger over the corner of her lips, thinking. “That still doesn’t solve the issue of how to get the bodies in the ground.”

“Organize some sort of rally—or a séance.” He congratulated himself on what an excellent job he was doing at pretending this was something that was just occurring to him, rather than a story he had been carefully fabricating over the last several days. “We ask the Enchantress to contact the souls and confirm they are well and truly dead and can’t move on without burial.” Loki leaned forward on the table, doing his best imitation of excitement over a realization he had just had. “When I went to her show, there was a couple there whose daughter had died. They wanted exactly that—confirmation from the Enchantress that their daughter had moved on from this world. We could find them—once they have the confirmation that their daughter has passed on, they may give permission for the autopsy. Then the bodies can all be declared dead, and buried.”

“And we are sure they’re dead?” Mrs. S. asked.

“Of course they are,” Loki replied. “No heartbeat—isn’t that what you humans generally look for?”

“What about the chimney sweep you reanimated?” Theo asked quietly.

His facade slipped for the first time. He had almost let himself forget that strange moment that the dead man had moved beneath his hand. “That wasn’t life,” he said, and tried to sound certain.

“How do we know your theory is correct?” Mrs. S. asked.

“Why would I lie to you?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” Mrs. S. replied. “Not the least of which being that when you arrived, your singular focus was getting home. How do we know this isn’t a ploy to accelerate that process?”

“I suppose you’ll have to trust me,” Loki replied. “But that’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it? To advise you. Consider yourselves advised.” He leaned back in his chair. “Do with it what you want.”

Mrs. S. stared at him, fingers steepled against her mouth. She glanced at Theo, then said, “Come away from the stove before you singe your eyebrows off.” Theo dropped into the chair between Loki and Mrs. S., stretching his leg out under the table. “What do you think?” Loki started to speak, but Mrs. S. held up one finger. “Not you.” She nodded at Theo. “What do you think of this?”

Theo’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. He looked from Mrs. S. to Loki, then back again. Loki felt, for the first time since he’d laid out this carefully woven theory, a twinge of apprehension. Theo knew he’d gone to the club more than once. He had told him more than was likely wise about his relationship with Amora. How had he let himself tell Theo so much, about himself and Asgard and all of it? He’d let his guard down without meaning to.

Theo chewed his lip, then said, “I think we should listen to him. He knows more about this than we do.”

Loki bit back a sigh of relief as he looked to Mrs. S. Her face was still frustratingly unreadable. But then she nodded once and said, “Fine. Let’s go find the Enchantress.”