They went to the Southwark Morgue under the cover of darkness.

The morgue was closed, the moon just starting to drop below the smoky clouds along the horizon, but the red-roofed pub in the alley was still bursting and loud, off-key songs rising from inside and patrons spilling out into the street. A few of them were standing at the morgue windows, their hands cupped over the dark glass, trying to see in. There was a policeman guarding the front door, his hands folded and a truncheon hanging from one fist. A drunk from one of the pubs was poking him in the arm, asking over and over again to be let inside, only to be ignored.

Loki recognized the officer suddenly—it was Gem.

“I can handle this,” Loki said to Amora as they approached. “Stay here.”

Gem didn’t look at him as Loki approached. He was too busy growling at the drunk man, “Shove off or I’ll have you in irons.”

“Gem,” Loki called as the drunk stumbled off, muttering to himself.

Gem looked his way and gave a small nod. “Evening, ma’am.”

He wasn’t sure how good his impersonation of Mrs. S. was. Good enough to pass in the darkness, he hoped, but the lights from the pub were brighter than he would have liked. He should have conjured a hat, though he’d never seen her wear one. “Can you let me in?” he called.

“In?” Gem repeated.

“Inside the morgue. I have the Enchantress, and we need to get inside before they take the bodies away.”

“You and...” Gem’s brow creased. “Her?”

“We need to test a few things,” Loki said, with a vague wave of his hand. “Just to make certain the deaths will stop when she leaves Midgard. Earth. London.” He mentally cursed himself for the slipup but tried not to let it show in his face.

The creases in Gem’s brow deepened. “I thought you said...” he started, but trailed off.

Loki folded his arms, alarmed by just how thin these arms were. Mrs. S. was remarkably small. “What did I say, Gem?” he demanded.

Gem’s eyes darted down the street, like someone might be watching. “I can’t be seen with you,” he said quietly. “Or officially helping you. You said I can’t lose my job.”

“Well, listen to what I’m saying to you now,” Loki said. “We won’t do any harm. Come, Gem, don’t you trust me?”

Gem took off his cap and rubbed a hand over his head, then replaced it with a nod.

Loki smiled. “Good boy.”

He turned back to where Amora was waiting at the end of the alley, but then Gem called, “Did you find him?”

Loki stopped. “Find whom?”

“Him,” Gem replied. “The God of Mischief.”

“Oh. Him. He’s gone back to Asgard.”

“And is Bell all right?”

“Theo?” Loki asked, his voice pitching in spite of himself. “What’s the matter with Theo?”

“I dunno. You said affair of the heart when I asked.” Gem shrugged. “Dunno what that was supposed to mean.”

He should have left. He should have turned and walked back to Amora and not said another word that could jeopardize this disguise. But doing what he should had never been his strongest suit. “What did you think of him, Gem?” he asked. “Loki. The God of Mischief.”

Gem shrugged, swinging his truncheon in a wide circle that reminded Loki of Thor with Mjolnir. “Seemed like a surly chap. Bit tense, though I suppose I would be too in a strange place.”

“Do you believe all the stories about him?” Loki asked. “The ones Theo had in his flat?”

“Stories is just that, aren’t they?” Gem replied. “Not worth putting much stock in. I’d rather know a man myself before I judge his character. Why? What did you think of him, Mrs. S.?”

“He seemed like a bit of a scoundrel to me,” Loki replied.

“Yeah, well, so are you.” Gem smiled. “I think that’s why you liked him.”

He had to stop. Any more of this and he’d want to turn around and run back to the offices at number 3½, or back to Theo’s flat. Throw open the door and demand to know what “affair of the heart” he was engaged in, though Loki already knew. He needed to hear Theo say it.

Instead, he swallowed. “Are you going to let me inside now?”

Gem dug a pocket watch from his coat and glanced at the face. “I got relief coming in twenty minutes. You’ll have to be out by then.”

“We’ll be finished.”

“I’ll meet you round the back.”

“Here, give me the keys so you needn’t leave your post. I’ll bring them back when we’re finished.”

Gem looked reluctant, but he surrendered his set. As Loki took them from him, he frowned. “Oh, you’re not...”

Loki froze. “What?”

“Nothing,” Gem said quickly, ducking his head. “Twenty minutes, all right?”

“I’ll count each one.”

The morgue was dark, the glass separating the hallways from the bodies on display looked opaque and glossy. The humans laid out on the tables looked ghostly in the faint glow through the windows, their skin luminescent, like the pale glow of the moon behind a cloud.

“Do you have your knives?” Amora asked, and Loki slid them both from his sleeves. “Here, let me have one.” She held out a hand, and he hesitated only a moment before he handed one to her. “Don’t forget.” She took his hand and carved the rune into his palm. His blood bubbled to the surface, then shrank back into his skin, leaving just a very faint impression and the sting. “They all have to be precisely the same for it to work.”

“I’ll get it right.”

“You start here,” she said, tipping her head toward the end of the hallway nearest them. “I’ll go to the other side. We’ll meet in the middle.”

As Amora retreated, Loki approached the first corpse. A middle-aged man with dark hair salted with gray, and a neatly clipped beard. His eyes seemed closed so lightly that Loki almost expected that when he touched him, he’d wake. But he didn’t have the Norn Stones on him this time. Somehow, these living dead were eerier in the dark, and alone, in the morgue with a hallway full of them.

Loki took the man by the chin and pried his mouth open. He and Amora had discussed where they might put the rune—nowhere that would be visible when the corpses were re-dressed and packed into their coffins. There had seemed only one option, but Loki felt his skin crawl more than he had expected when he reached into the man’s mouth and pried his tongue from it. He had a strong inclination to pull his hand away—like he was afraid the man might bite him—but instead, on the tip of the man’s tongue, he carved a delicate imitation of the rune on his palm. Blood bubbled up to the surface, and Loki doubted suddenly whether he was right—perhaps these people weren’t dead after all. Perhaps their souls still existed somewhere. The dead didn’t bleed, did they?

But this was what he’d chosen. Too late to start feeling empathy now.

He dabbed the blood from the man’s mouth with the inside of his sleeve, then moved down the row to the next body.

He worked quickly and methodically, trying not to think about the warm flesh beneath his hands, how alive these people still felt to him. What Gem had said. He was in the second hallway, prying apart the jaws of a woman whose rotted teeth splintered from the force, when he heard the door at the end open—not the door to the hallway, but the one the public used. He ducked behind the table, crouching out of sight. Heeled footsteps echoed through the hallway. Not Gem—his boots wouldn’t click so loudly.

Then Loki heard, through the darkness, his own name. “Loki.”

A shadow blotted the glass, accompanied by a long beam of golden light that bobbed across the floor.

He stood, and the light stopped. “Mrs. Sharp.”

They met on either side of the glass. The beam of the lantern she unveiled turned it veined and gold as she held up a hand, tracing the shape of him, still glamoured in her form, against the pane. “Well, that certainly is eerie. Particularly with the glass here.” She rapped one knuckle against it and it rang. “It’s like looking in a mirror that has gone rogue on you.

“How did you know I was here?” Loki asked.

“Gem alerted me,” Mrs. S. replied. “Though he said you did quite an impression.”

As she raised the lantern, Loki realized what it was that had tipped Gem off to who he was—on Mrs. Sharp’s left hand, the gleam of her wedding band. He’d forgotten it.

“What do you want?” Loki asked, trying to paper over any cracks in his voice with the strength of it, but he didn’t feel strong.

“Looking for you,” she replied. “We’ve been worried.”

“For me or the rest of the world?”

“Theo told me what happened.”

“What do you mean what happened?” he demanded. “That I learned my own story?”

The beam of the lantern guttered, then flared. Mrs. S. sucked in her cheeks. “I didn’t know how much you knew.”

“None of it,” he said. “But it’s already been written. It’s been told and retold. You humans know everything about me, so what choice do I have?”

“Everything’s a choice,” she replied, her breath fogging the glass between them as she leaned in. “There’s always a choice.”

“Then I choose to be what you all think of me.”

She smiled sadly. “That’s disappointing.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No,” she replied. “But I wish it could be different. I wish so many things could be different. For all of us.”

He saw Amora before Mrs. S. did, moving silently through the darkness like a shadow with her knife raised. A warning itched at the back of his throat as Mrs. S. touched the tips of her fingers to the glass, her lips parting to say more.

But then she caught the reflection in the dark glass and gasped, just as Amora struck her in the back of the head with the hilt of her dagger. Mrs. S. collapsed, the lantern tumbling from her hand and cracking against the tile. Amora caught her, forcing her to her knees and pressing the blade to her throat.

She looked at Loki. So did Mrs. S. Through the darkness, he felt their eyes upon him. He felt his fingers brush the glass, then fall. He did not know what he wanted. He did not know who he was. Everyone knew but him.

Amora buried the knife in Mrs. Sharp’s throat, then pulled it across, severing her neck. The blood was bright and jeweled through the darkness. It coursed down her front in thick rivulets that shimmered in the beam of her lantern, the candle still stubbornly burning. Through the glass, he heard the rush of air as it left her throat. Her body spasmed, and Amora released her, letting her body fall, still thrashing, to the ground. The glass between him and Amora was speckled with blood.

Amora could have stolen Mrs. S.’s energy. She could have drained her and left her here in the morgue with the other dead, carved a rune on her tongue and raised her as a soldier, one more to join their ranks. But instead she had buried Loki’s knife in her throat and let her blood stain the floor. If she hadn’t thought herself a murderer before, in spite of the hallways of humans laid out at her hand, she couldn’t have hidden from it now.

Everything was a choice. Amora had made hers.

And Loki had let it happen.

He dropped his hand from where his fingers had pressed to the window, half expecting to see the blood there too.