Gunnar Magnusson doesn’t ask where I went or what I did. It’s for the best. I don’t want to have to tell him the truth.
Gods, what have I done, locking a tiny, helpless bird in a trunk?
Muninn will be alright, Laguz soothes. He’s immortal and hardly helpless.
I know this, but it doesn’t make me feel better.
It was necessary, the rune says.
I’m not sure I believe it.
Something seems off with Gunnar Magnusson. I mean, more so than it did when I went after Muninn. He refuses to touch me, which is both a disappointment and a gamble. He’s fully visible. Muninn may be locked up, but if Heimdall has regrown his eyes, he’ll be able to locate Gunnar Magnusson. Hurt feelings aside, I silently beg the Norns to keep Heimdall blind for a bit longer.
Gunnar Magnusson turns up the music on the radio as he pulls out of the parking lot. I assume he’s not interested in talking, so I pull materials from the Wal-Mart bag and get to work on my project. Letting Laguz guide my fingers, I weave a network of wires into the vague shape of a chicken and reinforce the form with duct tape. By the time we arrive at the motel, I have a prototype.
The truck rolls into a parking spot. I toss the exoskeleton in the bag, gather the supplies, and lay a hand on the door handle. Gunnar Magnusson’s hesitation stops me from pulling it.
He looks broken. I wish I could fix him, but I’m what wrenched him apart. Taking a deep breath, I try to put myself in his shoes by shifting my paradigm and seeing things from his perspective.
He just finished his thesis. He’s about to graduate from college. He got his dream job as a curator of Norse antiquities. Then I came along and ruined everything he’s worked his entire life for.
I sigh. “I’ve hurt you. Again. It seems to be the only thing I’m good at lately.”
He doesn’t deny it.
I consider my words carefully before speaking again. “Education and work are high priorities for you,” I observe. “I’m sorry I got in the way of your goals, but what you see is who I am: a trickster who makes trouble for a living. If that’s too much, I understand. I’m not for everyone. You don’t have to stick around.” I’ve given him this out so many times, it’s becoming a habit.
“Can you turn off the invisibility for one minute?” Frustration pitches his voice an octave higher.
Against my better judgment, I do as he asks. His breath hitches. When his gaze collides with mine, I feel more naked than I did in the parking lot earlier. The soul beaming through his tortured eyes skewers me.
Turning fully toward me, he takes my hands in his and squeezes. “I want things between us to go back to what they were. I want life to slow down long enough for me to appreciate it. I want …” He inhales deeply. “I want to let go and try to be more like you.”
I cant my head to the side. Did I hear him right?
“More like me?” I ask incredulously. “Why?”
“You live your life like every day is your last. If I said, ‘Hey, let’s jump off a bridge,’ you wouldn’t hesitate. You’d take a running leap and figure out how to live through it on the way down. Me? I wouldn’t jump off a couple of stairs, let alone a bridge.”
Then it clicks. His reluctance to go up to the roof. Avoiding the bridge in traffic …
“Are you afraid of heights?” I ask.
His cheeks burn red. “When I heard you climbed the World Tree at Nine Realms, I almost had a panic attack on your behalf.”
“If it makes you feel better, I nearly did too,” I say, cringing at the memory of dangling from that harness, fifty feet above the ground. “But it’s amazing how fast you can forget your fears when your immortality is on the line.”
“That’s what I mean,” he says. “You’re not scared of anything.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something. Venomous snakes get my hackles up and twitching.” I swipe at the goosebumps dancing over my arm and shiver.
“I’m not a fan of those either,” he says, rubbing his stomach. “But being high up and looking down makes me nauseous.”
“What about planes?” I ask. “You flew in one of those from Iceland to this country. Were you not afraid of being in the sky?”
He shakes his head. “I took medicine that knocked me out before we left the runway. Slept through almost the entire trip.”
I’m baffled by this admission. I would never have guessed he harbored such an intense fear of heights.
“That’s not the point.” He rolls straight over the acrophobia discussion like he wasn’t even here when it took place. I don’t blame him. Putting one’s deepest, darkest fears on display is emasculating, not to mention humiliating. “You get in trouble constantly, but you always manage to find a way out of it and come out okay. I wish I could be that carefree. It’s just not who I am.”
A memory of the conversation I had with Darryl Donovan last night springs to mind. “You need to change your paradigm,” I say absently.
He laughs without humor. “Yeah, maybe.”
The big hands cradling mine are warm. I thumb the pulse thrumming in his wrist and inhale his scent. I press my truth into his eyes and hope he doesn’t take it the wrong way. “I want you to be happy, Gunnar Magnusson. With or without me.”
He finally meets my gaze. “I’d be happier with you than without.”
My heart flutters.
Gunnar Magnusson likes me. I drive him crazy, but maybe he’s willing to accept a little insanity if the journey is worth it.
New goal: give him the ride of a lifetime. Shouldn’t be too hard.
He looks away shyly. Frowns at some inner monologue playing between his ears. Then he seems to regain his resolve. His cheeks color as he returns his gaze to mine. “Could we … start over?”
A wave of relief floods over me. I nod eagerly. “Yes.”
Gods, yes.
“No more lies,” he says.
“I couldn’t lie if I tried.”
He palms my cheek. I close my eyes and lean into his touch. Something in his tone shifts, lightens. Hope?
“I know you need your other two runes,” he says. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you find them.”
My heart swells. “You’ve protected me from the moment we met.” Both of me, I note, remembering the first time I laid eyes on Sigyn. She stood up for me against Thor after I made a mess of things, as I was wont to do. Am wont to do. “I promise to do the same for you.”
He smiles. “I don’t need protection. But thanks.”
Truth. He and Sigyn have proven that point countless times. But now it’s my turn to show him protection is a two-way street.
We’re standing on the fulcrum of our relationship, balanced between the many mistakes I made in the past and the churning black sea of an unknown future. One step either way will tip us both.
“Will you trust me?” I ask.
The ensuing pause is so long, I’m afraid he’s not going to answer. After what feels like an eternity of deliberation, he says, “I trust you.”
Outside the truck, slow clapping catches my attention. We both turn to track the sound, and my jaw falls open.
“Shit,” Gunnar Magnusson and I say together as Odin and Saga Leifsdóttir approach from the direction of Freddie’s motel room.
Kenaz lights up my skull with adrenaline-driven alertness. I’m a live wire. If they did anything to my friends, I’ll destroy them both like I destroyed their precious little Nine Realms Resort and Casino.
“What a lovely speech,” Saga says wearing a grin too big for her face. Cruelty lurks under the lines surrounding her ice-blue eyes. Two long, blond plaits hang loosely around her shoulders. I’ve only ever seen her in smart, professional dresses, but today she’s sporting jeans and a pink shirt with buttons down the middle. A filigree feather pendant—which once entrapped Kenaz—settles in the dip between her breasts. Now that my rune is gone, the surrounding metal is dull, but the casual outfit and nondescript necklace take away none of her beauty.
I clench my teeth. Jealousy bubbles in my gut like week-old herring left in the sun.
Behind her, a young, brown-skinned Odin follows, leaning on his spear Gungnir, disguised as a cane. His one blue eye flashes. A tan leather patch covers the hole where his other eye used to be.
“Stay here,” I murmur to Gunnar Magnusson.
“Let me go with—”
I shoo him away. “I got this.”
I get out of the truck and slam the door behind me. Meeting my nemeses halfway, I block their view to Gunnar Magnusson with my body and hitch my hands to my hips. “What do you want?”
Saga arches a brow and bends to peer around me at Gunnar Magnusson. “Aside from a new paint job for my Jag and the 75 million you owe me for Nine Realms? I’ll start with another roll in the hay with your boyfriend over there. I couldn’t care less about his knowledge of Viking culture, but he’s good at making my toes tingle.”
Fury steams my brain, fogging my vision and staining it red. Gunnar Magnusson worked hard for his degree in Scandinavian Studies, and those should’ve been my toes tingling. Baring my teeth, I lurch toward Saga, hands out, ready to strangle her scraggly old neck. Expression cool, Odin flicks his wrist as if batting away a horsefly. Ironically, this isn’t the first time I’ve played that role. I launch into the air, gliding ten feet before the ground catches me in a most agonizing manner.
CRUNCH!
I roll painfully, trying and failing to catch my breath.
“Loki!” Gunnar Magnusson shouts. He’s out of the truck and running toward me.
No, no, no!
My business is with you, Odin. Leave him out of this, I try to say, but it comes out as a rapid series of useless, painful coughs.
Odin’s polished leather shoes halt in front of my eyes. I stare at them and wonder if they’re the last things I’ll ever see. I lean back, squinting against the blinding sun and the heat of the pavement scorching my skin, searching for Gunnar Magnusson’s face. I’d much rather die looking at him than crusty old Odin. But all motion and sound other than my coughs and twitching body have halted. Gunnar Magnusson’s worried face is frozen in place ten feet away. Not so much as a breath of wind stirs. Odin must’ve hit the pause button on time like Heimdall did when our paths crossed at the Asgard Awakening convention in Atlanta. At least Frigg is pinned in place too.
“How’d you find me?” I eke out, clutching my screaming side.
“Your friend Gunnar’s phone. Frigg has been trading texts with him. We tracked his GPS.”
My stomach plummets. Texts? How long has this been going on? And what happened to honesty, Gunnar Magnusson?
Odin squats beside me and studies me with his probing eye. His gaze wanders to the bag hooked around my shoulder. The eye widens. A slow grin pours over his features like thick, honeyed mead.
It’s do or die.
My infected left shoulder is bleeding again, and I’m sure I cracked a rib. Neither stops me from protecting what’s mine. Powered by a cocktail of Laguz’s intuition and Kenaz’s fire, I pop out my right hand snake-strike fast at the exact moment Odin does the same. The ensuing scuffle snaps the strap on my bag, spraying more than sixty runes across the blacktop.
“No!” I cry, grasping desperately for the tiny chips. I catch a few, but Odin’s fingers are gobbling them up like a ten-pack of starving wolves.
I lurch forward on bruised knees to sweep a cluster of runes into my cupped hand and shove the lot into my pockets. I look around for more, but Odin got the alpha wolf’s share. I drop again to the ground, damaged and miserable under the weight of excruciating pain.
This trickster knows when he’s been tricked. I pull out the only card I have left. With a thought, I gather my will and the remainder of my strength. I force myself invisible and scrabble for the bumper on the nearest car to pull myself up. Odin’s hands fall on me, and a blast of power overwhelms my senses. He’s merely touching me—not using spells or magic—and I feel like I’ve been hit with a million volts from Thor’s hammer. I scream, punch, and struggle.
Frenzy answers Kenaz’s call. With wild pinwheels, jerks, and thrusts, I shove Odin’s hands off me and teeter toward Gunnar Magnusson. The truck’s driver side door is still open. If I can turn him around and get us inside, we might be able to drive away, ditch the vehicle, and find another before Odin catches up.
“You can’t escape me, Loki,” Odin calls. “You can kidnap Muninn, turn invisible, or pluck out Heimdall’s eyes all you want, but the one thing you don’t have that I do is time.” He doesn’t sound the least bit concerned that I’m about to sneak away with at least a few of the runes he pilfered from the other gods. This doesn’t bode well. Nor does the inherent threat in his “time” comment.
What does he know that I don’t?
The parking lot stretches and swells as the world around us restarts in a spiraling blur.
As I careen toward a confused-looking Gunnar Magnusson, Saga shrugs awake and resumes lobbing word bombs in my direction. “By the giants, trolls, elves, dwarves, and all the gods of Asgard, I will have your head, Loki. I shall mount it on the wall of my rebuilt palace and smile upon its visage every time I think of what you did to my son.”
Gritting my teeth and lacquered in a sudden cold sweat, I clamber onward, hooking my arm through Gunnar Magnusson’s and spinning his now invisible form toward the truck. Frigg doesn’t play when it comes to heads. She’s called for and secured quite a few of them over the years, and I have no doubt she’ll make use of mine as a prized mantel decoration should she happen upon me again.
Gunnar Magnusson seems to have recovered from his daze. Loud music blares from a car rolling down the street, giving me enough cover to whisper, “Hurry.” He tosses an arm around my waist and helps me into the truck we stole.
I chance a gander over my shoulder. Saga bounds toward us like a berserker shieldmaiden, braids flying like little whips on either side of her face. But Odin stands still—a statue taking stock of his cheap motel kingdom. His lips part in a knowing grin.
I don’t like this. As my blood brother, he can’t kill me, but he can damn sure let Saga or Heimdall do it. Or he could wear me down and let my weakened body finish itself off. Just keep pushing, pestering, chasing until I run out of energy or my heart gives up its precarious life force. Odin simply has to outlast me, which—without my immortality rune—shouldn’t be hard. It’s been his game all along. He said as much outside the Asgard Awakening convention.
Gunnar Magnusson slams the key into the ignition and turns it. The truck roars to life. We barrel away from the scene in a scream of tires and black smoke. Saga’s banshee wail echoes off the cab window.
“What the hell?” He leans forward, breaking contact with my skin to watch Saga’s shrinking form in the side mirror. “I knew Saga was nuts, but that was next-level batshit crazy. Invoking elves and giants against you, and ranting about her … son?”
I press my right hand to my leaking shoulder and curl the left one around my tender middle. GODS, THAT HURTS.
“I may have failed to mention,” I pant, “that she’s actually Frigg. She tried to cast love spells to win you over and did all that … stuff with you in the Nine Realms suite to get revenge on me for the unpleasantness with Baldur.”
He tenses and turns toward me, eyes wide. “I slept with Odin’s wife?”
I stifle a wince and nod.
“Oh, shit,” he breathes.
“Yeah.”
Which makes me wonder. If she’s so hungry for retribution, why didn’t Frigg out Gunnar Magnusson as Sigyn? She knows of my past indiscretions and how they devastated Sigyn. She clearly recognizes my affection for Gunnar Magnusson, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone out of her way to seduce him. All she had to do was tell Gunnar Magnusson who he really is, and our relationship would go up in flames.
Why didn’t she?
Maybe she doesn’t recognize Sigyn, Laguz offers. If she and Odin haven’t seen each other in over a century, it’s unlikely he revealed Gunnar’s identity to Frigg. Only a handful of people are privy to that gossip.
I have much to ponder. In the meantime, we need to find our friends.
“Give me your phone,” I tell Gunnar Magnusson, shifting in my seat for a more comfortable position I don’t find.
He wrestles the cell from his butt pocket and hands it over. I’d read his text messages, but I don’t know how to access them on this clunky old flip phone. Instead, I unroll the window and smash the device onto the road. Biting my tongue to stifle the cry trying to escape, I yank my arm tenderly to my chest. Damn, this is pure agony.
“What was that for?” he demands.
“Saga used your text messages to find you,” I say.
The gray in his cheeks deepens under my black-and-white-invisibility vision. “You can’t use texts to locate someone,” he says weakly.
“GPS. However that works,” I say, fighting to keep my tone neutral. “How long have you been trading messages with her?”
He sighs and looks away with a pained grimace. “She contacted me this morning. Said she wanted to see me again. To explain.”
Yeah, right. And I’m sure she would have expertly justified why she used his body to pay me back for orchestrating her son’s death.
Actually, when I put it that way, I sound like an awful person.
I’m a murderer.
But the Æsir were too. They killed my innocent son.
In response to Baldur’s murder, Laguz reminds me.
We all made mistakes.
Plus, I haven’t killed anyone since I woke up. That’s a bonus, right?
I shake my head and return to the conversation. “What did you say to her?”
“I told her not to contact me again.”
My heart stutters. The cardioverter-defibrillator leaps to attention in my chest, doing its best to sort things out. It seems to be working overtime.
“Truth?” I ask, more of a gasp than question.
“Truth.” Nodding, he presses his lips together and scrunches his brow.
Gunnar Magnusson reaches across the space between us. Our fingers entwine. The accusation swelling in my mind calms, and he goes invisible. I believe him.
“We gotta find Freddie and the boys. They’re in danger,” I say, shifting my focus toward next steps. “As soon as Heimdall’s back in action, he’ll be on the hunt for them. Odin and Frigg know I have a weak spot for fools and chickens.”
“How are we gonna stay off Heimdall’s radar?” Gunnar Magnusson asks. “We can’t hold on to you every minute of every day. There must be another way to mask our locations.”
“I don’t know.”
Under my shirt, a trickle of searing liquid slides like lava from my shoulder into my bra.
I also don’t know what I’m gonna do about this infection.
I wince at the stab of pain twinging at my right side.
Or the broken rib threatening to poke a hole through my skin.