by Mackenzi Lee
Loki jumped, though he had expected it. Even knowing it was her operating it, a chill still went through him. Amora bit her lip, suppressing a laugh. “Do you want to ask the spirit a question?”
“Spirit, how did you do that?” Loki asked. He looked from the bell to her hands, still raised, trying to find the string or the mechanism in her fingers.
She pulled back the tablecloth and he saw the foot pedal beneath her chair, the rod leading up to the bar on which the bell was suspended. When she pumped the pedal, the bell rang.
Loki laughed. “That’s quite clever.”
“If it’s clever enough to fool you, the humans will be dumbstruck.”
“What else is down here?” he asked, starting to drop off his chair, but she held up a hand.
“Don’t look, you’ll spoil it! Let me show off for you a bit.” She fished in her pocket and came up with the planchette, then placed it over the top of the letter A on the talking board. The letter was magnified through the hole in the center.
Amora ducked under the table, then crooked a finger at Loki to follow. The tablecloth dropped around them, suffocating and thick. Amora slithered onto her back, motioning for him to lie down beside her, staring up at the bottom of the table, where the mirror image of the board on top was painted. Amora reached into her pocket again, this time coming up with a magnet, which she pressed against the board atop the letter A. “Usually one of the stagehands is under the table for the show, if we use the board. He got kicked in the face once by one of the customers, and his nose was bleeding all down his front for the whole show.”
“So you mean to tell me last night I was having an intimate conversation with a stranger under a table?” Loki demanded with false indignation.
“I make exceptions. There are some people worth wasting your magic for.” She winked at him, and he laughed. “So the person asks a question and then...” She slid the magnet across the underside of the table, and over their heads, he heard the scrape of the planchette’s wheels against the table grain, spelling out HELLOLOKI.
He smiled. “Hello to you too.”
“Here, go sit at the table and try it.”
He slid out obediently and took his seat again. Her legs were jutting out from under the table, and she clicked her heels together as she called “You first must greet the spirits.”
“All right.” He placed his hands flat on the table. “Um, good morning, spirits.”
The planchette slid across the board with a low scraping sound and landed upon the word HELLO. A few select words surrounded the letters, simplifying the answers of the spirits.
“They’re not as formal as a good morning,” Amora called. “It takes too long to spell.”
He laughed again, and he felt the muscles in his shoulders unclench. Had he felt this relaxed since he arrived in Midgard? Had he felt this relaxed in years? How much tension had he been carrying in his body without realizing it until it floated away? It felt like the past few years had lifted; like he was with Amora, in court, before the Godseye Mirror had written his future for him.
“Now you ask your question,” she prompted.
He pressed his fingers together against his lips, not sure how much of this was a game and how much was her baiting him. “What shall I have for breakfast?”
The planchette shuddered for a moment, and it felt suddenly eerie, though he knew it was her controlling it below him. Then it slid across the board in slow formation, spelling out the answer. BLOODOF YOURENEMIES.
“A good suggestion,” he replied frankly. “How much longer will it rain?”
The planchette spun this time before landing on the first letter of FOREVER.
“I fear you’re right again.” He fished with his foot under the table until he found the softness of Amora’s stomach and poked his toe into it. She laughed, and the planchette lurched. “What wise spirits you are.”
“Ask them a real question,” she called. “Something they can tell you about your future.”
He paused. He could always tell when Amora was trying to manipulate him, but he’d never been able to resist it. She would open her arms, and he would step into them every time, whether or not there was a knife in her hand.
“Will I be king of Asgard?” he asked.
The planchette scrabbled back and forth, like it couldn’t make up its mind, flying from one corner to the other and back. Then, at last, it spelled out:
MAYBE.
“Sometimes they must be vague,” she said, sliding out from under the table. Her hair was speckled with clumps of fuzzy dust. “Simply to avoid being wrong.” She smiled. When he didn’t return it, hers faded. “Come here.” She patted the ground beside her. He slid to her side, and she pushed herself back under the table and he followed so that they were lying side by side. Above them, the white letters of the alphabet on the talking board seemed to glow, fireflies against the black wood.
“I wish I could help you,” he said.
“Help me?” She snorted, reaching up to trace the alphabet with her fingertips. “With what? I think I’ve done quite fine on my own, princeling.”
“I wish I was king and could bring you out of banishment and back to Asgard.”
“To practice simple spells and be a docile queen, like your mother?”
“To be a sorceress,” he said. “The most powerful sorceress in the Nine Realms. To never have to hide your strength.”
“I wish I had any strength left to hide.”
“How long can you last?” he asked. “Without taking anyone’s life force?”
“It depends,” she replied. “Though it’s becoming less and less.” She let out a laugh laced with bitterness. “I don’t even have the strength to be strong.”
“If you could hold out, just for a bit,” he said. “Let everything die down. Let the SHARP Society think it’s all over. If I can find something else to blame it on and convince them it’s all been cleared up so long as no one is finding bodies. I can pretend to find some other reason no one else is dying, the murders stop long enough for father to bring me home, and then...” He trailed off.
“And then I stay here until either you are made king or I die?” she finished for him.
He reached out and let his fingers brush her wrist. He couldn’t lose her, now that they had tumbled back together. It had to be more than just luck or chance. “We just need some time.”
“Time until what?”
Loki bit his lip, weighing his next words carefully. “Just trust me,” he finally said, though it sounded sillier when it left him than it had in his head. “I won’t let you die.”
“I don’t think you’ll have much say in the matter, Your Majesty.”
“I’ll take you somewhere else. Somewhere safer. We’ll find a way to restore your power without the humans.” She didn’t say anything. “What’s the matter?”
“I just wish you thought bigger.” She pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “Promise you’ll raise me along with your living-dead army when you conquer Asgard, won’t you? I would hate to miss the fun.”
She said it lightly, but he felt the sting of it, of all the years since that feast day when Odin had looked at him with distrust, every time he had favored Thor, every time he had overlooked Loki because he was too afraid of what he and his power could do.
“Maybe there’s a reason people fear us,” Loki said.
“They should fear us,” Amora replied. “Because we’re strong.”
“Not because we’re dangerous?”
“What’s wrong with being dangerous? Odin is dangerous. That’s why he rules the Nine Realms. I’d rather be deadly than dead.” She rolled over on her side, pillowing her head upon her hands, and though he didn’t look at her, he could feel her gaze hot upon his face. “You can’t save everyone, darling. Best to think of this as good-bye and good luck.”
“No. You’re here because of me.”
“It was my choice.”
“It was my fault.”
“Let’s not wa
ste any more time on the past.”
“Then what is there to dwell upon? The future, me as a second son and you turned to dust?”
“Why not the present?”
He rolled over so he was looking at her, and suddenly he realized how close their faces were, how beautiful her hair looked, puddled around her fair skin, how long he’d wanted to know what her mouth felt like to be pressed against his—not in a way that was accidental or quick. He’d never truly kissed her—not even when they spent every moment together in Asgard, when he’d thought of it as often as breathing. He’d never been brave enough. Never thought she would say yes. He still wasn’t sure she would.
“Any final questions you want to ask the spirits?” she said, and her eyes flicked to his mouth.
How long had he missed her? How long had he wanted her? How long had he been certain she was the only person who knew him, the only person who would ever know him or understand him? The only person with the same fire in their blood, but hers buoyed by a current of certainty that they were made of gemstones and light, made to shine brighter than others? As he looked at her shadowed face in the pale glow of the gaslights, he almost believed it too, all the things that had made him feel strange and outcast turned to gold by the strange alchemy of being near her again.
“May I kiss you?” he asked.
She leaned forward and closed the space between their mouths, still and gentle for a moment before her lips parted against his, teeth playing with his tongue, and then she rolled over on top of him, her legs straddling his hips and his hands pinned in hers.
She was intoxicating, like sweet wine. He’d be drunk before he realized she’d refilled his glass. Had it always been like this? Even when they were children? Had he truly never noticed, or was it easier to ignore because she was the only person who made him feel like he was worth noticing? Any sort of attention had become water in the desert after being so long neglected by his father.
This, he thought, and released a deep breath against her mouth. As his heartbeat swelled, the stage lights flickered and died, leaving them gasping and moving together in the darkness.
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 opport
unity 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.