“Janet’s back?” I said, as if I didn’t know.
I could tell that Rocky had noticed I said Janet instead of Mum, just as he’d said Sal instead of Dad, but he didn’t ask me about it.
“Molly thought she was getting back today, or maybe last night. She had some talk shows to do—The View, Seth Meyers, one of those ESPN roundtable things where people talk really fast at the top of their lungs—so she told Molly she wasn’t a hundred percent sure when she’d manage to get out here. I guess she made it.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll call you in a bit. So,” I continued, grabbing an apron from beneath the counter and tossing it to him, “you want to help me get Billy and Bruce’s order ready?”
“I guess,” Rocky said, draping the apron over his head. “If you tell me what that means.”
I nodded. “If you head to the walk-in and bring out the parsley–pine nut pesto, arugula-walnut pesto, habanero–black bean tapenade, chipotle mayonnaise, red pepper hummus, gefilte fish, smoked brisket, and blood pudding, I’ll get out the cured meats, cheeses, and pickled products, and we’ll assembly line this production together in no time.”
Rocky looked at me slack-jawed, as if waiting to see if I was joking.
“It’s not as overwhelming as it sounds. Just bring out everything from the middle two shelves left of the door.”
With two people working, we got the order together before their errand boy arrived.
After that, we got the sandwiches ready for the 11:30 train, then passed the rest of the day in near silence, both of us on our phones when we weren’t helping customers or dealing with the occasional delivery. I resisted texting or calling Molly, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking in on her various social media accounts. She wasn’t posting anywhere, not even a single like on Facebook or Instagram or one raving Tweet about the latest celebrity breakup or shoe trend. Was it possible she really had turned her phone off? Was Ragnarok upon us?
It was busy enough that we never really got bored, however, and soon enough it was five o’clock. There was one last mini-rush from the afternoon train, and then we closed.
“Don’t worry” was the last thing I said to Rocky on his first day at the Cheesemonger. “I’m sure she’ll call you later.”
• • •
That night, after we closed up shop, I decided to head over to the North Inn. I’d heard through Ingrid that Molly and Rocky were spending a lot of time there, and so I’d avoided it out of respect. I’d figured if they hadn’t invited me, they wanted some alone time, and the North Inn was the one surefire place where Molly and Rocky would get served. Who was I to stand in the way of young love? But now that I knew Molly had put Rocky (and me) on hold, I figured the Inn was fair game, and I hadn’t seen Freya in a while. And I could have used a good stiff drink, preferably something magicked up enough so that even my divine body would feel it.
When I walked into the bar, Freya took one look at me, shook her head, and pointed to a barstool. I slumped into it gratefully as Freya began pulling out unlabeled bottles and lining them up on the bar.
“I’m a good aunt, aren’t I?” she said as she began pouring transparent, brown, and red liquids together.
“What do you mean?” I said confusedly. “Of course you are.”
“I serve you drinks even though you’re underage. I give you the run of my closet, which contains the best items of clothing between here and Madison Avenue. Or, let’s face it, between here and Rodeo Drive.”
“You’re awesome, Freya. Getting to know you has been one of the best things about this past year.”
“And I’m pretty good with the advice, if I do say so myself. Not too many people know how to negotiate the fine line between being an immortal goddess and a teenager, but I don’t think I’ve ever steered you in the wrong direction, have I?”
“Of course not. You’re like a big sister–best friend–super-cool aunt all rolled into one.”
Freya nodded as she poured her concoction into a cocktail shaker filled with ice, capped it, and shook it vigorously. She set the shaker aside, grabbed a chilled martini glass and a bottle of absinthe, poured a splash of the green, anise-smelling liquid into the glass and swirled it around, coating the inside of the glass, then poured the residue out and strained the liquid from the shaker into the glass. It had a beautiful golden-brown color, just touched by red, and smelled of licorice and cinnamon, and the tangy bite of some kind of sharp whiskey. My mouth immediately began to water.
I reached for the drink, but Freya pulled it away. “Then why, dear Mardi,” she said in a tone that was half hurt, half theatrical, “would you not tell me that you broke up with Trent Gardiner two weeks ago?”
It was still early, and there were only a half dozen people in the bar, all coupled off at individual tables, but still I winced at Freya’s words. It made it seem so final.
I looked up at Freya, who was eyeing me with an expression that was half reproachful, half sorrowful.
“I’m always here for you and your sister, Mardi. Always.” She pushed the drink toward me. “Now. Dish. What did that dirty SOB do?”
• • •
One hour and three drinks later, I raised my hand and waved it around.
“And why should I even care if he thinks I’m too young?” I said in a voice just this side of a shout. “No offense,” I said to Freya. “You look great for your age.”
“None taken,” said Freya, who was busily pouring a round of shots for a group of investment bankers who were doing their best imitation of weekend rockers. She winked at the banker-rockers with a look that said, “Kids. They can’t handle their alcohol.”
“What’s in these things anyway?” I said, holding up my empty glass. “I don’t usually get drunk, but I am feeling all right.”
“A magician never tells,” Freya said, pushing the drinks toward the banker-rockers and slipping the stack of twenties they gave her into the register. She turned toward me.
“So enough about him,” she said. “Here’s the real question: do you want him back?”
“Oh, gods,” I said, pushing my glass toward her. “That requires another drink.”
“Give me your car keys, and I’ll think about it.”
I pulled my car keys from my pocket and handed them over. It was worth it.
“So?” Freya said as she began lining up her bottled potions and tonics. “Forget about Tyr for a moment. What is it that Mardi wants?”
Freya’s use of Trent’s Norse name made me think about what he had said that terrible day on the beach—how as the memories of his millennia-long past came back to him, he felt further and further away from me. And though I’d never thought about it much, I’d always felt it. Despite the fact that Trent looked and dressed and generally acted like a hot eighteen-year-old, there was always something older lurking inside of that. A kind of amused distance in his eyes when he watched me and Molly shopping or bickering or doing the “Single Ladies” dance. And now that I thought about it, I realized that detachment had always kept me from committing to him 100 percent. I gave him 90 percent maybe, 95 percent even, but there was always a part of myself I held back. A part of me knew Trent would always be different from me, and maybe that difference would never be bridged.
From out of nowhere, a thought popped into my head: He’s Aesir. You’re Mimir. You don’t belong together. I could even hear it in Janet Steele’s Australian accent.
I shook my head to make the words go away. Just because I didn’t know what I wanted, like every other teenage girl in her first relationship, didn’t mean I was ready to sign on to some cosmic war between the generations of gods. It sucked to be dumped, but I didn’t actually want to kill Trent. But all I said to Freya’s question was:
“Have you met Sal’s son? Rocky?”
Freya smiled, but it quickly turned into a frown when she saw the
look on my face.
“You mean the cute boy who’s been following Molly around like a puppy dog for the past two weeks? The one Molly seems to be equally smitten by?”
“If she’s so smitten with him, why didn’t she return any of his texts or calls today?”
Freya pushed a fresh drink toward me. “Because she’s a woman, and it’s her prerogative. And how do you know this?”
“Because Sal made him work at the Cheesemonger with me today?”
“Back up. You’re working at the Cheesemonger? That’s why you smell ever so faintly of speck and Gruyère?”
The last sandwich I’d made that night had been the Italo Calvino: speck (an Italian ham that’s somewhere between pancetta and prosciutto), Gruyère, rosemary-infused olive oil, twenty-five-year-old balsamic vinegar, served open-faced atop a chewy piece of focaccia.
“Wow. That’s some nose you’ve got on you.”
“Never mind my nose. You’re not really thinking about making a play for your sister’s boyfriend, are you? Are you that mad at her?”
“I would never make a play for Rocky if Molly was with him. But let’s face it: this was her pattern before Alberich messed with her head last summer. She crushes on a boy, attaches herself to him at the hip for two weeks, then abruptly severs the connection and runs for the hills. I would never go against girl code or twin code, but still . . . ”
“Huh,” Freya said, in this way that was supposed to be blasé but was clearly just a stalling tactic. She whipped up a couple of drinks, then made her way back to me.
“How many men do you think I’ve been with?” she said in a casual voice.
“What?” I said, taken aback. “How should I—”
“A lot,” Freya said sharply. “You live three thousand years in a body like this, you see plenty of action, especially when you’re the goddess of love. And how many of those men do you think I met because Ingrid had dated them first?”
“Um, I don’t know—”
“None! Zero, zilch, null. You don’t go for your sister’s castoffs, Mardi. It just never, ever, ever turns out well!”
“How do you know if you’ve never tried it?” I asked, annoyed at Freya for reading my mind.
“Seriously?” Freya said. “Our kind have started wars over this kind of thing. Promise me that you won’t go after this poor boy.”
“Fine,” I said. “I won’t go after him.” But what if he comes after me?
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Freya said. “I invented the it’s-not-my-fault-if-he-makes-the-first-move excuse. Literally.”
“Look, I promised not to go after him. But I can’t promise to be a saint.”
“Well, don’t call me when this explodes in your face. And by explodes, I mean literally explodes. I don’t care if Molly’s dumped him or not. She is not going to look kindly on you taking sloppy seconds on her ex.”
The way she said sloppy seconds made me look at Freya sharply. Of course she was right. I was being crazy even entertaining this. I had to stop thinking of Rocky. He was totally off-limits. To change the subject, I said, “Have you ever heard about the Mimir?”
Freya pursed her lips. “That’s not what you were going to ask me about.”
“What makes you say that?” I said as innocently as I could.
“Because whatever you were thinking about had something to do with love.” She jerked a thumb into her chest. “Goddess of love, remember?”
“I’ll say!” one of the investment bankers called out from down the bar.
“Easy, slugger,” Freya called, but it seemed to break her line of thought. “What did you ask me about? The Mimir.”
I nodded.
“Definitely rings a bell,” Freya said, “but I can’t put my finger on it.”
“It refers to the gods of Midgard. As distinct from the Aesir and Vanir.”
Freya laughed. “Hate to break it to you, but the Aesir and Vanir are the only gods.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Right now they are. But according to Janet, prophecies have been predicting the Mimir since the beginning of time. Supposedly they’re the offspring of the Aesir and humans, and they’ll overthrow the Aesir and the Vanir in the same way the Aesir overthrew the giants and took control of Asgard.”
For a moment, Freya continued mixing up a couple of East End Manhattans, but then she suddenly put her shaker down and turned to me.
“Hold on a sec,” she said. “Janet thinks that you and Molly are these Mimir peeps?”
I nodded my head. It sounded kind of silly when I heard it aloud.
Freya quickly grabbed her shaker, poured the two Manhattans, and shooed her customers away.
“On me,” she said when they tried to pay. “Okay, first of all,” she continued to me, “it’s not like the Jotun and the Aesir were all buddy-buddy and then the Aesir just got it in their heads to take down their friends. The Jotun were a violent, oppressive bunch, subjugating any kingdom or country they could find, killing people pretty much at random, and enslaving the rest. Including the Aesir. What Odin and the others did was no different from what the European settlers did to the Native Americans.”
Freya’s tone had been forceful enough that a few people had turned to look at her, but she glared at them so hard that they all quickly glanced away. One clueless fellow approached the bar with an empty glass in hand, but Freya snapped, “Can’t you see I’m busy?” and he went scurrying back to his table.
“Secondly,” Freya continued, turning back to me, “these Mimir that Janet told you about. I’m starting to remember the stories. But they’re not the children of Aesir and humans, like you and Molly. They’re the children of Aesir and Jotun. And given how much the Aesir and the Jotun hate each other, the chances of two of them hooking up are looking a lot worse than the chances of you and Tyr getting back together.”
“Ouch!” I said. “It’s not like I believe anything she told us,” I continued defensively. “It’s just why I haven’t been all up her skirt the way Molly has. I don’t think she should be telling those kinds of stories any more than you do—and especially if they’re not true.”
“Sorry,” Freya said. “But that kind of nonsense makes me angry. I’ve got half a mind to head out to Fair Haven tomorrow and give Janet a piece of my mind. That said, I think you shouldn’t avoid her.”
“Really?”
“She’s your mom. Sounds like she’s got a chip on her shoulder, which, given the way our kind treated her ancestors, seems understandable. But the only thing that’s going to get rid of it is if someone starts telling her the truth.”
“That makes sense, I guess. Though I’m not exactly known for my tact.”
“News flash, Mardi: none of the Overbrooks are. Nor are the Beauchamps, for that matter. Even Ingrid’s got a temper. But like I said. She’s your mom. You deserve to have a relationship with her. If it’s a bit strained sometimes, well, welcome to the rest of the world. Moms are complicated.” She glanced up at the sky. “Sorry, Joanna,” she mouthed with a grin.
I took a moment to finish my drink. “Okay, then,” I said as I put it down. “Maybe I’ll give her a second chance.” I slid my empty glass toward Freya and stood up. “You want to call me a cab?”
“Nah,” Freya said, tossing me back my keys. “You’re not drunk anymore.”
“What?” I said, then realized that I did in fact feel totally sober. “How did you . . . ?” I glanced at my empty glass, which Freya was whisking away.
“Helps when the bartender’s a witch.” She winked, then hurried down the bar to a fresh round of customers.
21
TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT
From the Diary of Molly Overbrook
It was over a week before I spoke to Mardi again. I have to admit, I was surprised when she didn’t respond to my texts or answer any of my calls.
As the goddess of rage, Mardi is, not surprisingly, hot-tempered, but she’s not petty or vindictive.
I was more surprised, though, that Rocky didn’t reach out to me either or respond to my texts. He’d seemed totally cool about what happened on Saturday. So why freak out now? Part of me thought that maybe it was because I didn’t call him on the Monday when Mum came home until late that night, when I went up to bed. But we’d been running around constantly and there hadn’t been a chance. For some reason, I knew Mum wouldn’t like it if I was on my phone while I was with her, and I was also learning about her life, and her time with Dad, and that was so fascinating that I barely gave my phone a thought the whole day.
And Janet Steele, I was learning, was a busy woman. By the time I rolled out of bed in the morning, she’d already been up for hours. She would have gone for a five-mile run on the beach or a two-mile swim in the ocean, or worked out in the state-of-the-art gym she’d set up in the basement. She also spent at least an hour on social media, making a point to respond personally to fifteen or twenty of her Twitter followers as well as posting a few pics on Instagram and her official Facebook page. A lot of the recent pictures featured me, which on the one hand was kind of amazing because there I was: Molly Overbrook, eating barbecued shrimp with Janet Steele (with a tamarind-sesame glaze courtesy of Ivan); Molly Overbrook, trying on bikinis with Janet Steele (a Lolli one-piece with cutouts in all the right places for her, a Stone Fox cheeky bikini with a string bow over the bottom for me); Molly Overbrook, picking out bedroom furniture with Janet Steele (an Art Deco white lacquered suite whose six-foot-tall wedding cake headboard looked like something right out of a Golden Age of Hollywood black-and-white movie, probably because it had been used in Jean Harlow’s bedroom in Dinner at Eight).
But on the other hand, well, it was only me, and aside from selfies I snapped in the bathroom to get my makeup approved by my friends at school, I’d never really been photographed alone.
Sure, we had our ups and downs, but it was always me and Mardi because, you know, we were twins. A package deal. We were always photographed together, one punky, the other a little more princess. It was just how it had always been, and looking at pictures of myself without Mardi made me feel lonely. But when I shot her a cute little text, nothing came back. It was like my messages were going out into a black hole.
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