Gilded

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Gilded Page 8

by Kendall Grey


  I sigh. “They’d better have goat on the menu.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Freddie says.

  I open the bar labeled “Snickers,” shove it in my mouth, and chew. It’s chocolatey and gooey and nutty and oh my gods, so good. I moan and melt into my seat. This hits the spot—so much that I’m literally drooling. When my knuckles swipe at the spit leaking from the corner of my mouth, I accidentally bump my boob and lurch at the pain.

  “By Frey’s frigging foreskin!” I cry. Gods, that hurt.

  “You all right?” Freddie asks.

  I poke the offended boob, wince, and try the other. Both scream with sensitivity. “Have I mentioned lately how much I hate having tits?”

  Freddie flashes me a sympathetic look. “I guess they’re pretty different from horse teats.”

  “Indeed,” I say.

  Sigyn had great boobs. What I wouldn’t give to trade bodies with Gunnar Magnusson and restore us both to the way we once were. Even a close approximation would work.

  “What were we talking about before punch bug?” Freddie asks. “Oh, yeah. Gunnar. He’s always held onto this notion that you should be in love with the people you sleep with. I blame it on his Catholic upbringing.”

  I tsk. “Those damn Catholics really know how to bungle things, don’t they? They swept in and waged war on us gods too, but we used our powers to evade them. Thor with his thunder, me with my tricks, Freya with her cloak of feathers …”

  “I love feathers,” Freddie gushes and nods to my coat. “I want to borrow that when we get to Vegas, by the way.”

  “Of course,” I say, shaking the coat so the glossy black plumage shimmers. It is quite beautiful. “I stole Freya’s cloak once, transformed into a falcon, and flew. It was so freeing—far better than surveying the Nine Realms from the top of a mountain.” I mimic the movements with my hands, but the demonstration doesn’t adequately convey the exhilaration of soaring. “Not only could I look down at the contours of the land and watch the waves rolling over the seas, but I controlled where I went. Like your airplanes but better. The winds lifted me up, dropped me down. The air streaming around my body cooled my fire.”

  I wish something cool would soothe me now. I feel like Thor has beaten me senseless with Mjolnir. My body is sore and tender from my exhausting adventures over the last week. And missing Gunnar Magnusson and Huginn isn’t helping.

  “That’s how I feel when I eat WeedPops,” Freddie quips.

  I nod. Maybe if I want to feel like a god, I should embrace the things the Midgardians embrace. Like alcohol and drugs. A WeedPop might calm the hot spring churning in my gut, but I don’t want to leave Freddie unattended whilst driving. I’ve already been in two car accidents, and my mortality no longer thinks they’re funny.

  “When I have to be sober, I get my flying fix through human contact. The type doesn’t matter. Variety is the spice of life, right?” Freddie says.

  “I suppose it is.” My thoughts wander again to the empty seat behind me. “How did you meet Gunnar Magnusson?”

  “We were in a play together when we were in middle school. Funny, now that I think about it, the play was based on Erik the Red.”

  “Ah yes. Erik Thorvaldsson. I remember him.”

  “They cast Gunnar in the lead role because he was bigger than the other boys and already had a few red whiskers on his chin. I played his son, Leif Erikson, so we got to know each other pretty well.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eighth grade, so thirteen or fourteen.”

  I smile. “I would have loved to have seen that.”

  “It was a disaster,” Freddie says. “On opening night, Gunnar was scared to death. He kept forgetting his lines, and the teacher had to whisper prompts to him every other minute.”

  “Did you remember your lines?”

  “Mostly.” A twinkle sparks in his eye. “And when I didn’t, I just made shit up.”

  My kind of guy. “Good man.”

  “Nah, Gunnar’s the good man. I’m just a hedonistic couch potato.”

  Surprised, I angle my head to the right. “You have potatoes growing in your couch? Do you eat them?”

  Maybe he does unmentionable things with his potatoes. My butt cheeks clench.

  He laughs. “No, I mean I’m a layabout. A deadbeat. A lazy person.”

  Ah. Clarification is everything, though I still don’t understand what potatoes have to do with couches. Whatever.

  “A lazy person who designs mechanical people and flying devices in his spare time,” I argue.

  “Robots and drones, but okay.”

  “So, you and Gunnar Magnusson became friends when you were young and remain so to this day. You must know all of each other’s secrets.” I dangle my lure and hope he bites.

  “Some.” He smiles. “Not all. What do you want to know?”

  Freddie’s a gossip. Excellent! “How many women has Gunnar Magnusson slept with?”

  He turns to me, surprised. “I thought you weren’t a couple anymore. Are you resurrecting some feelings for him already? It’s only been a day,” he teases. “Despite the distance, he’s still got that electromagnetic hold over you.”

  “What is ‘electromagnetic’?”

  “Having to do with a magnet surrounded by a wire that conducts an electric current.” He winds up an invisible wire.

  I shrug and shake my head. No clue.

  “An electromagnet exerts a strong pull on iron and some other metals. Kind of like the pull between you and Gunnar.”

  “I see.” This “science” stuff he talks about all the time confuses me, but I think I understand the analogy.

  “And as far as I know, he’s only slept with one woman. Don’t quote me on that, though.”

  Only one? How is that possible? Gunnar Magnusson is the ideal man.

  “What was her name?” I ask. “What did she look like?” I hope she looked like me. “What happened to her?” Maybe she ate a bag of sour dicks and got sick from them.

  “Kathy. She had short black hair. And she cheated on him.”

  “The bitch,” I say, feeling a little guilty. Guess I’m not the only one who treated him—her—badly.

  “If you wanna know the truth, I don’t think he ever got over it,” Freddie says.

  My stomach lurches. “He still loves her?”

  “Nah, I don’t mean he didn’t get over her. More like the pain she left behind. I think he still carries it around. Gunnar is what we in the South call ‘tender-hearted.’”

  I sink into my seat. If there was any doubt that Gunnar Magnusson is Sigyn, it’s now evaporated like morning dew in summer.

  “Have you ever cheated on someone, Freddie? I mean, aside from cheating at punch bug.”

  “Is it cheating if you’ve never been in a relationship?” he asks.

  “You never married?” I say. “No kids?”

  “Hell no,” he yells and slaps the van’s ceiling. “No way. Ain’t nobody got time for crotch goblins and grown-ass leeches. I’ll take my freedom over responsibility today, tomorrow, and every other day from now until Kingdom Come.”

  I flinch and cover my nethers. I’ve never had a goblin in my crotch. Sounds painful. The grown-ass leeches he refers to must be either children or wives.

  I say, “I used to feel the same way.” But not anymore.

  Freddie pats my knee. “Nothing wrong with that. I’ve been away from home for a while, but for what it’s worth, I haven’t seen Gunnar this happy in years. You bring out the best in him. Give him time to finish his thesis and sort out his feelings. He’ll come around.”

  I hope so.

  Freddie stretches and yawns loudly. The cats scatter off his lap and run for cover in the back of the van. “In the meantime, we gotta get you prepped for Vegas.”

  “I’m Loki. I need no preparation. Like you, I can wing it.”

  He shakes his head. “Not in Vegas. There are rules. Always assume someone is watching you. Cameras are everywhere—in the
casinos, the elevators, the streets. Don’t do anything in public that you don’t want used against you in a court of law.”

  “That’s rather … limiting.” I knead my grumpy stomach again. I don’t like being told what I can and can’t do.

  “If you aim to win money at the poker tables, be careful,” Freddie continues. “The pit bosses are watching you too. If you emit even the slightest whiff of being a rotten egg, they’ll haul you out and never let you back in.”

  I sniff at my armpits. They seem fairly fresh. “What are ‘pit bosses’?”

  “The guys who don’t want you to win. They’re protecting the casino’s cash by making sure you’re playing fair, and they reserve the right to remove anyone for any reason. Don’t go in there like a fireball. And whatever you do, don’t show off.”

  “So, I’m not allowed to have any fun.” I sigh loudly. “Disappointing.”

  “You can have fun,” Freddie says. “Just do it on the down low. If you win big and you’re not obnoxious about it, the resort staff might give you things.”

  “Like goats?” I ask hopefully.

  “Maybe a cooked one. Or something even better. Like a hotel room. Or a suite.”

  Tail up, Sparky leaps into the front seat and settles into Freddie’s lap. Fickle beast.

  I hold up the other candy bar and admire it. “I like sweets.”

  “Wrong suite,” Freddie says, ducking around the tail flicking in his face to see the road. “I’m talking about comping you a big room with lots of space, food, and access to special privileges.”

  “Comping?”

  “Short for complimentary. As long as you spend money in the casino, they’ll keep giving you stuff.”

  “Like bargaining with dwarves for runes or other items of value.”

  “Sure. Bargaining with dwarves.” He pauses and strokes Sparky behind the ears. The cat’s purr amps up. “Let me ask you something, Loki. You say you’re a god, but I thought gods are immortal and can’t die. Why are you so worried about finding your runes?”

  “‘Immortal’ is a misnomer. We can die under certain circumstances.” I watch the passing scenery through the window. We’ve skirted around the lush farmland and brushed the edge of a city. “When my rune bracelet was fused around my wrist, I never thought about the possibility of being killed, growing old, or succumbing to disease. Sure, Thor got pissy with me occasionally and drubbed me senseless with his stupid hammer—which by the way, is nothing more than a stand-in for his shortcomings in the groin area—but I always had Ihwaz to protect me from significant harm.”

  “Nowadays we call that penis envy. Guys buy fast cars to compensate.” Freddie looks pointedly into his cat-draped lap.

  I arch an eyebrow. “Like your Porsche?”

  “Touché,” Freddie says. “Not me, though. I don’t envy any penises. I think they’re all great.”

  “You would,” I tease.

  Freddie studies the moving panel on the dashboard that looks like a living map and nods toward the tangle of traffic on the road ahead. “The GPS says Birmingham’s up here. I gotta find a Wal-Mart and get the cats some litter boxes.”

  I quirk my head to the side.

  “You know, for peeing in,” he clarifies.

  “Where did they pee before?”

  “Gunnar’s bedroom carpet.”

  I laugh. Freddie’s a lot more like me than I realized.

  “Can I pee in the litter boxes too?” I’ve had to go for ages, but I was enjoying our talk too much to ask him to stop the car.

  “I’d rather you didn’t, but hey, whatever floats your boat.”

  I turn in a wide arc and scan the road. There are no ships or bodies of water in sight. He must mean something else. Freddie’s penchant for idioms is strong. I clearly need more lessons on deciphering American slang.

  “They have bathrooms at Wal-Mart if you’d rather be civilized,” Freddie says.

  “Do they have goats at Wal-Mart?” I ask, perking up.

  “In Alabama?” Freddie says. “It’s entirely possible.”

  We carry on chatting about silly things: the importance of cheese on top of cauliflower (I know not what this last thing is, but Freddie says it looks like a brain, and that sounds good to me), how to get food comped at casinos, and why you should always say yes to the dress. Freddie looks pretty good in a dress. I’m a little jealous.

  When we finally roll into the Wal-Mart parking lot, it’s not a moment too soon. My stomach is cramping something awful. I don’t know if I need to use the toilet or throw up, but either way, the gnawing approaches an explosive level. When I yank the door handle open and climb out of the passenger seat, something unexpected cuts loose inside my pants.

  Freddie walks around to my side of the van and shouts with glee, “Punch bug, red!” He pummels my arm with one hand and points to a tiny car that indeed looks like a beetle with the other.

  Out of the corner of my eye, the shock of a different shade of red glares angrily at me. I turn.

  It’s blood. In my seat.

  I look down.

  And in my pants!

  I moan and clutch myself around the middle as bile shoots up my throat. Frigging Frigg’s Fallopian tubes. The great god Loki just got his first monthly blood.

  Shite on a goat kebab, I hate being a woman.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Dude, you got your period.” Freddie studies the splotch of red as if it’s a bit of roadkill he just drove through. He opens the box secreted in the van’s dashboard, removes a wet-looking towel from the cannister within, and sets about cleaning up the mess.

  “Your powers of deduction are astounding. What am I supposed to do?” I moan. My face is hot with humiliation. How the Hel do women deal with this crap? “It’s like bloody Ragnarok in my pants.”

  Up to this point, I’ve tried to make peace with the body Odin, the Norns, or the giant, gaping Anus of Destiny dressed me in, but gods damn it, this shite is uncalled for.

  “First things first.” Freddie grasps the handle and slides the back door open. He digs around in his suitcase and produces what the Midgardians call a “hoodie.”

  “Arms up,” he says.

  I lift my arms.

  He ties the sleeves of the black hoodie around my waist so it covers my arse. Seemingly satisfied, he says, “Let’s find you some feminine products.”

  I don’t know what feminine products are, but the mere sound of the term makes me want to scream. Then something even more horrifying dawns on me. Not only must I endure this “period” and all the trauma it entails, but as a human female, I’ll have to deal with it again next month. And the next month. Ad infinitum.

  I grab the door handle to keep from dropping. “I can’t do this. No. No. No.” I aim my face at the sky and scream, “Odin, Son of Bor, answer my call. I want out, Allfather! Right bloody now!” Some pun intended.

  Several shoppers in the parking lot gawk at me. They clutch their purses and their children’s hands tighter and then rush away. I don’t care if they think I’m unstable. Being a woman is unfair and it sucks and I hate it and everyone can die.

  Freddie grabs my arms and forces me to look at him. “You’re going to be fine, Loki. Women have been doing this for thousands of years, and they survived. You have the advantage of being a god—”

  “Former god,” I correct.

  “—which means you’re stronger than they are. You can handle anything a normal woman can. You fought frost giants, remember?” He dips his head and peers up at me with the round eyes of a wolf pup.

  “Yes,” I grumble. “I did bring down many a frost giant.”

  “Exactly.” Freddie lifts a palm, and we perform our special hand dance. Top, bottom, middle. Bump, bump, bump. Jazz hands, and … explosion.

  The gesture brightens my spirits a lumen or two.

  “Having your period will be a walk in the park,” he continues. “Tell you what. Stay here, and I’ll go inside and get your supplies.”

  “
You know what I need?” Because I certainly don’t. Aside from my uterus ripped out and stomped on by an army of battle horses going to war.

  “I’ll figure it out,” he assures me. “Once I have everything, I’ll take you in and show you where the women’s restroom is, and you can handle things from there. Deal?”

  I nod miserably. Heat pools at the corners of my eyes, but I blink the cursed wetness away.

  “Be right back,” Freddie says. As he turns to leave, Sparky and Wiggles spring out of the van and tag along after him, tails up, back legs prancing.

  Traitors.

  I want to lash out at everyone and everything. I’d like to take a hammer to this van and smash it to bits. I lean in through the open door and check the back for anything I could use as a weapon.

  “Nice ass. What you want, bitch?” a deep, masculine voice asks behind me.

  Startled, I smack the top of my head on the door frame. “Oww!” I cry, grabbing the spot.

  When I turn around, a smug Muninn hovers at boob-level, his iridescent green wings throwing rainbow colors in every direction.

  “What the Hel are you doing here?” I demand, rubbing the swelling knot of pain sprouting on my skull.

  “You called for Odin. He sent me.”

  “That’s all I have to do to get his attention?” I ask. “Good to know.”

  “Get to it,” Muninn says. “I have things to do.”

  “So do I, but that doesn’t stop the universe from shitting up my plans,” I snap. “Allfather knew this would happen, didn’t he? He arranged it to work out this way. Which Norn did he pay off to make me suffer thusly?”

  Without so much as a dip in altitude, Muninn folds his wings across his puffed-out chest and levels me with a skeptical glare. One eye clouds with swirls of glittery blue. “What the Hel are you talking about?”

  I try to grab the bird, but he’s too fast. He blinks out of reach only to appear a few inches to the left of my grasping fingers.

  “I wouldn’t do that again,” Muninn warns. “It’ll get your blood pressure up, and gods know you wouldn’t want to put any undue stress on yourself.”

 

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