“No, I really don’t know much about Nordic lore,” I said. “When you study art history, or Western art history, I should say, but anyway, you learn a lot about the Graeco-Roman myths, but not about the Norse.”
“I can give you books if you’re interested.” Tor thought for a moment, frowning. “Yeah, I do have some in English. There are two main sources, the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, and I can give you translations. They’re good stories.”
“Cool! I love good stories.” I held out the gold ornament. “I don’t mean to be nosey, but where did you get this piece?”
“Where I get everything. I inherited it. I’m pretty useless on my own, or so I’ve been told.”
Although he smiled, I heard a touch of bitterness in his voice. He took the gold ornament from me and stroked it with one finger. In a minute or maybe two, he went on, “A long time ago now my great-grandfather was digging a well on the family farm. He found a hoard of gold objects. In those days there wasn’t any government archaeology board to buy up finds like that. So Great-Grandfather sold it off piecemeal, all except for this one thing, and hid the cash in a pickling crock in the farmhouse kitchen.” He looked up and smiled again, but this time the bitterness was gone. “His son, my grandfather Halvar, found the cash and invested it. He’s the one who made the family wealthy.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t sell this piece, too.”
“I’m not sure why he didn’t. Probably because no one knew what it was, and he was afraid of selling it too cheap.” The bitterness returned to his voice. “Grandfather Halvar didn’t like making bad bargains.”
Tor returned the gold ornament to its batting, box, and the safe. Before we went back upstairs, he looked over the shelves in his library and found a stack of books for me to read, the two Eddas, some books on Norse history, and then a modern compilation of Norse myths.
“By the way,” I said, “you don’t have a TV, do you?”
“No. I hate them. They’re useless noise, and they ruin people’s brain waves.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. He gave me a thin smile, as if he knew he’d shocked me.
“Look,” he said. “Would you rub dirt into your eyes? Of course not! Well, your mind’s the most important thing you have, and watching the crap they put on is just like rubbing dirt into it. Especially the commercials. Brain poison, that’s what they are.”
“Uh, well, if you say so.”
“I won’t have one in the house.”
“Okay. I can live without it. I just wondered.”
He was my boss, after all. I figured that if there was a show I absolutely had to watch, I could get it on my laptop or go to Cynthia’s. Her husband had set up their flat screen TV on cable with a couple of DVRs, and they’d invited me over a number of times to catch up on stuff I’d missed.
That night Tor and I lingered at dinner, talking over the day. After I cleaned up the kitchen, Tor poured us each brandy, and we sat down in the living room. Through the west window I could see the lights of San Francisco, blurred by fog/ “I love this view,” I said.
“You’ve got the artist’s eye. Which reminds me. Do you need more drawing stuff? In case the illusions come back. I bet whoever it is isn’t going to give up after just one try.”
“Probably not, no. I could use some more Conté and another sketchbook. I can get them at the student store. They’ve got the best prices around.”
“Okay, buy what you need, and I’ll reimburse you.”
On the way to class on Thursday, I stopped at the ATM for cash. My credit cards had hit their limit, and I refused to add an overdraft fee to my horrendous bills. When I bought the supplies after class, I made sure to get the receipt. I wanted to keep my relationship to Tor as business-like as possible.
Which was going to be difficult, I realized, when I returned to the flat that afternoon. I walked in to find Tor in the kitchen, putting away a sack of groceries. He turned from a cabinet and gave me a smile that announced how pleased he was to see me. His eyes became warm and alive. I felt myself respond, too, with my familiar treacherous thought. What would it be like to kiss that smile, that dimple at the corner of his mouth? I made myself look away and put the bag of art supplies down on the counter.
“Let me give you the bill,” I said.
When I took receipt out of my purse, he walked over to take it from me. Our fingers touched, then brushed against each other’s hand. I drew back fast, and he winced in disappointment.
“Tor,” I said, “I hardly know you, and you don’t know much about me, either.”
For a moment I thought he was going to argue. He laid the money down on the counter, scowled at it, then forced out a stiff smile.
“Well, that’s true enough,” he said. “You’re right, considering the way things are now. Sorry.”
He turned sharply around and returned to putting away the groceries. I grabbed the bag of sketchpads and fled the kitchen. As I was stashing the drawing supplies in various rooms, I heard him go downstairs. When I went back into the kitchen, I found the money he owed me lying on the counter.
The next time I saw him, about an hour later, he acted as if nothing had happened. So did I—not that it worked for either of us. It’s hot in the East Bay in July. I’d stood up for four hours, drawing preliminary graphite sketches of the model. When I got a good one, I transferred it to canvas, then glazed with acrylic medium. After class, I walked around the student store, where I’d picked up a surge of élan along with the drawing supplies.
“I’m going to go clean up,” I said. “I know I stink.”
“I wouldn’t call it that. You smell good to me.”
He meant it, too. His eyes had turned heavy-lidded, stripped of their usual bitterness, and his mouth had relaxed into a soft curve instead of the tight line. I wanted to walk over to him and let him kiss me. No, I wanted him to do a lot more than just kiss me. I could feel the longing where it mattered.
“Uh, I need to take a shower.” A cold one, I thought. Right now.
He sighed. “Yeah, I suppose you’d better.”
I hurried into my bedroom and shut the door behind me. I took a pair of shorts and a shirt into the bathroom. Once I had the door closed and locked, I took off my dirty clothes. After my shower, I put on the clean clothes behind the same closed door. When I came out again, Tor had masked himself in the illusion of the nerdy guy with the vacant eyes. He’d been reading on the couch, but he laid his book aside and stood up.
“It’ll be the full moon in about a week,” he said. “I thought you’d better see my lair.” He tried to smile, then let it fade. “Well, it’s the bjarki’s lair when he’s dominant. It’s mine the rest of the time.”
The lair turned out to be the master suite. The bedroom had soothing blue-gray walls, a green and blue area rug, and antique furniture: a big oak bed, a dresser, an oak wardrobe, and a couple of upholstered armchairs. There were yellow drapes at a window that he’d fitted with safety glass, the kind with a fine mesh embedded in it. On one wall hung the pastel portrait I’d done of him that day at the fair. He’d had it matted and framed.
“I’m surprised you kept that,” I said.
“Well, it says a lot about me.” He gave me a shy smile. “Besides, you drew it.”
I had no idea what to say to that. I turned away and glanced around.
“What’s the safety glass for?” I said.
“The bjarki tried to throw himself out of the window once. I pulled back just in time.”
“Do you still know you’re Tor when you’re transformed?”
“Kind of. It feels like I’m dreaming.” He frowned down at the floor. “That’s the only reason I haven’t gone out and hurt someone. It’s like there’s two of me. And we fight the whole damn time.”
“God, that must be awful!”
“It is, yeah.” He turned away and walked over to the clutter on top of his dresser. “Let me give you the keys.”
On the outside of the door he’d
installed a safety chain and a formidable looking lock.
“There’s a deadbolt, too.” He handed me a ring with two keys on it. “The bjarki gets pretty desperate, and he bangs on the door a lot. I can’t stop him till he wears himself out.”
I glanced at the inside of the heavy wood door and noticed long claw marks. No way could Tor have made those with his fingernails. I looked around and saw that something had chewed the edge of the flimsier closet door into splinters. I felt cold all over, and I must have turned pale, because Tor saw my reaction.
“It’s really real.” His voice ached with sadness. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I really do turn into a bear. It’s in the old sagas, too. I’ll have to get you some of those to read. You’ll understand more, then.”
Just like my disease is real, I thought to myself. I wanted to tell him, to explain that I lived under a curse just like he did, but I’d hidden my condition for so many years, and I was so afraid of losing what he was giving me, that I kept silent.
Since I needed to buy gas, I left for school early the next morning. When I backed my heap out of the garage, I noticed the filthy windshield and got out to attend to it. I kept a roll of paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner in the back seat. I was wiping down the glass when a gray car—a sleek, expensive-looking ride—drove by the house. I would have thought nothing of it if the driver hadn’t looked familiar.
I only caught a glimpse of him, but he reminded me of Tor. Even though the sunny morning was already heating up, he wore a jacket with the collar turned up, as if he were hiding his face. I watched him as he drove down to the end of the street and hung a right onto the avenue that led downhill toward Broadway. It took me a few minutes to clean all the car windows, but when I drove down and turned onto the avenue, I spotted him, parked in a driveway half-hidden by trees.
When I drove by, he pulled out and followed me. I kept glancing into the rear view mirror and caught glimpses of him, enough to confirm that he was the man I’d seen looking into the café window, the older guy who resembled Tor. At the gas station, he drove on by and merged into the lane that would eventually take him onto the freeway. Even so, I kept glancing into the rear-view mirror all the way to school. I never spotted him.
Was he the same guy who’d sent those illusions? I had no way of knowing, but who else would it have been? Maybe he was checking me out, seeing if the woman who’d thwarted him was a permanent resident at Tor’s. I could come up with any number of paranoid ideas
After class, Cynthia, Brittany, and I were walking to the parking lot together. Brittany was telling me about Roman’s progress with the group therapy when I had the feeling that I was being watched. It grew so strong that I stopped and turned slowly around, looking at every building, every tree, anything that might shelter a staring creep.
“What is it?” Cynthia said.
“I keep feeling like someone’s watching me, but there’s no one there.”
“That must be what’s causing the weird vibe,” Brittany said. “I’ve been picking up something all morning, and I bet that’s it.”
“What kind of something?” Cynthia said.
“I dunno exactly.” Brittany considered for a moment. “Like something was disturbing my aura. A feeling of danger but not to me. I thought it meant Roman was in trouble, but maybe it applies to Maya instead.”
“You know,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll go to lunch with you guys, after all. I want to go home.”
“Just be careful when you’re driving,” Brittany said. “Don’t go on the freeway, okay?”
“Okay. I’ll see you Monday.”
I took Brittany’s advice. Over the past few years I’d often joined Cynthia in teasing Brittany about her goopy New Age ideas, but now I regretted not paying them more attention. Maybe we’d always suspected she was right, I thought. Maybe that’s why we had to tease her, so we could pretend the universe was all clean and rational, that shape-changers and sorcerers only existed in the fantasy books. Even though I called myself a vampire, I’d never put myself in the same class as those fictional creatures of the night. I was just a girl with an awful disease.
Wasn’t I?
When I got back to the house, I found Tor in the kitchen, where he was cutting up vegetables for salad. He looked so normal, so solid, that I wanted to run to him and ask him to hold me. Instead I just said hello.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “You look like something frightened you.”
“Something did.”
When I told him about the car following me and my feelings of being spied upon, Tor frowned in thought for a couple of minutes.
“Have you ever come back here when I was gone?” he said eventually. “I’m wondering if he’s trying to see you re-arming the security system.”
“So he can get the passcode?” I thought back over my brief time of living in the flat. “No, you’ve always been here, and so the system’s been off.”
“That’s a relief. Though I don’t know why he’d spy on you when you’re in school, if the passcode’s what he wants.” He considered this for another minute, then shrugged. “I wonder if he drove by to make sure you were living here now.”
“That’d be my guess, yeah.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not living alone anymore, with this guy hanging around spying on you.”
I went cold all over. “It’s something you’re always aware of,” I said, “when you’re a girl on your own, being stalked, I mean. But I don’t think this guy’s just the usual kind of creep.”
“He can’t be, yeah. Pervs don’t usually know how to scry. I’ll bet he’s our illusionist, or at least, he’s got to be connected to the attacks. Sorcerers don’t grow on trees, y’know.”
I managed to smile at the joke.
“Look,” Tor continued, “let’s not take any chances. Are you going out tonight or anything?”
“No. I was going to start reading the books you loaned me.”
“Okay. That’ll give me time to do a thorough job. I’m going to make you a bindrune talisman. It’ll look like a piece of jewelry, a pendant on a thong. You’ll need to wear it whenever you leave the house.”
“Bindrune?”
“That’s just the name for this kind of operation. You bind the magic into the object with the runes. It looks like a monogram. I’ll use a couple of runes that offer protection and combine them into a little design, then energize them. If someone’s using magic to spy on you, it’ll keep the prying eyes off.” He gave me a sly smile. “If it doesn’t work, then maybe we should see about getting you into therapy.”
I laughed and pretended to swat at him with one hand. He grinned in return, his real smile, not the nerdy illusion. I felt like my heart had turned over in my chest. He was watching me expectantly, as if he were hoping I’d give him an opening, or make the first move, or in some other way give into the raw desire I felt swirling around us. If it had been just smidgen stronger, I swear, it would have been as visible as smoke.
“I’d better clean up before lunch,” I said instead.
His grin disappeared, but he forced out a civil expression.
“Okay,” he said. “While you do that, I’m going to send my sister another email. I can’t help wondering if the guy you saw drive by is a relative. I don’t come from a big family, so if he looked like me, well, that’s evidence. And if he is from my family, who knows what kind of magic he can work? Something strange, probably.”
Tor spent the afternoon down in the lower flat, while I stayed in my room reading. The Norse myths were good stories, just as he’d told me, though kind of on the grim side. When we ate dinner, I asked him if he and his family believed in gods like Odin and Thor.
“Not literally,” he said, “not like Fundi Christians believe in their Jesus. The Norse gods represent principles of the universe, true things in their way. You can contact those principles, or the forces that emanate from them, and then they feel like persons. Sometimes I do feel like I’m tal
king to Odin, and He hears me.” His face turned slightly pink. “But that’s just the human mind, turning abstract principles into something concrete.” The pink got brighter. “Not that I’m divinely inspired or anything. I don’t mean to preach.”
“You’re not preaching,” I said. “This is all really cool stuff.”
But when I asked a couple more questions, he gave me short, embarrassed answers, and so I let the subject drop.
After dinner Tor went downstairs to charge my talisman, or so he told me. Whatever that entailed took several hours. I was sitting in one of the leather armchairs, studying the view of the Bay and San Francisco, when he returned. I stood up to see what he’d brought me: a beautiful pendant, a thin oak roundel about an inch and a half in diameter, dangling from a leather thong. He’d incised the design, then laid rust-colored paint, or so I thought, in the grooves. He’d glazed the whole thing with acrylic medium—I recognized the faint scent—to seal it. The runes reminded me of old-fashioned peace symbols, but placed upside-down, each set at a different angle to form a kind of bouquet. Lying horizontally across their nexus were two axe-like shapes, each a line with a little triangle placed in the middle. One triangle faced down, and the other, up.
“The runes I used are Yew and Thorn,” he told me. “For this kind of thing you can reverse the runes, double them, put them sidewise, whatever, without any negative effects. The idea is to make something that looks decorative, so if anyone notices, they won’t think much of it.”
“It looks wonderful. Thank you. What kind of coloring material did you use on the runes?” He smiled and held up his left hand to show me a band-aid on his index finger.
“Blood?” I said. “You used your own blood to stain it?”
“That what the old texts all say you should use. I like to do these things right.”
When he handed me the pendant, it seemed to tremble with energy in my hand. I began to think that he was right about my having some kind of magical talent, if I could feel the energies so clearly. I refused to follow the thought down. He stepped behind me.
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