“Something wrong?” he said.
“Well, um, I’ve—god, this is embarrassing—but I’ve spent my last check from my old job. And I need gas for the car.”
“Right.” Tor pretended to slap himself in the forehead. “And you need the salary I promised you. I’m the one who should be embarrassed, not you. You’ve been here a month, haven’t you?” He grinned at me. “The best month of my life. Even with the damned bjarki.”
“Really?”
He sat down next to me on the couch and kissed me for an answer. “Let me just stick a note about it on the refrigerator door.”
“Thanks, I really appreciate it. I feel like I shouldn’t take it from you, now that you’re my boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend.” He grinned at me. “What a word for it! Anyway, I don’t want you to go without spending money.” He let go of my hand. “Is the five hundred a month enough?”
“I’d take less if it weren’t for my credit card bills. I mean, I can’t spend that kind of money just on stuff.”
He sat forward on the couch and frowned at the laptop screen. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were in debt.”
“Yeah, fraid not.”
“We should just pay those cards off. Why give the bastards all that interest?” With a shrug he stood up. “You’ve changed your address, right? At the post office, I mean.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Do you get ebills or paper?”
“Paper. They should come any day now, probably with new penalties, too. I kind of missed a payment.”
“Kind of.” He rolled his eyes. “Then I’ll take care of the bills when they get here. Don’t worry about it any more.” He went into the kitchen to make the note.
Lord Bountiful. I tried to make myself object, but the thought of being out from under that debt stole my voice. I salved my conscience by deciding that I’d make the five hundred last as long as possible before I asked him for money again. I was good at making money last. While he wrote the note to himself, I logged off of the bank site and shut down my laptop.
Tor came back and sat down next to me. “Anything else?” he said.
“Just this.” I put my hands behind his head and pulled him down for a kiss.
He sighed, drew me closer, and kissed me again.
“I think,” I said, “we need to get more comfortable. Like in the other room.”
I got up and held out my hand, but he stayed on the couch and looked up at me with a troubled expression.
“You’re not paying me back, are you?” he said. “With sex, I mean. For the money.”
“No! This is why I hated to ask you for it. I don’t want you to think that, not ever.”
“Okay. I wanted to make sure.”
“Look, why don’t I just get a job, just part time, until my student loans come through? All I need cash for is gas for the car and lunch with my friends now and then. Since I’m not paying rent now, the loans will take care of my art supplies and studio fees and stuff like that.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want you to get a job. You don’t need the loans any more, either. You’re part of my household, and I’ll provide for you.”
I sat back down. “This thing about your household—I don’t get it.”
“Do you know what the word husband really means? It’s got nothing to do with Christian marriage.”
“No. What—”
“A house-bound man, a man bound by law and custom to support his house and the people who live in it, the householder. That’s what I am.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I own this house, I protect it, and I take care of you.”
“That sounds like something out of the Dark Ages.”
“Pretty much it is, yeah. So?”
That’s where the runes come from, don’t they? I told myself. Why are you surprised? Tor uncrossed his arms, but he went on waiting for me to answer him.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it now.”
“Good.” He smiled at me. “Now look, if ever I start coming on to you, and you’re not in the mood or something, just say no. I don’t want you to feel like you’ve got to earn anything. I’m giving you stuff because that’s the way I am. Some of it’s my duty to give you, and some of it I just enjoy doing.”
“Your duty?”
“Maya! You ended up drowning yourself because of me. Damn right I need to take care of you now.”
His typical logic again: air-tight and totally nuts, or it would have seemed crazy if I hadn’t remembered the water, the cold and the dark, and the weight of my heavy Victorian winter clothes pulling me down. Tor leaned forward and put his hands on either side of my face.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Something is.”
“Just remembering ugly things.”
“I bet I know what.” He kissed me, just softly. “Don’t.”
“Make me forget them.”
When he kissed me open-mouthed, I felt my entire body respond. I caught his hand and laid it on one breast so he could feel my nipple harden.
“You do want this,” he said. “Well, hell, who am I to argue?”
Around sunset we got out of bed. I took a shower while he cooked dinner. When I returned to the kitchen, he was standing by the refrigerator in a pair of faded, torn jeans and a black Oakland Raiders T-shirt. His hair was touseled, he could have used a shave, and he smelled of sex and sweat. He still struck me as the most attractive man I’d ever known.
The next morning, before I left for school, Tor handed me a check for five hundred dollars. I deposited it on the way.
I finished my final project for class early that session. Brittany and Cynthia agreed that there was nothing more I could do to the portrait without overworking it. I gave it a coat of clear acrylic medium, put it on its easel to one side of the room, and left school. When I got home, Tor had just brought in the mail. He held up a small square envelope.
“From Bryndis Leifsdottir,” he said. “She must have gotten my note.”
We sat down together on the couch. Since Bryndis had answered in Icelandic, I had to wait for Tor to read the note through and translate it for me. She’d been very surprised to hear from him, she said, but she was quite willing to see him and his fiancée, as he’d apparently termed me. She suggested that we drive down to Daly City one afternoon for coffee.
“I would be happy to talk to you about Nils,” the note finished up. “But I’ve not seen him for many years now. I have often wondered what happened to him. His mother, you know perhaps, committed suicide some years ago.”
I winced. Tor shuddered. “Shit,” he said. “That’s pretty sad.”
“Very, yeah.” I paused for a moment to honor her death before I continued. “Uh, Tor? What’s this about calling me your fiancée?”
“Does it bother you?”
“Kind of. I mean, I’ve only known you for a little over a month.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You’ve known me for a hundred and sixty years.”
“That was another life. I’m talking about this one.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes at my scruples. “What else was I going to call you?” he said. “The girl who’s living in sin with me?”
“That’d be better than kept woman, anyway.”
“The proper word for that is concubine.” He grinned at me. “But that’s not what you are. You’re the mistress of this household.”
“There’s a difference, huh?”
“A big one, yeah. You’re the highest status woman. You’ll have to approve any concubine I want to take, and you can smack her to keep her in line, too, if she gives you any trouble.”
For a few seconds I felt like slapping him, but his grin—the dimple told me he was teasing even before he laughed and pretended to duck.
“When I’m gone a-viking,” he continued, “you have to manage the household and my land.”
“Do I get first choice of the loot you bring back? Well, of the jewelry, anyway.”
“You
bet. That’s a promise. The guys in my warband get the weapons.”
We both laughed. He reached over and took my hand in both of his.
“Bryndis is over seventy,” Tor continued. “In that online picture you showed me, she’s wearing a silver cross pendant. I know the stereotypes about Nordic people, but not all of us are open-minded free spirits.” He looked sour. “A lot of the old people still stick to Christianity, and it’s a real grim version, too. Calvinistic Lutheran. I don’t know why they believe it, but they do.”
“Okay, so saying we’re engaged makes sense. About the visit, it’d be better for me if we didn’t go next week. That’s when the critiques are happening. I’m probably going to be totally stressed.”
“I’ll tell her that. And we’ve got the next couple of nights to get through, too.”
It took me a moment to realize what he meant, that the moon was entering her dark phase.
“What do you bet Nils is planning something?” Tor went on.
“I guess. It’s strange, isn’t it? He’ll try to hurt us, but then he backs off.”
“He’s testing me, I bet. Seeing how strong my sorcery is. I’ve got an idea about that. I’m sick and tired of sitting around waiting for him to cause trouble, so I’m going to take the fight to him.”
I caught my breath in a gasp before I could stop myself. “What are you going to—” I began.
“I’d tell you but you wouldn’t understand.”
The flat assurance in his voice annoyed me, even though he was probably right.
“Well, sorry I’m so stupid,” I said.
“What? That’s not what I meant! You just haven’t studied the runes, that’s all. Do you want to come watch?”
“Will it bother you if I do?”
“No, as long as you don’t say anything or get up and leave in the middle.” He paused and tilted his head to one side to consider me. “There won’t be a lot to see, and the chanting’s going to sound weird, but at least you’ll know what I’m doing down there.”
“I’d like that, if you’re sure it’s okay.”
“I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t.” He got up and turned to look out the east-facing window. “There’s no use in working till it’s dark, when the energies change.”
“Is that like astral tides?”
He spun back to look at me. “Exactly,” he said. “How do you know that?”
“My father talked about it. He studied ritual magic.”
“So that’s why you knew I’m a vitki. When we met, I mean.”
“A what?”
“A sorcerer. The name means someone who knows stuff.”
“Stuff, huh? Let’s just say I knew magic was a possibility.” I decided to forestall any questions about my father. “You’re not going to be in danger, are you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m just going to explore the field tonight. Try to find him. If I can’t find him, I can’t challenge him.”
“Do you think you can find him?”
“Probably. We’re blood kin, after all. Not his address or anything exact like that, but it’ll be good enough for what I have in mind.”
“What’s that?”
He smiled and said nothing.
“Sorry,” I said. “Is there something I can do to help?”
“No.” He paused and looked at me for a long minute. “Unless—well, we’ll see how things go.”
Chapter 10
Even though I’d finished my project, I went to class Friday, just to check in and show the prof that I took her course seriously. She told me I could go home if I wanted, so I did. Tor had already made arrangements with his guy friends to play basketball in a nearby schoolyard, but he suggested that I come pick him up around noon.
“We’re only good for a couple of hours,” he said, “and I’d like you meet my friends.”
“Sure. After all, you’ve met some of mine.”
“But look, let me warn you about Aaron. He can be real hard to take at times. Asperger’s Syndrome. Know what that is?”
“Oh yeah. He’s the hacker guy, right? I guess it’s really common in people with that kind of computer skill.”
“Well,that’s what I’ve read. I guess it’s true.” He shrugged. “The other guys are okay. We all kind of look out for Aaron, though.” All at once he grinned. “Well, we like to think we’re okay. Some people would think studying sorcery is weird.”
I said nothing—really loudly, apparently, because he laughed.
“It doesn’t take sorcery to know what you’re thinking,” Tor said. “Okay. I’m strange. I know it. In fact, when I was in kindergarten I got labeled a high-functioning autistic. That’s why my father took me out of public school.”
“You’re certainly not! Why—”
“We’d just come to this country about eight months before. My English wasn’t real good. People acted differently than they did in Iceland. I’d been raised to be quiet and not get in the grown-ups’ way. The other kids all ran around shouting. I didn’t know what in hell I was supposed to do, so I sat in a corner and just watched. When my father tried to explain all this to the school, they brushed him off. I wasn’t real sure what was happening, but I do remember him coming home in a towering rage. He told my mother, that’s it! Homeschooling!”
“I can see why. Were you part of an organized program? Play dates, science classes with other kids, that kind of thing?”
“Oh yeah. My mother saw to that. And I learned early not to tell people that my father was teaching me sorcery. So did Liv. He homeschooled her, too.”
Before Tor left, he warned me that the cleaning women would be coming. Although he vacuumed out his workshop himself, Tor had hired one of those franchise housecleaning services to take care of the heavy work in the upstairs flat. Every month he consulted the lunar calendar before he made the appointments, just to make sure they wouldn’t arrive on a full moon day.
Around ten in the morning, a pair of business-like young women in matching black pants and striped shirts appeared at the door. The shy one set right to work in the kitchen, where Tor had left a plastic basket of cleaning supplies. The other woman, Meg, whom I judged to be a few years older, stopped to talk with me.
“How long does it take you to do the flat?” I asked. “I’m just curious. It won’t be a problem.”
“Only a couple of hours, with two of us. Say, is Mr. Thorlaksson ever going to get those doors in the bedroom replaced?”
“Eventually, I guess.”
“I hope so. Come look.”
We walked down the hall to the master bedroom. Meg opened the door and pointed to the damage. “Look at those grooves. The splinters catch the dust. Sometimes they stick in the carpet, too. They could maybe ruin his vacuum cleaner.”
“I’ll talk to him about it.”
“Thanks.” She smiled at me. “I’ll bet you’re glad he got rid of that crazy dog.”
“Very, yeah.” I smiled in return. “I’ll just get my stuff and get out of your way.”
She trotted off to start on the bathroom on the other side of the flat. I took a minute to look at the scratched door more closely. The damage had left an odd pattern. You’d expect a bjarki’s claws to leave three parallel grooves from the three strongest claws in the middle of his paw. These looked like they’d been made one at a time because they weren’t quite parallel. I walked over the closet and examined at the damaged door there. Instead of a pattern of teeth marks, the damage looked more like it had been done with an ice pick.
Maybe the bjarki had weird teeth, I thought. I knew little about real bears and less about bjarkis. I shrugged and left the room. When I went into my bedroom to fetch my backpack, I glanced at the writing desk. The design had changed to an innocent bouquet of roses. Somehow it knew that normal people were in the flat.
I slathered on sunscreen and made sure to wear my sunglasses. Here and there in the sky a few wisps of yellowish smog hung in the heat of the day. I drove down to the schoolyar
d in Gretel, because I figured that Tor would want to show the guys his new car. I did think of it as his, even though he’d registered it in my name.
I parked just outside the chain-link fence that surrounded the play yard. The four men were playing two on two at a basketball court marked by white lines on the pale, cracking asphalt. I found a wooden bench nearby and sat down to watch. Someone had left a black plastic cooler with the Raiders’ logo on it under the bench. I touched it, found it was cool, and figured it belonged to the guys.
It didn’t take me long to see that Tor wasn’t much of a basketball player. The other guy on his team, who had glasses and an amazing head of light brown curly hair, did most of the shooting while Tor did most of the guarding. On the other team the chubby redhead and the fourth guy, an African-American man with a shaved head, seemed pretty evenly matched. All four were laughing as much as shooting, though, pretending to elbow each other out of the way as they scrapped for the ball. Tor darted at the Black guy and stole the ball from a dribble, then did a layup that finally went into the basket.
“One for the wizard!” the redhead called out.
“Ah, he cheats!” the guy with the shaved head said.
The curly-headed guy caught the ball and stopped the entire game by cradling it and standing still. “Tor doesn’t cheat.” He sounded puzzled.
“Aaron, yeah, I know.” Shaved Head grinned at him. “It was a joke.”
Aaron tossed him the ball, then took off his glasses and wiped them on the edge of his T-shirt while he thought about it. “It’s not real funny.” He put the glasses back on.
“True enough,” Red-head said. “Chalk it up to the heat of the moment.”
Aaron shrugged, and the game resumed. Although Tor was no polished athlete, I loved watching him move. He had a certain grace for all his lack of aim. His thin T-shirt, soaked with sweat, clung to the muscles of his back. He was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans, a little too loose in the waist, so that they slid down an inviting few inches. I began to hope the game would get itself over soon. Finally, after a few more skirmishes, Red-head maneuvered toward the basket, made a perfect shot, and shouted out, “Sixty! We win!”
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