“Okay.” Opal gripped her walking stick in one hand and adjusted the straps of her backpack with the other. “Let’s go find Sally.”
Laika woo’ed at Fenrir and plunged through the surrounding trees and brush. Fenrir took off after her.
Before Opal could object, Heimdall stripped her of her backpack and slung it over his own shoulders.
“I think we’re in for a bit of a run.” He jogged into the woods, with Opal at his heels. He cursed the weight of her pack with every jolting, jostling step.
Sally regained consciousness in front of a small fire. She found herself leaning against a boulder, and her head was throbbing. She could still hear the stream rushing past, but the scenery had changed. She squinted at the modest firelight and realized with a start that night had fallen.
Jonathan squatted on the other side of the fire, prodding the flames with his bare fingers. She’d never seen clothes like his before, outside the movies. He wore what looked like leather breeches, and as her eyes traveled over his body she realized that every other part of him was bare.
Sally tried to shift away from the boulder, quietly, so she could sneak off into the woods, but her body wasn’t cooperating. Every muscle felt like heavy clay. Just moving her arm made her hiss with unexpected pain.
Jonathan gazed at her across the fire. His slate-colored eyes glowed above the flames, and snakes of red-orange light seemed to dance over the dark purple surface of his skin. He smiled.
“So, you are awake now,” he said in a courteous and friendly voice that surprised her. Given the circumstances, she would have expected the rough bark of a Hollywood villain. But his soothing tone did little to put her at ease. “I trust you are not feeling unwell.”
Sally blinked. Should she tell him that she felt like she’d been hit by a bus, or just pretend that everything was fine? She tried to strategize like Thor had taught her, to casually identify possible escape routes, look for weaknesses in her opponent, and keep up playful banter in an effort at misdirection. But a dark cloud had settled over her brain. She was having trouble enough just to keep herself sitting upright. But she lifted her chin in defiance, refusing to let him know that she was vulnerable.
“Where am I?” she demanded. “Where are you taking me?”
Jonathan’s smile grew wider. “Why, I am taking you home, of course.”
Sally kept her eyes steady on his. “This doesn’t look like home to me.”
Jonathan threw his head back and laughed. His black hair shimmered over his naked skin with every movement. “Your new home. You will be very warm there, much warmer than what heat this measly campfire can provide.” He gestured toward the flames, then prodded the burning wood. The flames leapt higher, and the light in Jonathan’s eyes danced. “This is merely a stop so that you may rest.”
Sally tried not to gawp at the man’s bare hands pushing into the fire and coming out unscathed. He was some kind of fire spirit, she figured, but she didn’t yet know enough about the indigenous legends to make any assumptions beyond that. Was this another one of Moon’s tests?
She squirmed against the boulder. The jagged surface of the rock cut into her back, and her clothes were still damp from the stream. She must have passed out. Maybe Jonathan had saved her from drowning? The more Sally tried to remember, the worse the painful thudding at her temples became.
Jonathan frowned. “No, you are not well. That is a shame. But it is temporary, I promise you.” He spread his arms wide and smiled. “All of this is temporary.” He laughed again, and Sally noticed that the usual night sounds of the forest—the chirping frogs, hooting owls, and other chittering noises and squawks she couldn’t identify—quieted whenever he spoke.
Sally pulled her knees close to her chest. She was cold, and the chilly night might freeze her wet clothes, or at least give her hypothermia. She wanted to edge closer to the fire, but that would also bring her closer to Jonathan.
He lifted something out of the fire and offered it to her. It took a moment for Sally to recognize the blackened form of a small bird run through with a stick for roasting. Though her stomach grumbled, she shook her head and pressed her back against the boulder.
“You have no need to fear me,” he said. “I am your bridegroom after all.”
“Thank you, no,” Sally replied, trying to keep her tone light and doing her best not to stare at his purplish-red skin. “I think I just lost my appetite.”
Jonathan laughed again. And again, the frogs and owls fell silent.
“Are you a god?” Sally asked in a voice that sounded smaller than she intended.
Jonathan flashed his perfectly white teeth. Pleased by her question, he puffed up his bare chest and placed his hands on his hips. The light from the fire accented his muscular build and Sally wondered if Jonathan might have had a successful career modeling for the covers of romance novels, if he could just change color.
“Do I look like a god to you?” he asked with a broad grin. “You certainly appear to be divine to me.”
Sally was fairly certain her attempted smile manifested more like a wince. She looked away to study her surroundings and realized her backpack was nowhere to be seen. That meant no compass, no food, no maps, no dry clothes. She crossed her arms tightly and willed her body not to shiver.
“Can you just take me back to where you found me?” Sally said. “I have friends in the woods who will be worried about me.”
In truth, she had no idea if anyone was looking for her. If this was part of Moon’s plan, then technically she wasn’t even missing.
The smile faded from Jonathan’s handsome face. “Why would you want to leave me so soon? Perhaps you are a shy maiden after all?”
“Um, okay.”
“Why, then, I shall regale you with testaments to your beauty and appeal, so that you will have no reason to doubt my regard for you.” Jonathan settled himself on the ground, and Sally realized that while he sat between her and the stream, she still had the woods at her back. Maybe she’d done some accidental strategizing after all. Thor would be proud.
“Okay, that would be nice,” Sally stalled. How much of a head start would her frozen muscles need to outrun this guy? He’d ignored her comment about her friends coming for her. Did that mean he wasn’t troubled by the idea of a rescue party, or that he didn’t want to show agitation? Either way, he was one cool fire spirit.
Jonathan fixed her with a hard stare, and Sally felt tendrils of fire licking the back of her neck and an accompanying thrill of . . . What? Reluctant attraction? She was suddenly reminded that she’d never really had a boyfriend, not even Niall in Ireland. Her magick and misadventures had always come first. She’d read about romance and passion in the books her mother hid in her nightstand drawer—and there was the occasional spicy dream—but Sally was pretty sure that the heat of desire wasn’t supposed to literally scorch her skin.
She flinched at the blazing flush she felt prickling her cheeks. When she smelled her own hair burning, she scrambled backward and tried to take shelter behind the boulder. Her muscles screamed at the hasty maneuver, but at least she knew they still worked. Kind of.
“My apologies.” Jonathan dipped his head low and dropped his gaze. “You are not yet accustomed to my attentions.” He smiled into the fire, and ghostly flames again danced across his face. “But you will be soon enough.”
“What did you do?” Sally knew she hadn’t gotten too close to the small campfire. Relief had come only when he released her from his smoky stare. At least her clothes were dry now, even if there were tiny burn holes in her jeans and socks. They still smoldered a little, too.
She was also a few steps closer to the woods.
“Let me sing to you of your heavenly beauty, Little Maid,” Jonathan replied. “It will ease your troubled thoughts and soothe your weary body.”
Jonathan flashed her another quick glance that let Sally know he’d like to do a lot more to her body than merely calm her muscles with song. She bristled, feeling the h
eat rising around her head again, and then Jonathan mercifully looked away. Sally let out an involuntary sigh of relief.
“Little Maid, a ray of sunshine in the dark forest,” Jonathan began to sing, seeming to pluck both his words and his melody out of the air. “Your hair is like the first light of dawn, a golden sparkle of promise, the rosy tints of life-giving warmth that set fire to the morning sky.”
His voice was mellow and sweet, and Sally had to shake herself out of the reassuring embrace of his rich timbre. His song felt like a hot mineral bath for her aching body, a long soak that didn’t smell of sulfur. But there was something in the air, something hot and ashy. Sally’s eyes opened wide. Maybe there was sulfur here after all. Brimstone, even.
She needed to keep her wits. She blinked hard and tried not to be lulled into submission. She pressed her palms against the boulder and got ready to spring away into the forest.
“Snow-white skin, with cheeks kissed by blood-colored cardinals, sweetly curving into the purest of mouths. My Little Maid’s lips are a testament to the bounty of the forest and the warm moisture of the Earth’s moss.”
Sally frowned at that. She wasn’t sure she liked having her freckles compared to blood spatter or her mouth likened to moss. She shifted her crouching position behind the boulder and felt a sharp stab in her hip.
The pendulum! Sally had nearly forgotten the obsidian point she’d shoved into her back pocket when she’d left her parents’ house the day before. She hadn’t carried it much these past months and hadn’t used it at all since her first semester at Trinity. She still had mixed feelings about Loki—sometimes bordering on betrayal, sometimes more forgiving—and she hadn’t been keen on using the pendulum he’d given her. But the snowflake obsidian was supposed to help ground her in the energies of the Pacific Northwest, so she’d reluctantly brought it along.
Was the pendulum the reason she’d reached Gaia so easily the day before, while Opal struggled? Could she call on that same connection now?
Jonathan kept singing. He was waxing on about the virtues of her fingernails and the poetry of her eyebrows. Forgetting for a moment her probably ill-fated plan to flee into the forest without a clear direction, Sally kept her facial expression neutral as she worked her fingers into her back pocket. Jonathan glanced at her only from time to time, not wanting to singe her further but still careful to keep an eye on her.
10
Thor made his way downstream in the dark. He had forgotten how deep the night could be in the wilderness. The waning moon was a fingernail crescent in the sky, and even when it peeked out from behind the modest cloud cover it was next to useless for lighting Thor’s path or keeping him from splashing into the creek every fourth step.
He plunged ankle-deep into the cold water again and cursed a blue streak as he stepped back onto the shallow bank and made another futile effort to shake the water out of his boot.
“I’m only doing this because you told me to,” Thor grumbled at Freyr, who followed closely behind. At least, Thor assumed his cousin was still back there. Freyr didn’t make a single sound as he traveled, and Thor was pretty sure his cousin hadn’t picked up ninja training in Badbh’s underworld.
Has to be a ghost, Thor thought.
“I know,” Freyr replied. “And I appreciate it. But at least you know where you’re headed now.”
Thor pushed a springy pine branch out of his way. When he let it go, he wondered if the fly-back would catch Freyr in the face or pass right through him. Thor hoped for the former—he needed some comic relief, especially at someone else’s expense—but when there was no satisfying THWACK or exclamation of pain, he guessed his shade of a cousin was immune to flying branches.
“I know roughly where I’m going,” Thor said, enjoying the feel of his lungs working harder and his blood pumping through his body. Not that he was happy about the danger to Sally, but he was a god of action and preferred to be on the move. This was much more fun than sitting by the water waiting for some mystical vision.
Thor pondered what fable he should invent to tell Bonnie when he got back, maybe about fending off a cougar or a mountain lion—because indoctrination into the mountain lion clan through courage and physical mettle would impress her grandmother, right? But Thor was no storyteller. That had been Bragi’s domain.
“Why am I even out here?” Thor mused aloud.
“Because you love Bonnie,” Freyr replied. “And because her grandmother is understandably not crazy about her favorite granddaughter marrying into a family of blond, blue-eyed Norsemen, divine or not.”
“Oh, yeah.” Thor stepped into the creek again.
“If you ask me, you’re getting off easy,” Freyr continued.
“Not that I did ask, but how do you mean?”
“A vision quest is an honor and a privilege, whether or not you want to believe that,” Freyr said. “You’ve been given the rare gift of solitude in the wilderness to study your own soul.”
Thor slowed his pace. “Yeah, and what if I don’t like what I see?”
He could almost—almost—feel the pressure of Freyr’s hand on his shoulder.
“Thor, you have nothing to worry about,” Freyr said. “You’re oafish and thick-headed, sure, and you can be prejudiced and you’re prone to jumping to conclusions, but you have a good heart. Always have had. That’s what Bonnie sees. It’s what her grandmother wants to see. And I imagine it’s what you’ll discover once you give yourself over to the exercise.”
“Exercise,” Thor grumbled. The word meant something completely different to him. If he had a dozen warriors in battle leathers and outfitted with shields and broadswords, now that would be an exercise. They’d cross swords to test each other’s fortitude on a frigid beach after slogging through the angry surf to bring their longboats ashore. Thor would relish such a test to prove his suitability as a bridegroom. But that wasn’t what had been asked of him. He quickened his pace.
“You can’t fault the lady for wanting you to take her granddaughter’s heritage seriously,” Freyr said, not remotely out of breath. “So you need to experience some of it for yourself.”
Thor dodged a low-hanging branch and narrowly avoided dunking his boot in the creek again. He thought on what Freyr had said, and it made sense to him. He wished someone else had been able to put this pre-marital obligation into such clear perspective before he’d struck into the forest.
“Thanks for that,” Thor grunted as he pushed onward. The volcano peak didn’t look like it was getting any closer, no matter how far or how fast Thor hiked downstream. But it was glowing oddly, and he doubted that was a good thing.
“What about the siatco, then?” Thor asked.
Freyr laughed lightly behind him. “I don’t know what to tell you there, buddy.” Thor half expected Freyr to slap him on the back. Maybe he tried, and Thor simply couldn’t feel it.
“You believe the siatco is real?”
“I’ve seen a lot of inexplicable things,” Freyr replied. “A Warg commanding Berserkers. Køjer Devils dispatched with enchanted art supplies.” He paused. “The Vanir and Æsir working together.”
Thor’s mouth spread into a tight grin. The peace between his Æsir kin and Freyr’s Vanir kind hadn’t been easy at first—or even more recently. But Freya and Freyr had become close and important relations as adopted cousins, and with his constant teasing and snide remarks, Freyr sometimes felt more like a brother than even Heimdall.
But now Freyr was trapped between worlds, or something. Freyr didn’t seem especially angst-ridden about it, though, and Thor didn’t have time to think about it. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into an existential discussion with a ghost. Thor felt a stab in his gut when he considered that Freyr might not be able to come back again. Not really.
“But as to the siatco,” Freyr said, “I think you’re just going to have to find out for yourself.”
Thor wanted to push back. Shouldn’t a ghost have the low-down on all things supernatural? There had to
be some upside to being mostly dead. Even if Freyr didn’t have a bead on the legendary sasquatch, perhaps he could introduce Thor to some mermaids or the Headless Horseman.
Better yet, maybe Freyr could hook him up with his very own leprechaun hammer. Thor had rather liked the power of the little thing in his hands in Ireland, and the pixie trinkets that rained down from its blows were tasty.
“So you’re not going to give me an assist on this siatco thing?” Thor asked.
He heard an excited hiss of “Siatco!” coming from the trees behind him.
“Nope,” Freyr replied.
“He just said siatco!” The voice in the trees was louder now, followed by tangled sounds of shuffling feet and jostling bags. Thor sighed.
“I’d say the Bigfoot hunters are on my trail,” Thor said in a low voice. “Anything spectral you can do to throw them off?”
“Not exactly my area,” Freyr replied.
“Big help you are,” Thor grumbled.
A figure stepped out of the trees ahead of Thor and blocked his path along the bank. Thor stepped off into the water in surprise and gritted his teeth as his toes and socks took another cold bath. He raised his fists and prepared for an altercation with the camouflaged man and his small band of misfit videographers.
“I’m glad you think I am of assistance to you in your quest,” the intruder said. Thor recognized Hugh’s voice and got a mean look on his face.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Thor snarled.
Hugh stepped closer but was careful to remain on the bank. “Then who were you talking to?”
“Whom,” Freyr coughed behind him, and Thor chuckled.
“Did I say something that amuses you?” Hugh asked with a grin.
Thor glanced behind him. Freyr was still there, the slightly spooky silhouette of a ghost in a dark forest. Thor saw him shrug. He stepped out of the water and turned to Hugh with a smirk. Hugh couldn’t hear Freyr. Probably couldn’t see him, either.
“I’m just happy to see you,” Thor replied with a sarcastic smile.
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