“Not a happy-looking boy,” she commented.
“Understatement of the year,” Luke agreed.
“This is the one who hurt you?” she asked bluntly, and her face darkened as Luke nodded. “I don’t remember seeing him.” She lowered her glasses, then frowned. “The name Tomasson, though... I don’t know how it’s familiar, but something about it...the family name...” She thought for a moment, then shrugged apologetically. “I’m not sure.”
“If you remember anything, tell me. We...” He glanced toward Aurora. “I need to find him. I thought I’d start at the school.”
“You truly think he’s trying to kill you,” Nona said.
“Yeah.”
Nona sighed, and looked across the table at both of them. “You must promise me to be very, very careful.”
“It’s my job, Nona,” Luke said patiently.
She shook her head. “And look what happens.” She glanced significantly at his wounded arm.
“I’m alive. I plan to stay that way.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aurora flinch. Now what was that about?
But Aurora ducked her head down and concentrated on her pancakes.
* * *
After breakfast, Aurora cleared dishes from the table while Nona rinsed plates at the sink and loaded the dishwasher.
“That was maybe the best breakfast I’ve ever had,” Aurora said sincerely. Not that she sat and ate with humans often; that had been part of the charm of it.
Aurora had been in heaven. It was all so normal, to sit across a table from Luke, to feel the warmth of his thigh close to hers, to feel the pleasure he was taking in the food. She felt dizzy with the sensual pleasure of it, watching his hands, the shine of honey on his mouth.
Nona’s voice brought her out of the memory. “Thank you, my dear.” The other woman smiled. “Would you hand me that skalen handduken?”
Aurora automatically reached for one of the dishtowels hanging on a rack and passed her the towel. Nona took it, and dried the remaining dishes without comment. But as soon as she was finished, she turned to Aurora.
“I have something I’d like you to see.”
Nona laced her arm through Aurora’s and led her into the living room and over to the wall of paintings. She stopped in front of one of them, and Aurora found herself looking at a painting of a baby in a cradle, that she immediately understood was Luke. Three hazy female figures hovered over him: with blond, black and red hair.
“It’s a legend of our country,” Nona said, watching her closely. “The Norns, the goddesses of fate, stand watch at each person’s cradle. Do you know them?”
“I think I’ve heard of them,” Aurora stammered.
“I noticed your Swedish is very good,” the older woman said softly. Aurora froze. Nona was looking at her with no attempt to hide her surveillance. “Are you from the Old Country, then?”
Aurora was still trying to think how to explain when Nona asked softly, “Or maybe a country older than that?”
Aurora couldn’t speak, but she lifted her eyes to the older woman’s with no denial. Nona looked startled, and shaken. “Gode Gut,” she said under her breath.
Aurora stood silently.
“Well,” Nona said weakly. She inched away from Aurora.
It was a reaction Aurora had experienced before, not very often, but once in a while, when a perceptive human suddenly became aware they were in the presence of an Eternal. It made Aurora feel lonely.
“I’m not the bad one,” she said impulsively.
Nona looked hard at Aurora for a long moment, then softened. “No, I don’t think you are.” Then she asked cautiously, “Does Luke know?”
Aurora bit her lip. “No. I don’t know. I mean...he doesn’t believe.”
Nona shook her head, an exasperated, resigned gesture. “Men. So very slow.” Then her face turned worried. “Luke is in trouble, isn’t he?”
Aurora felt her heart wrench. She looked at Nona helplessly, and Nona sighed before she could answer. “What else is new?”
“I’m going to take care of him,” Aurora said. “I promise.”
“I suppose that is your job,” Nona said, but fixed her eyes on Aurora. “See that you do.”
“I am,” Aurora said. “I will.”
And before they could say more, Luke stepped in through the doorway. “We should get moving,” he told Aurora.
And the two women’s eyes met for the briefest moment as Luke stepped up to kiss Nona goodbye.
Chapter 11
In the car again, Aurora was silent, reflective. As Luke drove the familiar streets, he was roiling with emotion and confusion, thinking like a madman. Literally. Because he’d heard Nona and Aurora talking.
His old-country, old-school grandmother actually thought that this woman was a Norn.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this,” he said aloud.
Aurora looked at him with azure eyes, and he could see that she knew what he meant. “You need to do what you know you need to do. And trust that I’m here to help.” Her voice dropped. “Do you trust me?”
He realized that he did.
“Then you know what you need to do.”
He was torn between stopping everything and having the full-on freak-out that this reality-bending deserved. But a) being with her felt so natural that he couldn’t really find the supernatural in it, and b) the case was driving him. He felt that if he could only make sense of that, then everything else would make sense, too.
And c) Aurora was looking at him in that way again. A way that, regardless of whether she was Norn or not, made Luke want to head over to the curb and pull her into his lap so he could feel the shimmering silk of her hair spill over his arm as he kissed her. Her mouth would taste like lingonberry...
Eyes on the road, he warned himself.
“All right, then. We’re going to the school and we’re going to find Tomasson.”
* * *
The sight of the school was so familiar, not just from Luke’s past memories, but from his dream. Time can do strange things, Aurora had said. It really felt as if he had been there just hours ago.
Pacific High wasn’t a typical high school; the huge main building was a former monastery and as elegant as any university’s.
He held the door open for Aurora as they walked in through the Administration office door of the main building, and she looked up at him in a way that gave him a sudden rush of déjà vu. It felt like—really felt like—he’d done this with her before.
That was the dream, wasn’t it? Or is there something more?
He flashed on the image he’d had that morning of a girl with red-gold hair. Could it really be? From that long ago?
She looked away from him as if she knew what he was thinking.
There were a few students passing in the hall, including a tall, broad boy in a letter jacket walking with a slim and pretty girl. As they approached him and Aurora, Luke had the feeling that he was seeing his high school self through the mirror of time.
He glanced at her and she looked back at him and he had a nearly irresistible impulse to take her hand—but resisted.
He nodded ahead to the office, and said gruffly, “There.”
It was times like this that Luke loved being a detective. When he handed his shield across the counter the clerk stared down, then raised her eyes with a slightly starstruck look.
“Of course, Detective, how can I help you?”
“I’m tracking down a former student, graduated 2000—Tomas Tomasson. I’d appreciate the most up-to-date information you have on him. Current address and contact information, college attendance, whatever you’ve got.”
While the clerk hurried off, Luke looked around for Aurora, who was sitting on one of the benches against the wall looking through the yearbooks he’d brought with them. She was taking her time about it, which Luke appreciated. Yearbooks were always filled with candid shots and absurd little facts; you never knew what might turn up.
/> He watched her poring over the book, so beautiful and so serious, and again had the strongest sense that he’d seen her in that position before.
But younger...
He had seen her bent over a book just like that, and he had kissed her...
No. That had been a dream. She’d been in his dream last night, too.
A dream? A memory?
Then the clerk’s voice spoke behind him. “Detective Mars.”
After an endless moment, Luke turned away from Aurora, and toward the clerk. She was frowning, looking perplexed.
“I’m sorry, Detective, but there’s no record of that student ever attending this school.”
Luke stared at her. “You mean someone emptied the file?”
“I mean, no student named Tomas Tomasson ever attended the school.”
“That’s just not true.” Luke looked toward Aurora, who was sitting with the yearbook in her lap. He took a step toward her and she handed him the yearbook before he even asked.
Luke turned to the clerk and opened the yearbook on the counter to Tomasson’s photo, turned the book around and stabbed his finger at the picture.
“Right there. Class of 2000.”
The clerk stared down. “But I checked...” She shook her head, took a pad of paper and carefully copied the name down. “Hold on.” She went back to her desk.
Luke turned again toward Aurora...and froze.
* * *
Aurora felt her whole body heat up as Luke looked at her, and she thought she would gladly give up her immortality to be able to have him look at her like that for a mere human lifetime.
He continued staring toward her and she became aware that he wasn’t moving. Not moving at all. And the clock on the wall above him wasn’t moving, either; the red secondhand was as frozen as Luke was. Someone had stopped Time. It wasn’t her, though, and she looked around to see what Eternal might be in the vicinity.
The only other moving thing in the room was a skatepunk kid with spiky hair. He grinned at her slyly. Aurora looked harder, and recognized him with a jolt of exasperation.
“Loki,” she muttered in a whisper, although no one else in the vicinity was animate to hear her. “Get out of here.”
“And miss this charade?” He glanced meaningfully at Luke, still frozen at the counter. “It’s déjà vu all over again.” He dropped his skateboard and rolled across the slick floor of the office to Aurora, flipping the board up and catching it and sitting beside her in one fluid move. “I love these things. Brilliant invention. One has to admit sometimes mortals do get it right.”
“Acting your real age again, are we?” Aurora scathed.
“You’d be better off acting yours.” He tapped his chin pensively. “Let’s see, when he’s forty you’ll be...ten thousand nine hundred and fifty-two? In solar years? Thereabouts?”
The truth stung, and Aurora had to blink back tears. “Would you please leave?”
Loki shook his head mock-sadly. “Before I tell you the important thing I came to tell you?”
Aurora knew too well that Loki always had his own agenda that had nothing to do with helping, and she wanted to tell him to stow it, shove it, stick it in some body part, whatever the current human insult was—but she also knew too well that there was always some gold to be found in the middle of Loki’s tricks. It was a question of seizing the gold while avoiding the trap.
She feigned boredom. “We were doing just fine here until you stopped Time.”
“You’ve hit a complete dead end, and you know it. And yet the answer is so close.” He leaned annoyingly closer. “So close...”
He nodded at the book Luke was holding. “Take that yearbook, for example. What is it but a mortal attempt at a Book of Fate? Past, Present, hints of the Future...” His voice dropped, enticingly. “How much could it tell you if you knew what to ask?”
He was taunting her, Aurora knew, but it was a specific taunting. There was something in the book, a clue. All she had to do was find it.
She was careful not to let her face betray her; instead she feigned boredom.
“I tire of your riddles. Go and—” she glanced at the skateboard — “Shred.”
Loki sighed dramatically, but picked up the board. “I’ll take you sometime. You’ll love it.”
He dropped the board, jumped onto it, and sped out of the office as the doors opened by themselves in front of him.
Before Time could begin again, Aurora moved quickly to Luke’s side and gently extracted the yearbook from his hands.
She paged through the glossy photos. She’d already skimmed almost the entire book. All that remained were the back pages, page after page of advertisements...
This time she turned directly to the back of the book...and saw what she had been looking for.
She skittered back to her seat just as Time began again.
* * *
Luke turned back to the counter and saw that the clerk was on the phone; she held up one finger to him apologetically. He glanced around for the yearbook he thought he had been holding but when he looked behind him he saw Aurora had it, was deeply absorbed in the pages again. Odd.
While he waited he stuck his hand in his pocket and took out his painted souvenir box. Idly he flipped it open, and looked down at teenage treasures: concert tickets, his class ring, a Varsity pin...
And a rune stone.
Not just any rune stone, but the same symbol as the one Aurora wore around her neck.
Luke stared down at it. He hadn’t seen it in ages and it took him a moment to recall where he’d gotten it. It had been the neighbor girl.
He had to stop himself from turning to stare at Aurora. Instead, he deliberately kept his posture neutral so she wouldn’t notice anything different about him.
I’ve known her that long? Not just since high school, but that long?
His mind was racing. His actual memory of her in high school was hazy; as far as he could remember there had only been that one session of tutoring he had with her, and he hadn’t even remembered that until the dream. Until he’d remembered the dream. Had that really happened? He was reeling with confusion.
But before he could think further the clerk stood from her desk, and came toward the counter again, shaking her head. “No record at all.”
Luke refocused on her. “Thanks for checking. I appreciate it.”
He looked toward Aurora and glanced at the glass doors to the corridor. She stood with the yearbook and moved with him to the doors and out.
In the corridor, Luke put his hand on her arm to steer her and felt her tense up, that instant chemical reaction to him that she had, which he had to admit was a major turn-on. He forced himself to ignore it as he filled her in shortly.
“Someone’s made Tomasson’s school record disappear. Probably him. He’s gone off the radar.”
“I found something.” She stopped beside the wall and opened the yearbook. She turned to the final pages, which were page after page of ads.
Luke glanced at her, frowning. She pointed.
On a full-page ad list of sponsors, the second-to-last name on the list was Bayside Shipping Company.
“Bayside Shipping?” And then he saw the name under the company name: Nils Tomasson, CEO.
Luke stared at the name, and felt memory tugging. “Yeah...yeah...his father owned some big-deal business...” He felt a thrill of significance, and looked up from the page at Aurora. “Shipping.”
She nodded, her eyes shining.
Luke’s thoughts were racing. It wasn’t just that it was a shipping company, either. The name of Bayside Shipping was very familiar to Luke; it was one of the major shipping companies based in San Francisco, and a major competitor of one of the companies that had been plagued by the piracy he was investigating.
So the son of the head of a rival shipping company had been at the dock the night that stolen goods were being unloaded?
His case had just broken wide open.
“This is fantastic,” he s
aid before he remembered that she had a lot of explaining to do. But he had to follow the clue.
“Bayside Shipping,” he said, and pulled out his cell phone. He needed the internet now, but should he risk activating the phone, putting out a signal? And then he remembered something better.
“The library.”
He did an about-face and headed for the stairs, Aurora right behind him.
Chapter 12
As it turned out, a detective’s shield worked just as well as a hall pass, and in less than a minute they were moving through the double doors of the upstairs library.
Again, the shield got them effortlessly past the desk clerk.
Then Luke found himself slowing, looking around him at the aisles of bookshelves, the computer stations, the round study tables. He’d done this so recently, it seemed, in the dream and apparently in the past, as well, walking across the thin industrial carpet of the library in its school colors with this woman at his side, ready to help him in any way he should need, including all kinds of ways he’d only dreamed about when he—they—were in high school.
Mind on the job, he reminded himself.
There were students at a lot of the tables— evidently it was a study period—and he was slightly unnerved to realize that the two most available seats were exactly the seats where he and Aurora, the tutor, had sat in his dream.
He looked at her suspiciously, as if she could have been engineering the whole configuration, which of course was impossible.
In the present there were computers at every table. Surreal, how much everything had changed. And yet, it felt exactly the same; he was having the same kind of insistent hormonal rush he remembered from high school, the feeling of being so sexually charged that any brain function was a minor miracle. He was having thoughts that would definitely get him arrested if he acted on them—visions of pulling Aurora into an aisle and pressing her up against the shelves...moving his hands under her dress, between her thighs...
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