It had taken threats of no hot chocolate or playing in the yard the next day to finally get the boys beneath their respective blankets—Magnus in his bed and Maksim on an inflatable mattress on the floor—but Thor could still hear them talking and laughing through the ceiling. He smiled. He was glad his son had a friend, even if that friend brought potential trouble into the house with him.
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t have any little ears tagging along.” Bonnie sat at the head of the table—a sturdy, no-frills piece of blond wood that Thor had fashioned for his wife for their first wedding anniversary. She motioned to an empty chair beside Saga, and Thor obediently took a seat.
“She was telling me about the men who showed up at your door,” Saga said.
“I didn’t think I’d ever be thankful to have Carol on my side in a confrontation,” Thor replied. “But that lady can really hold her own.”
Bonnie poured him a cup of tea and passed him a plate of store-bought cookies. “I thought you said she had a delightful personality and a refreshing outlook on the world.”
“That was when I first moved in.” Thor shoved a fist of chocolate wafers into his mouth and brushed crumbs out of his beard. “Whatever. Those were not good guys.”
He pulled the business card out of his pocket. He’d kept it hidden while the boys were still up and about. Now he held the worn card stock in his thick fingers and squinted at the small type.
“Don’t tell me you need reading glasses,” Bonnie said.
“I’m fine.” Thor held the card a bit farther away so his eyes could focus. Balkian Brothers Antiques. Emilian Sidran. Consultant. He had a hard time believing the men from the porch were antiques dealers, but he also couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone shopping for old furniture or dusty carpets.
A loud thump sounded from upstairs, followed by some tussling noise and muted laughter.
“I should go up there.” Bonnie looked tired and her brow was threatening to permanently crinkle with worry. “They’re going to be at this all night.”
“Let them have their fun.” Thor patted her wrist and tried to get her to smile, or at least to relax back into her chair. Magnus had never had a sleepover, and Thor would ask Saga to give the boys extra playtime between their homeschool lessons the next day, assuming Maksim was still with them.
“The story those guys gave was obviously made up, about the kid being a nephew and about the mother beside herself with worry,” Thor said.
Bonnie wrapped her hands around her tea mug for warmth. “But I can imagine that it’s true. Maksim has got to have parents out there, somewhere.”
Saga reached for a single cookie and nibbled at the edge. “But why come specifically to this house, and nowhere else? That’s pretty brazen if you’re trying to sell a story about a concerned family.”
Thor and Bonnie looked at each other then lifted their eyes to the ceiling. The two boys sounded to be settling in above.
“I’ve got a funny feeling about that kid.” Saga reached for another cookie. “But I’ve been getting a lot of funny feelings lately.”
“Maybe you’re coming down with something.” Thor gulped his tea before it got cold.
Saga flashed her brother an irritated pout. “I’m telling you, something is off. Maybe several somethings. I’m pretty sure Sally thought I was trying to stage an intervention when I was out furniture shopping today.”
“You can’t keep calling her to consult on every little thing,” Thor said. “The Rune Witch has earned a long and healthy rest, and I don’t want her starting to think we’ve all got loose nuts in the belfry.”
Bonnie frowned at him.
“What? I thought you liked it when I use colorful language.”
“I like it even better when it makes sense.” Bonnie sipped her tea.
“The point is . . .” Thor huffed. “We were mighty and self-reliant before this current Rune Witch, so why are we stumbling around as blind as newborn kittens now?”
“Speak for yourself.” Saga snatched the business card out of Thor’s hand. Her eyes widened when she read the print. “This is the card they gave you?”
“Why? You know it?” Thor reached for another cookie but Bonnie smacked his hand away. First the boys ate his lunch and now his wife was denying him cookies. He wondered if there was a pizza delivery in his future, after the rest of the house was asleep.
Saga sat up straight and slapped the card down on the table. “You haven’t called the authorities about Maksim?”
“No, not yet,” Bonnie said. “I know I should, but things have a way of never being particularly straightforward where this family is involved. And if Child Protective Services comes over and they challenge us for paperwork on Magnus, what then?”
“He’s our child,” Thor growled. He and Bonnie had been over this before, and the nearest they’d come to resolution was tabling the idea of asking the Valkyries biker gang for a lead on someone who might be able to forge a birth certificate.
When they’d first brought him home, Magnus had looked like any normal child, and the neighborhood accepted the young family with disinterest. But then Magnus started changing—growing and developing at astonishing speed. Having a toddler graduate to kindergarten proportions and beyond within only a few months was difficult to explain.
Home-schooling helped. Magnus couldn’t attend public school, especially as his parents waited and watched to see precisely what their hybrid child would turn out to be. They didn’t know what he might inherit from his biological parents. How long before Magnus had the appearance and mannerisms of a teenager? Would they have to pretend he was a cousin coming to live with them in Portland and invent a story about “little Magnus” heading off to boarding school—or worse, the grave—at such a young age?
Magnus was Thor’s responsibility, and he would keep his son safe. Any neighbor other than Carol could have seen Maksim at their house and could have placed an anonymous call to CPS. If there was a chance the young waif upstairs might endanger his family, Thor might have to rethink giving Maksim anything more than shelter for the night.
As if reading her husband’s thoughts, Bonnie grasped Thor’s hand and held tight. “Maksim was so dirty, cold, scared, and so pale. I put food in front of him and as soon as I’d turn my back, his plate was empty again. I worried we’d go through the entire pantry just trying to fill that boy.”
With his free hand, Thor poured her a fresh cup of tea. He’d never met another woman like Bonnie. Strong, intelligent, and with a depth of caring and concern that somehow didn’t pull her off-balance. They’d been together a few years now and he still didn’t know what her secret was. Maybe this beautiful equilibrium was just who she was, something that couldn’t be taught. He pushed the plate of cookies closer to her.
“It’s more than physical hunger that has plagued that child.” Bonnie pushed the cookies toward Saga.
Saga glanced between Thor and Bonnie. “Okay, that all sounds like part of a deeper conversation, but right now I’m telling you not to call anybody. Not yet.”
She tapped the card on the table, her finger striking the business logo dead center. “This is the place where I went to look at furniture, where I called first Opal and then Sally for help.”
Thor ran a hand over his beard and a few more crumbs fell down onto his shirt. Whatever kind of trouble Maksim might be in, there was little chance it was of the boy’s making. Thor would simply have to find a way to help Maksim while keeping his own son out of harm’s way.
He reached into his pocket for his phone and pulled up his list of contacts. “Then I say we pay this Emilian Sidran a visit.”
“I will show you, but you must promise not to tell anyone,” Maksim whispered in the darkness.
“I promise. I promise.” Magnus leaned over the edge of his bed, his face and voice eager as he peered at Maksim on the air mattress on the floor.
The big man, Thor, had put them to bed a short while earlier. He was gruff and short o
n words and liked to pretend that he was irritated and angry, but Maksim had quickly learned that Thor had a soft heart and a weakness for sweet foods. Maksim hadn’t shied away when Thor kissed both him and Magnus on the forehead. Maksim had even smiled at the big man when he paused in the doorway before he switched off the light, shut the door, and retreated downstairs.
Maksim’s breath had caught in his throat when the ceiling came alive with tiny lights. Magnus laughed at his reaction at first, and then explained that his parents had painted the ceiling with glow-in-the-dark constellations. Maksim recognized some of the familiar patterns, and he rested easily beneath the heavy blanket. A few tears ran down into his ears and into the firm pillow under his head. For now, he was safe.
These people were kind but strange, with their stories of living heroes and real-world monsters. Maksim didn’t think any of that was true, even if Magnus insisted it was all real. Magnus had even rolled out of bed and wrestled with Maksim to get him to admit that he believed in the Rune Witch. The boys kept an ear out for footsteps on the staircase, but the grown-ups didn’t seem to mind the after-house roughhousing even though some of the bedroom furniture was now out of position.
But Maksim was tired, and Magnus soon crawled back into his own bed. They’d had a long afternoon of playing outside and racing each other up and down the trees. The house was large and warm, and there was even more food at dinner—bread and vegetables and meat, and then an apple pie Bonnie had made. After that came more hot chocolate and storytelling from Saga as they sat by the fire Thor built in the fireplace. Maksim wondered if he’d climbed up from the tunnel into heaven itself.
Maksim stared up at the stars on the ceiling and thought about the stories his mother would tell him late at night when the lights were dark and he couldn’t sleep. It was cold in the tunnels under the city, and Maksim always went to bed hungry. The other people huddled together in the same hole always seemed to fall asleep quickly, sometimes after sobbing and murmuring into their thin, mildewed pillows.
His mother’s stories were full of wild horses running proud and free across endless fields of green grass. She told fairy stories about kidnapped princesses finding strength in the midst of hopelessness and turning the tables on the evil men who sought to oppress and abuse them. Sometimes, when he was feeling especially brave, she’d tell darker tales of wandering ghosts seeking worldly satisfaction that was forever beyond their reach, or of selfish and misguided men cursed for their cold hearts and forced to live long lives as hideous creatures.
But she’d never told stories like the ones Saga wove. Saga delighted in Maksim’s exclamations and facial expressions as she related the legends of heroes, monsters, and gods—though she made it seem like every story was real, as if it had just happened yesterday or might happen again tomorrow. She also had a sparkling yellow aura around her—it was something Maksim could see sometimes, when he concentrated or when he was very sleepy. Most people didn’t have any sparkling colors around them. With Thor, the color was light blue.
Maksim knew a little about gods. His mother and father sometimes whispered in the darkness when they thought he was asleep. At first, he thought they were talking to each other about something bad he had done. But then he realized they were talking to someone he couldn’t see. Someone who never answered.
His parents didn’t pray to the gods of the men who kept them in the dirty hole and threatened them with even less food and more work and fewer blankets if they didn’t do as the men said. But the bad men didn’t punish them for praying. The bad men shuffled in their heavy boots just beyond his family’s sleeping space and listened to the whispered prayers. They lit cigarettes and watched television and ate delicious smelling foods and laughed. Maksim’s father said the men were waiting for their captives to reveal their true selves.
And now Magnus was asking for the same. But Magnus was his friend. Maksim didn’t want to be a bad guest and find himself back out on the street.
“Please? I promise I won’t tell,” Magnus said. “And we’ll be really quiet. They probably think we’re asleep.”
Maksim eyed the closed door and the slit of light from the hallway. He couldn’t remember ever having such a comfortable mattress. Magnus seemed perfectly comfortable in his cavernous bedroom and in every other area of this large house Maksim was just beginning to discover. Was this how all boys lived?
“Come on,” Magnus goaded him.
Maksim nodded. He had offered to show his new friend something “magickal” after Magnus told another story about the young witch named Sally who sometimes came to visit. Maksim had been raised to be afraid of witches—crooked people who harnessed and directed the power of the universe to serve themselves and their own wicked plans. But Sally sounded like a very nice and good person. He hoped he might meet her so he could see this good witch for himself.
“Okay.” Maksim got up and sat crossed-legged on the air mattress. Magnus faced him, his eyes wide. “But it doesn’t always work. You have to wait and not interrupt.”
Maksim lifted his hands, palms up. He took a deep breath in, held it for a second, and then quietly exhaled.
“What’s going to happen?” Magnus leaned forward in anticipation. “What are you going to do? Is it dangerous?”
Maksim tried not to make a face. “You have to be quiet. I’m working on it.”
He closed his eyes to shut out Magnus, the thoughts of his parents, and the soft sound of snow falling outside. There wasn’t any special trick to making the light. It was just something he could do once in a while. But he was getting better at it. Even as his mother watched him with worried eyes and his father made him work puzzles to keep it contained, Maksim knew that it was the family gift, like a long second toe or crooked pinkie fingers. But when he tried to ask questions—What was this light? Where did it come from? What could he do with it?—his parents shushed him and promised that one day, he’d have the answers.
His father, at least, had told him he needed training, as his father’s own mother and father had trained him. But there was no time for handing down such wisdom in the hole where everything had to be kept secret.
“Oh!” Magnus exclaimed.
Maksim opened his eyes. The palms of his hands were glowing with a delicate blue light.
“That’s so cool!” Magnus whispered. “What else can you do?”
4
Sally stood across the street and down the block from the Balkian Brothers loading dock. It was after dark and well past closing time, but there were still workers onsite.
No one noticed her lurking in the shadows. The three nearest street lamps had conveniently fizzled out a few minutes after she arrived and chose her vantage point. Through the falling snow, she watched the workers come and go through the warehouse doors, but she’d been observing for a full thirty minutes before she noticed the dark van parked not even half a block from her. Two men sat in the front seats, drinking coffee, smoking, and reading newspapers. All the while, the men watched the workers more intently than Sally did.
She shivered inside her parka and chastised herself for not having brought a thermos of coffee—or tea or chicken soup or anything warm, really. It was still winter and it was snowing and she obviously hadn’t thought this through. But she’d never been on a stakeout before. She didn’t have any idea what provisions to bring or even how long she would be standing around in the dark.
She’d tried an improvised instance of “snow magick” to divine what was going on inside the warehouse—concentrating on her obsidian pendulum and willing the snow to fall into distinct patterns. But all she’d managed to do was make some pretty tessellations on the frozen ground that didn’t tell her anything at all. At least it had provided a distraction from all of the new text messages that kept coming in from Loki.
Sometime soon, she was going to have to confront him. But she had no idea how.
Finally giving in to her stiffening knees, Sally found a clear spot of pavement and sat cross-legged with he
r back against an old telephone pole. She checked her phone, encased in enough chaos-absorbing rubber to protect the circuits. It was just past 9:30 p.m., and the chill of the sidewalk was already creeping through her hiking pants to her skin and into her bones. She imagined her backside might be frozen solid before she knew it.
Sally watched the museum workers again as they unloaded wooden crates and metal boxes from a small moving truck, but she kept glancing at the two men in the dark van. The man behind the wheel checked his watch while the one in the passenger seat drank coffee from a large Dutch Bros cup.
There was a loud thud and raised voices from the loading dock. One of the wooden crates lay broken open on the concrete drive. It must have slipped from the grasp of one of the workers, or maybe it fell off a dolly. Three of the workers glanced furtively at the men in the van. They knew they were being watched.
A supervisor stood in front of a knot of workers and yelled at them about staying focused, pulling it together, and other clichés Sally tuned out. She pulled her knees to her chest for warmth. She didn’t miss the fact that the same trio of workers kept their heads down during the tirade, and that when the red-faced supervisor was done shouting and threatening, those three were the first to return to unloading crates and transporting them into the building.
The guy behind the steering wheel checked his watch again. He seemed impatient, but not nervous like the men he was watching.
Twilight Magic (Rune Witch Book 6) Page 6