“Is this the future, then?” Heimdall asked Sally. “Or the past?”
Sally the witch shrugged. Maksim could tell by the way Heimdall dug his hands into his hair that he wasn’t happy. He pulled out his phone and stared at it.
“What?” Saga asked.
“I think . . .” Heimdall blew out an angry sigh. “I think we should call in the Norns.”
Saga groaned. Maksim didn’t know what a Norn was, but it sounded bad. He watched the mysterious men in the vision playing their parts in the ritual. One of the men stood over the glowing spot in the middle of their gathering. He held a large knife high in the air, its sharp tip pointed down.
“Are they trying to hurt someone?” Maksim squirmed. Saga relented and lowered him to the floor, but she kept her hands on his shoulders and held firm. Maksim wasn’t going anywhere.
“More than that, I’m afraid.” Utra folded her hands in her lap and gazed at the scene at her feet. Maksim thought she looked genuinely sad.
“What are they doing, then?” Heimdall stepped toward the circle, his phone in his hand. “Who are these guys, and what do they want with Maksim?”
When the goddess lifted her face to look Maksim’s way, her hair was raven-dark again and her brown eyes filled with tears. Sally and her friend gasped at the sudden transformation, but Maksim just stared at her.
“They are using us,” Vesha whispered. “They’re hurting us, Maksim.”
“Utra said something about the boy’s family.” Saga’s hold on Maksim tightened, her fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. He fidgeted, but she didn’t let go.
Vesha nodded.
Maksim felt tears rolling down his cheeks. “I want my parents.”
The goddess cried her own tears. “I do, too, little one.”
Maksim watched the figures on the floor as they continued their ritual of knives and fire. He moaned when he saw the faces of some of the people who had been kept in the tunnel with him. The robed men brought them out one by one and forced them to kneel before the man with the knife. The shadows were merciful and hid the spilled blood. Maksim shouted at the images and stomped his feet, but the robed men wouldn’t stop. He thought he was going to throw up. He looked at Sally the witch for help.
“Make them stop!” he cried. “Please?”
“I think we’ve all seen enough.” Sally stalked toward the circle and smeared the colored lines with her shoe, breaking the magick. The images disappeared like water soaking into soil.
“I want my parents.” Maksim’s breath stuttered and caught in his throat. Saga knelt and cradled his head on her shoulder. Her words of comfort were drowned by sudden shouting from upstairs.
Thor was slicing thick slabs of roast beef for sandwiches while a half-dozen eggs cooked in the iron skillet. The aroma of toasting bread filled the kitchen, and his stomach growled. But he wasn’t hungry. Not really. His insides were tied up in knots of worry—for his wife and son, for the magick-wielding boy, for his fractured Norse family, and for his community and Portland in general. Too much was happening at once, and even with a hearty lunch he feared he didn’t have the stamina to face whatever might be coming next.
“What in the icy baths of Niflheim?!” Freya’s curse sounded through the house from the front entryway, followed by the raised voices of strangers. Thor held onto his knife and strode toward the commotion. With his luck, there would be a whole family of magickal refugees seeking asylum on his front porch, followed by an army of human traffickers desperate to get them back.
The front entryway was overrun with loud voices and five burly people in police uniforms. In the middle of the scrum, Freya faced off with a short, dour-looking woman while an angry man with a badge waved a collection of papers in the air.
“Where is the boy?” the man shouted. Freya snatched the papers out of his hands and read them over, while the short woman gripped a heavy clipboard and looked up at Thor.
“We’re here on allegations of child abuse,” the woman said. “Are you the so-called parent in this house?”
“What’s this about? How did you all get in here?” Thor growled.
The woman offered a stale smile. “Through the front door. We have a warrant.”
Thor felt like he’d been struck in the chest. A warrant? He didn’t know if these authorities were here for Magnus or Maksim, or maybe both of the boys. But how had they gotten here so fast, and who tipped them off? He scanned the faces of the surrounding officers and didn’t recognize any of them from the antiques warehouse. The badges looked real enough, too. But he doubted Emilian or his thugs would want to have anything to do with the police.
Freya let out a loud sigh and handed the papers to Thor. “It looks legitimate. Maggie would know better.”
Thor balled up the papers and shoved them into his pocket. What good was having a former paralegal in the family if she wasn’t around to handle a crisis like this? He met the short woman’s cool stare. She was bundled up against the cold, but her dark ski pants and stark duffle coat were in keeping with the bureaucracy she represented. Her short, straight hair and severe bangs didn’t move when she reached into her coat pocket and produced her own identification. She thrust the laminated badge toward Thor and her thin lips quirked into a condescending smile.
“Elisa Jackson with Child Protective Services.” Her steady voice rose above the mumbling, shuffling officers who started fanning out into the house. Thor wanted to thrust his arm straight out to clothesline the first two and then punch the others in their throats. But any violent action on his part would just make this bad situation worse. These were innocent mortals, following the rules of men, and as long as Thor lived in their environs they had the power to break up his family. He balled his fists and clenched his teeth and ignored the rising heat under his collar.
Jackson waved the officers forward into the house. “We’ve received numerous complaints about possible child endangerment and other atrocities at this address.”
“Atrocities?” Freya exclaimed. “Your information must be mistaken.”
“I assure you our information is quite reliable.” Jackson returned her credentials to her pocket and consulted her clipboard. “Mrs. Belinda Radcliffe Wyatt?”
Thor frowned. Wyatt was the surname Odin chose when he started working for the Portland Public School system, and Thor had forgotten that he’d adopted the name when Bonnie added him to the deed to her house.
“Belinda?” Freya asked. “You mean Bonnie?”
The woman winced a small, impatient smile.
“Out shopping.” Thor breathed a private sigh of relief that Magnus wasn’t in the house but was out with his mother picking out pajamas and winter clothes for Maksim. But Maksim was down in the basement, unaware that his reprieve from danger was about to come to an abrupt end.
“Convenient,” Jackson replied.
Thor resisted the urge to snarl down at Jackson and her clipboard. “Truth.”
Throughout the ground floor of the house, he heard the uniformed officers shout calls of “clear” to each other, as though they were searching the premises for an armed serial killer. All of this for one little boy? He glanced out the open front door and saw that the road was crowded with police cars and black sedans. His heart caught in his throat when he saw Bonnie’s minivan drive slowly past the house. Would she understand that she needed to keep Magnus away?
“Is all this really necessary?” Thor gestured toward the door. “You’re letting all the hot air out of the house.”
Jackson moved to push past him. “We are authorized to conduct a thorough search of this residence and to secure any minors within, should their safety and well-being be deemed to be in danger.”
Thor tried to get ahead of Jackson. If he could get to the basement before she did, maybe Heimdall could hide Maksim in the storage boxes, or the Rune Witch could make the boy invisible or something. He had no idea how he was going to explain the crowd beneath the house. Sally and Opal had probably set up a wil
d-looking arrangement of burning candles and sigils around the cramped basement. And the Zorya, whether in the form of Vesha or Utra, was unstable at best—switching back and forth between the morning and evening stars without a second’s warning. Would Jackson and her minions believe that Thor’s kin were rehearsing for a community play?
The basement door to the kitchen burst open while Thor was still three strides away and moving side by side with the tiny woman from CPS. Maksim flew through the door and leapt into Thor’s arms.
“Daddy!” the boy exclaimed with a huge smile. He wrapped his tiny arms around Thor’s neck and held on tight. “I was hiding, but you almost found me!”
Jackson looked unimpressed. “I have to tell you, Mr. Wyatt, you’re starting out at a deficit with me. A musty basement is hardly a safe or suitable environment for a young boy to be playing in. I take these matters very seriously. If I find any evidence of danger to the boy—”
“I can assure you that we’re very careful with our little Ma, Magnus.” Thor caught himself, and he hoped Maksim was already playing along. “Such a fragile little thing. Of course, we make sure he gets plenty of exercise, and that he eats good, healthy foods.”
“We’ll see about that.” Jackson’s mouth pursed into a tight knot. “Now, of course, I’ll need to examine and question the boy.”
Maksim leaned close and whispered into Thor’s ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll be good.” Maksim slid down out of Thor’s arms and took Jackson’s outstretched hand. As Jackson led him up the staircase, Maksim glanced over his shoulder at Thor and winked. If the situation had been different, Thor might have laughed.
Two of the officers accompanied Thor into the living room and asked him a long list of tedious questions about Magnus’s origin and adoption. It wasn’t a stretch for Thor to play the incompetent husband. He lied and told them that the boy’s mother, Bonnie, had filed the paperwork away someplace safe—maybe in a safe deposit box at the bank—and they’d have to wait for her return to sort it all out. He heard footsteps over his head and hoped Maksim could spin a convincing story about why there was an inflatable mattress on the floor in addition to the child’s bed. Did Maksim understand that he had to pretend to be Magnus? And what about the boy’s accent? Thor hoped Jackson and her team wouldn’t start going through Magnus’s drawers and closet and discover that none of the clothes or shoes fit little Maksim. At least he could trust Heimdall to keep a cool head as he and Saga, Freya, Sally, and Opal were interviewed by the three other officers in the frigid backyard.
Thor’s pulse raced with every footfall on the staircase and every opening and closing of the front door. He wished with all his might for telepathic ability, so he could warn Bonnie to keep Magnus far away from the house.
One of the officers interviewing Thor looked up from his notebook and sniffed at the air. “Do you smell something burning?”
“The toast!” Thor leapt to his feet and made a move to rush to the kitchen, but the two officers grabbed his arms to slow him down. He half-dragged them along with him to the kitchen. Black smoke lifted in wisps from the closed oven and the eggs were a nasty, charred mess in the skillet. Thor turned off the burners and made the mistake of opening the oven door. Smoke billowed out to fill the kitchen. One by one, the smoke detectors in the kitchen, hallway, and dining room squawked to noisy life. Within seconds, the entire house echoed with the shrill, off-beat beeping of a dozen smoke detectors.
Thor’s eyes stung from the smoke. He rushed out of the kitchen and tried to mount the stairs to get Maksim and Jackson safely out of the house, but the two officers assigned to question him grabbed hold of his arms and shouted at him to let them handle the situation. The smoke was a nuisance, not a real threat, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time. The front door flew open and five more men stormed into the house. As one man pushed past him, Thor blinked hard and thought he saw a red spiral peeking out above the collar of the man’s shirt.
In all of the shouting and beeping and smoke, Thor didn’t see who laid hands on him to force him outside onto the front porch. The acrid smell of burnt food wafted through the door behind him. More neighbors pulled on their coats and stepped outside to see what all the shouting and commotion was about. Carol Tilson was curiously absent from the gawkers, but Thor spotted the cranky old man looking out his window across the street. He was smiling in smug satisfaction. Thor wanted to pry up a paving stone and hurl it through the old man’s window, but that would have to wait until after he’d secured Maksim.
“What’s going on?” Heimdall asked as he and the others came around the side of the house. Opal had her phone out and was tapping at the screen, but Sally stopped her from making any calls.
“There isn’t any fire,” Thor mumbled to himself more than anyone else. Jackson and her cops were just doing their jobs, and it was his own fault for leaving the eggs on the stove and the toast in the oven. But then he glanced down the street and saw the familiar Balkian Brothers van waiting at the end of the block.
Thor unleashed a bellowing roar as he turned on his heel and faced the smoke pouring out of the house. Maksim was in danger.
His war cry echoed off the surrounding houses as he led the charge through the open door, but he didn’t make it past the entryway before something bright and loud exploded directly in front of him and drove him to his knees. He couldn’t see or hear anything as he felt bodies rush past him. Drawn by the cold air, Thor crawled across the thick rug toward the open door. His chest and face slammed down into the floor as heavy boots came down hard on his back.
9
Maksim was gone. So was Vesha. Or Utra. It didn’t really matter anymore.
Sally had been grateful for the glasses of lemonade Thor’s neighbor Carol kept forcing into her hands. Despite the cold, she and the others sat on the front porch and tried to get their wits about them and the ringing out of their ears. They’d been hit by flashbangs—Sally, Thor, the lady from Child Protective Services, everybody—and the house was crawling with cops. At least no one was seriously injured.
The officers who’d accompanied Elisa Jackson from CPS swore they’d done nothing wrong and tried pointing fingers at Thor and his kin, but the canisters found on the scene were police-issue. Perhaps sensing a pending lawsuit, the new officers called in to investigate weren’t pressing too hard on Sally and Thor and the others.
In the few years since her disastrous introduction to Odin’s Lodge, she’d gotten used to being inconvenienced by mythological beasties and gods gone rogue. Dealing with other human beings was outside of her wheelhouse. It was something of a miracle that she’d never had to fully explain herself to a police officer before. There’d always been an easy excuse or a plausible-enough alternate explanation. Regular people, in Sally’s experience, were all too eager to accept flawed but mundane logic over a paranormal truth.
Sally wasn’t sure how Maksim’s kidnappers would have gotten their hands on police munitions, but they’d taken advantage of the ensuing confusion and disorientation to make off with the boy and the Zorya goddess—but of course no one mentioned this to the cops.
The only bright spot was that Bonnie and Magnus had been safe at Carol’s house next-door. Thor had practically broken down in tears when he learned that his neighbor had intercepted them on their way home. Magnus was still there, watching cartoons and drinking hot cider.
When Heimdall and Thor made the collective announcement that they were making this fiasco their problem to solve, there were no complaints. Sally felt relieved. She wasn’t looking forward to taking on yet another magickal crisis, but this one had landed literally at Thor’s doorstep. It wasn’t so much a decision to get involved as it was resignation that they had to act.
Saga, Bonnie, and Freya headed to the Lodge to make preparations. Thor’s house was no longer secure, and the Lodge would once again become the family’s stronghold. Even the Norns would be arriving soon from Seattle. Not that anyone asked her, but Carol volunteered to remain behind in the SE
Portland neighborhood to “hold down the fort.” She also said she’d see them “on the other side,” and no one seemed to know what she was talking about. But Magnus would be safe with her, and Sally was relieved that he’d get to sit on the sidelines this time.
More snow started falling as Sally and Opal rode in the front of Heimdall’s truck on their way to the Balkian Brothers warehouse. Thor followed in his truck. It was the obvious first place to go looking for answers, and there weren’t any other leads to follow. The vision Sally and Opal had conjured on the basement floor was slim on details like where and when and who, but the presence of a Balkian Brothers Antiques van on Thor’s block at the same time that CPS showed up was a pretty good indicator of where they should start.
It was early afternoon and the snow was coming down hard. The streets were mostly empty around the warehouse, and Heimdall’s truck skidded to a stop in the icy slush as he pulled up to the curb in front of the store. There was no point in being subtle about their arrival. Whoever the Balkian Brothers were, they’d messed with the Lodge and even Sally felt a kind of Cosa Nostra mentality kicking in. Or maybe it was more like the Hatfields and McCoys? She wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t up to speed on the feuding families in Game of Thrones, either. For the time being, it felt good to be part of a familial team on a mission. She’d ask Saga for appropriate historical context and comparisons later.
The doors to the showroom were locked, which wasn’t a surprise. Like many of the surrounding businesses, Balkian Brothers Antiques had a “closed for snow” sign in the window. Carrying a crowbar and a hammer he’d grabbed from his truck, Thor led the way around to the back of the building where the loading dock stood wide open. Three abandoned hands of poker, two cups of still-warm coffee, and a half-eaten egg salad sandwich sat on a folding table on the dock, and tire tracks not yet completely covered by the falling snow led away from the building.
Twilight Magic (Rune Witch Book 6) Page 14