by Jamie Wyman
The waitress brought out a pot of piping hot black coffee, a pitcher of water, and enough glasses and mugs to go around. I plucked a straw from the waitress’s apron, pulled the sweating pitcher in front of me, and shoved the straw through the layer of ice cubes. Though the water scratched down my throat, I felt it stretching its cool fingers through me as if I were a desert lake long parched. When I’d downed the pitcher, I switched to coffee.
Across the table, Flynn inspected Karma, his worried eyes taking in every detail of her smudged face and bleeding hands. He stroked her hair. “You’re hurt,” he said.
“I’ll be fine.”
“About that,” I said, my voice a hoarse and husky rattle. “That’s two times you’ve bailed me out with those little—” I waved my hands toward her as I tried to think of the word, “—thing-a-ma-doodgies. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Grateful as I am, could you explain why last night didn’t hurt that much and tonight it felt like someone was lacing my skin like a corset with rusty piano wire?”
“Last night I was able to use a numbing patch beforehand, so you didn’t feel the pain of your body stitching itself back together. Tonight, though, I didn’t have one with me.”
“Tell me about these things,” I prompted.
“They’re cybernetic implants. Made them myself. The implants interface with the human body and can speed up processes like reaction time, metabolism, healing.”
“Hence why my body was zipping up.”
“Pretty much. And why you’re probably ready to chew through this table.”
My stomach growled in response. “Are they permanent?”
Karma shook her head. “They dissolve over time and are processed out of the body.”
“One more question…why did you cut yourself last night?”
“They require two sources of blood to work: one from the new host and one from another subject. It’s part of how the spell works—empathy.”
“Well, uh, thanks for bleeding for me,” I muttered weakly into my coffee.
Karma grinned. “I had to coax it along with a bit of my own magic, too. You’re rather stubborn.”
“No shit,” Flynn spat.
Karma ignored him. “Nice work with the truck. That was pretty badass.”
“No, you running up the other one to flip on top of the moving truck? That was badass. Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?”
“Magic,” she smiled. “I’ll teach you sometime. When we’re both better rested. If you want,” she added quickly.
“I’d love that,” I said.
The waitress arrived with our food, and my stomach gave a volcanic rumble in appreciation. None of us spoke for a while. I, for one, was too busy stuffing my face to care about anything other than restoring myself to a human status.
When I’d eaten my weight in waffles and enough bacon to make a rabbi blush, I decided it was time to have a chat about the finer points of being attacked by mages.
“So,” I said, dabbing my mouth daintily with a napkin. “What have we learned from this experience?”
“Ferromancers suck,” Karma announced, fingers glancing over a slash on her upper arm. “Little bastard.”
In my mind, fire glinted off the dancing razor wire as the mage charmed the metal like a snake. With a flash of white fire, another memory: Mrs. M’s walker rising up to strike.
I hadn’t even thought about the connection before now. “So, Hector Chu and Francis Grey are both ferromancers looking for the veil. Coincidence?”
“Who?” Nate said around the last bite of his burger.
I briefly recounted Grey’s persistent demands for the veil, and his subsequent attack on me and my landlady.
Nate stared into the middle distance and asked no one in particular, “What does any of this have to do with Muri?”
“Maybe nothing,” I said. “But I strongly doubt it. There are too many connections. Her body is found magically bolted to a tow truck from a lot where we encounter mages adept at using ferromancy? And her friend happens to have the veil these clowns are looking for,” I added with a pointed nod to Polly.
All eyes at the table swept to her. Polly glared at me but said nothing.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” I challenged her.
In response, she turned her eyes away from me. Score one for the human team!
“You seem to be the connection between my two problems, Pol,” I said quietly. “A god asks me to find a girl’s murderer. An hour after that meeting, a metal-bender attacks me asking for a veil that I’ve never heard of. The next day, I meet you and find that not only are you friends with the dead girl but you’ve also got the same damn veil.”
Nate’s sad gaze bored into his friend. “What have you done, Polly?”
“Nothing! I didn’t know,” Polly pleaded. “The guy was following me around town, not her. If they wanted the veil and thought I had it, why would they go after Muriel?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” I said, not bothering to mask the snark, “to get to you?”
I played back Grey’s words; he’d said he wanted the veil or the thief. And Grey was certain that I’d have the veil because I had some connection to said thief. Loki? “But why would Grey think I had the veil? Polly, what made you decide to rent that the hotel room?”
“Because someone broke into my apartment. Presumably the guy who’s been after me this whole time.”
“Was one of the guys from tonight your stalker?”
“I don’t know! I told you, I’ve never seen his face. Look, you have to believe me. I had no idea they’d go after Muriel.”
“What is the veil?” I asked.
“Mine,” she said tersely. Polly looked around the surrounding tables. “And nothing I can speak of here. Nate, you understand, right?”
Nate pulled at his eyes, hands dragging down his cheeks in a motion of emotional exhaustion. I had to give him a break. His heart probably felt like my body looked: battered and broken.
Flynn’s hand slipped under the table where it probably gripped Karma’s. “Listen, we’re not getting anything else done tonight. These two—” he flashed his eyes back and forth between me and Karma “—need to rest up. And you guys look emotionally spent. We’ll come back to this tomorrow full force.”
Pawing through her purse, Polly nodded. “I’ve got a few things I need to take care of myself, it seems.” She dropped a few bills on the wreckage we’d made of the table and pushed herself up. “I’m going back to my hotel. I’ll see you guys tomorrow, okay? Meet back at Nate’s?”
“Wait!” I called, shooting up from the table. Well, I tried to. My muscles protested, tight and unwilling to do anything more than sit and decompose to jelly. “You can’t just go off by yourself.”
Polly’s face softened. “Aren’t you adorable? You can hardly stand and you’re being all protective? I’ll be fine.”
“You seriously want to split up? Have you never watched a horror flick?”
Flynn bobbed his head. “First rule of Dungeons and Dragons: don’t split the party.”
Polly flapped her lips. “Whatever.”
“They’re right.” Nate rose to his feet and slipped into his own jacket. “You’re in danger. And so is the veil. I should go with you.”
I narrowed my eyes. So he knew about the veil? What else was Nate hiding?
“No,” she said firmly. “Stay with them.” A collective protest came from around the table, but she silenced us with a level stare. “I’ll. Be. Fine.”
When none of us piled on the permission she hoped for, she sighed heavily. With exasperated annoyance, she pulled out her phone and thumbed a text message.
Nate’s phone chimed in tandem with a buzzing from Karma’s pocket.
“There’s the address of the hotel,” Polly said, “so you’ll know where I’m staying. But I don’t need you to come with me.”
“I don’t like this,” Nate rasped.
“Me neither.”
And just like that, she breezed out of the restaurant, her damn scarf billowing behind her.
While we settled the check, we divided up the sleeping arrangements. I didn’t want to spend another night at Flynn’s. I wanted my bed. My cat. My fuzzy pajamas.
“I’d rather not go home alone,” Nate said meekly. “House is too big and empty.”
“You can crash at my place if you don’t mind the sofa,” I offered.
“Or mine,” Flynn said. “I’ve got room at YmFy if you’d li—”
“No,” Nate interrupted. “Not there.”
Curious, I asked, “Why? YmFy’s a safe place. Safer than my apartment, actually.”
Nate shook his head, curls tumbling into his eyes. To Flynn, he said, “I appreciate it but I don’t want to impose on your hospitality. If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to stay at Cat’s.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, a million questions warring to see which would fly out of my mouth first.
“Fine by me,” was all I said.
After trying to talk me out of it for the umpteenth time, Flynn finally remembered that I’m a stubborn bitch and gave in. He dropped me and Nate at my apartment and followed us to the door. No ferromages lurked in the shadows.
Once in the apartment, I slipped into my pj’s, popped four ibuprofen, and fell into bed. I was snoring before I hit the pillow.
Chapter Eleven
“Bliss”
The rune on my arm tingles, throbbing with a glacial-blue glow. The light spreads slowly, glistening over my skin like frost until it coats my body in a crystalline sheath. A flash, a howl of wind, and I am gone. Blown away. Reduced to a billion snowflakes and starlight tossed on a winter gale.
No.
I’m here.
Where is here? I wonder.
I’m standing at a window larger than my entire bedroom. The fog licks the lip of the sill with a cold, slender tongue. Looking out, I see mountains as black as obsidian dusted with fine silver powder. In the distance, the ocean churns with raging whitecaps.
I’m at the top of a spire gazing down upon miles of glaciers. They slide along, brilliant greens and blues shifting with the jewel-bright sea. White smoke boils up from a crevasse, and if I look deep enough into the shaft of ice, I see magma pulsing in a fiery tide of creation.
Thunder rumbles overhead like jubilant laughter, making the hairs on my arms crawl. Lightning springs from cloud to cloud, skipping merrily, its vitality a dancing energy calling to my blood. I long to join that power, to invite it inside me and wield it like a spear.
An image of myself doing exactly that fills my mind with dark avarice. I see myself taking in the lightning only to watch as it breaks me, shattering my very being and tearing my mind to flinders.
“Managed to fuck things up yet?”
I sigh.
My master’s voice.
I turn away from the window to find Loki sitting on a throne. One leg is thrown over an arm of the chair in an irreverent pose. Gone are his jeans and flip-flops. Nor does he wear the pressed gray suit he typically favors. No. Here, in the seat of his power, Loki wears his full majesty. The jet black of the mountains clings to his skin to form clothing, and it creaks like leather as he crosses one leg over the other. His gauntlets are engraved with runes, the sprawling Tree of the Worlds: Yggdrasil. Loki curls his fingers into a fist, the silver armor on his hands bristling like the choppy waves below. His hair, spiked as always, flares lava red here in this hall, and his eyes burn bright blue.
“In my head again?” I ask.
“Not as such. Your mind is here, but your head is elsewhere.”
Tricksters do so love their riddles.
“So where is here?”
“We’re on my turf tonight, Miss Sharp. Welcome to Asgard.”
I blink at him, skeptical. But there can’t be any other explanation. There’s no place on this or any other earth where Loki would be so…Loki. This is different than meeting in his office. This is not like going to a house Eris kept off the Strip. This is Loki’s demesne.
I am in the seat of his power. A most hallowed of halls.
“Holy shit,” I mutter.
His lupine smile sparkles with glee. “Indeed.”
As I step forward, I see myself reflected in his silver breastplate. Before the god I wear nothing but white light. It courses through my veins, brightening in time with my pulse. It keeps time here in this infinite place.
I let out a breath, and it billows in front of me and obscures my reflection. I blink and meet Loki’s wintery stare.
“If I’m not here,” I ask, “why is there a reflection?”
“Your senses still work even without the fleshbag you call a body. Most powerful of all is your sense of self. But I didn’t bring you here to wax philosophical about metaphysics. How goes your task?”
“I have no clue what I’m doing,” I admit. “Muriel’s brother and friends are holding back information. How am I supposed to find a killer when I’ve got one blind eye?”
Loki brings a finger to his lips and shushes me. “Do not say such things in the Hall of the Allfather. You will draw Odin’s attention, and he may see fit to show you what it’s truly like to be half blind.”
I gulp down a lump of fear, cast glances around the room. The sigils on the walls—Yggdrasil, the series of triangles that form the Valknut, two ravens—swell with the potency of Odin, the King of the Aesir himself.
Loki settles deeper into a throne that does not belong to him.
“What are you doing here then?”
“Keeping the seat warm,” he says. “Now back to business. You say the children are being unruly?”
I nod. “They won’t tell me Muriel’s nature. If I knew—”
“But you don’t.”
“Can you tell me?”
Loki clucks his tongue as if I’m a naughty student. “What would you learn if I did the work for you?”
“Is that what this is? A lesson? I thought it was a murder investigation.”
“All things are lessons, Cat.”
I roll my eyes but otherwise don’t pick a fight with him. “Nate—Muriel’s brother—is hiding something, and his friends Karma and Polly are helping him keep secrets. I feel like I’m fighting them.”
“Children,” he sighs. “Secrets are, sadly, a thing of habit for Nate and Muriel. Necessity.”
“But why?”
Loki steeples his fingers beneath his chin, eyes narrowing. “Are your parents Normal?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are they Normal? Are your mother and father everyday, run-of-the-mill, vanilla mortals?”
He may as well ask if the sun rises in the east. “Yes.”
“What do they do?”
“Dad’s a music teacher. Mom’s a contractor. Carpentry, drywall, that kind of thing. I don’t see what this—”
“You are more than willing to tell me about them. This tells me that you are proud of them. Yes?”
“Of course.”
“What if your father was a murderer? More, what if he was the most famous, most prolific killer in all of time? Would you still be so proud? So quick to tell anyone who asks after your parentage the nature of he who sired you?”
I have no body, and yet I still feel the question slug my chest like a prizefighter’s punch. My eyes widen.
Without waiting for my verbal response, Loki continues, “Now imagine trying to keep such a thing a secret over the course of centuries. Then you might begin to understand where Nate and his dearly departed sister come by their shyness. If they have found friends—mortal or otherwise—able and willing to hear that secret and accept them despite all that it entails, then the children are to be congratulated.”
“But if I knew it would help!”
“Then figure it out,” he says simply. “Other than bemoan that which you do not know, what can you tell me, Cat?”<
br />
I blow out a breath. “Something else is going on here, too. Mages coming after me looking for a veil.”
“A veil, you say? And mages.” The god leans forward with interest. “Is this how you’ve come by your injuries?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you know of this veil?”
“Other than the fact that Polly has it, not a damn thing. Care to enlighten me? Or is that a secret, too?”
“Lessons, Miss Sharp. Lessons.” Loki is on his feet, pacing around the throne, hands behind his back. “Tell me of these mages.”
I do, beginning with the assault at the wrecker lot and moving backward to Mr. Grey. When I finish I add, “He asked me to give him the veil or hand over the thief. You wouldn’t know anything about that last part, would you?”
He swoons, a hand to his breastplate. “Cat, you flatter me. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no. That venture is not mine. Unlike others I could name, I’ve no particular interest at present in Greek relics.”
“You’ve got to give me something,” I plead. “A trail to follow. Some sort of direction.”
“I just did.” Loki’s steps echo off the stone walls as he crosses the room to me. He takes my shoulders into his icy grip and my brand responds. I feel no pain, just the pressure of his intensity. His eyes bore into mine, a silent instruction to listen and listen well.
“Do not let the veil cloud your vision,” he says. “Your task is to find the one who killed Muriel. To that end, do not leave the boy.”
“Nate?”
Loki nods. “He is now the last of his line. He is valuable alive and dead to many varied parties. He won’t think of this, of course.” He gives a chuff of laughter, a hint of nostalgia streaking over his face like a criminal. “That particular apple does not fall far from the headstrong tree.” Loki swallows his memories. “Stay with him. Protect him. Together, you can find Muriel’s murderer. And maybe, the matter of the veil will make itself clear. If you figure that one out, do come and tell me. Consider it extra credit.”