by Jamie Wyman
“We’re fucked.” I whispered to myself again.
Chapter Twenty
“Recess”
“If I had a mortal heart, Cat, it would have jumped into my throat and choked me to death by now. I send you on a simple errand and you are nearly killed not once, but three times.”
I open my eyes and I’m on Asgard again, but not in Odin’s throne room. I lay on a slab of cold rock and stare at a ceiling shimmering with endless shades of blue. Ice ripples overhead as if an ocean has frozen solid in the midst of a storm, while the walls curve down, jewel-bright blues fading to slate gray. The floor shines with the glassy black of volcanic crags, and a slow drip echoes hollowly from somewhere deep within this cave.
A stalagmite forms a gnarled set of claws reaching up from the floor, like an open hand groping for the ceiling. In the basin made by the palm of that obsidian hand, a green-silver liquid shivers and ripples. It casts a queer light over the face of my master. As he circles the bowl, Loki’s long fingers whisper over the dagger-sharp rock.
He clucks his tongue, a sound that echoes oddly in this icy place. “What am I to do with you?”
I push to my feet and once again find myself clothed only by white light. My brand is a glacial glow on my arm. “I told you before,” I say. My words bounce back to me, but the echoes come in different octaves, perversions of my natural voice. “You’ve got the wrong girl for the job.”
“And I told you that I do not make mistakes.” The sibilants hiss and echo through the cave. It’s like being in the belly of a snake.
“Did you send Marius?”
Loki stops, his index finger tapping an irritated rhythm on the stone. Those blue eyes study me until I squirm uncomfortably. “Why do you ask?”
“I know he’s moonlighted for you in the past. Did you?”
“No. The satyr is here on his own errand.”
“But you’re willing to use him,” I say.
“Just as much as you are.” His white teeth gleam in that shifting glow as his lips spread into a lupine smile. I glare at him, embarrassment coiling in the pit of my stomach. He spreads his hands as if in apology. “I do not judge. Rocks must be gotten off somehow.”
I roll my eyes. Loki is not one of the few who know of Marius’s impairment, and I’m not about to be the one to tell. Nor am I willing to think about any attraction I may or may not have to the goatfucker.
“Why am I here?” I ask instead.
“Quite the existential question, my dear atheist.”
I raise my voice, hands curling into fists. “Why have you summoned me?”
Loki’s smile fades, but amusement never leaves his cold eyes. “There is a problem.”
“No shit.”
He narrows his gaze. “That problem is you.”
His words hit me in the chest and steal my breath. Impudent responses flood my mind, a million phrases that I want to fling at him. But none of them will make him happy or improve my situation. I bite my lip until I taste blood.
Loki’s smile widens, and my brand flushes with his approval. “Glad to see you’re finally learning. There may be hope for you yet.”
“How am I the problem?” I ask.
Loki sighs. “You aren’t enough.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It’s true, Cat. You are a fine talent. Your mind is nimble, if not a bit slow at times. You are resourceful and kindhearted, but you are appallingly…mortal. I understand that while you were under Eris’s hold, you had little chance to be anything more than this, but if you’re going to be in my stable you will need to up your game. In fact, when this is over I’m sending you to my personal trainer.”
I wince as if he’s punched me in the throat. Wounded and confused, I run my hands over the gentle curves of my hips. “I’m sorry,” I snap, “did you just call me fat?”
“You are weak,” he spits. “If you cannot interface with a computer or other machine, your skills are terribly stunted.”
“What did you expect? I only found out that I was a mage last year, the night before you won me from Eris.”
“That is no excuse! I expected you to immerse yourself in learning your talents, not grow content with a thimbleful. I expected more. I need more,” he growls. “I need someone who is able to fight, Miss Sharp. I need someone who I don’t need to watch constantly to make sure she doesn’t die before her time.”
“Then you should have hired her!” I yell, those strange echoes coming to me again.
“I did!” His voice booms like thunder, rattles my bones, and tingles through my teeth. The ice and rock around us rumbles and shifts. I hear the patter of small rocks falling. The steady drip continues. I eye the ceiling, expecting it to fall on me. “You’ve failed to become her in a timely fashion.”
When Loki speaks again, his voice is little more than a confident whisper. “As your steward, Cat, it is my job to ensure you are a worthy investment and do not depreciate in value.”
Loki resumes his orbit around the stalagmite basin. The green-and-silver light intensifies, and the shadows over the god’s face deepen into stark angles. It gives him the look of a raptor. I am his prey.
“Your evolution is too slow, Catherine. I’m afraid I’ll need to…help it along.”
Terror slides over my skin, bumps of gooseflesh rising to the surface.
“Fear not, Miss Sharp. What I give you is temporary. Consider it a loan that I expect you to repay with infinite interest.”
Loki dips two fingers into the basin and stirs the viscous fluid. As he draws his hand away, the silver pulls up into the air. A thin string of the stuff snaps, and a bubble of living metal forms above the cauldron.
“My gift to you will have no ill effect. Unless, of course, you are troubled by the prospect of not dying anytime in the immediate future.”
Reflections shift over the gleaming surface of Loki’s creation as it revolves slowly. Loki’s fingers extend, and his eyes glow hotly as he sends power into the air.
“Mistletoe darts were all well and good before,” he says. “But that was when running away was an option I favored for you. You no longer have the luxury of flight. Not with the forces you are dealing with. The game has changed, and so, too, must you.”
The orb twists on itself, flattens, and stretches. When its metamorphosis is complete, the glistening air describes a glyph, a rune similar to an S with its curves sharpened to points.
Chastened by his words, I know he’s right. The past few days with Karma and Flynn have proven how horribly lax I’ve been in my own training as a mage. I’ve been content to play with computers, locks, and light switches. I’ve been wasting my potential.
“Come to me, Catherine Sharp,” my master commands.
Without protest—but afraid of what fresh pains Loki might have in store for me—I walk to him, my steps light on the frozen stone. With the gentlest of touches, he lifts my left arm. The Ansuz, the rune that makes my brand, glows as blue as the icy ceiling. With his other hand, Loki plucks the spinning metallic glyph from the air and lays it over my mark. The rune melts into my flesh, buries itself beneath my Ansuz. But I feel it. I feel it burrowing down, cloaking itself beneath the power of Loki’s mark. Though it is fluid, it weighs down my arm like impenetrable steel. It burns, fresh from the forge, scorching my blood and searing itself into me.
As my arm burns, the rest of my body fills with ice, rigid and thick. The pain is blinding, and my chest constricts with a cold snap, my breath stolen. Eyes wide with fear, I look to Loki to make it stop.
The god’s fingers tighten on my wrist, and his voice shakes the air. “You are stronger than this. Stronger than flesh and more than blood. It is time for you to get off your ass and become yourself, Catherine Sharp. You will look down and see but one set of footprints, but not because I have carried you to the destination. I will not complete a task for you. What I give you this day is a reminder that you have much to do, and insurance that you will live to see it
done.”
When I speak, a single word in the god’s harsh tongue escapes on a cloud of mist. “Eihwaz.” Though I don’t know its meaning, the word is a certainty in my mind, a truth in my bones.
Loki nods and releases my arm. “Do not squander this gift, for it may well be the last I give you.”
I look down to my left wrist. The Ansuz is still there as it has been for a year now, unchanged. I press on it with two fingers. Beneath the surface, something lingers. If I push in the right places I can feel a thin metal rod, the new rune lying dormant under my flesh.
I shoot a questioning glance up to the Lord of Mischief. His gas-flame eyes meet mine, piercing, calm, and cunning. Loki lifts a finger to his lips.
“Shh.”
…
I woke up to the sound of hushed voices. Footfalls echoed in a slow, steady rhythm, like the drip in the ice cave. Without looking, I ran my fingers over the flesh of my left forearm, pressing lightly on my brand. I found precisely what I’d expected: a cold, steely mass beneath my rune. Real as bone, inevitable as daylight. Loki had once again taken me to his chambers while I slept. This time, though, he’d sent me back changed. A gift from a Trickster is not always something to be thankful for.
I dug out my phone and did a quick search for the word Eihwaz. According to multiple sites, it was a Norse rune of protection. Others, however, claimed Eihwaz prescribed a need for patience. One interpretation of the rune even suggested that if one received this symbol in a divination reading, it meant that person has been “put on notice by the gods.”
“You have no idea,” I sighed.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. A rune of defense. A warning. But no instructions on how to use it. I felt no different than I had any other day. Would Loki’s gift amplify my powers or usurp them? I didn’t think it would be wise to test-drive the new ride inside a church. Nor did I particularly want to go outside where Moloch might be waiting to devour me.
I sat up in the pew and stretched, popping my neck. Nate was a few feet away from me in the same row. He leaned against the pew in front of us, his elbows resting on the polished wood and his hands against his forehead. Eyes closed, his lips moved silently.
When he finished with a subdued Amen, I asked, “Did you get a hold of anyone up there?”
Nate didn’t look at me but lifted his gaze to the altar and the cross. “Sometimes I worry that no one listens. So I pray harder, thinking that will translate to louder.”
“Does it help?”
He shrugged and passed me a wan smile. Sadness pained those watery blue eyes. “What if the satyr is right? What if He has gone missing? Or worse, what if He’s not missing? What if He doesn’t care? What if He’s just picked up and walked away from everything? What if He left us?”
I didn’t know how to comfort him. How was a self-proclaimed atheist supposed to soothe a man questioning the nature of God?
“Does that happen?” I asked. “I mean, if a deity is made stronger by belief, can a god ever truly commit suicide and disappear as long as someone has faith?”
Nate’s smile was wry. “Says the woman who believes in nothing?”
I gave a noncommittal wave of my hand and scooched closer.
“I don’t know,” Nate said. “You’re the one who is constantly questioning things, trying to figure it all out and quantify the world you see.” He shook his head. “That’s never been me. I follow the rules. Always.”
“What, you never questioned your parents when you were a kid?”
He shot an arch look at me. “No.”
I sighed. There was so much I didn’t understand about Nate Harper. And it drove me bonkers. He was right: I did have an inherent need to know things, to puzzle out the unknown, take it apart and see how it worked. I can’t say it’s helped much in the philosophical sense of my life. I mean, it’s kind of a mess around here. But that irksome trait of mine served me well when dealing with computers and problems. It’s how I fix things.
Nate was something I couldn’t fix. I couldn’t see how he was put together to understand the problem and, therefore, couldn’t remedy it. I definitely couldn’t fix Muriel. The mystery surrounding her death tickled at my brain, and I tried to analyze the pieces I had been given. How did they all fit together? What was the picture I was supposed to end up with?
I looked around the church as if answers would miraculously appear. None did. No burning bushes or ephemeral lights. Marius paced back and forth, eyes glazed with boredom, and in a far corner, Flynn and Father Calvert sat with their heads together, probably sharing myths in excited whispers like boys telling ghost stories around a fire.
“Where’s Karma?” I asked.
Nate pointed with a jerk of his chin. “She’s up a few rows, stretched in a pew trying to nap.”
His eyes drifted to the cross again and fell out of focus. He was so damn beautiful it broke my heart. I tried not to stare, so I let my gaze wander again. I followed the plodding rhythm of Marius’s pacing. When this was all over, he expected me to pay up and go on a date with him. It was an old debt that I knew I owed him, but it still made me squirm.
I’d spent time with him before. Dinners. Parties. Perilous missions to Belize on behalf of the goddess of Discord. But an actual date? I shivered. That sounded more dangerous than trying to steal the lamp away from a djinn. I didn’t even understand why that was the payment he chose.
As I watched him pace, though, I had to admit that it was nice to see his familiar face. In this massive clusterfuck that Loki passed me, I felt superfluous. Flynn had Karma. Until she died, Nate could lean on Polly. When Marius showed up on the scene—albeit on the scene of a crime—I’d been strangely relieved. Marius, though hellishly annoying, provided a known quantity in a labyrinth of questions.
“You care for him,” Nate observed.
I blinked in surprise—and no small amount of shame—and ripped my eyes away from Marius. I stammered out gibberish in hopes I could avoid this conversation.
“Well, I…kinda. It’s not like…I mean…we’re…”
What? How could I explain that I loathed Marius but would fight for him because I’d been privy to his darkest secrets? Not only that but he’d seen mine. He knew that I’d been foolish and fallen into this odd world of gods and monsters because of a tryst with a faerie named Dahlia. She’d broken my heart when she told me that she had bet my soul away to Eris. Few people in the universe knew that little factoid about Cat Sharp. Marius was one of them. And he’d stuck by me despite the fact that I’d been a moron.
What comes out of a mixture of pity, respect, shared misery, joy, and utter revulsion?
“It’s complicated,” I said weakly.
“Have you and the satyr…?”
“No!” I blurted out. “Never. Never will.” I studied my fingernails and thought of the curse I couldn’t lift. “Not going to happen.”
Nate’s eyebrows knitted together. “Friends?”
I pondered this. That simple word didn’t seem to work in this case. “More like…war buddies.”
He scoffed lightly and shook his head with subtle amusement.
“What about you?” I asked. “Was Polly your girlfriend?”
“No,” he said, the curve of his smile drooping. “We were just…kindred spirits.”
“Yeah, you looked pretty kindred with your head in her lap the other night.”
“So?”
“So I’m just saying that usually when people are that touchy-feely together there’s more than platonic friendship going on.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed as he regarded me. After what felt like an eternity of scrutiny, he reached up to touch me, but I flinched away.
“Oh, Cat,” he said, his expression softening. “Has it really been so long since someone just touched you?”
My throat tightened.
“It has,” Nate said, answering his own question. “It’s been ages, hasn’t it? You can’t remember the last time someone touched you without malice or expect
ation. No sexual desire or pretense. Just care. Untainted, unconditional affection.”
Nate brought his hand up and stroked my cheek, his thumb gliding over my chin to catch a teardrop. I shuddered at his warmth, at the naked need in my soul to just sink into that touch like a pool. I closed my eyes and leaned into the firmness of his palm.
“The simplest of touches remind us that we are real and connected to others,” he said. “My intentions don’t have to be sexual. When I touch you, I don’t want to manipulate you into my bed, I just want to offer you comfort. Knowledge that you’re not alone.”
I drank it in, the softness and purity of his attention a balm on a wound I didn’t realize I’d allowed to fester. I was lonely. Sure, I had friends, a life. My cat and Mrs. M. I saw people all the time. But at the end of the day, not everyone is beholden to a god or friends with people who are half goat. Not everyone can play with forces of nature and technology. And keeping those kinds of secrets becomes an isolating factor. Over the past few years, life had just been easier with fewer people in it.
And that choice had its drawbacks.
“Muri and I felt alone for a long time,” Nate admitted. “It’s what nearly destroyed her, why we clung to one another. Polly understood that. And many other things.”
I opened my eyes and leaned away from Nate. My gaze found Flynn in the pews and then danced over to Marius. My chest gave a dull ache. I let my head fall forward in a half-nod and wiped away the stains of my tears.
“I see what you mean,” I said.
Nate stared hard at Marius. “So he wasn’t in the room when Polly died.”
It was more of a concession than a question.
“Convinced he’s not involved with the murders?” I asked.
He didn’t humor me with a verbal answer but bobbed his head. “That begs the question, though: who else was in that video?”
“Ah, the guy rolling the coin over his knuckles.”
“Him. If Moloch was killing Polly offscreen at the time, he couldn’t have been standing in frame.”