by Jax Garren
That made her laugh. “What kind of name is Glendabelle?”
He backed up, teasing laughter in his eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t name you. See you Monday, Glendabelle.”
She took a risk and flipped him off in jest. His formerly suppressed laughter came out in a loud snicker, and he unlocked his door to let himself in as the elevator doors closed.
She stopped them at the last moment. The door shut behind Rafael, and she waited a few more seconds to make sure he was gone before pulling out her own keys and slipping into Coyote’s apartment. Her apartment?
The lair.
The scent of old coffee and earthy musk greeted her, smelling uncannily like home, and she breathed it in. She didn’t want to be alone right now, but she didn’t feel so lonely here. She felt a connection to the place, and it terrified her. Still, it was better than nothing.
After sending a text to Rawan to let her know the dorm room was hers for the night, she grabbed one of Coyote’s T-shirts from the bin to wear as pajamas, wanting at least that little bit of someone else. She washed her face of the horrid makeup—she did look like a raccoon, dammit—and found a packaged toothbrush in a drawer. Coyote had thought of everything.
He might be crazy and committing multiple felonies with her, but maybe she’d somehow managed to meet two good men. The thought gave her comfort as she sent him a thank you for letting her crash here, gathered a pillow to her chest, and drifted off to sleep.
RAFAEL PACED HIS APARTMENT—TECHNICALLY his abuela’s, which accounted for the “wealthy cattleman” décor he’d never pick—and couldn’t settle his mind. The story his classmate had told him had equal parts terrified and humbled him.
What was it with the world shitting on good people? He missed Freyja. The desire for her—even just to see her—clawed at him. He wanted to make the world safe for her—and for people like Giselle. Safe and joyful and lovely. The need to pierce his skin and call forth Coyote raged within him, but that would be the fourth time today—once in the morning to fly and twice with Freyja—and that was getting out of hand. By the third connection, he’d started to feel woozy from the blood loss. Hiding from Freyja how much he’d bled had been a bitch.
But the fact was he’d come to Zavala College to find himself again, not to turn into another person he didn’t recognize.
Although, crazy as it sounded, he felt more himself when possessed by a god than he ever had on the drug-fueled debauchery of last year. And just what did that say about how far he’d fallen?
No, he wasn’t going to change again, not until tomorrow when he got to see Freyja. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t go next door and be somewhere where it felt like life had meaning again.
He’d rather be there than here. No contest.
A text came in, and he almost turned his phone off, tired of arguing with Lyssa about having bailed on the party. She was just worried about him—to her, ditching a party was tantamount to clinical depression—but it was irritating trying to explain the same thing over and over again, particularly when he wasn’t even sure himself what it was he wanted instead of the good time she constantly sought.
Meaning. As Lyss kept repeating to him, what gave life “meaning”? He had no idea. But it felt like Freyja and Coyote and what they were trying to do had a lot more of it than any party he’d ever attended.
But the text wasn’t from Lyssa.
Took u up on offer hope its ok and thx. Dont go to bed if u come by im other me.
A frisson of electricity ran over him. Freyja was less than a hundred yards away. Just the thought breathed life into him as he stared at his front door like he could see through walls.
He inhaled deeply. If he went over there now, she’d still be awake. Maybe they’d finally see each other, and that would be amazing.
Except she’d know who he was, and that had a ninety-nine percent chance of making everything fucking weird. And she still didn’t want him to know who she was, either.
Fine. He took a quick shower, then paced his apartment some more, giving her time to fall asleep. When fifteen minutes had passed, he crossed and uncrossed his fingers in an old superstition and went next door.
The apartment was silent. He closed the door as gently as he could and walked barefoot toward the back, where a curtain separated the bed from the dining area. The soft sound of her steady breath comforted him but also drew him farther forward, closer to the woman who’d become his desire and his inspiration. He could just see the end of the bed where one pale foot peeked out of the covers.
The real her. Temptation flooded him. He could see who she was, and she’d never know. Then he could find her as Rafael and ask her out—write her songs and send her presents until she wanted him with some pale version of how much he craved her.
Then he’d show her he was Coyote and explain that they were perfect together. And... and that was never going to happen.
Freyja’s life meant something. She wasn’t the kind of person to be impressed with presents and songs. She wanted someone who made the world a better place, like she did. He was going to become the kind of person whose life meant something—as Coyote. And then, when he was worthy of her, then maybe she’d give him a shot.
That started by earning her trust right now. Though he ached to pull back the curtain and see what she looked like with the moonlight shining down on her unmasked face, he groaned and forced his feet to pivot and walk away. He’d prep coffee for the morning and then sleep on the couch, right where he’d promised her he’d sleep.
After creating a tent of sorts with a blanket to hide his face, he curled up beneath it on the couch with a pillow, dreaming about the night when he’d get to curl up with her.
A few hours later, he woke up to the smell of coffee and the sound of her screams.
Chapter 25
THE LARGEST SNAKE GISELLE had ever seen rose above her, body coiled on her chest and head poised to strike. She screamed—because snake—and slid to the side, grabbing her godstone as she fell off the bed. The snake smacked into the mattress where she’d just been, making the whole thing shake.
“Freyja?” Coyote yelled, and she blessed the sky she’d told him he could meet her today for Sunday ritual. “You okay?” His voice came closer as feet beat the ground toward the bedroom. “Shit! Snake!” he announced from the other side of the bed.
“I need a knife!” she called. “Need to activate the godstone.”
“Tossing one center.” An obsidian dagger dropped to the floor near her, proving at least he had changed.
The snake surged over the bed, coming for her, and she panicked. “No! No!”
The snake disappeared, yanked backward, presumably by Coyote.
“Fuck me,” he announced. “What’s with the red eyes? Fuck, what’s with the giant fucking snake?”
She pricked her arm a little too hard in her haste and soaked the godstone. A second later, she drew her ax and popped up over the bed. Coyote was face-to-face with a viper the size of an anaconda.
She swung her ax, decapitating it. The snake collapsed to the bed in two pieces, splattering black ichor across the duvet, then its body misted away, leaving the grody mess behind.
Across the empty space, Coyote stared at her, eyes wide and hands out like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. Breath heaved in and out of him with the same panicked regularity hers did.
He straightened up, swallowing. “Coffee?”
She let out an unhinged giggle and walked around the bed toward him.
Without asking this time, he pulled her into a hug, pressing her head against his chest in a way that signaled relief. Almost as quickly as the gesture began, he let her go, and together they marched into the kitchen.
“So, do you often battle giant snakes first thing in the morning?” Mechanically he poured the coffee as she grabbed the cream.
“Not usually, no. This is new.”
“Any idea what the fuck?” He waved his hand at the bed and took a gulp of coffee, the
n sucked in the pained breath of a burned tongue.
She took a sip of her own cream-cooled coffee and shivered at the receding memories of a dream. “Macha.”
“Isn’t she in hell? Do living residents of hell get to visit you as a demon snake?”
Leaning against the table, Giselle tried to grasp at fragments of a dream. “Ereshkigal is mad that I sent the living to her in Kur.”
“Who? What?”
“Kur is the Sumerian underworld and Ereshkigal, the queen of Kur and goddess of the dead. Also, she’s Ishtar’s sister and, in my dream anyway, they didn’t seem to get along.”
“So she sent you a demon-snake present?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
He blew on his coffee this time before taking another sip. “Think that was a one-off fuck you, or is she going to keep sending gift baskets with fangs?”
“I don’t know.” She stretched her neck, trying to ease the tension that wouldn’t let go before she shot him a look. “You know, this shit didn’t happen to me with Ande.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Hey.”
She bumped into him. “Not that I think it’s your fault. Although...” She stretched out the word, teasing him.
“Hey!” He sounded offended, but his eyes sparkled. He leaned down, getting closer to her. “You didn’t have any fun with that crazy hag, either. You have fun with me.”
Despite the frightening mess less than ten yards away and the near certainty that this was not the last she’d see of Ereshkigal—at least until she got Macha out of the underworld—she smiled at him, feeling oddly calm.
He winked. “Pancakes? Eggs?” He started pulling accoutrement from the kitchen. “I think ‘nearly got killed by the queen of the dead’s demon snake’ makes for a french toast kinda morning. You good with that?”
“Sure. How can I help?”
He pointed toward the living room with a whisk. “You can set up our ritual. I’ll have this done in a few minutes.”
“That won’t take long. How about I...” She wrinkled her nose toward the mess in the bedroom. “Is there a washer in the building?”
He nodded toward a closet off the kitchen. “Through there. Sure you don’t mind? I mean, I’m not going to stop you, but I can handle it.” He stuck out his tongue. “Or just buy new sheets. That might be our best route.”
She couldn’t decide whether to thank him or tease him for the extravagant offer, so she did neither, heading into the bedroom. “Nah, it’s my gift exchange—a living conduit for a bed full of demon-snake blood. I’ll take care of it.”
Coyote whistled a song she’d never heard before while he cooked, and by the time she’d gotten the messy sheets in the washer and the ritual accoutrement set up on the living room floor, he had toast soaking in an eggy mixture and was watching her light candles. “Want to eat before or after?”
“After okay? It’s short, I promise.” She hesitated. “Sure you want to do this?”
He put his hands on his hips in a power pose. “I’m a god. I feel at one with worshipping myself.”
“You would!”
“Aren’t Pagan rituals usually done naked?”
“Hey! You said you’d be serious!”
“It’s a serious question! Also, I said I’d be good during the ritual. Not before it.”
She held out her hands. “Well then, get over here and let’s start so you have to shut your sassy-pants mouth.”
Freyja’s laughter said she was over the snake incident, and Rafael relaxed, happy she was happy. Unlike his abuela, he wasn’t much into religion, but watching Freyja touch a plethora of little icons she’d set up on the windowsill was fascinating. Her fingers caressed a chair, ran down a large wand with a strangely bulbous ending, and then wrapped around a statue of a giant dick attached to a very small man.
“Do I do this too?” he asked, trying really hard to keep any amusement out of his voice.
“Got a problem grabbing Freyr by the rod?” she asked archly.
“I’ll give hand shandies to all the statues you want. It’s just I’ve only ever been to Catholic mass with my grandma, and we didn’t do that there.”
As if in challenge, she motioned toward the row of icons. He gave her a sardonic smile, and without taking his eyes off her challenging expression, he touched the chair, ran his fingers across her wand—how phallic was this ritual of hers?—and gave a firm stroke to her statue’s oversized member.
Her challenging smile bloomed into something real and joyful. “Welcome to Paganism,” she said as she settled back on her knees. “I grew up this way. I know it’s unusual. But I think other religions are weird, so I figure it’s just what you’re used to.” As she lit a smudging stick and waved it over her icons and then over a little leather pouch, she recited a few verses of poetry. His favorite line was about how everyone dies, but a good name lives forever.
What did it mean to have a good name? He was wildly famous. Was that a good name? Or just a popular one?
She looked up at him, biting her lip as she bounced the pouch back and forth between her hands. “This is the part where I need you not to laugh. You can laugh at the statues and the incense and the plethora of candles—it’s funny, I get it. But don’t laugh at the runes. I won’t be able to read anything if I’m worried about you thinking I’m ridiculous.”
“Runes, like what you use to open locked doors?”
“Uh, yeah. But you can use them to predict the future—or at least give you some ideas. I know that’s woo-woo, but Freyja was an expert at seeing the future.”
He wrapped his hands around his knees, getting comfortable. “And you’re channeling her. I believe you can do this.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Well, some weeks I’m better than others, so don’t get your hopes up too much.”
An idea struck him for how he could participate. “Wait.” He turned his drum around and wished for something smaller. A long, narrow drum and two mallets appeared—teponaztli, he remembered from the Aztec musical research he’d spent much of his free time working on. It was played by striking it with mallets, and the log-like shape gave it a musical, hollow echo—almost like a marimba instead of the crashing drumroll of a snare. Obviously if he just hit it, it would make sounds, but to play it well was a different thing entirely. To make it really sing would take practice and skill.
He’d never failed at music this much in his life, and he looked up at the sky, where he was sure Huehuecoyotl was laughing uproariously at one of the world’s bestselling musicians preparing to crap out on a primitive drum. “So... I won’t laugh at your prognosticating, and you won’t laugh at my drumming, and we’ll muddle through in mediocrity while we figure out what we’re doing, cool? Or will this be distracting? I just thought, you know, drum circles and stuff. That’s Pagan, right?”
She looked at the drum with the carvings of a coyote and tribal patterns running along the sides and grinned. “I think it’s a great idea.” It was a beautiful instrument, no matter what he was able to make it sound like. If Huehue would just hand him an equally beautiful piano, he might be able to impress Freyja—which would be really nice.
Diving in, he forcefully whacked the teponaztli in a few places, listening for the different tones it could make before he tried to make it do something that resembled music. “I’ll study Viking music next, but I haven’t figured out yet how to pick the instrument my drum becomes. It transitions itself.” More odd sounds emanated from the instrument as he tried striking the ends and then listened for the whack of the stick versus the rumble of the mallet against the split at the center, where it reverberated most. As he experimented, he started to hear how the music coming from it could flow and how the ancient-sounding beat could synergize with modern instruments into something different and beautiful. It would be fun to experiment for some Rage songs.
How much would Lyss kill him? Did he care? Jada would love a challenge...
Freyja settled back on her heels, listening with a wrinkled
brow. “You look like you know what you’re doing. Sounds much better than the flute thing.”
“Ocarina? I have a friend who’s a drummer; I play around on her set sometimes. I don’t regularly hang with any flautists.” He closed his eyes and listened to the instrument and what it could create. Frustrating as it was to do this in front of someone whose good opinion he coveted, it didn’t take long to forget and just have fun with rhythm. Freyja didn’t say anything, but he could hear whatever was in her pouch rattle, like she was idly shaking it, and he incorporated that into the music. When he got the hang of it, he hummed whatever came into his head, adding melody. It wasn’t beautiful—he still had to focus too hard on what his hands were doing to make much out of his vocalization. But it had been a damn long time since he’d gotten to just play with music in unexpected ways without giving a shit about albums, critics, shows, and what his bandmates wanted to play. It was rejuvenating.
And then he remembered that Freyja was listening. He popped open his eyes, nervously imagining her bored to tears, but instead found her amused but relaxed as she rattled what he now guessed was her unbagged rune set around in her hands, adding to the music in her own way. He gave a quiet-ish howl, for a coyote anyway, which did the most important trick of making her laugh. He stopped singing and played more of a drumroll, and then smiling at him, she threw the runes from her hand, scattering the little stones in the space between them.
Out of twenty-four runes, only one was face up. He played a final strike in surprise. “Is that normal?”
Her lip curled in what he could best describe as disgusted terror as she stared down at them. “No. Normally they scatter randomly, like you’d think they would.” She picked up the lone right-side-up piece. It looked like a capital F if you broke both horizontal bars so that they pointed diagonally down.
“What’s it mean?”
“Ansuz. A divine message.”
“Like the snake? Please tell me we’re not getting another early morning snake.”
She dropped the rune like it was a bug, crossed her arms, and squeezed into herself uncomfortably. “Freyja didn’t really use rune stones to predict the future. This is, like, baby prognostication.”