“As the eldest of this merry bunch,” Loki gestured through the van’s window toward Maggie, the Frost Giants, and the rest of his kin standing in clumps at the ferry’s railing, “I suppose I know more history than most of Thor’s generation has forgotten. But even I don’t have the full picture.”
Bragi would have known, Sally thought as she organized her new runes into neat rows. The Bard of the Gods would have been able to relate the entire history not only of his own kind, but of any creature who’d ever drawn breath. But Bragi feasted in the Halls of Valhalla now.
“I never got to meet Bragi,” Sally muttered.
Loki sighed. “I wish I’d known him better.”
Sally looked out at the passing watery landscape. The Frost Giants stood apart from the rest, no doubt complaining about mortals smelling funny or too great a reliance on electronics. The others all looked so serious, gesticulating and arguing as they drew up battle plans. At least, that’s what Sally hoped they were doing.
But Iduna, the strange goddess in shining robes who was uppity one minute and weeping the next, sat alone in one of the other Vanagons. Sally had been relieved when Iduna declined to help with the runes.
Sally rubbed at the mark of Sowilu on one of the scales, and the ink smudged.
“Okay. I’m going to try something here.” Sally grabbed the orange and green pens and held one in each hand. “And if it doesn’t work, you’re the only one who knows about it.”
Loki smiled.
“I just wish I’d read more about alchemy,” Sally sighed. “Or that I’d paid better attention in chemistry class.”
Maggie stood at the railing and looked out over the water. She’d been unconscious when she’d made the crossing to the Lofoten Islands with the Frost Giants, assuming they’d taken the ferry. She’d been careful not to ask for details.
But now Freya was pressing her for information. How many apples had she eaten? Over how many days? What had her dreams been like? Had she felt especially light-headed, or experienced any moments of sudden clairvoyance? How had she known how to heal Loki and Heimdall?
Maggie turned to Freya. “I don’t know what I can tell you.”
Freya offered a tight smile and placed a hand on Maggie’s back. Maggie was too tired to step away.
“This is not how it’s usually done.” The wind whipped through Freya’s hair, and she tucked a wayward blond strand behind one ear. “Historically, there’s always been a careful vetting process, to make sure the candidate was fully cognizant of his or her future role and responsibilities, and to ensure the mortal in question was a good fit for life among us.”
“Immortal life,” Maggie muttered. She looked back out at the water.
It’s not like she’d never thought of it before. As soon as she’d learned Heimdall’s true identity—and that of his family—the possibility of being offered immortality herself had screamed into her thoughts and dreams. But unlike an angst-ridden teenager with a vampire fixation, Maggie didn’t find the idea so appealing.
She loved Heimdall—for now. But would she still love him in three hundred years? What about just next year? They’d been together barely twelve months and she still wasn’t entirely comfortable stacking her thirty years of life experience next to his millennia of memory.
Heimdall never brought it up, and for that she was grateful. When her own parents asked about any marriage plans, Maggie quickly changed the subject. Heimdall was always so serious, carrying the weight of responsibility for his family—for the whole freaking Cosmos—on his shoulders. An eternity of marriage? She honestly didn’t know how Odin and Frigga did it.
And she’d have to watch her own family and friends wither away and die.
No. Maggie was quite certain she had no interest in that.
“It’s not so bad.” Freya patted Maggie’s shoulder, and Maggie tried not to shiver at the goddess’ uncanny ability to read her mind.
Maggie shook her head. No matter the pros and cons of immortality, it was all academic now. She’d eaten the apples.
“Freya, I know you’re trying to help.” Maggie looked out over the water, her cheeks stinging in the cold breeze. “But you’ve never known anything different.”
Freyr stepped up on Maggie’s other side. “Don’t be so sure.”
Maggie looked from one twin to the other. “What are you talking about?”
Freyr gave a thin smile and tapped the railing post with the toe of his boot. “Not long after the Asgard attack on Vanaheim, Iduna’s Grove came into harvest.” He looked quickly at Freya, then back to Maggie. “I wasn’t going to eat the apples, but my sister convinced me.”
“I don’t understand,” Maggie said.
He turned to face her. “I was choosing death, Maggie, rather than being absorbed into Odin’s Lodge among his kin. You saw what happened to Loki, and to Heimdall, without the apples.”
“But why?” Maggie asked. “You all seem to get along so well. Unless you’d told me that you were—well, I guess adopted really is the only word that works—”
“That was a long time ago,” Freya said. “Being ripped away from your home and your people is traumatic. Even when it’s in the cause of lasting peace, you don’t get over it so easily.”
“And you thought dying would be a better option,” Maggie said flatly.
He shrugged. “At the time, I did. But things change.”
A chill settled into Maggie’s bones. How long would it take before she had such a distant perspective on her own mortality? Years from now—whole lifetimes and even centuries in the future—would she remember this conversation, or any of her human life?
“It’s not a done deal.” Freya squeezed Maggie’s shoulder. “We’ll know more when we can get you back to Frigga and the Norns, but there’s a good chance you have an important choice to make.”
Maggie breathed deeply. She wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or mortified.
“Let’s just get through today’s challenges, and worry about the rest later,” Freyr offered with another tap to the railing post.
“I like that plan,” Maggie smiled. “Don’t freak out today over what can send you into a full, existential panic tomorrow.”
Maggie turned her face to the water and tried to imagine what it would feel like to embrace this landscape as her adopted homeland. Vanaheim, the name of Freyr and Freya’s home echoed in her thoughts. Even after she’d arrived in Norway, she’d been having difficulty connecting Heimdall’s family history to actual geography. If Asgard was the home of the Æsir—and as near as she could tell, they were in Asgard now, or what was left of it anyway—then what or where was Vanaheim?
“It’s all Midgard now,” Freya interrupted Maggie’s train of thought. “The Frost Giants are right about this being a human world. And it’s not so much my reading your mind as it is you projecting your thoughts,” she added. “The apples do make it easier for us to read each other—but for you, really, it’s written all over your face.” Freya smiled. “But to answer your question: Yes, Vanaheim is a real place.”
“Where—?”
“I think we’ve got something here,” Heimdall approached them at the railing. Sally walked at his side and Thor and Loki fell in behind. The Frost Giants crowded around them.
Sally held up her hands to show Freya a small pile of cold cinders in her palm. Two seconds later, the wind rose from the water and scattered the ash on the air—and directly into Geirrod’s face. He choked, and Thor clapped him on the back.
“Umm, that was a Køjer Devil scale,” Sally offered.
“Seems our little Moon Witch is rather clever with her magick,” Thor smiled down at Sally. “You’ve given us options.”
“You!” Saga bellowed at Thor from across the ferry deck. She stormed toward him, shaking her mobile phone in her hand. Thor’s face fell.
“You want to tell me why my boss is texting me to ask for your freaking hat size?” Saga stopped just short of her hulking brother and shoved her phone’s scree
n into his face. “Says she found the perfect mohair yarn in your favorite color and has a knitting pattern she’s sure you’ll love.” Her eyebrows shot up in exasperation. “Well?”
“Uh . . .” Thor looked to Freyr for help, but the nature god just shook his head with a bemused smile.
Thor was on his own. He met his sister’s eyes. “Yeah. You’re going to kill me.”
Heimdall raised his hand, preventing Thor from continuing. “The Køjer Devils first, please. After that, there will be plenty of time to sort out our individual dramas.” He looked around at the assembled faces. “I promise.”
17
Standing at the center of the warehouse roof, Sally paused. The sun was about halfway up from the horizon to the zenith, but she’d lost track of both cardinal directions and time. She had stopped worrying about what day it was. She still hadn’t slept.
She looked down at the one-meter-square sigil she’d drawn on the pristine PVC roofing material. She’d combined a pair of Dagaz symbols, flagged with Thurisaz on either side and topped with a single instance of Eihwaz.
“Beginnings and endings,” she muttered as her eyes traced the dark blue lines she’d drawn with her newly enchanted “magick” marker. The stubborn thorns of protection. An empowered trap.
The spell for infusing magick into the ink had been deceptively simple. Only two pens were required for drawing magick—one for her, and one for Freya on the building’s ground floor. Sally was surprised no one had tried it before—or if anyone had, they weren’t talking about it. At least Sally would have one key accomplishment to lay at Frigga’s feet upon returning to Oregon. Assuming they’d make it back.
“You’re sure this is going to hold?” Freyr called out from one of the far corners of the warehouse roof. The sun glinted off the white surface, making Freyr flicker like a mirage before Sally’s eyes.
“As long as they don’t choose dead center to come crashing through,” Loki responded. He stepped up next to Sally and admired her drawing. “I’ve set the last of the marked scales in place, just as you directed.”
While the fleet of Vanagons had bumped along the road from Bodø’s ferry ramp to the warehouse’s empty parking lot, Sally had brainstormed an army of new sigils and bindrunes for them all to use—when she wasn’t working trial-and-error spells to alter the chemical composition of box after box of colored markers. They’d cleaned out the one art-supply store they’d found, and the vans were littered with the melted marker casings and splattered ink of her failures.
She’d had no idea she could do so much magickal work so quickly—and in such cramped, car-sick quarters. It wasn’t an experiment she wanted to repeat.
At least the warehouse was deserted. The furniture store hadn’t opened yet to the public, and the two students working a lonely shift as security guards had been easily bribed away with tickets to the Norway v. Denmark Viking Tri-Nations rugby match up in Bergen—care of Maggie’s generous credit card limit. Not every problem had to be solved with magick.
The Køjer Devils were already on their way. It might take them longer to cross the water, and they’d be distracted by mischief-making. There were already news radio reports of mad pranksters in strikingly realistic lizard costumes tearing up a convenience store in Svolvær. But they’d home in on this Bodø warehouse—probably much sooner than later.
An IKEA superstore was the last place Sally would have thought to stage a battle. But Saga had jumped on her smartphone as soon as she had a clear data signal on the Lofoten Islands, and with some sophisticated mapping—and some dowsing help from Sally—she and Heimdall worked out that the new warehouse had the unfortunate distinction of sitting directly atop the easiest on-shore access point to a newly discovered oil reserve.
Sally shifted uncomfortably on the roof. There were 17.3 billion barrels, untapped, directly beneath her feet—more accurately, some distance below the building. And apparently devils liked oil—Loki had mentioned some vague legend about ancestor worship that Sally didn’t quite understand.
Why did it always have to come down to petroleum? She shook her head. There was no point getting riled up about environmental politics when there were more immediate concerns. Like trying not to get everyone killed.
Sally watched Freyr as he lay down a handful of Køjer Devil scales in one of the combinations she’d designed. Given his placement, she guessed it was the binding pattern of quadruple Algiz with just as many Sowilu symbols shooting off like lightning bolts. Freyr looked across at her and smiled.
Sally’s stomach tightened. Her magick accounted for way more of Heimdall’s plan than she was comfortable with. Sure, she’d used magick to hold off a couple of bulldozers and forced an entire battalion of Berserkers to stand down at the Battle of the White Oak, but there had been Thor and Freya and Odin and the Einherjar on the field that day, too. The hand-to-hand combat had been fierce, but it had been a lot more evenly matched than the odds they were facing now.
This time, everything hinged on just how well Sally Dahl knew her runes.
Loki rested a hand on her shoulder. “It will be fine.”
Sally slipped the marker into her pocket. “I just need to do some work to make all of this invisible. To them, at least.”
Loki stepped back. Sally held her hands out over the large sigil and closed her eyes. She imagined all of the sigils and bindrunes piling up on top of each other, then conjured the image of a blue mist swirling up around them. In her mind’s eye, she traced Algiz, Isa, Raido, and Uruz in scarlet fire and sent the symbols into the misty sapphire shield.
Sally took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she opened her eyes. She turned and nodded to Loki and Freyr, standing behind her. “Okay. I think we’re ready.”
One floor below in the Bedrooms section, Thor was trying to keep the Frost Giants off the furniture. While he’d been walking the showroom layout, looking for defensive positions as well as possible hiding places, bottlenecks, and herding opportunities through Living Rooms, Media Storage, and Kitchen & Dining, the Frost Giants had decided to sample the merchandise.
He found Thiassen stretched out on a super-king bed with a lattice headboard of pine and steel. His mailbox-size feet dangled off the end. Valthrudnir was curled up like a baby goat on the bottom shelf of a bunk bed at the other end of the showroom. He was snoring.
“Soft,” Thiassen pronounced with unveiled disdain as he tried to get comfortable.
“We’re not here for furniture shopping.” Thor kicked at Thiassen’s fur-lined boots. Thiassen snarled at Thor, then got up from the display bed—leaving a permanent, Frost Giant-shaped depression in the mattress.
“And you!” Thor shouted as he hurled a bean bag pillow at Valthrudnir, hitting him squarely in the face.
Valthrudnir sat up with a dark growl, banging his head on the upper bunk and denting the metal frame.
“We can’t let these guys catch us napping,” Thor scoffed.
“We will not be unprepared,” Valthrudnir grumbled back as he got up from the bunk. Thor was amazed the furniture had withstood his bulk.
“We forgive you your criticism,” Thiassen said as Valthrudnir lumbered across the floor toward them. “It is not easy for either of our kind to find ourselves fighting side by side.”
“That’s mighty big of you,” Thor answered with cold sarcasm, then choked back a laugh at his accidental joke. Thiassen looked down at him with an odd expression.
“Big,” Thor attempted in explanation. “Because you’re Frost Giants. You guys are like freaking trees. And I said, ‘That’s mighty big of you’ . . . It was funny.” He looked from Thiassen to Valthrudnir, then sighed in defeat.
Four loud bangs echoed down from the ceiling.
“That’s Freyr’s signal,” Thor said. “They’re ready on the roof.”
“Perhaps we should take our positions as well,” Valthrudnir said. He headed off toward Kitchen & Dining. Thiassen lingered beside Thor.
“You have not spoken what weighs on your
mind.”
Thor’s face darkened. “You don’t want to hear it, so I’m trying hard not to think about it. Now, if you’d just make your way to Living Rooms—”
“You believe we are responsible for the re-emergence of the Køjer Devils,” Thiassen interrupted.
“Well, you can’t deny it’s quite a coincidence,” Thor grumbled. “Your lot is back on the scene, and suddenly those fire lizards are throwing rocks at us. The temple where they were interred wasn’t too far from your own prison—”
“Which only proves, perhaps, that imprisoning your enemies underground is not always permanent.”
“—giving you plenty of time to negotiate some kind of deal with the devils!” Thor spat. “For all I know, you all got together and built yourselves some kind of rumpus room down there under the ice, and spent centuries planning this whole thing.”
Thiassen laughed. Thor felt his face flush as he balled his hands into angry fists.
“Negotiate with the Køjer Devils?” Thiassen asked with a smirk. “There is no reasoning with their kind.” Thiassen paused a moment. “Trust me. We tried.”
Thor felt rooted to the spot. “So it’s true? You actually tried to enlist their help in staging some kind of violent return to Midgard?”
Thiassen shook his head. “Millennia ago, when they were rampaging across the Earth. We sought to join forces with them to defeat the Æsir.”
“And the Vanir?”
“The Vanir were occupied with teaching birds to sing and flowers to bloom,” Thiassen replied.
Thor made a mental note to mock Freyr about that remark at the earliest opportunity.
“We hold no treaty with the devils,” Thiassen continued. “Not now, not then. As you may recall, the Frost Giants instead joined you in driving them into the ground.”
Alliances of convenience, Thor thought bitterly. As though he needed another reminder why he didn’t trust Frost Giants. Who was to say Thiassen and his kin wouldn’t try teaming up with the devils again right in the middle of the IKEA shelving units and dinette sets? He opened his mouth to make a biting comment to that effect, but Thiassen cut him off.
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