“I can’t believe that.” Again, the words had to be forced out. I didn’t trust our mother—hell, I didn’t even like Dru very much—but this was beyond my comprehension. Murder. I’d expected her to try some stupid spell that hurt them or made it impossible for them to get where they were supposed to be during the end of the world.
Not that I entirely wanted to accept that was what was happening.
“I don’t know for sure,” Raven answered. “But there wasn’t a mark on him, and it looked like he was killed with magic. Plus, I smelled the lavender.”
A diesel pickup pulled into the next space, and the driver leaned over to look at me through his passenger window. I frowned and turned away from him, still clutching the phone as if I was afraid I’d drop it again.
“Kat?”
It took several tries for me to get enough air to speak. “You know I’ve stayed mad at her, that I’ve always thought she was kind of loopy, but this? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand.” I didn’t want to be this far from Coral when she found out. Our middle sister was still too attached to our progenitor. “Oh gods, Coral! This will kill Coral.”
“She won’t believe it.” Raven lowered her voice. “I have to find Mom, Kat.”
I made a strangled sound. “No. You don’t. If she’s already crossed the line, you have to tell them! Why do you feel this need to protect her? I don’t get it! Look at how we grew up! All I ever wanted was a normal life and she made sure that didn’t happen. You should have just told them the truth last night. She’s killed someone, Raven.”
“We don’t know that for sure. And I have to be absolutely sure. Have to give her that. Anyway, have you been paying attention on your trip? On mine, nuts were coming out of the woodwork. It’s snowing at the equator, Kat! People are scared! We don’t know the situation here. What if this was something else?”
Of course she backtracked. Like I would have to. Literally. I’d have to turn around and drive to Oklahoma now. There was no choice. I loved my sister—both my sisters—fiercely, but I didn’t trust them at all when it came to Dru. “You sounded pretty certain a minute ago, Raven.”
She didn’t say anything for a long, long moment. “My rune tempus hit last night and the runes said ‘in violence conceived.’ What do you think that means?”
Stunned, I sat still and silent, gripping the phone as more trucks came into the restaurant parking lot. I glanced over, and the guy in the diesel truck was still in there, still watching me. Instead of thinking about the ramifications of what Raven had just said, I dug in my bag for my can of pepper spray. I really, really needed to not think about what she said. Not too deeply.
“I think my norn is trying to tell me something about our birth,” Raven said.
“No.” I clutched the can to my chest, stared straight out the windshield at the clumps of snow building on the hood. Then at the span of new dark clouds that looked like they had sprung from the mountain in the distance. “No. Dru doesn’t hold back. Innocent childhood isn’t a sacred thing in her world. It’s not her style. Gory bedtime stories are my first memories.” And they were. Stories of gods fighting, gods smearing herbs on talking severed heads...gods giving birth out of their freaking armpits. Nothing had been taboo for Dru. “She would have told us.”
“Maybe not.”
“What if it isn’t?” I groaned again, knowing it sounded more like a growl. “What if it’s something stupid from the past that has absolutely nothing to do with this? You could get in big trouble, Raven.” And I couldn’t handle that. Couldn’t handle anything happening to either of my sisters.
“I know.”
“Sounds like you’ve found the right guy. I’m calling Coral, and we’re coming to help. In the meantime, you know where to look.” I turned off my Jeep—thinking I’d grab breakfast in the restaurant.
“Not really. Campgrounds are out in this weather. She has to be in a hotel, but I can’t figure out how. She didn’t have much cash.” She paused. “How long do you think it’ll take you to get here? I have no car and I can’t waste the money to rent one. I still have to find a hotel, and I’m worried about the cost on that. Have you had trouble finding rooms? I did every single night. Spent a fortune to get here.”
“Yeah, I’ve had trouble, but it got easier up here. People are used to driving in snow, so they didn’t all stop immediately.” Okay, I lied. But just a little. She had enough to worry about. “Since Coral’s guy lived closer, she’s been driving around, trying to find him, but she told me last night every hotel in the area is packed. Our neighbors are taking people in.”
“Coral’s not, right?”
“Don’t think so.” I smirked because I knew exactly what she was thinking. That Coral trusted too easily and could let someone even worse than Dru into the house. Well, Raven probably wouldn’t use Dru as the comparison. It pissed me off that neither of my sisters could grasp how off our mother really was. And it pissed me off more that even I was surprised by the thought of her killing someone. I thought I’d given up on her years ago.
My stomach growled.
“Kat? I can’t let Mom hurt Vanir. He’s...well, he’s really cool.”
I liked this subject better. I shook my head. “I thought I detected heat. So, I guess you won’t end up in Gefjon’s hall, after all?” I’d always teased my sisters that they’d end up there because they’d die still virgins. Dru had kept a pretty close eye on us, so there hadn’t been any serious relationships yet, even though we were eighteen. Who was I kidding? Serious relationships. Ha! We hadn’t even experienced casual ones.
“Probably not.”
“Really?” I dropped the pepper spray. “Holy crap! I’m coming down there now. Get off this phone, call Coral and tell her you’re okay.”
“Bossy much?”
“I told you. She’s freaking.” Man, at this rate, my nose was going to start growing like Pinocchio’s. I stared at the light filling the sky, at the snow that was falling everywhere—not just here. When I’d left Florida, it had covered the ground there, too. The scariest part was it was still summer. Even this far north, I doubted they dealt with this much snow in August.
A plume of smoke rose into the sky from somewhere not that far away. It writhed and spread into the already dark clouds. Fear made my heart pick up. Stupid fire.
“Raven?” I whispered.
“What?”
“Do you have the feeling one of us isn’t making it through this? All the other stuff Dru told us is coming true.”
“We are. All three of us are going to make it. We’re going to fight. And think about it. Mom changed things so maybe she’s altered all of it and fate is now in our hands.”
“I’m not sure that makes me feel better.” Though it kind of did. Any change from the scary prophecy of our death was welcome. But then it occurred to me that whatever Dru changed could actually be playing into fate’s hands. That thought made me break out into a cold sweat.
“Yeah, nothing like a little pressure. But I’m determined to keep Mom from hurting Vanir and I plan to do it without dying. Stubborn as you are, it shouldn’t be hard for you, either.”
I should have told them about the dreams of fire before because doing so now would just worry Raven and probably make Coral do the freak thing I’d made up earlier. For real. “But Coral...Coral’s—”
“Coral is a lot stronger than we think. She’s going to be fine.”
I smirked. “You know you’re channeling that parent vibe again, right? You’re, like, minutes older than me.”
“Sometimes, every minute counts. I gotta go. Promise to call you again later.”
She hung up, and I sat in the near silence of my car, the only sound the engines outside and the steady thump of snow pattering the Jeep. What if everything Dru changed wasn’t really a change? Just trying to wrap my head a
round that crazy woo-woo stuff made it hurt.
Someone banged on my driver’s window and I jumped.
“You okay in there?” A bearded face appeared. It was the man from the diesel truck. His breath fogged the frozen window. “You really shouldn’t be sleeping in your car in this cold.” He knocked again. “Do you need help?”
He actually tried to open the car door.
My eyes flew open wide. “No!” I yelled and held up my cell phone to show him I could call for help—whether it had to do with the car or him. “Was just taking a break!”
He frowned a moment longer, eyeing the huge mound of blankets packed into the front seat of my Jeep with me, then looking in the back. I knew exactly when he spotted the suitcase because his eyes turned into slits. His face was so close to the glass, I could see up his nose. Gross. “Seriously, I’m fine,” I yelled at the window. “I’ll leave now, okay? As soon as my car warms back up!” Ever heard of nose clippers? I continued silently.
He nodded and moved away. Just not far enough.
So much for breakfast here.
Groaning, I started the Jeep again and hoped the heat would kick on fast. It usually did. Unlike my sister Coral, I’d picked a car that had an actual working heater. Though I wished I’d thought of how cold it could get with the partially removable top. Of course, I lived in Florida and planning for subzero temperatures hadn’t been on my agenda. College had been my first goal. The second—keeping my sisters safe. I didn’t even know what I planned to study yet. Raven wanted some kind of history or anthropology—something or another. Coral was interested in plants, so she’d know everything about them for spells. Me? I planned to take the basics wherever my sisters ended up. What I wanted to do would eventually come to me. I hoped. I peeked out the window only to see that scary nose-hair man was still watching me.
He had the same shaggy brown do as the guy in that movie The Stepfather. Right before he killed the family and shaved his beard.
That’s it, Kat. No more freaking scary movies!
My skin started to crawl. I picked up the pepper spray because I knew better than to ignore that feeling. I had once, and that once had been enough to make me overvigilant when it came to me and my sisters from then on. Insidious black fear began to creep into my bones. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Calm down, Kat. You’re in control here. You’re eighteen. Not thirteen and stuck in the woods with an older boy you shouldn’t have trusted. You. Are. In. Control.
And I was. My car was locked and I had a weapon. But I couldn’t shake the discomfort and realized it was probably coming from my norn. She’d been shoving her own feelings into me more often lately. The emotion could be coming from my sisters. We had a weird connection as triplets and it was probably one hundred times stronger because we also all carried the souls of the norn sisters—the three goddesses who had lived beneath the world tree called Yggdrasil.
Those shared feelings had helped us out more times than I could count. And my sisters had no idea I’d sort of made it my life’s work to watch out for them. Raven was always too busy working and trying to keep things together. Coral spent her time studying and fretting. It was an old-fashioned word, but the first time I’d read it, I’d stuck it to Coral because it fit. She was the softest one of us. The quickest to tears. When we were little, sometimes all I had to do was look at her a certain way and her eyes would fill up.
Eyeing my phone, I thought about calling her. Checking in. She’d sounded funny during our last call, and I’d had the distinct feeling she’d been keeping something from me.
The three of us had split up for the first time in our lives, each going after a boy who could possibly carry the soul of a Norse god. A future warrior who needed to make it to the final battles—one who didn’t deserve problems from Dru.
Nose-hair man started toward my car again, and my unease kicked into high gear. I held up my pepper spray, watched with real satisfaction as his eyes grew wide; then I jammed my Jeep into Reverse and peeled out so fast, he had to jump away from my car.
He could have been harmless, but it was better not to take that chance.
Me and cynicism. BFFs.
As I drove back to the truck stop I’d passed on my way into this town, something Raven had said on the phone kept replaying my mind—kind of like one of those earworms that crawls deep into the brain to eat all the good songs.
“Mom changed things, so maybe she’s altered all of it and fate is now in our hands.”
Ha! Our fate had never been in our hands. We’d all grown up in fear, moving from one place to another, watching the woman who called herself our mother slowly coast along the edges of the Loony Bin Highway. Then, after years of manic ups and downs, Dru had finally steered herself directly onto it. Full speed ahead. She was out there somewhere, terrorizing someone who might or might not carry a Norse god’s soul.
Like me.
But after this morning’s phone call with Raven, I now knew she was in Oklahoma.
Driving all the way to Oklahoma after coming straight here from Florida was probably a dumb-ass move, but I wasn’t leaving Raven alone to deal with Dru.
Lately, she’d been so weird, who knew? It was possible she’d moved into murderer territory. Recently, my norn had given me a message that said “mother berserker.” I’d shown it to my sisters.
But I hadn’t told them about the time I’d seen her standing in the backyard, a swarm of snakes writhing around her ankles, with this creepy, creepy smile that had made her mouth seem out of proportion. She’d looked at those snakes like they were her children.
Though the first spine-chilling word that had whispered through my mind had been something entirely different.
Minions.
Chapter Two
I got in the small line for food at the truck stop, barely looking at my surroundings. I’d stopped in a bunch of places like this on the way here from Florida. The trip had taken me days because of the weather. But like everywhere else, the fear coming off the people made me slightly nauseas. I’d expected it to be easier up here. People this far north were used to early snowstorms, but even they knew this was too early and not exactly natural. Not when it was snowing everywhere in the world. I caught snatches of quiet conversations coming from those in line and in the small booths.
“Old Mrs. Northrup’s heat went out last night in one of the power outages. Her daughter found her this morning. Froze in her own bed...”
“Did you hear that they ran out of gas already at the Exxon station over on...”
“One of the park rangers told my husband he saw one of those aurora borealis things twice in the past week. Right over the lake. They’ve only happened a few times before and never when it’s this overcast. My husband got so scared, he went up and bought all the beans at the grocery store. Can you believe it? Beans! If it’s end times, the last thing I want is to be holed up in my home with a man on a steady diet of musical fruit. Might as well shoot me now before the misery starts”
I had to turn away because I choked on a laugh. Death and farting—true end of the world conversation. It wasn’t the first strange topic I’d heard in these sorts of places. I decided to go ahead and get what road food I could instead of eating here, so I stepped out of line. As I walked down the few aisles, I was surprised to see anything left on the ratty shelves. With the snow getting worse, the shelves would empty fast, and who knew what I’d find on the drive to Oklahoma.
After grabbing crackers, canned chicken and iffy-dated peanut butter, I got into the checkout line. My vision blurred from exhaustion. I should be finding a motel, but I didn’t trust Dru. And unfortunately I didn’t trust either of my sisters to send her butt to jail, either. They always gave our mother the benefit of the doubt. Not me. Not since I’d watched her sit and pee herself as she surrendered to the lure of her inner catato
nic world when she had three small children living in a freaking tent. That was around the time Coral had started having nightmares about a silver-haired man crouching over us at night.
I’d never seen him, but I’d barely slept for weeks after that, keeping watch. Something in her expression—her absolute certainty—had scared the crap out of me.
“Hey, you’re next.”
I blinked my gritty eyes and looked down at the person sitting in the booth next to the checkout line. “Huh?”
“The line moved without you.” She pointed.
Right then it felt like someone stabbed a hot poker through my chest.
“Oh no, not now,” I whispered through gritted teeth.
But as usual, the She Leech did whatever she wanted. I frantically looked around for a place to hide and realized sitting in an empty booth would draw less attention. I set my items on the table, then looked up at the wall menu like I planned to buy a meal. The red letters smeared hard to the left, and I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to not look as the world went into chaos around me. It wasn’t so hard lately because the pain that came with my rune tempus sort of obliterated everything else, anyway. Everything around me—the diner, the people, the shelves—would be in a spin. When I was younger, this was the only part of the process I liked because it felt like jumping into a kaleidoscope and watching the colors swirl around me. Or like being on my favorite ride at the fair. The one with the huge steering wheel in the middle so people could get a good spin in the hooded seats big enough for me and both sisters.
But the next part of my rune tempus ripped my soul out.
Being a host. Being forced to write messages against my will. Being at someone else’s mercy. It was like each and every time took away a little more of me. Broke down what made me feel like me. And what made me feel like me was being in control of my own damned life.
I peeked to see if the world had shuddered to a halt and found what I expected. The people in the booth next to me had been frozen midbite. The lady held a pickle over her mouth like she was dangling spaghetti into it. The man across from her had his nose wrinkled in distaste as he picked something off an onion ring. I squinted. Oh gods, was that a hair?
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