by Jane Kindred
* * *
While they ate breakfast, Rhea showed Ione the note from her windshield. “I assume this was from whoever keeps vandalizing the parking lot at the shopping center. And Leo tore down a poster the other day with the same words as the graffiti.” Rhea swallowed a bite of her pancake. “You’re going to hate what it said.”
Ione narrowed her eyes as she handed the note to Dev. “What did it say?”
“The impure shall be cast out.”
“Goddammit.” Ione clenched her fist around her fork. “He’s like a cockroach.” She looked at the note again as Dev passed it back. “I’ll talk to Phoebe later and see if she can put on her PI hat and find out if anyone else is visiting Carter in prison.”
“You don’t think it could be Laurel again?”
Ione shook her head. “No, she’s learned her lesson. I don’t think she ever wants anything to do with Carter Hamilton again, let alone us.”
Rhea was fine with that outcome. If only Theia would leave it alone.
* * *
It took the better part of the day to chase down the landlord for a spare set of keys and get a replacement set made for the car while also, at Ione’s insistence, stopping at the bank to get her cards replaced and at the cellular store to get a new phone. With Ione chauffeuring them about, Rhea felt like she was back in high school, her “date” relegated to the back seat. Which totally didn’t make the awkwardness from this morning worse.
Once Rhea had everything sorted, Ione dropped her off at the site of the fire—formerly the site of her business—to assess the damage and see if anything had survived among the ashes. She sent Leo to buy some clothes, insisting he take the car and some cash and get what he needed. Right now, she desperately needed alone time.
Her best tattoo machine was charred rubble, the electrical cord a melted piece of goo. Not to mention the water damage. She had the one she used at home, but it hardly mattered. It wasn’t as if she had any clients. The ink bottles were ruined, but the packages of needles and steel tubes inside the drawers and cabinets might be salvageable. Everything else was gone.
Rhea collapsed onto the couch, bizarrely still standing largely intact among the wreckage. She tried to focus on restoring her phone from the cloud backup to avoid thinking about the money she’d sunk into this business and the fact that she was now officially unemployed.
The little bell that had once been on the door made a sad thunking noise as someone stepped on it. Rhea looked up, surprised Leo would be back so quickly. Instead, the most out-of-place person she’d ever seen stood amid the charred doorframe and warped floorboards in a long and absurdly expensive fox fur coat with the hood drawn up.
“We’re not open for business,” said Rhea in a stunningly stupid statement of the obvious.
The woman drew back her hood, revealing a long fall of red waves, and glared at Rhea with piercing green eyes. “What the hell have you done?”
“I... Huh?” She couldn’t seem to form words. She’d seen this woman before. In Leo’s vision and with the Hunt. The Valkyrie, Kára, was standing in Rhea’s burned-out shop.
“You’ve let him loose. Your job was to protect him, not free his pettiest self and condemn him to wander as a wraith for all eternity.”
“My job?”
“I came to you in good faith because you had the gift of vision. You promised to protect him.”
The power of speech was coming back to her, awe giving way to irritation. “Look, lady, I’ve never met you before in my life, and I sure as hell never promised you anything.”
A look of supreme annoyance overtook the flawless features. “I forget how small the human mind is.” As the words left her mouth, the fur she wore shimmered and transformed into a living coat, her hair blending with the fur, pointed ears rising from it, and the fur covering a face that ended in a petite black snout.
“Vixen.” Rhea shoved back hair in desperate need of product and a cut. She’d been played by the Valkyrie who’d enslaved Leo. God, she was stupid. “So I guess you’re not my fylgja after all.”
“Really, now. Why would your fylgja look like this?” Vixen smoothed her hands over her disturbingly curvaceous fox form. “You’re so simple.”
“Could you please stop looking like that? You’re kind of creeping me out right now.”
The fox shrugged, and with a little shake of her hair, she was a woman once more. At least, she seemed to be. Who knew what she really was.
“So what are you telling me? That Leo’s lost his hugr permanently? He told me he remembered everything, that he was finally himself.”
“He is himself. The self he believes to be central to his being. And he won’t give it up without a fight.”
“So it can be given up. He can be restored?”
“If he does so voluntarily before the Hunt has scattered on the wind for another year. It ought to have ended on the longest night, but I have managed to assure the Hunt will linger until Yuletide’s end. You must persuade the munr to take back his other selves before the Hunt has ended or he will be forever broken. You have also left the Chieftain of the Hunt vulnerable to his enemies. They will seek to destroy him.”
Neck aching from looking up at her, Rhea stood, though the Valkyrie still loomed over her. “You said other ‘selves.’ Are you saying he’s missing more than one?”
“It is only the will that remains within his skin. His hugr, his fylgja, even his hamingja will be lost on the wind.”
“So Leo has a fylgja, too?”
“Of course he does. Every man does. And every woman. Except for you, that is.”
Rhea breathed in too sharply and nearly choked on her own spit. “Wait, wait.” She pounded on her chest, coughing until she caught her breath. “Wait a minute. Why wouldn’t I have one if everyone else does? Is there something wrong with me?” She’d always suspected there must be.
The Valkyrie smiled as though Rhea had said something adorable and amusing, stepping close to her. “Because you are a fylgja.” Rhea felt her face go white as the Valkyrie stroked a finger along her jaw. “And your sister is yours.”
“My...my sister? You mean Theia?”
“Monozygotic twins are always each the fylgja of the other.”
“So you’re not saying I’m only half a person or something.”
“Oh, goodness, no. You have all your other selves. It’s only the fylgja that splits off in twinning. Every human has a complete set of selves otherwise.”
Rhea shook her head to clear it. “Okay, let’s forget about me for a moment. What was the other thing you said? The other self Leo’s missing?”
“The hamingja. It’s not so much a separate self as his personal embodiment of luck. Without it, he will be plagued with misfortune.”
Becoming chilled in the open room, Rhea tucked her hands into her pockets and began to pace. “And how am I supposed to help him get them back? Especially if he doesn’t want them? Where do I even find them?”
“The hamingja will come on its own if it chooses to, once the others have returned. The Chieftain, his hugr, you have seen. He leads the Hunt nightly. And his fylgja would have shown itself to you. It accompanies his warden spirit, watching from the shadows.”
“You mean the black wolf?”
“I cannot say how it will appear to you, but if you have seen this wolf near him, it is most likely the one. You must seek its aid.”
Rhea regarded her with mistrust. “And why can’t you do any of this? Aren’t you the one who did this to him? Shouldn’t you have been protecting him? Why can’t you round up the troops?”
The Valkyrie fluffed the collar of her fur beneath her throat. “Leo left me.”
“But I’ve seen you riding with him in the Hunt.”
“My spirit rides with the Chieftain, yes. But he has not recognized me since...”
>
“Since you gave the Norns his mind.”
Her preternaturally green eyes went wide. “How do you know of this?”
Rhea shrugged. “I see things.”
“Wyrd could simply have healed him,” she said bitterly. “But she refused. And I couldn’t let him die. Not after all we had been through. I let her take his mind as she had taken his will. That is when he came to know me as Faye in his waking hours. He didn’t remember Kára, who saved him, who gave up everything for him. So I became what he needed me to be, and I helped him when his memory failed him. But eventually, he left. So I whispered in his hugr’s ear to encourage him to choose someone worthy to be his human protector.”
“But why would I be worthy?”
“Because of your blood. And because of your strength. I admit I was surprised at first to see whom he’d chosen.” She smiled again, almost fondly. “But though thou be but little, thou art fierce.”
The reference made Rhea smile despite herself. She’d played Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in high school.
Faye sighed and drew up her collar, once again all business. “He cannot know I have spoken to you. You must convince him to do what is necessary on your own. And you must ensure no harm comes to his hugr in the meantime. I will ride beside him in the Hunt, as Kára, and try to protect him as I always have. But you must stop the one who has been seeking him before he comes too close.” Faye turned toward the door as she spoke, and Rhea took a step after her.
“What one? How do I stop him?”
But when she followed Faye through the door, there was no one on the other side. And Leo was coming around the corner.
Chapter 18
Rhea pondered how to broach the subject of Leo’s missing selves without mentioning Faye as they drove to her place. Had he deliberately deceived her this morning, or was it as Faye said, that he believed himself to be the self he was meant to be?
His eyes were on her as she parked the car. “Anything wrong?”
“Why would anything be wrong?”
“You’re very quiet. I know it must have been hard seeing the place like that. After everything you put into it.”
“Yeah, it sucks,” Rhea agreed with a sigh. “But I talked to the owners of the shopping center, and they’re going to refund the January rent—eventually. They’re assessing the structural damage, and it might even be possible to move back in after they’ve made repairs in a couple of months. In the meantime, I’m going to have to borrow money from Ione to cover rent for my apartment. I’m royally screwed. Of course, I do have the check from Brock, since I deposited it electronically before it got burned up.”
“Brock?”
Rhea studied his face. He didn’t have a clue who Brock was. Which meant Faye was right. This wasn’t the whole Leo.
“You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you? My first client. The guy you punched in the face.”
Leo was obviously trying to hide his surprise. “Of course. I’d forgotten that was his name.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Leo frowned at her. “What do you mean, I didn’t? It slipped my mind for a moment. Brock Dressler, the neo-Nazi asshole I punched on the street.”
That was unexpected. Maybe Faye was wrong.
He flexed his knuckles, still lightly scabbed over from the encounter, though the cuts on his fingertips had already healed. Rhea wondered if the physical evidence had jogged his memory. He’d said before he had flashes of memory from Leo the Dull’s daily life.
“How are your fingers, by the way?”
Leo’s expression was guarded. “Fingers?”
“The paper cuts you got when you were putting up those posters for me the other day. Looks like they healed up.”
He turned his palms up and nodded as if he knew what she was talking about. “Yeah, it was nothing. I barely remember it happening.”
“You don’t remember it because that’s not what happened, Leo. You tore down some racist propaganda and there were razor blades on the back. You sliced open the tips of your fingers pretty badly. There were bandages and everything. But you don’t remember because it happened when your hugr was occupying the skin, and since you heal so quickly, there wasn’t anything to jog your memory. And your hugr isn’t in there, is he?”
“Rhea...”
“Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You said you remembered everything.”
Leo leaned back against the seat. “I meant that I remembered the night. That I was still me.”
“But you knew that wasn’t how I took it.”
“Are we going to argue about his precious soul, now? About your promises to him?”
“It’s your soul, too.”
“Well, I don’t need it. I’ve never felt the lack of it. I am perfectly whole, mitt hjärta. I promise you. We don’t need him. You don’t need him.”
“What’s that mean? Meet...?”
Leo blushed. For a man without a soul, he seemed sensitive enough. “Mitt hjärta. ‘My heart.’ It’s a term of—”
“I can tell what it is.” Rhea took his hand, and Leo raised her knuckles to his mouth and brushed them with his lips. Maybe he didn’t need the hugr. But the hugr needed him. She couldn’t just abandon it. And Faye had said he would be forever broken if the hugr was lost.
They got out of the car without further discussion, taking the salvaged supplies and Leo’s new duffel bag of clothes up the stairs to her apartment.
When they’d stepped inside, Leo tossed his bag on the floor and took the shopping bag from Rhea’s hand to set it down carefully before closing the door.
He pressed her back against it, his lips at her temple. “Let me make you forget him,” he whispered. His amber-resin scent was intoxicating.
Rhea closed her eyes. Maybe just for a night. She could figure out what to do about Leo’s broken pieces in the morning. Maybe just for tonight she could let him do this—let him pull her shirt over her head and toss it on the couch. Let him open her bra with one expert snap of his finger and thumb and slide the straps down her arms, making her nipples tighten in the cold air. Let him unzip her pants as he bent to suck one hard nipple into his mouth until she was moaning. Let the pants pool at her ankles while he dropped to his knees and peeled her panties down with his teeth. Maybe just for tonight she could let him open her with his tongue and—
“Oh. God.”
Her knees nearly buckled as he took the gold ring between his teeth and tugged while his tongue curled inside her and lapped at the wetness dripping over his cheeks. The orgasm was powerful and immediate, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Rhea felt the room going gray.
“Rhea?” She came around to find Leo lightly slapping at her cheek. “You still with me?”
Rhea nodded and managed to make a vague murmur in the affirmative.
Scooping her up into his arms, he carried her to the bedroom like a bride over a threshold, letting her jeans slip to the floor, and laid her gently on the bed. “You scared the hell out of me. Has that happened to you before?”
She rubbed her bare arms in the cold air. “Can’t say it has.”
Leo placed the fleece throw from the end of the bed around her shoulders. “Where’s your thermostat?”
“In the hallway next to the kitchen.”
Leo went to switch it on and came back to wrap her in his arms. Pretty attentive for a soulless munr. How could Rhea even be sure Faye was telling her the truth, anyway? Maybe she just wanted him back in one piece so he’d remember her and return to her. But keeping Leo fragmented just to keep him from remembering some past love would be a pretty shitty thing to do.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, startling her.
“You do?”
“You’re wondering if you can put me back together.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
Leo shrugged, tightening his hold on her. “It doesn’t matter. It can’t be done.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I remember the curse. The original one, spoken by the Norn. ‘If the bonds be not broken ’ere the dawn, the wandering spirit will come anon. Should the will be loosed before the light, the spirit thought shall swift take flight; an it not return by break of day, the wandering wraith shall hie away.’”
The wandering wraith. Faye had called the hugr the same. But Faye had told her the hugr could be persuaded to return. Leo either didn’t know there was a remedy to the curse or he didn’t want Rhea to know. She considered revealing what she’d learned from the Valkyrie, but his reaction the other night when Rhea had mentioned the Kára of his past had been explosive. Keeping it from him felt awkward and made her uncomfortable, but if he knew about Faye, he might be the one to take flight and never return.
The real question was whether Rhea could even find any of Leo’s other selves. “Second sight” notwithstanding, the Hunt only appeared to her when it wanted to. She hadn’t sought it out. How could she seek out the invisible? Then the obvious hit her. She happened to know two people who possessed the ability to communicate with shades. And what was a shade but a disembodied soul?
Leo nuzzled her ear. “You’re awfully quiet. Just sleepy?”
The suggestion made her yawn, and Rhea nodded. “It’s been a long day.” She looked over her shoulder with a grin. “And you kind of wiped me out, to be honest. Not that I’m complaining.”
“So you’re not avoiding me.”
“Why would I be avoiding you?”
Leo sighed against her shoulder. “You realize you keep rephrasing and repeating my questions instead of answering them. It’s making me feel a bit suspicious.”
She sucked at keeping secrets. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t realize I was doing that.” She turned to face him. “But I am not avoiding you.”
Leo stroked his hand down her arm beneath the throw. “I mean, it’s perfectly fine if you want to go to sleep.” The Mjölnir tattoo brushed her side, making her shiver. There was something about that ink that was like an aphrodisiac. “I’m perfectly fine, is what I’m saying.” He drew her closer, and she could feel the hardness through his jeans against her bare thigh.