I open the book and begin reading, patting the bed so Loki will curl at my side, one paw on my arm. I have no idea how much time goes by, how many hours I spend with my nose in the book. I would have read long into the night, except that Bestemor knocks on my door with her ladel.
“Elskede, dinner’s ready. Fårikål, just like you like it, with homemade bread. Come and eat. You’re wasting away.” She turns and walks to the kitchen, lifting her feet with deliberate, pain-staking purpose. Bestemor has strong feelings about old people. Old people, the ones on the way out, shuffle when they walk. She refuses to shuffle.
The fact that two weeks ago the sound of her feet dragging in a slow shuffle filled my ears and sent chills down my spine shakes me.
Loki jumps off the bed and trots after Bestemor. She turns to give me an expectant flash of her gold eyes over her copper shoulder, and I scramble to follow them.
At the table, Bestemor spoons out my favorite stew into the white and blue bowls she loves so much, and Loki parks herself at my grandmother’s feet, I’m sure hoping for some scraps. I dig in, filling my mouth with a huge spoonful that scorches my tongue.
“Not so fast, skatt! There’s no rush!” She sits across from me and dips her spoon with a dainty twist of her wrist. She blows on the stew and eats like a lady.
I put my spoon down and hold cold milk in my mouth in an attempt to combat the blisters I’m sure are coating the roof of my mouth. I swallow. “Bestemor?”
“Yes?”
I’m at that place where asking for more information is just going to hurt. And I don’t want to add my grandmother to the long list of people who let me down. But I need to know.
“I was reading about Norse mythology. I read about Valkyries.”
She sets her spoon down and folds her hands in her lap. Her bright blue eyes apologize across the table, so I know for sure this isn’t going to end well.
“Is any of it…true? Are there really shieldmaidens? What would they even do in regular life? I mean, they’re all about war and battle, right?”
The kitchen yawns around our silence. Bestemor picks at the blue threads that embroider the edges of her snowy napkins. She opens her mouth, and I lean forward, eager to listen, but she snaps it shut again. Her lips pucker closed, the wrinkles around her mouth more pronounced than usual.
“Wren.” She sighs and her brittle shoulders sag. “Oh, elskede, I hoped that our fate wouldn’t find you. It was a stupid hope.”
I push my bowl out of the way and reach across the table, grab her hand, rub my thumb along the tissue-paper skin. “Just tell me. Please. So much is happening, and I don’t understand any of it.”
She shakes her head, her white hair fluttering like swans’ feathers. “I don’t, either. Not completely. I promise you, if I had answers, I wouldn’t keep them from you. But I don’t, not really.”
“Do you know about the Valkyrie?”
She blinks a few times. “In ancient times, the Valkyrie were women of battle. They chose the bravest souls and took them away to Valhalla. When the wars ended, the Valkyrie remained, but changed. They became women of power over human emotions and desires. I have a very small amount of the gift. Just a pinch, really. Your mother…oh she had loads!” Bestemor laughs. “It was her undoing. She could attract anything, anyone. And when she set her sights on your father, I knew it was trouble. He was the first person in her entire life who had any power to resist her. I didn’t understand why then.”
“Why?” My fingers itch to pull out the secret, never-tell-anyone-not-even-Nevaeh box full of pictures of my hip, gorgeous parents that I have squirreled deep under my bed. Very few of the shots have me in them. I guess because once I came to be, I ended their hipness. And sent them running across the country, far, far away from me.
Bestemor rocks my hand back and forth and squeezes her fingers around it. “Because he had power, too. His family, well, they were different and strange in their own way. But powerful. Charms, looks, magic, it didn’t work on your father. He had his own tricks.” She laughs softly, but she doesn’t sound like she thinks any of this is funny. “What do you know, elskede? What do you know about Loki?”
“I know that she’s been making life crazy,” I grumble.
“Not easier?” There’s an edge of panic in Bestemor’s voice.
“Maybe. I guess.” I sigh. “But there’s a lot that isn’t working. I don’t know what I’m doing or why. I can hear her, too. In my head. I can hear what she says to me.”
Bestemor’s hands still. “Are you sure?” She asks with a hitch in her voice, desperate for my answer. “Answer me as honestly as you can. You’re sure it’s her voice?”
“I’m sure.” I look at her now-trembling hand. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I was warned,” she says, her voice suddenly scratchy. “Go get me a small glass of akavit. Right away!”
I can barely pour the stuff, the stink of alcohol is so overwhelming, but Bestemor throws it back like a sailor in a pub, and I watch with my mouth hanging open.
“Skaat, the truth is I don’t know how powerful you are, but I was warned that your power might be extremely strong. And if you can hear Loki, it must be.” She pulls me toward her, and I half want to fall onto her lap like I would when I was a little girl. But I can’t now. She’s old and frail and her lap won’t support me. I kneel at her side instead. She smoothes my hair with her soft hands. “As long as no one from your father’s hometown knows about this, we’ll be fine.”
Uh-oh.
“Um, Bestemor.” We just look back and forth, saying everything we need to say without uttering a single word.
“Who?” she demands.
“Sakura. My cousin.”
“Sakura Kochi?” Bestemor clutches at her heart , and I grab her shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” I demand.
“Oh, elskede,” she murmurs, so low I almost can’t hear. “I think we’re in much bigger trouble than you realize.”
Chapter 13
“Sakura.” Bestemor purses her lips and shakes her head. “I knew that child would grow up to cause trouble way back when she was a tiny thing pulling your hair and stealing your toys.”
“I’ve met her before?” I wrack my brain to dredge up some decade-old image of Sakura as a little girl. All I can picture is a pink-haired Bratz doll, and I’m pretty sure that’s just something I’ve seen on a toy store shelf. “Did she always have pink hair?”
“Pink?” Bestemor rolls her light blue eyes. “What a drama queen she’s become. No, skaat, she was just an ordinary little snot-nosed brat with nothing to distinguish her except her jealousy.”
Cold. My grandmother is a lovely woman with bubbly kindness in her heart for animals, small children, even a very annoying Jehovah’s witness couple who’ve been visiting every other week since I was in nursery school. Sakura is a dumb skank, but that’s my very immature teenage response to her. Right?
“Why is she even here?” I watch my grandmother pace.
“It’s all jealousy! Of course. I should have known it would come to this. That woman always hated Ryuu.” Bestemor shakes her hands out at her bony wrists.
“Who? Who hated my father?” My voice sticks in my throat. I close my eyes, and I can see him no matter how many times I’ve tried to rub his image out of my brain. His arms bulge with muscle and are twined with tattoos of dragons. I bounce in his embrace, my baby hands tight around his neck. His black, shiny hair hangs close to mine, the intersecting strands identical except that his are thick and strong, mine wispy and baby-soft. When he turns his head to kiss me, I see his eyes.
Golden.
“His sister. Your Aunt. Hina.” She spits the name out like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth.
“Aunt Hina?” I know very little about my extended family, and the name ‘Hina’ leaves me with a total blank.
“Hina is the daughter of the woman who destroyed your grandparents’ marriage and made your poor father’s life a living hell. Hina was
raised as a princess in that house and your father was driven out! Disgraceful.” Bestemor shakes her silvery white head. “And I see she raised her daughter to keep the venom spewing.”
“Sakura?” It’s strange to think of Sakura having a mother. It makes so much more sense to think of her hatching from a huge, reptilian egg.
“Sakura.” Bestemor motions for me to pour her another glass, which I do not think is a great idea, but I know better to cross this woman when she’s made her mind up to do whatever it is she wants to do. “Tell me exactly what she said to you. Exactly.”
Now, under the pressurized glare of my two-sheets-to-the-wind grandmother, my mind shuts down. “Uh, she was pissed about Loki.” As if on cue, Loki trots down the hall and sits at my grandmother’s feet.
“What about? Think!”
I swallow hard and grasp at the strands of my memory, but it’s like a fog rolled in. I can hear Sakura’s phony little girl laugh in the recesses of my mind. “She’s in my head. I can hear her, and I’m confused.” My voice sounds far away in my ears, and I have to hold my head in my hands as the laughter grows louder, because it feels like my head might actually roll off my neck.
Bestemor grabs my shoulders as I slump forward, no longer able to stand. The lemony waxed linoleum is cool against my cheek, but it brings no relief from the splitting pain in my head, so sharp and cruel, it presses an acid wave of nausea at the back of my throat. I slit my eyes open, hoping that her pinch of shield-warrior-ness gives her some kind of ability to kick evil huss cousins out of her granddaughter’s head. But the terror on her face tells me that I’m on my own when it comes to telekinetic mental sabotage at the hands of Sakura.
Fantastic.
I swallow hard and try, really try, to squash the echoing laughter. I push at her. I stomp on her. I fight hard just to get back on my own two feet and keep my knees from buckling under me.
Laugh back. Laugh louder.
It’s Loki, her voice an intense balm to the burn that singes my brain. I focus on her voice, follow her instructions, no matter how ridiculous they sound. In my head, my own laugh breaks out.
At first it’s a little nervous laugh, no big deal. But it gains volume and force, and soon it’s a big belly laugh that has just a tinge of evil villainess. My laugh gets louder and more dominant, and it makes a little shiver break over my neck because of its sheer power.
Loki tugs at my pant leg, and I’m shocked to realize I was laughing out loud like some evil witch in front of a quivering princess. Bestemor stares at me, her fingers pressed to her lips.
I feel wild, alive, full of power, but I snap myself back into reality and quiet down. Sakura isn’t in my head anymore, and the scene from the party zips back into my memory like it had been there all along. I scoop Loki in my arms, careful not to crush her in a ferociously grateful hug.
Free of the shackles of my cousin’s mental interference, I feel jittery with energy. “She said that Loki’s name is actually Kaji, and that she’s not in the right hands. I mean, because she’s in my hands. Like my hands are the wrong hands. And she was super pissed when I called Loki a ‘pet.’ And other than that, her voice in my head told me that I’m a big idiot and a huge loser and not someone who is remotely a challenge for her to take down in whatever her lame evil plot to rule the world is.” I say it all in one long whoosh of breath, and once I’m done, I sag back against the fridge. I let Loki back down and she heads to her place at Bestemor’s feet.
“This is far worse than I imagined. Much worse that I thought.” Bestemor feeds Loki little tidbits of food under the table. “We need to find your mother and father. We need to bring them here. To protect you.”
I snort. “She has pink hair. I don’t need any protection from her.” Bestemor raises one pure white eyebrow at me, reminding me that a minute ago I was on the floor clutching my temples, my cousin’s evil mental torture wringing me out like an old dishrag.
“We need to find them.” Bestemor heads to the old, gorgeous desk with a million pigeon holes in the corner of the living room where she writes all of the household bills. She reaches her fingers in and pulls a small address book out of one of the holes with a sureness that proves she’s done it before. She sits at the table, and I look over her shoulder as she rifles through tissue-thin pages.
Her fingers flip to the very back and find my mother’s name; Robin Jelle and the two pages of addresses underneath it. Most are apartments, and most are in big cities scattered across the entire United States. Detroit, Chicago, Austin, LA, New York City, and Las Vegas are a few cities, and sometimes there are three or four more specific addresses under each city heading. My mother moves often and fast, and all of those entries probably represent less than a quarter of her actual addresses.
The last one says she’s in Boulder, Colorado. It seems a little granola for my mother, but her identity changes with the wind or her newest love interest, or the current of the modern bullshit art scene, so maybe she traded her ironically retro snakeskin boots for Birkenstocks and let her Debby Harry white blonde bob mellow to her natural long, wavy gold. I can picture her with an awesome tan and a blindingly white smile, looking totally chic and sweatless as she hikes through pines and ravines and talks about Gaia and chakras.
“This address could already be out of date.” I reach an arm around Bestemor and press my fingertip to the entry.
I argue with myself that it isn’t that pathetic to hope that when we call, she might actually pick up. That I might hear her voice. That this whole situation might interest her enough to leave her current bearded, gnarly-toe-nailed boyfriend and fly out on Bestemor’s dime to see me. Maybe this time I’ll be old enough, interesting enough, cool enough to convince her to hang around for more than a few weeks.
Maybe.
“There’s only one way to find out.” Bestemor grabs the old phone that’s been around forever. It still has one of those coiled cords and it weighs a good ten pounds, but I can’t talk her into getting a cheaper cordless version. Nevermind a cell phone. As far as Bestemor is concerned, a cell phone is one step away from a flying car.
I can tell we shouldn’t be holding our breath as the phone rings. And rings and rings. Finally an answering machine clicks on. I can hear some kind of music playing, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. My mother is one of those insane people who believe you’d like to hear “Across the Universe” by the Beatles in its entirety before leaving her a message she’ll most likely never return.
Bestemor doesn’t give up easily. I guess she can’t afford to, being my crazy mother’s mother. She waits out the song and the cheery message about ‘knowing what to do’ that I can hear my mother’s voice trill, and when the beep sounds, my grandmother leaves a message that’s no nonsense. “Robin, this is an emergency. It concerns our Wren. You need to get back to New Jersey immediately. I’ll leave our number just in case someone else hears this message before you do and can contact us with any information about how to reach you.”
Bestemor recites the phone number that was my mother’s childhood phone number and hangs up with a click, then holds her hand on the phone for a few moments longer than she needs to. We file back to the kitchen, clean up after dinner, and Besteomor kisses me goodnight, looking more exhausted than she has in the last few days. I vow to myself that I’ll make more dinners, not complain so much, start dealing with my problems on my own. I’ll do anything to keep that haunted look of pure confusion out of her eyes.
Back in my room, I collect my calc notebook and put it in my backpack and lie down with the books that Vee picked up for me, Loki stationed like a sentinel at my side. I’ve lost all track of time when the sound of my truck’s engine forces me to the window.
Jonas is sitting in the driver’s seat, one leg dangling out on the street. His clothes are filthy with grease streaks, and I can see from his slumped shoulders that he’s beyond exhausted. There’s a new battery next to the truck wheel.
I poke my head out of the window. “Jonas
?”
He looks up and smiles, cuts the engine, hops the fence and stands under my window. “Bestemor gave me the spare.” He holds up the key. “I know you’re not into me doing you any favors, but if I didn’t replace the battery, I’d have to have picked you up for school tomorrow anyway. Not that I mind, but if you and I are going to spend more time together, I’d prefer to know for sure it was because you wanted to.”
The irony of that statement hits home. “I want to. It’s just a bad idea.”
I want him to ask me to explain, but he gives me a tight smile and turns back to the street.
“Hey!”
He turns back around.
“Come here?”
He walks back under my window and tilts his head up to look at me.
“I’m being weird,” I stumble.
“Not more than usual.” He tries a smile out, but it falls mostly flat.
“You know how you just said you wanted to know whether I was spending time with you because I liked you or if it was because I had no other option?”
“Yes.”
“I know how that feels. I get it. And that’s why I’ve been weird.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need a ride from you. There’s no ulterior motive on my end, if that’s what you’re thinking.” His eyes are dark grey-blue and startlingly cold. It’s unexpected, like visiting the beach in February and realizing that the happy blue waves of summer get mean, choppy, and dark when winter sets in.
“I know that. It’s, um…” I glance back at Loki, curled in a ball on my bed. I drop my voice to a whisper. “It’s Loki.”
“Your fox?” He raises his light eyebrows and moves his mouth over to the right side of his face.
“She influences things. You know that. What if she influences…you?” I twist my hands and wait for Jonas to answer.
“You think I hang around because of the fox?” His jaw tightens. I watch the tightness spread down his neck and make his Adam’s apple stick out.
“You’ve hung around more since Loki.” I want to hide my face in my hands.
Inherit Page 10