“At Wren’s house with her grandmother. Svane Jelle.”
His aunt’s eyes go hard when she hears my grandmother’s name. “Svane? I thought her mind was long gone.”
That’s it! About to faint or not, I’m not going to let this rude, pushy blond twit insult my grandmother. “Shut your mouth! There isn’t a thing wrong with my grandmother, you bitch!”
It would have been very satisfying to see the look on her pointy little face, but the dizziness I’ve been fighting since gym class finally takes over and buckles my knees. Black spots appear in front of my eyes and I slump over, headed for the shiny hardwood floor at an alarming speed. Suddenly Jonas’s arm shoots out and catches me around the waist.
“Sit her down.” Magda’s voice is watery in my ears. I feel a cup pressed against my lips, and I taste something that has to be made out of earwax and Brussels sprouts.
“Ugh!”
“Stop whining and drink,” Magda demands. I obey without really wanting to. Something about her voice makes it difficult to ignore her commands. “And start from the beginning. Who is this girl, Jonas?”
Jonas stumbles through a long, drawn-out explanation of who I am that starts with us finger-painting together in kindergarten. I feel my ears burn as more and more details about me spill out. How long has Jonas been watching me? He’s spooning out so much information, Magda has to rush him along a few times. Finally, he gets to the present, and his version of what’s happening is unsettlingly accurate. I didn’t realize he knew so much.
How and why does he know so much?
Magda taps a French-manicured nail against the now-empty glass she’s still holding and looks down at me like she’s viewing a particularly creepy animal at a zoo exhibit.
“Your mother is Robin Jelle.”
It’s not a question, so I choose not to answer it.
“I had no idea Robin’s child had mixed magic blood. Fascinating. Svane has been very discreet. But why?”
“Discreet about what?” Much as it gagged me to drink the earwax and Brussels sprout mix, it already helped. I can sit up without feeling like my head will roll off my shoulders, and I can string together multiple thoughts without giggling. Definite improvement.
“About you,” she snaps impatiently. “Today when you channeled your powers, what was different from the times you’ve done it before? Why did you exhaust yourself?”
“I’ve never done that before.” And I’ll never do it again. Not only did I almost maim someone (no matter how much she may have deserved it), I had to be carried out of class like a ragdoll and still feel weak and jittery.
Magda purses her lips at me. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve never felt that or done what I did today before. Today was the first and last time.”
“No wonder you’re shaking like a leaf. You need training so you can properly harness this. So you broke through a witch’s shield on your very first attempt?” She smiles a smug little grin.
“Technically, it was my second attempt. She blocked the first one.” I stand up, straighten my blazer and kilt, and attempt to look like I’m not intimidated. “Thanks for the gross drink. I’m not interested in any training or anything, so forget that. Jonas, please take me home. If Nurse Hatchet called Bestemor, she’s probably worried sick. Can we go?”
“If this cousin of yours is as powerful as I think she is, you’re going to need to do nothing but train, Wren. She’s had a lifetime of training along with your Kochi bloodline, and that makes her a formidable opponent. You’ve humiliated her and bested her in a battle of strength. She’s not going to forget, and she certainly won’t let it go. I’ll be here when you come to your senses and decide to fight for what’s yours.” Her voice is firm and kind, but her eyes are empty of any emotion but crude, violent hunger. It’s reptilian, and it makes me as edgy as a cobra in my arms would.
“Yeah, okay. Jonas?” I cross my arms and tap my sock-clad foot.
“Thank you, Aunt Magda,” Jonas says. She puts her cheek out so he can kiss it. I roll my eyes.
We walk back down the long hallway, put our shoes on and get into the truck in silence.
“What’s with her? Why does she have Woodstock in her front yard if the inside of her house is like some modern art museum?” I take one last look at the funky front yard as Jonas pulls onto the street.
“Magda is one of the most powerful shieldmaidens in the United States. She’s extremely secretive, and the front of her house is a disguise, to throw anyone who might be looking for her home off the path. Would you ever imagine she lived there after you met her?”
“No.” I laugh. “Definitely doesn’t fit her anal retentive personality.”
“I know she can be a little gruff, but she’s really knowledgeable. I think you should take her offer seriously. You need training or you’ll hurt yourself. My aunt isn’t the nicest person, but she’s an extremely skilled shieldmaiden.” He keeps his eyes on the road.
His sudden interest in my safety and future jumps me to the question of how he knew so much about my past, and I’m about to demand answers. “By the way, how did you know so much about me and all this? We’ve hardly talked about it. And have you been stalking me or something? ‘Cause you know a whole lot that I don’t remember sharing, Jonas.” All this time, we’ve been closer than I imagined, could have shared so much, and I had no idea. It smacks of complete and total unfairness.
He drums on his steering wheel maniacally. “My grandmother told me who you were when we were little kids. Before she died. She told me to take care of you, that you were stronger than even Aunt Magda and someday you’d need me. She had Trollsyn.” I raise my eyebrows at him. “Second sight. She could see pieces of the future.”
“Your grandmother could see the future?” In an odd way, it makes me feel good. I’m not the weirdest person I know. Or the only weird person I know, anyway. Jonas has been so cool about all of this, and there’s a concrete reason. He knows weird inside out.
“She was a really cool lady. Bestemor reminds me of her sometimes.” His voice is even and emotionless, but he’s stopped drumming. His fists hold the steering wheel with so much force his knuckles are white.
“I’m sorry you lost her.” There’s a little squeeze/kick/punch combo on my heart. I can’t imagine life without Bestemor, and since her health already took a huge dip once before, I never take having her around for granted. “So your family is full of shieldmaidens, too?” It might seem ridiculous if I hadn’t, in one week, gotten a lucky fox from Japan, heard it speak to me, had my cousin invade my head, and controlled some kind of eerily powerful energy that turns me into a fainting damsel in distress. My capacity for accepting weird opens wider with every passing hour.
“Norway had a purge a few decades ago, so a few powerful families moved to this area where no one knew our pasts. Our families were really close once, you know.”
“What happened? And, no, I don’t know. I never know anything. Why didn’t anyone tell me about any of this?” Worse than being some shieldmaiden/witch hybrid is the fact that every single person who knows anything about this knows a whole crapload more than I do.
“Your mother and my aunt were super competitive. There’re rules about being a shieldmaiden and how to use the powers, and they were playing with fire, I guess trying to one up each other. I don’t know the whole story, but I have a feeling something pretty bad went down. That’s what my grandmother said. Anyway, your grandmother sent your mother to a college out of state, away from my Aunt Magda. The families decided it would be best if there wasn’t much interaction between the two girls anymore, so they just shut it all down between them.”
“Are our families feuding or something?”
“No.” His laugh is tired, like he’s searching for a reason to laugh even though it’s an old, unfunny joke. “This isn’t Romeo and Juliet. Your mom and my aunt grew up. My aunt has been a squeaky clean rule follower, one of the strictest shieldmaiden leaders in a long time. And I guess your m
om has stayed pretty far away from the life, right?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” We pull up outside Bestemor’s house.
“My brother and I will go pick up your truck later if you want.”
“About last night…”
He holds his hands up over the steering wheel and shakes his head. “Forget it. Seriously. You were right. You are right.”
“Right?” It should be a good thing that I’m right, right? But it feels like I swallowed something disgusting. More disgusting than earwax and Brusselss sprouts.
“Yeah. About the whole thing with your luck and it not being real or whatever. Not that it is. Or isn’t. But I thought, when I saw Loki, I thought you might be a little different, you know, but not a shieldmaiden. That my grandma had been wrong all those years. And then, today, when you did that in gym, well it’s obvious you are a shieldmaiden, and a really strong one.” He looks at me, his eyes sad. “I’ve been around shieldmaidens my entire life, and, no offense, but I can’t date one. No way. But we should stay friends. We kind of have to, actually, since I pretty much made a vow to my grandmother that I’d watch out for you.”
I had been holding out hope to be with Jonas, but I never actually went for it. I had the chance to love him back, make him fall hard, and I blew it because I was way too chicken and confused and full of excuses that seemed so good at the time. What were those excuses again? Now he’s got a reason to not want to date me, and it seems like he’s just agreeing with my earlier idiocy.
“Sure. Friends,” I agree too eagerly. “Friends would be perfect. So, here’s my key. To the truck. Friend! Because, yes, I would like it if you and your brother picked it up. As a friendly favor.”
I stumble to get out of this confined space and away from him. I feel like I’ve been shredded, blended, beat up, wrung out, and the last thing I want to do is sit here while Jonas dumps me permanently before I ever got the chance to be with him. And it’s all my fault, a sentiment that seems to solidify with every step I take away from him.
“Wait,” he says, and I rush back to his truck so fast it would be embarrassing if I had enough sense to care. “Please take my advice about Magda. I know she comes off as kind of a bitch, but you have a lot of power, and it will keep draining you until you learn to use it correctly. There’s no better teacher.”
“Oh. Okay.” Not at all what I was hoping for. “Thanks.”
I head back to the house and force myself not to look back and watch Jonas’s truck pull away. I’m so ready to get in my bed. I open the screen door and my stomach turns.
The kitchen is turned upside down, reduced to complete and total chaos. Utensils litter the floor, the sugar jar is turned over, the tablecloth is draped over the back of the only standing kitchen chair, the refrigerator door is wide open. In the middle of it all, Bestemor stands, hand pressed to her mouth, eyes streaming with tears.
“Oh, elskede, I’ve lost it. I can’t think of what, but I’ve lost it!”
Chapter 17
“Bestemor?” I have her wrapped in my arms, and she feels smaller since the last time I saw her. It feels like I’m the adult in the room and she’s the child. I’m used to feeling that way with my parents, but Bestemor has been my foundation for so long, this sudden role reversal makes the house of our love feel like it’s been sucked into a tornado.
Her head nestles on my shoulder, and I stroke her downy hair, my eyes searching the house for signs of a breakin. Maybe she got hit on the head? Maybe she’s only scattered because of the shock? What did she lose?
I convince her to get into her bed, make her a cup of tea, hold her hand until she falls into a fitful sleep, and head back to pick up the kitchen.
I wanted to ask her what she remembers, what she saw, but her eyes were too wild, darting around the room like a pair of trapped birds looking for an open window. I can still see them moving erratically under her eyelids in her fretful sleep.
I grab the broom and sweep the scattered sugar into a small pile, my mind whirring a hundred miles an hour. I think about calling Jonas or Vee, but something about this feels too huge to ask them to shoulder. Bestemor is losing her mind again. Stray grains of sugar crunch under my soles as I drag the garbage can over and scoop the white granules in absently. I told myself I wouldn’t take her good health for granted, but how could I help myself? She was doing so well, feeling so good. I wanted that to never change.
I should call Magda. It feels like tiny monkeys have taken residence on my shoulders, clashing cymbals next to my ears over and over. She told me Sakura would take revenge. Did she? Is this it?
Or is there more?
What was Bestemor looking for?
The dustpan clatters to the floor, and I run so fast down the hall I nearly break my neck on the throw rug that bunches under my feet.
“Loki!” I sweep the towels and blankets away. “Loki! Loki!” I drop on my belly and slither under my bed. There’s no sign of her. I creep through Bestemor’s room, search the living room top to bottom, even check the bathroom, the garden, up and down the street, but I know it’s a pointless waste of time.
She’s gone. She’s gone, and I knew there was someone who could harm her, and I did nothing to make sure she’d be okay. She’s gone because of me.
I slide down in front of Mrs. Pottberg’s gorgeous crocuses and let the sobs pour out. My heart aches, my head aches, and soon my eyes ache. I’ve shriveled into something so weak and small, I let myself whimper out the one word I never let myself say.
“Mommy.”
Wish harder.
My head snaps up and I crush two gorgeous purple flowers in my scramble off of the cement. “Loki? Loki where are you?” I look for her sleek red coat, the flash of her white-tipped tail, the glint of her gold eyes, but she’s nowhere to be seen.
Wish harder. Wish harder.
It’s Loki’s voice, more distant than it was before, but in my head, still connected.
I wipe the tears off of my cheeks with my knuckles and sit back down, cross-legged on the street, the smell of crocuses in my nostrils, Loki’s voice in my head.
I pull hard from every strong place in my body. I wrench from my guts, grab from my straight spine, claw from my racing heart, press from my brains and my eyes until I can see the wish like a swirl of sparkling white light in front of my eyes. I hold my hands up and let the wish shoot out from my fingers, and then I contract it. What I want, what I desire, starts to take a solid shape, like a pearl. I pile more on top and it extends to the size of a golfball, a peach, a globe, and finally explodes, all the sparkling, glittering particles swirling like the eye of a hurricane up into the sky.
For the second time today I feel like the life has been sucked out of me, but I can’t stay on the sidewalk, especially because Mrs. Pottberg will kill me if she finds out I wrecked her flowers. I drag myself back home, check Bestemor and see that she’s still fitfully sleeping, and collapse face-down on my bed, the weight of sadness so heavy it feels like there’s a boulder between my shoulder blades.
Tears roll out of my eyes, but it’s not even like I’m crying. I’m way too weak to do anything but let them leak. And, as petrified as I am of losing everything I care about, I’m triple scared over the possibility of getting what I wished for.
Bestemor made the call, but I never believed she’d come. I never for one second considered the fact that she’d get on a plane and come back to us. But that wish was hanging in the air in front of my face, and that made it feel real. I know somewhere deep down that it is real, more real than I’m ready to acknowledge.
I don’t know how long I sleep, but I do know the sound that wakes me up. It’s keys dropping into the crystal bowl on the table in the hall.
It’s a sound I haven’t heard in so many years, I’ve lost count. It’s the sound of…
“Mom?” I press up off the bed and run down the hall.
I want to be a tough bitch. I want to flick my hair over my shoulder, cross my arms, and roll my eyes.
Say something snide and sarcastic. Flick a cigarette and crush it under my heel. If I smoked. And wasn’t in my grandma’s highly flammable old house.
But I don’t do any of those things. I fly down the hall and crash into my mother’s arms. I hug her so hard and tight neither one of us can breathe, and I don’t care how pathetic it is. I’m like a dopey little puppy whose owner keeps ignoring it, leaving it in various kennels, forgetting its favorite treats, paying no attention to new tricks or preferred sleeping positions. But it’s like my human brain melts and gets replaced by a lovable puppy brain when I see her. I love her. I love her. That’s all I can think, over and over.
“Wren.” She smoothes her hand down over my hair. “I’ve missed you.”
Ah, and the spell is broken. I try one last cuddle, but it doesn’t work anymore. I rip away with a quick, mean pull, like the no-nonsense beehive-haired ladies who wax my eyebrows with cruel exactness.
“Bestemor called you. Why didn’t you call back?” All the good, sweet, warm feelings need to get bottled up and tucked away to take out later, when she’s gone again. Right now I’m falling back on old standbys: rejection, guilt, anger, accusation; the main ingredients in the mess that makes up our relationship.
“Wren, I got on a plane the minute the phone call came through. You have no idea how many connections I’ve made! By the way, does Mor still keep the akavit over the piano?”
I watch her walk to the living room, her long gold hair swinging around her hips like she’s the teenager instead of me. Her face has a few more tiny lines here and there, but they only make her look more mature and beautiful. She has Bestemor’s awesome cheekbones and nose, but her eyes are even brighter blue. Like I guessed, she’s immersed in hippie culture. She wears a long flower-printed tunic, jeans, and high moccasin boots with lots of fringe and silver beads. She looks cool.
And it irritates me on so many levels.
She sniffs the bottle and closes her eyes, then takes two swigs, wipes her mouth and puts it back with a sigh.
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