Of course Echo wasn’t in my room. He’d appear when I least expected it. Arrogant reaper.
I did my homework, but I kept checking the clock and my cell phone in case Raine called back. Four o’clock came and went. Five. I put aside my homework and turned on my laptop. Instead of waiting for that flaky reaper, I could do my own investigation, starting with a familiar word—Valkyries.
Females from Norse mythology. Choosers of those killed in battle. The Valkyries walked through the fields of the dead fighters and chose those who lived and those who died. Half of the dead went to the God Odin in Valhalla, while the other half went to a Goddess Freya in Folkvang. The fighters trained daily for the final war between the gods and the evil giants.
The more I read, the more questions I had. Soon I was reading about Norse pantheon, the nine realms, and the gods and goddesses. Hel was the name of the goddess of the underworld. She had a huge hall and watched over those who died of old age and diseases. No wonder Echo kept mentioning Hel’s Hall.
Next, I researched Norns, female deities who controlled destinies like the Fates in Greek mythology. They always appeared in threes. The most famous Norns were maiden giantesses. Their arrival in Asgard ended the golden age of the gods. Norns also arrived when a child was born to determine his or her future. Some were good and protected humans, while others were bad and caused most natural disasters.
I jumped at a knock on my door. Echo? No, of course not. He wouldn’t knock.
Mom stuck her head inside my room. “Dinner.”
“Can I eat up here?”
“No.”
I grabbed my math package and headed downstairs. “I need help with a few math problems.”
It was another hour before we finished dinner and homework. I lingered, needing to ask my mother a few questions.
“You don’t have to do the dishes,” Mom said.
“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind.” I rinsed and put the dishes in the washer. Mom wiped down the counters while Dad went back to his writing. “Mom, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, hun.”
“What exactly did Raine say when she came here?”
Mom rinsed the rag she’d been using and carefully draped it to dry on a peg by the window, her expression preoccupied. “Why? What happened at school?”
“We talked and made up.” Sort of. I closed the dishwasher and pressed the start button. “Raine told me about her father.”
Mom moved closer. “They found him in Central America.”
“I know, but that’s not it. He had, uh, has a brain tumor. He’s dying, Mom. Raine found out a few weeks ago.”
“Oh no.” Mom covered her mouth, her expression horrified. She looked toward the alcove, but Dad was already on his feet walking toward us. He put his arms around her. “The poor dear. I feel awful about the way I treated her when she came here. First the accident then this. I thought…” she sighed. “I thought she was caught up in her image and social standing at school, and that’s why she didn’t try to visit you.”
“So what did she say?” I asked.
“She wanted to see you. She didn’t know you were at PMI. I didn’t see how she couldn’t have known. You weren’t in school for over a month and she never stopped by during that time.”
“She told me her parents took her away for two weeks after the lightning accident,” Dad said. “So she was probably dealing with the situation with her father when she came back.”
I only partially listened to Dad. Raine didn’t know I had been at PMI, so she must have seen me at school every day like everyone else. I was back to the astral projection theory.
“How’s she doing?” Mom asked.
“Not so good. Thanks, Mom.” I kissed her cheek. “Goodnight. Night, Dad.”
Upstairs, I entered my room and froze. Echo sat on my writing chair, demolishing the rest of the pie I’d left by my laptop. He pointed at the screen. “Were you reading this inaccurate crap?”
I closed the door. “Where were you?”
“Working.” He swiveled the chair around and studied me. “Miss me?”
“No.”
He chuckled. “Come here.”
I ignored him and put my math folder on the table. “We agreed you’d be home when I got here.”
“No, we didn’t. You ordered me to be home, so I went home. My home. Next time,” he pointed the fork at me, “be specific. I was waiting for you. Then I remembered your memories were gone and you didn’t remember our little love nest in Italy. Next time, say your bedroom. Come here.”
I didn’t buy that crap about his home, but I needed information locked inside his arrogant head. “I need information, Echo, so stop playing games.”
He put the bowl down, used his legs to propel the chair to where I stood and studied me with a lost puppy expression. “I’m sorry I was late. I just came back from escorting some souls. Do you know how many people die per minute? Thousands.”
“Are you the only reap—Grimnir?”
“No, but I’m the best.” I rolled my eyes and tried to walk around the chair, but he stuck out his leg. “Not so fast, doll-face.” He pulled me down on his lap and wrapped his arm around me before I realized his intentions. His clothes were cold, his cheek freezing against my arm.
I shivered. “Why are you so cold?”
“Hel is frigid. Nonstop blizzards. No natural light. No amount of clothing stops the cold from sipping under your skin. That’s why I always look forward to coming back to Earth and warmth.” His hands slipped under my shirt.
“Whoa! Your hands are like icicles.” I gripped his wrists, pulled his hands from under my shirt, and trapped them between my hands.
“I need your warmth, Cora.”
If I wasn’t holding his hands, I would have thought that was another cheap come-on. Slowly, I rubbed them. He still wore the fingerless gloves and silver Gothic rings with runic etchings. “You should invest in some serious winter gloves, not these.”
“I can’t. There must be skin contact with the scythe for me to engage its runes and use it.” He slid his hands under my shirt again to warm them against my skin. This time I let him.
“So Hel really exists?” I asked.
“The goddess and the place, yes.” He explained who Hel was, daughter of Loki, sister to some serious shape-shifters, and ruler of the land of the dead. “They say her giantess mother is more evil and devious than Loki, and that’s why Odin decided to give Hel a realm to rule so she wouldn’t get into mischief. It backfired of course. Her loyalty is to her father, and she’ll fight with him before the world ends. She even kept Baldur, Odin’s beloved son, after the gods begged her to let him go.”
“Doesn’t that make her and you, by association, evil?”
He chuckled and rubbed his cheeks against my arm. I seriously loved that sexy chuckle of his. “That’s like saying the police and jailers are evil for rounding up scumbags and keeping them behind bars. It’s just a job.”
“I read that you only reap the sick and elderly?”
“And bad people. You know murderers, thieves, and other sociopaths.” He rolled us back to the desk.
“But won’t you be on Hel’s side during the final battle between the gods and the giants?”
“Nope.” He buried his face in my neck, his warm breath teasing my senses. I shuddered. I wanted to hold him longer, but I knew I shouldn’t. He was distracting me from my goal to pump him for info.
I pushed his head away and angled my body so I could see his face, which didn’t help. He really had the most incredible lips ever. Think lower lip and perfectly shaped upper lip. So kissable. The corners of his mouth lifted in a smirk, and my eyes flew to his.
“You keep looking at my lips like that and we’ll be over there,” he nodded at my bed, “making up for lost time.”
My cheeks burned. What were we discussing? Ah, the war of the gods. “So what side will you support?”
“Neither. According to the prophecy, which is annoyingly va
gue, most of the fighters, the gods, Valkyries, Grimnirs, the Immortals, Hel’s army of misfits, and the giants will die. I intend to survive, so I will fight for me. That’s the beauty of immortality, doll-face. If you can survive getting your head severed, you live to see another millennium. You can fight by my side. I’ll protect you.”
The look in his eyes said he was about to do something outrageous. In fact, his hands were no longer cold. They’d inched up and were busy tracing the edge of my bra. From the sexy, hooded look in his eyes, he wanted to slip under the silk material and caress my chest intimately.
“You are warm now.” I stood and moved away from him, straightening my top. “And shameless.”
“For putting my well-being first?” He picked up the bowl with the pie.
“Among other things.” I went and sat on my bed.
He forked the last piece of pie and ate with utter delight, closing his eyes and humming. His ridiculously long lashes formed a canopy on his chiseled cheekbones, and his shaggy brown hair was carelessly styled. “That’s the best pie I’ve ever eaten. Can I have more?”
I made a face. I needed answers, not to march up and down the stairs getting him food.
“Please.” He picked crumbs with his finger and licked them off.
“Fine, but when I come back, I want to know everything about Valkyries, Immortals, and Norns, especially Norns and what they can do, because nothing that happened at school makes sense.”
“What happened?” He stood and followed me to the door.
“I’ve been gone for weeks, yet everyone acted like I only missed one week of school. How could I have been at school and at PMI? My friends talked about meets I attended and teachers gave me back homework I did. I’ve never aced math tests or essays in my English class, but I’m getting A-pluses. History is my worst subject, yet the research paper I wrote covered things I’ve never read. Oh, and I kissed a football player during the last game and he’s not even my type.”
Echo’s eyes narrowed. “You kissed someone? Who?”
He sounded outraged. I laughed. “That’s all you got from what I just said?”
“Who did you kiss, doll-face?”
“Drew.”
“Does Drew have a last name?”
Okay, maybe his reaction wasn’t funny. “Leave him alone.”
“When was this kiss? Where was I? No one is supposed to mess with you except…” He glowered. “No one.”
I rolled my eyes. “Except you?”
“That’s right. Just because you don’t remember what happened between us doesn’t mean I don’t. We made a pact.”
“Quit making up things as you go, Echo. I would know if I was no longer a virgin.” Heat rushed to my face when I realized what I had said.
“Sweet-cheeks, you weren’t a virgin when we hooked up.”
For a moment I just stared at him, then anger spread through me like wildfire. “You’re such a jerk. I’ve never been with a guy that way and… and…” I growled. “Stay away from Drew. He’s suffered enough.” I shook my head. “What am I talking about? You don’t even go to my school.”
Echo’s eyes narrowed. “That could change.”
“Well, how about this? I don’t want you there.” I left the room before he could say anything else. I refused to believe I let that arrogant man touch me. Of course, his story about us could be pure fabrication. Or not. Maybe things like virginity didn’t manifest themselves in astral images. How dare he say he wasn’t my first?
Believing in astral projections would have been a stretch, but my perception of reality had shifted when I started seeing souls. I had a smoking hot reaper in my bedroom who had just returned from the realm of a goddess called Hel. Norse freaking gods really existed. Dad would have a field day with that kind information. He could write bestsellers based on just reapers alone.
Downstairs, my parents were on their respective computers. They looked up. Hoping my face wasn’t red, I said, “I need more pie.”
“I told her she’d lost weight, and she said they didn’t feed her at PMI,” Dad teased.
Was I really at the mental hospital, or did Norns also erase my parents’ memories?
“I was teasing, Dad.” In the kitchen, I cut a huge chunk of the remaining pie and scooped it into a bowl. Our first floor had an open floor plan with arched doorways separating the kitchen from the living room and the living room from Dad’s writing cave. Mom often conversed with Dad while cooking in the kitchen. “I missed Mom’s pies.”
Mom chuckled. “Thanks, hun. Make sure you bring down the bowl, okay?”
“Promise.”
Back upstairs, Echo was on top of my bed as though he belonged, the laptop on his chest. He’d removed his jacket and only wore the leather waistcoat and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. With the leather pants hugging his thighs, he looked so tempting.
I knocked his booted foot with my knee. “You’re making my covers dirty, reaper.”
He looked at his boots then at me. His expression said he knew I was being a bitch over nothing. There was no dirt on his boots. He sat up, put the laptop next to him, and took the pie.
“I’m sorry today was rough on you,” he said.
I shrugged. “Until I understand what happened to me during those weeks, it’s not going to be easy.”
“Norns plant false memories in Mortals’ heads all the time. They don’t mess with us, but I guess your situation is different.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were training to be a Norn, Cora.”
What I’d read about Norns flashed through my head. The good ones helped humans, while the bad ones were behind most natural disasters. “Good one?”
Echo smirked. “No, doll-face. You are bad-ass.”
“That doesn’t sound like me. Why would I want to be an evil Norn?”
“I don’t know. But you changed your mind and decided to join us. You chose to be a Grimnir.”
Reaper of scumbags, the sick, and the elderly? From online pictures, Valhalla looked like a palace. Why would I choose to be a Grimnir and not a Valkyrie?
I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Echo stopped in the process of putting a chunky piece of pie in his mouth and shot me an annoyed glance. “Inside Hel’s Hall is not so bad. She has a nice court, even though it is cold and a little depressing. Valkyries are wussies. Every time one of them is sent to Hel’s Hall, they whine like babies.”
“You hate Valkyries?”
He smirked. “Hate takes energy. I don’t care about them one way or the other. I just don’t like them stealing my souls.”
“Yet, you let Raine’s father go.” Then I remembered. “Oh, Crap. Mr. C. What did you find out about him? Is he okay?”
Echo frowned. “He had a stroke this morning and flat lined around noon.”
“That’s about the time I saw him.” I reached for my jacket and car keys.
“They resuscitated him, but he’s in a coma at the local hospital. Kayville Medical Center. Where are you going?”
“The hospital. Raine must be devastated. No wonder she hasn’t returned my calls or texts.”
“You want to go now? It’s late to be driving anywhere. Use a portal.”
I glanced at the mirror and wished we could. “I can’t. My parents might wonder where I’ve disappeared to when they swing by my room and find it empty.”
“They check on you before they go to bed?”
“Every night. The first few days when I came home, they did it several times. Drove me crazy.” He had that look on his face. “Don’t say anything about false memories. I was in that psych ward.” I paused before opening the door. “Come on. I want to hear why the Norns erased my memories.”
“We can talk in the car, but I can’t come inside with you. The Valkyries around here don’t like me, so don’t tell them anything about me.” He walked toward the mirror still wolfing down the pie.
I stared after him, wishing I could use the portal. What Valkyries was he talkin
g about, and why would I mention Echo to them? I didn’t know them.
5. Valkyries
“Isn’t it late to be going out now?” Dad asked, standing. “You could always go tomorrow.”
“It’s only,” I glanced at my watch, “eight, and Raine would be there for me if it were you in the hospital, Dad.”
He reached for his jacket. “I’ll come with you.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I’m picking up a friend on the way. Go back to your work. I’ll call you when I get to the hospital and when I’m on my way back.”
He glanced at his computer. “No, I’m not letting you drive anywhere alone, muffin. I’ll tell your mother where we are going.”
Arguing with him was pointless once he made up his mind. “I’ll be by the truck. I want to get something from my car first.”
Outside, I saw Echo in the front passenger seat of my car. I opened the car door and peered at him. The runes on his body glowed. “My dad insists on taking me.”
“Good. We’ll finish our conversation later. Remember, your memories are gone because Norns erased them and replaced them with fake ones. When you get them back, it will all make sense.”
“You said the Valkyries don’t like you. Why?”
“I didn’t reap Mr. Cooper as a favor to Torin St. James, so he owes me. Valkyries don’t like owing us favors.”
I’d gone into selective listening at the name Torin St. James. “Raine’s boyfriend is a Valkyrie?”
He nodded. “Yep. He’s a hard ass, but a good soldier. We tend to steer clear of each other. Andris is young and an idiot.” He touched my cheek. “Go. Your parents are coming. Oh, don’t forget. No mentioning my name to anyone.”
That again? “Why would I do that?”
He smirked. “Because girls love to talk about guys they’re crazy about.”
I laughed. “You are one person I try not to think about.”
“You can try, but you can’t help yourself, doll-face.”
Talking to him was useless. I turned to see Dad coming toward me. Mom was locking the door. When I glanced back at Echo, he was gone.
“Your mother is coming, too,” Dad said, stating the obvious.
I wasn’t surprised. My parents didn’t socialize often with Raine’s parents, but they were friends. We had potluck a few times a year, and Raine’s dad often came to the farm to buy fresh fruit and vegetables and visit with Dad. I slid in the back seat and checked my cell phone. There was still no text from Raine.
Runes #03 - Grimnirs Page 7