Dag poked him again.
“Yes, yes. He seems to believe we have some control over all things vampiric.” Tony brushed the front of his t-shirt. “He’s not using his inside voice. Scared the living daylights out of poor Ivan.”
Tony wisped his hand again. “My dear brother took off. I should have followed the moment our King started frothing at the mouth but no, I had to do the honorable thing and protect the books.”
“You only protect yourself, vampire,” Dag said. She poked Tony again.
“Dag,” I said. “We don’t know what we’re up against. This is not the way to deal with this situation.”
Slowly, Tony popped and realigned his spine. He made a great show of holding his lower back. “Mr. Victorsson gets it. I tried to tell Lord Odinsson! But alas, he does not wish to listen.”
Dag looked at the door.
Tony leaned toward me. “Our King has taken a ‘kill them all and let the gods of the dead sort them out’ attitude with us less desirables.” He frowned. “Nice to know what we truly mean to the community.”
“Tony. Not now,” I said.
He threw out his arms. “Oh, who’s he going to take his ire out upon? You, Mr. Victorsson?” He rolled his eyes. “They like their pet jotunn.”
Dag ran up the stairs.
I wagged my finger at Tony. “Do not run off.” Tony would be gone when I came out. Ivan, it seemed, already was gone. Neither vampire wanted to be anywhere near an angry elf in the midst of… what? A fight? A tantrum? Both?
“Sure thing, Mr. Victorsson, sir!” He snarled. “It is not wise, what the Elf King does,” he hissed.
A new, bright, blinding flash of magic burst from every open window and door, from under shutters and through cracks in the mortar. From under the foundation and through the ground itself.
The Ramsey Mansion lifted off its moorings. The world lifted off its moorings.
Dag ran into the library. I ran after her, and rounded the corner into the library’s antechamber.
The inlaid lines on the floor, the ones denoting the seasons and their midpoints, hovered over the granite. The entire inch-thick surface of the stone had uncoupled from the rest of the floor and now floated at least six inches in the air.
Dag put out her arm to stop me from getting too close. “My husband will not be himself,” she said.
Arne’s magic had bleached the interior of the library. The children’s play area now appeared as if built from the muted, sparkly colors of an opal. The carvings over the main desk had turned bone white. Every book was now a washed-out, pale version of its former self.
No, Arne would not be himself after unleashing that much magic.
“Is your creature here, Mr. Victorsson?” Dag asked.
I stepped over the raised season lines and into the library proper, and scanned for shadows. “No,” I said. “Whatever Arne’s doing has filled the building with an even magical brightness. There’s no place for it to hide.”
Dag lowered her bow. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
She also stepped over the lines and into the library. Gently, she picked up a book off one display table, flipped through it, and set it back down. “The enchantment has been evenly applied to all surfaces.” She touched the counter of Tony’s librarian desk. “No undulations or vibrations in areas usually thick with vampire viscosity.”
She stopped in front of an empty vase.
The flowers that were there this morning when Ivan gave me the book were gone. Not coated in magic like every other surface in the library, but physically taken away. “Sam sent a bouquet not too long ago.” I pointed at the vase. “The flowers looked fresh when I was here earlier today.”
Dag nodded.
The library shook, and just as it had when we were outside on the steps, it lifted off its worldly moorings.
The bleaching increased. Every book, every tabletop and toy turned white. Every wall, every carving, even the ravens among the play-branches over the children’s play area.
Dag stiffened. She swooped her fingers through the air in a crisscross pattern, then drew a circle.
A gearwork-looking sigil formed between her and the vase. The gears clicked forward with what felt to me to be each beat of Dag’s heart. The room filled with her beat, with her magic and power, and she closed her eyes.
Dag placed her hand in the middle of the sigil. The gears stopped. Dag gasped.
The sigil vanished. In its place, an image of Arne setting fire to the flowers that had once filled the vase.
Dag withdrew her hand. “He’s systematically destroying all possible portals from The Land of the Dead.” She nodded toward the door. “How do I explain to Sam why her entire inventory vanished overnight? Arne will not allow her to restock until this is finished.” Dag slapped the counter.
“Why is the library—”
Another shock ricocheted through the building.
Dag held up her hand. “My husband is eradicating every portal, Frank. That includes every item Rose ever touched, and…” She clamped her lips closed.
“And what, Dag?”
He would go after the ghosts, as well. My ghosts. Which meant all vestiges of Lizzy left on this Earth.
“I’ll kill him first,” I said. I would snap the neck of the man I thought of as my father if he dared to take from me my memories.
“Frank…” Dag was looking at my eyes. “Your neck is tensing.”
My hand had her by the throat as if it moved on its own. As if the bits and pieces of me that made my arm were once again a part of someone else.
Dag’s magic solidified under my hand. Heat stung my palm. Her magic expanded.
I couldn’t hold on. Her armor forced my grip off her neck.
But she didn’t hit me the way Arne had at The Great Hall. She touched my arm, then my face, then my chest. “Frank, this is not right.”
I looked down. In the bleached magic of Arne Odinsson’s rage, I… glowed. Not glowed—it was more like a mirage of my body’s lives lifted off my skin.
They were mostly integrated, my parts. But a patch here, another there, did not quite line up. I was a patchwork man, a haphazard pile of bone and sinew, and my life force showed it.
Arne Odinsson burst through the door from the basement. The door slammed against the wall with an ear-splitting, metallic snap.
The bleaching effect popped like a balloon. The library instantly returned to its normal, unmagical self. My sense of my own dislocation vanished right along with Arne’s magic.
“You were supposed to cleanse any traces of that scum from all the flowers, woman,” Arne yelled. “I will go to that island and I will flay that bastard’s skin from his fire spirit body!”
Dag raised her bow. And Dag, in less than a blink of her eye, fired an arrow at her husband’s head.
He caught it, spun his arm over his head, and behind his back. In one beautiful, dance-like movement, he transferred the arrow—and its momentum—to his other hand.
He threw it at me.
I was not a vampire. It would not kill me, but it would hurt. I twisted out of its way, sliding to the side as it collided with the space I had occupied.
It hit my bicep. All that had been white turned blazing hot and red. All that had been me became a collection of holes in which what should have been integrated was now separate.
My hand—the one that had grabbed Dag by the throat—grabbed the arrow and yanked.
I bellowed. Blood dripped from the wound. Dag looked between Arne and me, then back to her husband. She yelled something in Icelandic, something I did not understand, and reached for the arrow in my hand.
Her magic armor flared. Its sigils and patterns rotated and folded, and it locked down around her body.
Arne raised his fist. “And you!” He pointed his finger at my face. “You didn’t think to tell one of us that you’d checked out one of her books?”
The building shook again.
“Arne!” Dag yelled. “You need to—”<
br />
“I have cleansed this town of all rips!” Arne bellowed. “Not even ash remains.”
His magic rippled and plumed very much as Dag’s had at my house.
Out in the antechamber, the seasonal lines fell straight down into their places and nestled in as if they’d never lifted out in the first place.
“The Special Collection is vanquished,” Arne yelled. “Every blossom has been pulled apart into its basic nitrogen and oxygen. Whatever is using that pathetic excuse of a fire spirit’s equally pathetic spells to cross over into my town no longer has a gateway. It will not harm any more of my people.”
“It is not that simple,” Dag said. Her magic had collapsed around her into a shield I did not believe even Arne’s anger could penetrate.
Arne slapped his hand over the wound in my arm. “I hereby seal all the dead with the blood of the dead.”
My body stopped. Nothing flowed; nothing fired. All of time became my stoppage, and all of space became my lack of life.
I was no more than the desk, or the floor. I was uncaring in it all.
I’d sent a tracer through the portal in Rose’s cottage. A marker that hit something on the other side. Something that mirrored me.
Now I mirrored it.
Dag fired a bolt of magic into my heart. “Damn it, Frank!”
And all that was me restarted. I gasped and backed into the desk.
“Have you learned nothing in your many centuries?” Dag spit at Arne. “You charged in and refused to allow our kind to return with our mundanes. How many elves died carrying your boats into the center of this continent?”
Arne’s lips thinned.
“I may not have been here, but I know the tales, husband.” Dag touched my forehead. “What happened when they found the tribes? You let loose your anger then, too.” She took a step toward him. “I was here for that little display of bitterness.”
Arne blinked rapidly. He inhaled sharply. “Remy leaves after the full moon. There will be no more magic from that island touching Alfheim.” He slammed his fist down onto the counter. “Remy does not fear fire.”
I stiffened.
Arne poked my chest. “My daughter and niece no longer live with you. They stay in The Great Hall.”
He whipped his hand through the air before pointing at Dag. “If your father questions my decision, you tell him his concerns are not needed, nor will they be considered.”
With that, the Elf King of Alfheim walked out of the Ramsey Mansion Library.
I wrapped my hand around my wound. It had already stopped bleeding, but it stung still. “There’s more to this than closing portals,” I called. There had to be.
Arne stopped in the antechamber, but he did not turn around, or answer.
“Leave Lizzy’s cairn alone,” I said. “Please.” I didn’t have the will to fight him anymore.
Arne walked away.
The Elf Queen watched him go. “Closing access is how you deal with a demon,” she said. She sounded as stung and defeated as my arm felt. “It’s the only way. My husband was correct in his actions.”
“Maybe,” I said. “You and I both know this isn’t a simple vampiric demon we’re dealing with.”
She slapped the counter. “I shot at my husband.”
So she’d felt the anger, too.
She pointed at the door. “This is not the first time his emotions have overflowed his vessel.”
She blamed Arne. And here I’d thought it was the demon.
“Maura and Akeyla?” I asked.
“How is this better?” she asked more of the air than of me or Arne.
I backed against the counter. Had Arne actually destroyed all of Rose’s artifacts? I should check for myself. Look. Touch. But in my heart I knew it would do no good.
Dag continued to stare at the open door. “They will never leave The Great Hall, Frank.”
I hauled myself to my full height. “What?”
Dag nodded after Arne. “He hasn’t lifted the banishment. He cannot. It was declared by the other Kings.” She tucked her bow into her quiver. “But he can sequester Maura and Akeyla here.”
Arne could do the modern version of locking his daughter and granddaughter in a tower.
What could I say? How could I help? If I’d figured out what was going on sooner, would I have been able to save Maura and Akeyla from their fate?
Dag squared her shoulders. “It is done.” She walked around the counter and hopped over the latched half-gate.
I stared at the door. Was there a way to fix this?
“Frank.” Dag pointed at Tony’s computer. “Help me with the security cameras. We can’t have video of Arne tossing Tony around now, can we?”
No, we could not.
I nodded and did my best to help Dag clean up as much of this mess as she could.
Chapter 16
The workers across the lake started later than usual today, and the birds took advantage. A robin sang in the oak above my head. Somewhere along the shore, a crow called to his brethren. After a moment, another crow somewhere deep in the woods answered.
I sipped my oolong tea and stared out over the calm waters of my lake.
Two days and I hadn’t heard one word from the elves. Two days since the Biterson brothers had vanished and the city had “temporarily” closed the Ramsey Mansion Branch Library. And three days since my dog had last come home.
Two God-forsaken days all alone in my house with only my thoughts and my noisy neighbors. At least the ghosts had also vanished.
No activity that looked suspiciously like a vampire attack. No sparks flying around Rose’s Hill, either.
Arne, thankfully, left Lizzy’s cairn alone, but I suspected that if he caught even a whiff of vampire, he would dismantle her marker with a bolt from the sky.
He wouldn’t show his face here. He would simply destroy.
A saw started up across the lake. Banging followed. Above my head, the robin took wing. The sun warmed my deck, and I needed the heat before I left for this morning’s trek through the trees in search of the emperor. I didn’t want one of the construction guys stumbling across me, a walking corpse, out in the trees.
The sun, at least, was warm this morning, and my mat comfortable. A few more moments with my skin exposed to the sun’s heat and I would return to something approaching human.
I sipped and swirled the last of my tea. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, the leaves said.
“Not helpful,” I muttered, as if the leaves really had spoken to me. The only pattern in my cup looked more like my compost heap than any symbol.
I’d break Arne’s neck if he touched the cairn. Rip his elf head off his elf body, magic be damned.
My mug shattered in my hand.
I blinked. What remained of my tea dripped onto my thigh. The mug’s handle still curled around my fingers, but the rest landed as shards on my deck.
Arne, I thought, and threw the mug handle into the lake. I shook my hand. No cuts. No blood, just my body’s disdain for an elf who thought he ruled everyone in Alfheim.
I stood. Droplets of tea clung to my knee and the shorts I’d thrown on this morning because of the workers.
Goddamned noise, I thought. Maybe they needed a lesson in manners, just like Arne.
Just like…
A ghost appeared at the edge of my deck, between me and the lake. A small ghost, a man, one I did not recognize yet who was eerily familiar.
He stood directly between me and the noisy neighbors.
He raised his hand and… the anger stopped. It did not recede, nor did it lessen, but it did cease churning.
As did the air around my head. The world became instantly stuffy. I tried to inhale.
What had been churning collapsed around my head into a suffocating mask. I pawed at the syrupy, thick magic. It clung to my fingers more like green slime than the normal light energy I usually saw. It dripped off my palm and smeared on my skin, but I got enough off to breathe again.
“Who a
re you?” I yelled. Why did he look familiar? “Why are you helping me?”
The ghost rubbed at his thick mop of curly brown hair, then at the tops of his ears. He waved his hand at me one more time, in short, staccato beats.
He vanished.
The magic slime shriveled. What still clung to my flesh fell off—as did my desire to snap Arne’s neck and do harm to the workers across the lake.
A ghost of a familiar man had just cleaned the anger off my soul.
Normal anger remained—Arne’s actions were infuriating—but the uncontrolled flailing, the chaotic fire from the start of my life, which for decades drove me to smash everything in my path, calmed. I knew how to control myself. I understood that my effects on the world were my own doing. I’d learned that lesson.
And suddenly, that control was no longer being overridden by slime.
We were not dealing with a simple demon, vampiric or not. This creature wielded spells.
Across the lake, someone yelled. Laughter followed. I rolled up my mat and walked back into my house.
Even if the elves did not want to talk to me, it was time for me to talk to them.
Sun warmed the concrete under my feet. Cars drove by on the road. I raised my hand to part the glamour surrounding The Great Hall.
Nothing happened.
I walked forward, and again, the glamour did not part. I made it all the way to the hotel’s dingy front entrance and tried the doors. They only rattled as if locked.
The elves—Arne in particular—had decided I was not to set foot in their realm. Nor were they answering their phones. Dag had not been in her office this morning, either.
I slapped the glass of the door. “Pettiness does not become you, Arne Odinsson!” I yelled. “Especially when I have information.”
I resisted the urge to give the building the finger.
“Frank!”
I turned around. Gerard Geroux stood at the curb where I’d tried to part the glamour. He motioned for me to come back.
Gerard Geroux, like his brother, wasn’t a large man in human form. He stood a couple inches shy of six feet, and though both he and Remy carried the broad shoulders and the square, chiseled features of their Norman ancestors, they watched the world from the dark eyes of a Celt. Both brothers’ hair was as black as my own, but shimmered with copper highlights.
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