“The boys! That family,” Julie said. “We have to tell them what happened to the other two ravens.”
“You mean their brothers?” Jenn asked. She looked at Julie’s face. “I suppose we’d better.”
They collected their purses and snuck out the door and into the bar. The bartender looked up when they came through the door, and then went back to wiping down the bar. Jenn made sure the door locked behind them.
“Why did you do that?” Julie whispered.
“I’ll tell you in a bit,” Jenn replied, as they exited the bar. Once they got in Jenn’s car, she put the address in her GPS and started driving.
“You were going to tell me about locking that door,” Julie prompted.
“Oh, right. I stole Luke’s keys.”
“You what?” Julie asked.
Jenn grinned. “When we were on Sleipnir, I realized that if our plan worked, we wouldn’t want him to find those keys, and if it didn’t…” Jenn trailed off and shrugged her shoulders, “then we would have bigger problems.”
Julie stared at her for a moment. “Do you think like this all the time?” she asked.
“Mostly. If you want to play a good prank, you’ve got to take your chance whenever you can and that sort of carries over to everything else I do.”
Julie shook her head. “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.”
“And on the honor roll,” Jenn added.
“So, did you know what you were doing when you told me to make that other wish?” Julie asked.
Jenn’s expression dimmed. “I almost didn’t think of that wish. I almost believed him that he wanted to make a world where we could be happy.”
Julie was quiet.
“We as in me and you,” Jenn said. “Not me and him. Never me and him.” She shivered and gripped the wheel a little harder.
Julie put her hand on Jenn’s shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze.
“So, I don’t overthink all the time. I didn’t have a lot of time to think of a wish to stop him and getting the wording right so I would do it right. You shouldn’t have to outsmart yourself that much.”
“What happened after the wish?” Julie asked.
“Well, Luke put his god-face back on, so you probably passed out,” Jenn replied.
“You fought him, didn’t you?”
Jenn was quiet for a moment, and then nodded. “I’ve never had to work that hard to grant a wish before, but I couldn’t fail. I couldn’t let him win…” She cleared her throat. “Odin ended up breaking us up.”
“Odin?” Julie asked.
Jenn nodded. “I tried to explain to them what happened and that they should go easy on Luke.”
“Really?” Julie was shocked.
“Do you remember what happened to Germany after World War I?”
Julie was taken aback. “I guess so,” she said. “It was pretty terrible.”
“It was awful,” Jenn corrected, “and that is part of why the Nazis were able to come to power and eventually start World War II.”
“Look who paid attention in history,” Julie said.
“All the better to contradict the teacher,” Jenn replied. “Anyway, that story the Norse have about the end of the world? That already happened. Loki did that because they were so harsh when they struck him down that he felt like he had to.”
“So you didn’t want them to do that again because then Loki would do something worse,” Julie finished. She nodded. “Was that the only reason?”
They were here. Jenn put the car in park and looked at Julie. “I know you can read my mind,” she said, “so why would you ask me that?”
Julie looked at her for a moment, but Jenn didn’t let her in.
Julie nodded slowly and unbuckled her seatbelt. “Do you want me to tell them?” she asked.
“You’d probably better,” Jenn replied, getting out of the car.
They had closed the front door, so Julie rang the doorbell instead of walking in. The girl who was missing a pinky answered the door. “Did you find them?” she asked.
“Yes,” Julie replied, “but they couldn’t come with us. Can we come in?”
Just then, two black shapes whizzed in through the open door and into the living room. The three girls raced in, to find that the two ravens had transformed back into their human shapes.
“You’re back!” the girl yelled, hugging them immediately. Her other brothers came running down the stairs and began running Huginn and Muninn as well.
Jenn looked at Julie and jerked her head toward the door. Julie nodded. Neither of them wanted to intrude on this. They started edging out, when the girl saw them.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It was nothing,” Jenn said.
“No, it wasn’t,” one of the boys corrected her, stepping toward them. “I forgot all about being a raven, but I remember everything that happened now. Every day that we were stuck in that place, we just wanted to be human again and come home. And we did. When that man turned us back into ravens, I thought we were going to be stuck like that forever.” He turned to Julie and grabbed her hands. “Thank you. So much.”
“You’re welcome,” Julie replied. Julie was pretty when she blushed.
The boy looked down at their hands, and quickly let go.
“We thank you as well,” either Huginn or Muninn said, turning to Jenn and Julie. “We have found a family on Midgard, and you have protected them, just as you have protected the world from Loki’s treachery.”
“You saved the world?” the girl asked, looking between Huginn and Muninn and Jenn and Julie.
“It’s nothing,” Jenn said desperately. “Don’t worry about it.” The girl ran over and hugged her. After a moment, Jenn hugged her back.
“Thank you,” the girl said. “If you ever need anything, let us know.”
Jenn was about to make a crack about needing the girl’s other pinky, but she stopped herself just in time. “Thanks,” she said instead. Then she pulled Julie out of there and almost dragged her back to the car.
“Not used to hearing praise?” Julie asked.
“Not exactly,” Jenn replied, getting in her car.
“Then let me make you more uncomfortable,” Julie said, closing her door. “You did very well. I know how unsure you were about what to do. You didn’t know if you were going to go with Luke, or bash his head in. I know how difficult that choice was for you, but you made the right choice.”
Jenn looked away and realized she was blushing.
Julie grabbed Jenn’s hand and Jenn looked back at her. “You made the right choice anyway and you tricked the trickster.”
Jenn laughed. “That’ll be my new bio. ‘I tricked the trickster’.”
Julie laughed and shook her head. “You’re really uncomfortable having a moment, aren’t you?”
“A bit,” Jenn admitted, starting her car.
“We’ll have to work on that,” Julie mused.
“Or not,” Jenn said, driving away. “Hey. Do you have time to go get some ice cream with me?”
“Sure,” Julie replied.
“Great. Let me take you to my favorite place.”
**
The rest of the semester was so much easier without having to steal away to take magic lessons from Luke, although it was difficult to have to go through the bar and keep to their hours. One of the first things Jenn and Julie had to do was to turn off the traps Luke had talked about in his cave. Jenn did not want to find any more of those. Jenn and Julie worked on that particular wish for a long time. Eventually, they settled on, “I wish none of Luke’s traps would hurt either one of us or anyone who means us no harm.” After all, as Jenn pointed out, Luke probably had more enemies than the gods and some of them might not know Luke was no longer living in the caves. Or, if they did know, they might try to attack Jenn and Julie on principle. Secretly, Jenn thought it would be a great irony to use Luke’s traps against him if he ever came around again.
One night, when Jenn was coming bac
k to her dorm late, she accidentally used Luke’s key to unlock her door. She opened it and was shocked to see the cave hallway stretching before her. Confused, Jenn shut the door and looked at her keys. Hesitantly, she put her dorm room key in the lock and tried that one. Now when she opened the door, it opened onto her room where her roommate was making out with her boyfriend.
“Can we get a little privacy?” the girl snapped. Jenn slammed the door shut.
Walking away, Jenn began to wonder why Luke had chosen the Velvet Tango Lounge as his base of operations but decided that the answer was probably that he genuinely liked the bar, or that he liked picking up women there. However, thinking about that reminded Jenn too much of the night she met him, so she dropped it.
Whenever Jenn had questions about her magic, she asked Abe, and she trusted his answers much more than she had trust Luke’s. Jenn and Julie explained to Achi and Abe that Luke had been trying to change the world with violence. Jenn hadn’t been sure if Abe and Achi knew, but they seemed to be surprised when Jenn told them and she had to believe that they weren’t in on the plan and that they wouldn’t betray Jenn or Julie. Julie had told Jenn they could trust Achi and Abe, so Jenn tried to content herself with that.
Julie still practiced her mindreading on Jenn, and Jenn got much better at keeping Julie out. Over time, they did turn the cave into a halfway house for magical creatures. Julie ran most of that, but Jenn was on hand to try to settle disputes, or trick creatures into trying out a better place to live. They agreed that when Jenn studied abroad in Spain over the spring semester and the following summer, she would keep an eye out for any creatures who might need a home.
Chuck, Helen, Emma, and Jenn ended up going back to the Velvet Tango Lounge again, but Jenn wasn’t worried about it this time. She explained to her friends that she had told Luke to leave her alone and that he had listened.
“Then get me his number,” Helen replied. “I’ll take him!”
“I lost it,” Jenn lied.
Then Emma turned the conversation to something else and Helen let it go.
Jenn, Helen, and Emma decided to move into an apartment together next year, although Jenn told them she couldn’t find a place from Spain. “We’ll just need thick walls so we don’t hear Helen and her boys at night,” Jenn said.
Helen pretended to be offended. “Jenn! I would only bring one home at a time.” Then she laughed and shook her head. At first, Charles had pretended to be offended that they were leaving him out, but when Emma earnestly told him that her parents didn’t want her living with a boy and that was the only reason, he relented.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m not sure I’d want to live with the three of you anyway. I’m far too manly for that.”
“At least you’re too manly for something,” Jenn joked.
Soon enough, it was winter break and Jenn was getting ready to head to Spain. She and Julie both got an app so they could text internationally, and Jenn unlocked her phone so it would work in Spain as well. It was strange. Jenn was going to miss seeing Julie so often. She hadn’t really felt that way about any of her friends before. “Maybe it’s because we are actually friends,” Jenn thought, shoving another pair of shoes into her suitcase. She liked having a friend. Maybe she would try to be nicer to her study abroad group in Spain.
It had occurred to Jenn that she was also using the halfway house to build an army of sorts. Still, it was possible Luke would remember everything one day, and she wanted to have an army at her back if she was going to go against a god. In the meantime, Jenn tried to figure out the rules of her magic and not to think about Luke too much.
A Tale of Two Tricksters Page 16