Loki

by Mackenzi Lee

  “Most likely it passes from the already infected corpses. Those bodies in Southwark need to be taken from the city. They need to be buried.”

  “That won’t do us any good if the source of this magical virus is still present in London,” Mrs. S. said. “How do we find that?”

  Loki took a breath. “I think I found it.” Mrs. S. raised an eyebrow. Stay calm, he chided himself. Lying is easy. Lying is natural. Lying is a native tongue. “The Enchantress, at the Inferno Club.” At the stove, Theo raised his head. Loki didn’t look at him as he went on. “She was a sorceress on Asgard once, but here I think her magic may have turned toxic from too long on Midgard. She told me she used her sorcery to read cards for that chimney sweep who died—the one we found last week. That’s why he had her card.”

  “So she uses her powers at the club to mimic spiritualism?” Mrs. S. asked. “And that poisons anyone who comes into contact with her?” When Loki nodded, she asked, “Have you told her? Since you two have been chumming it up and you never felt the need to mention it to any of us.”

  “I told you I was going to the club.”

  “And you reported very little after,” she countered. “And told none of us you’d gone back.”

  Theo looked down at his hands but stayed silent.

  “We were friends,” Loki said, meeting Mrs. S.’s beady gaze. “She trusts me. If I had involved any of you, she might not have. I couldn’t risk it.”

  “You could have kept us informed.”

  Loki shrugged. “I don’t work for you, Mrs. Sharp. I work for my father, and I did what I thought was best for his investigation here. The Enchantress likely doesn’t know she’s poisoning the humans she’s using her magic upon.”

  “So we tell your father, return her to Asgard, and see if the deaths stop,” Mrs. S. said. “Simple.”

  “She isn’t allowed to return to Asgard,” Loki said. “She and my father have quarreled. But I could take her elsewhere. I know her. She wouldn’t want to hurt humans. If we tell her, I know she’ll help us stop it.”

  Mrs. S. swiped a finger over the corner of her lips, thinking. “That still doesn’t solve the issue of how to get the bodies in the ground.”

  “Organize some sort of rally—or a séance.” He congratulated himself on what an excellent job he was doing at pretending this was something that was just occurring to him, rather than a story he had been carefully fabricating over the last several days. “We ask the Enchantress to contact the souls and confirm they are well and truly dead and can’t move on without burial.” Loki leaned forward on the table, doing his best imitation of excitement over a realization he had just had. “When I went to her show, there was a couple there whose daughter had died. They wanted exactly that—confirmation from the Enchantress that their daughter had moved on from this world. We could find them—once they have the confirmation that their daughter has passed on, they may give permission for the autopsy. Then the bodies can all be declared dead, and buried.”

  “And we are sure they’re dead?” Mrs. S. asked.

  “Of course they are,” Loki replied. “No heartbeat—isn’t that what you humans generally look for?”

  “What about the chimney sweep you reanimated?” Theo asked quietly.

  His facade slipped for the first time. He had almost let himself forget that strange moment that the dead man had moved beneath his hand. “That wasn’t life,” he said, and tried to sound certain.

  “How do we know your theory is correct?” Mrs. S. asked.

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  “I can think of a few reasons,” Mrs. S. replied. “Not the least of which being that when you arrived, your singular focus was getting home. How do we know this isn’t a ploy to accelerate that process?”

  “I suppose you’ll have to trust me,” Loki replied. “But that’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it? To advise you. Consider yourselves advised.” He leaned back in his chair. “Do with it what you want.”

  Mrs. S. stared at him, fingers steepled against her mouth. She glanced at Theo, then said, “Come away from the stove before you singe your eyebrows off.” Theo dropped into the chair between Loki and Mrs. S., stretching his leg out under the table. “What do you think?” Loki started to speak, but Mrs. S. held up one finger. “Not you.” She nodded at Theo. “What do you think of this?”

  Theo’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. He looked from Mrs. S. to Loki, then back again. Loki felt, for the first time since he’d laid out this carefully woven theory, a twinge of apprehension. Theo knew he’d gone to the club more than once. He had told him more than was likely wise about his relationship with Amora. How had he let himself tell Theo so much, about himself and Asgard and all of it? He’d let his guard down without meaning to.

  Theo chewed his lip, then said, “I think we should listen to him. He knows more about this than we do.”

  Loki bit back a sigh of relief as he looked to Mrs. S. Her face was still frustratingly unreadable. But then she nodded once and said, “Fine. Let’s go find the Enchantress.”

  The only liar better than Loki was Amora.

  When Mrs. S. explained their theory to her in her dressing room at the Inferno, she burst into tears. Actual, real, running-down-her-cheeks tears. Loki was impressed—he wasn’t sure he could have managed that.

  “I didn’t know!” she sobbed. “I didn’t...I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  Theo passed her his handkerchief. “You couldn’t have known,” he said kindly. “It isn’t your fault.”

  Mrs. S., leaning against one of the dressing room counters, added, “Oh, it’s most certainly her fault. Ignorance isn’t synonymous with blamelessness.”

  Amora raised her face from Theo’s handkerchief and looked at Mrs. S., her eyes shining. “Please—please,” she stammered, interlacing her fingers before her, “I beg you, forgive me! I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  “We’re not sure you did,” Loki added quickly. “It’s only a theory.”

  “However,” Mrs. S. added. “There is a way you can make some penance.”

  “Anything,” Amora cried, then gave a fantastic sniffle. “I’ll do anything to make this right.”

  Mrs. S. glanced at Loki, then nodded to Amora. Loki sighed. “We need the police to grant permission for the bodies of the dead to be buried,” he explained, like the two of them hadn’t already reviewed all of this. Get the bodies buried, then get her out of the realm and the deaths would stop. The SHARP Society didn’t need to know what was truly responsible, and neither did Odin. “We were hoping that, through your spiritualism, you would convince one of the families of the victims to allow for an autopsy and the pronouncement of death.”

  “The prince will then take you somewhere in the cosmos where your powers will be less destructive,” Mrs. S. added. “Whether intentionally or otherwise.”

  “Of course. Of course, I’ll do anything.” Amora sniffed again, another fat tear rolling down her cheek. She swiped it away with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe...”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Loki said, crouching down before her and taking her hand. He had almost begun to fall for her performance, but then she shifted so that her fingers were pressed against his palm, tracing the lines on his skin with a gentle touch that made him light-headed. “Do you remember the couple that came to the show the same night I did?” he asked. “The ones looking for the spirit of their daughter, to see if she had passed on. Do you think you could find them again?” Amora nodded. “If we can get them to agree, all you need to do is tell them their daughter has moved on to the spirit world—”

  “Without using any of your actual magic,” Mrs. S. added. “Lest you render all your good intentions moot.”

  Amora let out another sob. Loki shot Mrs. S. a disparaging look. She was entirely unmoved. “Then tell them she can only truly find peace in the afterlife when her body is buried. That way, with all the bodies buried, the source of the plague is removed from London and
it will stop spreading. Can you do that for us?”

  Amora blew her nose into Theo’s handkerchief, then offered it back to him. Theo wrinkled his nose. “You can keep it.”

  “Amora,” Loki prompted. “Will you help us?”

  “Of course,” she said, clutching his hand in both of hers and looking between the three of them. “Anything. Anything to make right the mess I’ve made.”

  As they left, Loki offered Amora a comforting embrace that was mostly an excuse to murmur in her ear, “That was an impressive performance.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, then she let out a large snuffle onto his shoulder. “I’m clearly distraught.”

  Mrs. S. filled Gem in on the details, and he volunteered to find the Matulises. He located them through the Southwark Morgue, and Amora paid them a call, accompanied by Mrs. S. In the end, they needed very little convincing, and the date for the séance was set.

  “That horrible woman,” Amora raged to Loki in her dressing room that night.

  “Who?”

  “Sharp.” She stabbed her cheek with one of the cosmetic brushes, leaving an inelegant splash of rouge. “All the snide remarks and little comments she thinks are so clever. How do you stand her?”

  “Mrs. S. isn’t so bad.”

  “Mrs. S.” Amora snorted, tossing her brush onto the counter and scrubbing at her cheeks with her palms to blend the powders. “She probably thinks that makes her sound like some sort of vigilante.”

  “She does good work for this planet,” Loki replied.

  Amora laughed. “Believe me, her work has much less impact than she’d like you to believe.” She surveyed him in the mirror, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t tell me you’ve grown fond of her.”

  “Of course not,” Loki replied, then he changed the subject.

  The Inferno Club was thrilled with the idea of a séance to contact the living dead and deliver a judgment about which of those two things they actually were—they prepared an entire night themed for the occasion, collecting newspapers with headlines about the spate of deaths and papering the club interior with them. Someone managed to procure crime-scene photos from several of the deaths, which could be viewed in a stereoscope for fivepence. A special drink was even added to the menu in honor of the occasion—Draught of the Living Dead, with a small note chalked on the board beneath it: Served Warm.

  With the date set, posters went up around the city. The narrow streets of Southwark were so thick with them they obscured the dirty bricks. Theo and Loki went to the morgue daily to spread the word about the event among the crowd that seemed always assembled outside, waiting to see the bodies on display.

  The protestors were there relentlessly, mostly the same faces day after day. Loki caught a few of them eyeing him and Theo and whispering to one another. A dark-haired woman, whom he recognized from the first day they had visited the morgue, was particularly prone to glaring at them each time they came. One morning, Loki caught her eye and gave her a small nod, which he meant to be more of a warning to stay away, but she took it instead as an invitation to approach.

  “Excuse me, sir?” she called to him, her gait hobbled by the wooden signs strapped over her shoulders clomping against her shins. The front read LIFE IS PRECIOUS AND MUST BE PRESERVED. On the other side, NOT ALIVE IS NOT THE SAME AS DEAD.

  Loki gritted his teeth and offered her his most unwelcoming smile. “Can I help you?”

  “I thought it high time we met properly, as I’ve seen you around here so often. I’m Rachel Bowman.” She held out a hand for him to shake. He didn’t take it.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “It seems like you and your companion are making quite the preparations.” She glanced across the crowd, and Loki followed her gaze to where Theo was talking to a group of girls about his own age. He appeared to be trying to explain the séance to them, and they appeared to be flirting in return. He looked rather panicked. “Do you work for the Inferno Club?” Rachel Bowman demanded, and Loki turned back to her.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “I suppose it doesn’t, unless the people you are trying to bury are actually alive.”

  “Who says we’re trying to bury them?” Loki retorted.

  Rachel scowled. “I know what you’re planning. The Inferno Club is being paid off by the police to convince the families to allow their loved ones to be buried so they can wash their hands of this crime.”

  Loki burst out laughing. “Now, that’s a theory I hadn’t heard. Congratulations, you’re certainly very creative and skilled at jumping to conclusions.”

  She extended a leaflet to him. “Perhaps you should educate yourself before you mock me.”

  “You already got me,” he replied. “It’s riveting reading, really. I’ve been up all night dying to see what happens next.”

  He started to walk away, but Rachel Bowman jumped in front of him. Her signs bounced with the sudden movement, slapping him in the kneecaps, and he winced. “If you put these people in the ground,” she said, her voice trembling with the effort of keeping it low, “you will be complicit in murder.”

  Loki folded his arms. “Last time I checked, they already had been murdered. That’s why they’re all laid out in a morgue.”

  “Have you seen them?” she jammed a finger toward the doorway. “I mean, have you actually looked into their faces? Have you touched their skin and felt its heat?”

  “No,” Loki replied. “As there’s glass in the way.”

  “Well, I have.” She seized him by the arm, her grip surprisingly tight. “I have seen them move. I saw one lift his hand.”

  Loki struggled to keep his face blank. Had she been there that day, somewhere in the crowd? He’d been so distracted it would have been easy to miss her. “I doubt that.”

  “That is not death, sir,” she hissed. “Not earthly death. If you let this happen, I hope it haunts you. I hope you someday feel the weight of all you’ve done. I hope it crushes you.”

  “With all due respect, madam,” Loki replied, prying her fingers from their grip on his jacket. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The night of the séance, the Inferno Club was packed.

  People had been queueing to get into the show since dawn, the line leading from the mouth of the tunnel growing at such an alarming rate that it spilled into the street, blocking traffic. The police had to be summoned when a carriage driver and a man waiting for admission got in a shouting match over his standing in the road that seemed likely to come to blows. When the club opened, the tunnel flooded, the crowd so thick and moving so fast that several of the plaster demons along the walls had their extremities broken off.

  Theo waited backstage, while Mrs. S. was out in the theatre and Amora finished dressing. Loki had volunteered to be Amora’s lone chaperone for the evening, but Mrs. S. had maddeningly sent Theo along with him—like walking the Enchantress from her dressing room to the stage, then watching the stage to be certain nothing unplanned happened required a pair. Particularly when one-half of that pair had limited mobility that made walking anyone anywhere a less-than-ideal job.

  “You know, I’m perfectly capable of handling things back here on my own,” Loki said to Theo as they stood between the shafts of curtains, both of them shadows in the darkness. Beyond the edges of the stage, he could hear the rumble of the crowd, their excitement somehow rendering them unable to speak at a reasonable volume, for it seemed everyone was shouting. When Theo didn’t respond, Loki nudged him with his elbow. “You should go watch the show.”

  Theo shifted his grip on his cane, his shoulders hunched. “I’d rather stay back here. I’m too easy to trample if I’m knocked down.”

  Loki stared at Theo, trying to get him to turn by the strength of his gaze alone. “You don’t trust me,” he said at last.

  Theo made a soft humming noise with his lips.

  “Still?” Loki demanded. “After all this time?”

  Theo shot him a sideways l
ook. “It’s been a week.”

  “That’s not an insignificant amount of time,” Loki protested. Theo rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you trust me? You follow me everywhere. You took my magic when I first arrived because you assumed I was going to put some sort of violent hex on you.”

  “In our defense, you did try.”

  “In my defense, you put me in a box, rather than just inviting me to walk downstairs with you, as you would with someone you trust. What did my father tell you about me, exactly?”

  Theo was still staring determinedly out onto the empty stage. The lights were low, and his face was mostly in shadow. “Your father didn’t say anything.”

  “Then why are you so suspicious?”

  “Call it caution.”

  “I call it aggravating.” Theo laughed. Loki wasn’t sure how much of his own words was playacting and how much was sincere—for some reason he couldn’t fathom, it mattered to him that Theo didn’t trust him. That none of them seemed to. Particularly since he was actively deceiving them and had done nothing to earn that trust. “I brought you here,” he said, stepping in front of Theo so he was forced to look up at him. “I helped you. If I were scheming with Amora, why would I bring you straight to her doorstep? I have lit the stove every morning this week so you didn’t have to waste matches. And I held the door to the stage for you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, that’s called manners. There’s a difference between being sneaky and being well behaved. I’m sure Genghis Khan was very polite at a dinner table.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “He’s sort of like your Rajmagarfen.” Loki gave Theo a playful shove, and Theo laughed.

  “Nearly time to start,” Theo said, glancing at his pocket watch.

  Loki offered a bow of mock supplication. “My dear chaperone, may I go fetch Amora alone, or do you need to accompany me down the hall, because who knows what magical trouble I may get up to on the way there? You know, my mother used to tell me if I rolled my eyes like that, they’d roll straight out of my head.”

  “That must be an anatomical folly on the part of the Asgardians,” Theo replied. “As far as I know, there are no documented cases of humans rolling their eyes out of their heads. Observe.” He did it again, even more dramatically this time, with his whole head. “I suppose you may travel unaccompanied.”