The Viking's Witch

by Holley Trent

  Her jaw might have been tense and lips set in a hard line, but her watery eyes gave away her hurt.

  He’d found a soft spot and poked at it on purpose in a way he was uniquely qualified to do. He hated having to hurt her, because he felt the hurt he inflicted barreling right back at him, but she seemed to need the reminder that he was digging in his heels for a long ride. He was keeping her.

  “Not going any-fuckin’-where,” he said. “You know that. Don’t disrespect me by sweeping me into the same dustbin you have your father and ex-husband in.”

  “That’s a cocky thing to say.”

  “And that’s all you have to say?”

  Marty let out a strained titter, squeezed her hands together hard enough to make the knuckles go white, and locked her stare on Queen Tess. “He’s an asshole.” She let out that dry laugh again. “My father, I mean. He…I don’t know what I can say. Mallory’s probably already told you everything worth saying, and our experiences were mostly identical. She just had a couple of extra years of them. He…” Her brows knit and she blinked rapidly several times before he realized she was trying to force back tears.

  She didn’t have to keep them in. No one at that table would have faulted her for crying. Being in the company of so many psychics often made regulating emotions more difficult, and Marty was still at the beginning of the learning curve.

  He put his hand over her clenched ones under the table and squeezed them. “It’s all right. Speak your mind and don’t back away from the words.”

  She freed one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose and ground her teeth some more. “I… Probably the only thing I never told Mallory about was of this one time he visited. I was fifteen, I guess.”

  Chris didn’t know the memory she was recounting. He’d only seen the highlight reel of her life—the most important traumas, but not all the smaller slights. A multitude of paper cuts could hurt just as much as a single deep slice, and she’d likely had countless emotional paper cuts she ignored just to be able to function.

  “Marty, what happened?” Mallory asked.

  “I don’t know where you were. Maybe you’d gone out to work or something. This was the summer between your junior year and senior year, and I remember that because that was the year I had that really short and spiky haircut. He was there on one of his increasingly infrequent visits, and the first thing he’d said when he’d walked in was that with the way I looked, I would never fit in where he was from.”

  “What the hell was that supposed to mean?” Queen Tess asked.

  Marty rolled her eyes, and that small act yanked the stopper on the waterworks. She swiped away the tears before they could reach her cheeks, though.

  Under the table, he squeezed her knee. “Digest it.”

  She nodded jerkily. “I thought I knew once what he meant. He made himself out to be some sort of colorblind crusader who didn’t care what the world thought, and he wasn’t going to let the bigots back here get in the way of love.”

  Her laugh was borderline crazed, and Chris wanted to pull her close and squeeze her until the tears stopped, but if he did, she’d stop talking.

  She needed to talk.

  “He always knew the right things to say, until he slipped up. He’d say something so unbelievably nasty, but in a passive-aggressive way so you didn’t realize how demeaning the words were until later. Anyhow, that was the summer he stopped promising to take us to where he was from. That was the summer he told our mother that things weren’t going to work out and that he wasn’t going to marry her after all.”

  “I wasn’t there for that,” Mallory said. “I came home and she was crying and you were gone.”

  “Yeah, I was sitting under the school bleachers for the longest time, just watching the landscaper cut grass and watching joggers on the track run mile after mile. I didn’t cry then. I was too numb, I guess, but I wanted to. Just couldn’t.”

  “And that was fourteen or fifteen years ago?” Queen Tess asked.

  Marty nodded and dragged her forearm across her wet cheeks.

  Queen Tess waved her aide Lora over. She relayed a range of dates to her and asked her to check into Dan’s travel logs from around that time. “Find out if that’s a bogus work trip Nan reimbursed him for. If we can nail him on the funny money stuff, we can terminate his employment and get him out of the mansion without him being suspicious about the other investigations.”

  Chris pressed his hand against the back of Marty’s neck again and massaged the tightness with his thumb. “Feeling conflicted?”

  “Like a fucking traitor.” She sniffled and stared across the table to Mallory, whose usual gentle smile had wilted and whose gaze had gone just as misty as her sister’s.

  “What’s history going to say about us, Queenie?” Mallory asked. “A century from now, are we going to be remembered as the women who tore the clan apart?”

  Queen Tess closed her eyes and rubbed the lids. “Your father is doing that. I appreciate that you’re in a tough place right now—that both of you are. Family bonds mean everything to our clan. Loyalty and trust make up our lifeblood. But sometimes, you’ve got to do the moral thing and screw loyalty. He doesn’t deserve your devotion, or Erin’s, either.”

  Chris tried to keep his thoughts to himself—tried not to inadvertently project his frustration to Marty so as not to sway her opinion. Naturally, he had his opinion, but she needed to come to a conclusion on her own. He might have pictured Marty and Shani as Holsts who were completely separated from the Petersen ripples in the web, but she had to cut those ties, not him.

  “Don’t let him run you away, Marty,” Mallory said. “Don’t let the thought of him or his wife make you anxious. This is a small place. We’re going to run into them here until they’re gone, but we have more of a right to be here than they do. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Tess set her elbows onto the tabletop and gave Marty a sideways look. “I’m not a lady who begs. You’ve probably already figured that out about me.”

  Marty finally cracked a smile, and Chris pulled her closer and tucked her head beneath his chin.

  “You know where this is going,” he projected.

  “I’m so scared.”

  “I know, honey, but you’ve got a lot of folks on your side. No Holst is going to let anything happen to you girls.”

  “You can’t promise that. You can’t possibly know what acts a desperate man will resort to when he starts to believe he’s losing his foothold.”

  “You’re right. I can’t know, but I can know this transition is going to be difficult for everyone. If you want to hide out for a while, fine, but I don’t think Shani’s going to go for that.”

  Marty laughed and rubbed her eyes as she straightened up. “I guess my life would be easier if I weren’t a Petersen, huh? History will forget me if I lose the name again.”

  “I already offered you a new one,” Chris said. “I was serious.”

  “We’ll see. Shani may have some opinions about the matter.”

  Mallory rolled her eyes and snickered. “Good luck getting Shani to leave, if that was your plan. She’s the most psychically sensitive out of all the kids. Moving her out would be like trying to rip a suction cup off a shower wall.”

  “Apt metaphor,” Chris said. “She’s young. She’s sticking to the web more than being knitted into it.”

  “I’ve got a life back in Tallahassee,” Marty reminded them.

  Mallory sucked her teeth. “Nobody’s forgotten that. You need to pack up? Then go. Leave Shani here with me. She’ll be okay for a few days.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. Screw the guilt, lady. You’ve been that child’s primary caretaker for six years. Your face is the one she has seared into her brain. A few days of her being in someone else’s hands won’t break you.”

  “Feels that way sometimes. She’s all I’ve got.”

  Chris and Mallory made simultaneous rude noises, though certainly for differen
t reasons.

  “Stop. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “You believed that Shani was the only thing in your life no one could take away from you. Well, sweetheart, no one’s going to take me from you, either. You have so many more people now who care about both of you.”

  “There are tons of people here who’d fight for you ladies in whatever ways they could.” Queen Tess leaned back and cradled her belly. “You and Chris can go down to Florida and tie off all your loose ends. Shani can stay with Mallory, and I’m sure Mallory will work on your mother from a distance.”

  Mallory made a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’ve been talking to her about this. She doesn’t want to be anywhere near our father, but she’s been entertaining some thoughts of getting rid of the house and mortgage, and doing the travel nurse thing for a while. If we’re both gone, she won’t feel so tied to one particular place.”

  “That’d be good for her,” Marty said. “She’s never been anywhere.”

  Queen Tess tapped her chin contemplatively. “Maybe when all is said and done and she’s ready to retire, Dan’ll be gone and she can settle here with her daughters and grandchildren.”

  “She’d love this place,” Mallory said wistfully. “She’d love being able to walk to everything she needs, and all the parks and hiking trails. She likes being outside.”

  Chris gave Marty’s ponytail a swat. “We can talk to her about it when we’re down there.”

  “We, huh?”

  “You gonna keep me hidden? That’s not cool.”

  “I…I mean…” Marty sputtered her lips and put her sunglasses back on. “Feel free to brainstorm some ways to explain to my non-psychic mother that we’ve exchanged memories the way horny teenagers swap spit, and that we’re a fated pair. I don’t think that she’s going to buy that story, but you’re more than welcome to try telling it.”

  “Damn.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Queen Tess eased back from the table, then pressed her hands to the edge and pushed an eyebrow up at Marty. “One more thing.”

  “Oh God, what?”

  “Mallory said she thought there might have been another—”

  “Another Petersen bastard,” Mallory said. “You don’t have to say the word, because I will.”

  Marty pinched the bridge of her nose again. “That was just psychic speculation on our parts, I think. We both thought there was someone else, but didn’t really have any evidence. I think we were reading that information off of Dan without any context.”

  “If you were separately reading off of him a relationship with some unknown related party, that’s proof enough to me that the person exists,” the queen said. “Male or female?”

  “Male,” the sisters said.

  “Older, I think,” Mallory said. “That’s the limit of my knowledge.”

  Queen Tess cracked her back and straightened up. “He probably doesn’t know what he is. If I concentrate hard enough, I could try to hone in on him through the web through your connection to your father, but my success would be predicated on whether your father has actually met him or if he simply knows he exists.”

  “Could an Afótama father be aware of having a child without being told?” Chris asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve been studying the archives. There were lots of accounts of our men being away on raids or whatever and knowing the precise moment when their children were born.”

  “Maybe the best thing is for the man not to know who his father is for the time being.”

  “I’d say that’s a fair assessment.” The queen started padding away, then stopped. “Save room for dessert. Mrs. Carbone made some kind of apple fritter thing. Looks yummy.”

  “Maybe we’ll leave some behind for Dan to find tomorrow,” Mallory murmured.

  “Sneaky girl. I like you, Mal.”

  Mallory bobbed her eyebrows, then leaned back in her chair, staring pensively at her sister.

  Chris didn’t need to be inside Marty and Mallory’s heads to know what they were wondering. If he’d been in their shoes and with a sibling floating out in the wind, he would have been obsessively curious about him or her, too. But Marty already had enough on her plate, and he had no qualms about reminding her.

  He rubbed his thumb across the back of her neck and cleared his throat. “Perhaps you, Mallory, and the queen can track him once you’re all settled in.”

  “I know I shouldn’t be making that a priority right now, but the idea of him being out there niggles at the back of my mind.”

  “You’re worrying about him and you don’t even know him.”

  Mallory nodded. “How could we not? Maybe he had a harder go at childhood than we did. We had our mother, at least, and she was phenomenal at taking things in stride and making do with a little. What if he’s…” She pinched her eyes shut and gave her head a hard shake. “No. I’m projecting. Jumping to conclusions.”

  Queen Tess backtracked to Marty’s side, and leaned her palms onto the table again. “Don’t discount what may seem like a leap of logic. No one knows the limits of our magic, and you’re talking about a half-sibling. Your awareness of him is going to be a bit more acute than anyone else’s except for Dan’s. What were you going to say?”

  “She was going to say that this man is miserable,” Marty said.

  Mallory opened her eyes and nodded. “You’re getting that too, right? I always thought that was you. Distressed, and kind of hopeless.”

  “Thanks a lot, bitch.”

  Mallory crossed her eyes. “You know what I mean. We both had a rough decade or so. I can tell now that’s not you. That’s a separate tug, and I don’t think anyone ever responds to him.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know he’s tugging,” Chris said.

  “That poor guy,” Tess said. “I do think looking for him is important, not just to aid in our case against Dan, but if he’s holed up somewhere and miserable, we need to pull him in and help him the best we can. That’s what we do.”

  “But when?” Chris asked.

  “Not until after I have this baby. Right after she’s born, and once my chieftains release me from my Tess-can’t-leave lockdown, we can hit the road.”

  “That should give Marty plenty of time to get Shani settled in.”

  “But where?” Marty asked.

  “Oh, fuck.” Chris rubbed his palms against his eyes. “Didn’t actually think that far ahead. Paul and I have eleven months left on our lease.”

  “Worry about one thing at a time,” Tess said. “Just because you’ve turned your lives upside-down in a day doesn’t mean things have to be tidy just yet. Go slowly. There will be plenty of places for you to land when you’re ready.” She grinned in her troublemaking way. “Welcome to Norseton, Marty.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Elliott Booker stopped short on the sidewalk near the bus stop only for the lumbering asshole right behind him to plow against his back, swearing like a Nausicaan pirate.

  “Get the fuck out the way, dude.” The construction worker edged around Elliott, shouldering him for good measure, and continued on down the street.

  Elliott dragged his tongue across dry lips and shifted his lunch pail to his other hand.

  He thought someone had called his name, but they hadn’t said Elliott. The call had been a general sort of “Hey, you,” but he couldn’t tell where it’d come from, only that whoever had been calling out was surely speaking to him.

  He moved out of the way of the flow of foot traffic and leaned against the bus shelter’s side.

  Hope the bus isn’t packed today.

  Getting around Houston would have been a lot easier if he’d had a car, but he couldn’t afford a car. He could barely afford to keep a roof over his head, and doubted he’d be allowed to have a driver’s license, anyway. He probably wouldn’t have been able to get medical clearance.

  He had a tendency to talk back to the voices in his head. Mostly, he pretended he didn’t hear them anymore. The meds didn’t h
elp quiet them, but he dutifully picked up his prescription every month anyway and told his social worker all the right lies.

  Maybe nobody was calling me. Wishful thinking. Just my head messing with me again.

  He’d wished just for a moment, though, that someone actually gave a damn about him without him or her having to be paid to do it. He’d wished that someone had been calling for his attention just because they wanted to be around him and because they knew him.

  But no one knew him. No one gave a shit about him. The only person who ever had was dead, and she hadn’t been right in the head, either.

  His mother had done her best, though. That was more than he could say about the rest of the world, including the mystery man named on a Post-it note Elliott kept pressed inside his billfold.

  Maybe one day he’d be interested enough to find out why Dan Petersen had wanted a sick woman like Elliott’s mother and why he hadn’t stuck around.

  At the moment, though, Elliott couldn’t afford to be curious. He could barely afford his rent, and happened to be twenty bucks short.

  He jangled the change in his pocket as the bus approached at the same time another Hey you tingled in the back of his head.

  Didn’t seem like just a Hey you, though. It felt like worry and confusion and pity, and those weren’t his things. He’d stopped feeling much of anything—he had some unprescribed pills that were actually good for that.

  That worry and confusion was someone else’s.

  “For me?” He stepped to the rear of the queue at the bus door and ignored the glower of the elderly woman in front of him. He was used to those.

  “Who are you?” he asked the voice.

  It didn’t answer back that time, but he felt the shock. Someone else’s shock.

  “You hear me?” he asked.

  He stood there so long that the bus driver flicked a rude gesture at him and closed the door.