Chaos Magic (Rune Witch Book 5)

by Jennifer Willis

  “I think we might need reinforcements on this one. Hel’s own hounds.” Saga chuckled, but Sally didn’t get the joke. “They’re going to kill me.”

  “Who’s going to kill you?” Sally was only half-listening as she scrolled through her phone. She’d missed a call and several texts from Zach, even though she’d met him only a couple of hours earlier. She felt a pleasant flush of heat and it wasn’t from the borrowed blanket. Had that really been just today? She glanced up at the sky and noted that it was nearly dark.

  She had to call Opal. They didn’t have a place to sleep that night—or any night in the near future—and Opal would have to make alternate arrangements for her date. Sally was not looking forward to that call, but there was no way a text message that they were now homeless would be sufficient.

  She should try Loki again, and Thor and Heimdall, too. If those creatures really were draugar, then surely this was Lodge business.

  Draugar. She’d seen that word before, probably in an old book or on a website she’d skimmed while searching for something else. She hadn’t gleaned too many historical details these past years while she was scrambling to put out one escalating crisis or another. When she did find a brief pocket of downtime, the last thing she wanted to do was to steep herself even further in the Lodge’s traditions and legends.

  Sally was vaguely aware that Saga was still speaking—something about old intelligence and how disappointed Heimdall was going to be. Sally scrolled past Zach’s texts asking how she was doing and if he could meet her for coffee later. She frowned at the half-dozen messages from Loki:

  “NEW PLN. DN’T COME HERE MEET @ WOODS”

  “DANGER! B ALERT 4 DRAUGAR”

  “DID U GET MSG? DN’T MEET @ MY HOUSE”

  “SEEK SAFE SHELTER ASAP”

  “R U OK? RESPOND PLZ”

  “ON MY WAY 2 U.”

  “Holy hand baskets,” Sally muttered into her blanket. Had those beasties gone after Loki, too?

  “So that’s why I think we should try to handle it ourselves first,” Saga concluded. “What do you think?”

  “Umm, yeah, okay,” Sally replied, having little idea what Saga was talking about. She was confused. Hadn’t Saga said something just a minute ago about calling in reinforcements?

  “Draugar are no joke, Sally.” Saga’s sharp voice cut into Sally’s thoughts. “You haven’t heard a word I said.”

  “Loki’s on his way.” Sally wasn’t sure if that was a comfort or not.

  Saga sagged against the bench. “Thank the powers of Asgard he’s all right.”

  Sally frowned. “Aren’t you the powers of Asgard? Or one of them?”

  Saga rolled her eyes. “It’s an expression. If they’d gotten their corpse claws into him . . .”

  “And tell me again how they’re not zombies?”

  Saga pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “The main differences? They’re smarter. And faster. They don’t eat brains. They have their own magick, though it’s more of the smash and grab variety. But the fundamental idea is the same. Reanimated dead and all that.”

  Sally watched water streaming down the side of her apartment building as the fire crews stowed away more hoses. She tried not to think about all of Opal’s magickal tools and clothes that were now either burnt up or ruined by smoke damage. “And you think we—you and I—can handle them on our own.”

  A weary smile spread across Saga’s smoke-smudged face. “Now that we know what they are.”

  Sally didn’t have the energy to argue. On her phone, she tapped Opal’s profile photo and waited for the call to connect.

  Saga got up from the bench and wandered off somewhere out of Sally’s sight, probably to go flirt with the really tall fireman. In the first twenty-four hours of her new friendship with Saga, Sally’s world had gotten scrambled worse than usual. It was anyone’s guess which of the two of them was the truly bad influence.

  “Sally?” Opal’s voice crackled on the phone. “There are firetrucks all around the building! Are you okay? Where are you?”

  Sally felt a tender smile touch her lips. Opal had asked first about Sally’s well-being. She hadn’t demanded answers or blamed Sally right out of the gate for burning the building down.

  “Opal.” Sally coughed and had to spit black phlegm onto the sidewalk. She had an unpleasant flashback of volcano spirits and crisping skin, and she pulled the blanket close around her body. “I’m okay. They got us out—”

  “What happened?” Opal cut her off. “Did you go all sparky again?”

  There it is. Sally paused and mentally counted to five. It was something that Thor, of all people, had taught her as a way of keeping her emotions in check so her anger wouldn’t get the better of her.

  “It wasn’t me,” Sally said.

  “Okay.” Opal sounded unconvinced. “Where are you?”

  “I’m . . . I’m . . .” Sally had walked this neighborhood every day for months. She was sitting on a park bench across the street from their building but the rolling emergency lights and shouting rescue workers and spraying fire hoses and the smoking wreck of her building rising up in front of her left her feeling like a refugee in an urban war zone. What was the name of this city park?

  “I see you,” Opal said. “I’m coming your way.”

  Sally couldn’t see Opal yet, but the call ended. She tapped Loki’s name on her phone. Before the call connected, Loki sat down beside her and handed her a cup of hot cider.

  “I suspect you have a few questions.” Loki sipped from his own disposable cup.

  Sally put down her chocolate—it was just cold dregs—and rested her phone on her thigh. She wrapped her hands around the warm cup of cider. She breathed in the sweet spices, a soothing contrast to the smoking building across the street.

  “Just be straight with me,” she said. “Is this the beginning of some kind of apocalypse?”

  Loki laughed in surprise. “Why would you think that?”

  Sally sighed. “Because aren’t we always on the bleeding edge of Ragnarok? And it seems like when things go wrong around me, they go really, really wrong. The fate of the world is always at stake. This time I thought I should just ask. So I could, you know, be prepared.”

  Loki looked hard at her. “Sally, this is not the end of the world.”

  She met his eyes and studied him. “I’m not sure if you’re lying to me or not.”

  “I have never lied to you.”

  “No.” She slumped against the bench and took a sip of her cider. It was the perfect temperature and slid down her throat to warm her bones. “You just leave out lots of important details.”

  Sally spotted Opal approaching with a takeaway box of more go-cups. What was it about public tragedy that made everyone want to consume hot beverages?

  Loki lifted his cup in a small salute to Sally. “You’re not wrong.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  “Old habits.” He took a long gulp of cider and watched the last fire crews climb down their ladders and unhook their hoses. He turned to Sally and smiled. “I’d anticipated you’d be grilling me on the who and what and why of the draugar.”

  “I think I’ve figured out that part, or I’ve at least got a head start. Saga doesn’t think it was me. But you and I know better.”

  Loki’s eyes narrowed, but Sally didn’t look away. She was done being intimidated or cowed by these immortals. They had stolen her youth and plunged her into a world of unpredictability and mayhem. Every time she turned a corner, she smacked face-first into another supernatural catastrophe. Even when she’d fled the continent for a year away from all things Norse, she’d still landed squarely in the soup. She wondered if she might be suffering from residual magickal trauma, and her heart felt heavy in her chest when she thought of the long years of more of the same stretching out before her.

  “It may not have been your influence. Not entirely,” Loki said.

  Opal reached the bench and squeezed in on Sally’s other side
so she wouldn’t have to sit next to Loki. She gave Sally a tight, one-armed hug even as she held the branded coffee cups.

  “I’m just so glad you’re okay,” Opal said. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .” Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she wiped her face with her sleeve. “I shouldn’t have said what I said, when I asked about your, your magickal discharge.”

  Sally frowned. Opal made it sound like she had a sensitive infection and was in need of antibiotics.

  “I know you’d never do anything bad like this if you could help it.” Opal held a bright orange cup out to Sally. Someone had drawn bats on the side in black ink for Halloween. “I got you that spicy citrus tea you like.”

  Sally lifted her cider to show Opal that she already had a drink, but she took the tea anyway and secured the new cup between her knees under the blanket where it could help keep her warm.

  “Sally isn’t responsible for what happened here.” Loki gestured toward the ruined building. Every nook and cranny had been hosed down several times over. Wisps of smoke trailed out from several windows, and at least half of the brick façade was blackened with soot.

  “I doubt we’ll get our security deposit back,” Sally said dryly. She felt Opal’s exasperation on one side and Loki’s amusement on the other.

  “Look who I found!” Saga sang as she strolled toward the bench. She’d draped her shock blanket around her shoulders like a fashion accessory, and she had one arm linked through Zach’s. Sally choked on her cider, then grimaced as hot, spiced liquid shot into her sinuses.

  Zach knelt on the pavement in front of Sally. Uncertain what to do with his hands, he rested his palms on the blanket covering her knees. Sally realized she was still wearing Saga’s ridiculous make-up and costume, and that Opal hadn’t commented on it. She glanced again at the soot on Saga’s face and wondered what her own face might look like. But it was almost Halloween, and it was Portland. Even if she looked like a proper wraith, probably no one would give her a second glance.

  Sally almost laughed. Getting trapped in a burning building by Viking zombies hadn’t sent her into a panic, but the idea that her appearance might not be perfect when a cute boy looked her way nearly had.

  “Are you okay, Sally?” Zach was all earnestness and concern, and Sally felt her heart beat a little faster.

  “Yeah.” Her voice was soft and strangely wispy. When had she started to sound like that? She cleared her throat and tried to get hold of herself. “I’m okay. We got out in time.”

  “I told him that.” Saga’s tone was flat but amused. Zach didn’t seem to notice Saga was still standing behind him.

  “You’ve had a pretty rough day, I guess.” Zach smiled, and Sally felt her knees go wobbly. If she hadn’t already been sitting down, she might have been in trouble. “Is your life normally this exciting?”

  “You have no idea.” Sally offered the cup of citrus tea to Zach, and she felt Opal’s rising curiosity beside her. “Herbal tea. You look like you could use it.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” He accepted the cup and took a sip, then glanced at Opal and Loki on either side of Sally. He extended his free hand to each of them in turn. “I’m Zach. Are you guys looking after Sally? Making sure everything’s okay?”

  Opal introduced herself with an amused smile. “She’s in good hands. It’s kind of you to be concerned.”

  She glanced sideways at Sally, and Sally saw the silent question on her face: How much does he know?

  Loki shook Zach’s hand but offered no introduction. He turned to Sally. “There are matters we must discuss, away from the company of civilians.”

  At least Loki hadn’t referred to Zach as a non-combatant. That meant Sally would have less to explain later to her new friend—maybe her new boyfriend? Her first ever boyfriend? It also meant Loki didn’t consider the present circumstances to be battle-worthy. Yet.

  Zach looked from one face to the next and seemed confused. “Are you guys in a club together or something?”

  Shrieks erupted from the end of the block. Sally, Opal, and Loki were instantly on their feet. Sally’s blanket slid off her shoulders and her insides knotted up tight as she scanned her surroundings, looking for attacking draugar. But the shrieking resolved into peals of laughter, and Sally spotted a pair of senior ladies giggling and taking selfies with a collection of Halloween zombies.

  Except those weren’t Halloween zombies.

  “Saga . . .” Sally kept her voice low, and in an instant she felt the goddess at her side.

  “They didn’t run too far,” Saga replied.

  Sally couldn’t tell if the creatures were striking fearsome poses specifically for the photos or if they really were being threatening and the giggling women were just that clueless. Either way, the draugar were out among the Portland populace, and Sally was only beginning to understand what they were capable of. She wanted to shout a warning, particularly to the family with toddler children waiting their turn for zombie photos.

  “Are they dangerous?” Sally asked. “To other people?”

  “Nah,” Zach replied from behind her. Sally gave a start, having forgotten about him as soon as she saw the draugar. “Those guys have been shuffling around all day. Aren’t those costumes killer?”

  “People think they’re just some jokers dressed up for Halloween,” Sally said. That’s why no one was running for their lives.

  Opal laughed. “A brilliant group effort, too. Not your traditional zombies, not like Walking Dead or World War Z. But those are some first-class, old school flesh-eating ghouls.”

  Sally hoped Opal wasn’t right.

  Heimdall slid into the formica booth at Brat Belly, an all-you-can-eat hot dog and sausage bar his brother had chosen for their meeting on Portland’s Eastside. The booth was shoved up against a wall of glass at the front of the restaurant. Night was already falling outside.

  He looked at his plate of three dogs—one Chicago, one New York, and a pølse-style sausage covered in sriracha ketchup and jalapeño coleslaw—and felt confident he wouldn’t ruin his appetite for dinner with Maggie.

  Thor got comfortable on the opposite bench and settled his young son into a booster seat.

  Magnus had looked like an infant when Thor pulled him from the siatco’s cave in the forest. But in the months since, he’d hit a growth spurt and transformed practically overnight into a toddler. Now appearing to be about four or five years old and mercifully human—so far—Magnus was dressed in a comic book superhero costume for Halloween. He squirmed in the plastic seat. He grabbed a sausage in each hand and made them dance across his tray table, smearing mustard and pickle relish with every move. He hummed a made-up song to accompany the performance.

  Thor laughed and downed one of his half-dozen dogs in three hefty bites. He wiped maple syrup from the corners of his mouth and reached for another sausage slathered in bacon bits, guacamole, sport peppers, and potato chips.

  Heimdall glanced at the massive condiment bar offering eighteen different kinds of hot sauces and at least as many mustards. Another long counter displayed a dozen different sausages and nearly as many bun options. Two more bars were dedicated to pickles, slaws, and other toppings Heimdall never would have considered pairing with a hot dog. Just like he never would have thought Spam and gelatin had any business being in the same recipe. At least Brat Belly hadn’t put out any marshmallows that he could see.

  He picked up his Chicago-style dog and tried not to spill tomatoes and neon-green relish down the front of his shirt.

  “We should get Eddie to cater the next feast at the Lodge.” Thor tipped his head in the direction of the Brat Belly manager.

  Eddie was sweeping the vinyl floor near the self-serve soda fountain and keeping a conspicuous eye on Thor. It was easy to see he was worried about Thor’s boundless appetite eating into Brat Belly’s profits with every bite.

  Still, Thor was looking trimmer than he had in a long while. Probably Bonnie’s influence.

  “I doubt any caterer cou
ld match Bonnie’s skills.” Heimdall dipped the end of one dog in a beer mustard sauce Thor had recommended, then took a bite. It wasn’t bad.

  Thor sighed and rested his elbows on the table. “We can’t live at the Lodge in Pierce Forest. You know that.”

  Heimdall grunted as he chewed. He did know that. Thor had a Portland-based construction business now and needed to be on-site more often than not. And Bonnie was unwilling to give up her home in the city. Plus, he didn’t think Maggie would take kindly to any in-home kitchen competition.

  Magnus alternated taking bites of his sausages and waving his food in the air. Relish and ketchup splattered across the table and floor.

  Every surviving member of the Lodge—including Maggie and Bonnie—was pushing for a more modern pantheon. But it was difficult to change course after so many centuries heading in the same direction. Should they try to force a new structure onto their old ways, or let the new Lodge evolve naturally? Heimdall was anxious to provide real leadership, but he feared that a single misstep in a fragile time could unbind everything.

  “So you want to relocate the Lodge to Portland.” Heimdall drank down his cola and glanced toward the soda fountain. Eddie had moved on to the condiment bars and still watched Thor warily while replenishing the mustards.

  “It’s complicated.” Thor chuckled as Magnus threw a half-eaten sausage onto the floor.

  Magnus waved his arms and giggled at someone passing outside in a gorilla suit and paper Burger King crown. “Burger Kong” was emblazoned on the character’s yellow t-shirt.

  “Maggie will put up a fight,” Heimdall said. “She’ll rail about Bonnie not being a goddess, and the traditions of the hearth. Even though she has little idea what those traditions are.”

  He sighed and trailed another hot dog through another pool of golden-red sauce on his plate. “Let’s not do this. Not like this.”