A kitchen and bar took up most of the area to her right.
Beyond that, she saw a modern dining table with four chairs, and a desk with a laptop perched on top of it. Another small sofa stood in the opposite corner, nearer to the suite’s front door, that one pale green, also leather.
Everything about the room was sleek, white, but incredibly comfy-looking, down to the thick, white, faux-fur blanket that covered most of the blue sofa.
A full-sized, stainless-steel refrigerator sat in the kitchen, and the bar had three, tall, chrome and blue leather upholstered barstools.
A bottle of wine sat on the counter next to a fruit basket.
Marion saw two neat stacks of clothes on the kitchen table, along with a second note between the stacks.
That note was in a different hand than the one in the bedroom. Someone had scribbled in blue ink:
Call us if you’d like to make any exchanges, or if you need anything else!
It’s been a pleasure shopping for you, sir!
Below that, it had a phone number written in sharpie with a smiley face.
Snorting, Marion started going through the pile of clothes.
She quickly realized the first pile had to be for him, Tyr.
She noted a man’s dress shirt still in the wrapper (white), a man’s T-shirt (gray), blue jeans (also men’s), three pairs of socks, one of them dress socks, two pairs of boxer briefs, black sweat pants, and black slip-on shoes. When she glanced at the door, she realized more clothes hung there as well, in a garment bag.
She guessed that might be the reason for the men’s dress shirt.
And the black leather shoes.
Leaving his pile alone after her initial eyeball of the contents, she pulled over the other stack of clothes, which appeared to be women’s garments, and began to go through that.
As she did, she could have kissed Tyr.
Well… she definitely would have kissed him before she got the clothes.
But now she would have kissed him for the clothes, as well.
She found stretchy jeans in her size in burgundy and dark green, a thick, super fuzzy white sweater made of what felt like Angora wool, several long-sleeved, fitted T-shirts, a pair of legging-style pants, socks, and running shoes. He’d also gotten her several pairs of underwear, two bras, one sports bra, and a hoodie sweatshirt.
Everything was in her size––even the bras.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know exactly how he’d done that.
Regardless, she was hardly in the mood to complain.
She took all of her booty back to the bedroom, grabbed the legging pants, new underwear and a bra, one of the fitted, long-sleeved shirts, and the hoodie sweatshirt, and disappeared back into the bathroom. The mirror had cleared by then, so she dropped the towel on the floor and spent the next twenty minutes or so putting disinfectant on every cut she could find, and bandages on a few of the bigger ones.
When she finally finished, she dressed in the clean clothes and nearly groaned in relief.
Balling up her old underwear, she stuffed that in the trash, then wandered into the next room, put on socks, and went back to the living room.
Sitting on the leather couch, she curled up under the fuzzy white blanket and found the remote. She’d just turned on the television when it hit her that her stomach was grumbly. She had no idea how long it had been since that cheeseburger, but clearly, it had been too long.
She was food girl.
It was her job to order them food.
Shucking off the blanket, she got up, found the hotel phone, and started opening drawers until she unearthed the menu for room service.
She might have gotten a little carried away.
Part of it was having to guess what kind of food Tyr might want.
Most of it, truthfully, was that no menu was safe in her hands, not right then.
She was starving, and she wanted comfort food.
She was still ordering dishes for the two of them, when there was a rattle at the door, a click and a beep, then the door gliding inward. Marion tensed until she saw Tyr standing there, now wearing a bathrobe over the suit pants.
Looking him over, she couldn’t help smiling, chuckling a little.
She still held the hotel phone to her ear.
“Ma’am?” the person on the other end said. “Is that everything?”
Jerking her eyes and mind back to the phone, Marion flushed, then nodded, speaking in the same breath.
“Yes,” she said. “I think that’s everything. How soon can you have it up here?”
“It’ll be about thirty minutes, ma’am,” the server said. “You’re lucky. It’s really quiet tonight. Normally a haul like this would take at least an hour––”
“That’s great. Perfect. Thank you so much.”
She was hanging up the phone as Tyr walked over to the kitchen table, looking down at his pile of clothes. She watched him pull out the sweat pants, underwear, and the gray T-shirt, before he glanced over his shoulder at her.
“Are they okay?” he said, looking down at what she wore. “What I got for you?”
Marion hugged herself in the long-sleeved T-shirt and hoodie, nodding.
“They’re perfect,” she said sincerely. “Honestly, I couldn’t have possibly found anything more perfect. They’re almost too perfect. If I hadn’t gotten hungry, I’d probably be passed out on the couch right now,” she admitted, glancing at the blue leather couch under the television.
Tyr nodded, his expression unmoving.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he told her.
He turned to walk away, and Marion blurted out words.
“Hey!”
He turned, looking at her with those dark, coal-like eyes.
Marion flushed at the intensity behind that look. She made a vague motion with her hands approximating tweezers, or maybe some kind of muscle spasm.
“Do you want me to… you know? Like you did for me?”
He just stood there for a beat.
Then he shook his head, once.
“Thank you, Marion,” he said politely. “But I can handle that. You should relax.” He flicked his fingers gracefully towards the blue sofa. “I’ll be out in a little while. And I’ll wake you when the food arrives.”
She nodded, still hugging her arms around her chest.
She watched the tall god until he disappeared, closing the wooden sliding doors behind him.
Then, sighing, she collapsed on the blue sofa, picking up the television remote.
She felt like she could stay in this hotel with him, doing nothing but hanging out in these clothes, eating room service and watching television, for about a month.
Maybe more like three.
17
The Best Laid Plans
“We should talk now,” Tyr said.
His voice was serious as he set down the bone of a chicken drumstick covered with bright-orange buffalo sauce he’d just demolished.
Marion had ordered a lot of food.
A ridiculous, borderline-obscene amount of food.
Not to mention, a bizarre, decadent, and utterly irrational selection of food.
Strangely, though, and despite the cheeseburgers they’d had a few hours earlier, she and Tyr were doing a pretty good job of putting it away.
She’d gotten fish tacos, and a Filet Mignon for Tyr. Buffalo wings with blue cheese, calamari and potato skins for both of them. Another cheeseburger and fries for her. Two salads. Four beers. Two bottles of water. Two bottles of caffeinated soda. Two cappuccinos.
And an order of mushroom and cheese ravioli, just in case.
She also got a piece of carrot cake, a piece of cheese cake, a piece of apple pie, a brownie, and an order of crème brûlée, since she didn’t know what kind of dessert Tyr might like. She also ordered a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries for herself.
At the last minute, worried the ravioli might not be enough emergency food for both of them, she also ordered a
small pizza with goat cheese and some kind of fancy Italian meat.
It was ludicrous.
But they had a fridge, she told herself.
And a microwave.
Assuming they were still around tomorrow, they could eat the leftovers then.
If Tyr thought she’d lost her mind a little, holding the room service menu, he didn’t say a word. When he saw the piles of plates with metal coverings and the water bottles next to the two cappuccinos, two cokes, and four beers she’d ordered… he didn’t say anything.
Instead, he started lifting metal lids.
He stacked the lids all up on the bar, moving each plate to the coffee table under the television… then all the drinks… then all the utensils… then all the napkins and condiments and salt and pepper shakers… before finally getting comfortable on one end of the sofa and turning to her politely, his black hair wet from the shower.
“Do you mind if I turn on the news?” he said. “I would like to see what is happening around the White House, in case it is relevant to our situation.”
Marion nodded, sliding down the couch so she was a few feet away from him.
She watched as he laid a cloth napkin on his lap, then tugged the Filet Mignon closer to where he sat. Picking up a fork and steak knife, he gave her another polite look, pointing at the steak with his knife.
“Do you mind?” he said.
She shook her head. “No, that’s for you. The cheeseburger was mine.”
Nodding, the god began sawing into his steak.
Marion looked around at the embarrassing amounts of food, and suddenly wondered if he thought she expected him to pay for all of this.
“Hey,” she said, feeling her cheeks flush. “I want to put all of this on my credit card. You don’t have to pay for any of this––”
Tyr was already shaking his head, chewing steak.
He waved the knife in the air vaguely but expressively.
“Don’t worry about that, Marion,” he told her. Pointing at the food with the knife, he added, “Eat. It is likely we will have to go out again tonight.”
She considered arguing the point, then shoved it aside.
Turning to the food in front of her, she pulled the raviolis towards her first, and began to dig in with a fork.
She’d never tasted anything so damned good.
Now, over an hour later, she and Tyr were still on the couch, and still, unbelievably, picking at what remained of the bones of their food––Tyr especially, who appeared to have some kind of bottomless digestive tract.
“We should talk,” Tyr repeated, after taking a long drink off the second beer he’d opened. “I need your input. About how we might reach your father.”
Marion nodded, frowning.
Looking out over their makeshift buffet table, she snagged a piece of calamari, crunching it with her back molars as she thought about his words.
“You think it’s better if we go tonight?” she said, glancing at him.
Tyr frowned, glancing up at the television.
They’d been watching the news for the last hour, while they ate.
Their car accident made it to every channel.
They even had an image of the car door being blown off the side of the McLaren, after the sports car rolled over almost three times and ended up on its side. That’s when they got hit by another car, spinning the McLaren until it smashed into the curb. Marion couldn’t see much about that car, either, unfortunately, much less who was driving it. The SUV had darkened windows, no license plates, and no distinguishing marks whatsoever.
There was confusion after that, screaming, then everything went dark.
All the street lights went out at once.
Although Marion hadn’t thought it did them much good at the time, in the videos, the lack of streetlights made the McLaren strangely difficult to see.
“How did you do that?” Marion said. “With the lights?”
She glanced at Tyr, and he looked back at her, his mouth firm.
She didn’t think he would answer, when he shrugged.
“My brother helped me.”
“Loki?”
“Thor.”
She thought about that, in terms of the tiny amount she knew about Norse gods and their supposed abilities. Within that context at least, Tyr’s claim made sense. Thor was the God of Thunder. He should have some ability to manipulate electricity.
Marion had questions, of course, big questions.
Even if she accepted the “Tyr is a god and his brothers Loki and Thor are gods, too” part, Marion still had questions.
Namely, she wondered how Tyr was able to get help from any of his brothers long-distance, especially since she hadn’t seen Tyr use a phone, or even produce or glance at a mobile phone, at any point in their time together.
She decided that was a detail that could wait.
Nodding to herself, she glanced back at the television.
Marion saw a dark form leap up and out of the opening left by the car door.
That figure landed on the car’s frame, just a foot or so from where the passenger-side door had been. Marion heard the sound of glass cracking as the shadow adjusted its weight.
It was holding something in its arms.
That something, Marion realized in a bewildered flash, was her.
There was a split second of silence as the tall shadow standing there adjusted his balance, lifting his feet from the glass to the metal frame.
Screams broke out.
Those screams came from bystanders––bystanders presumably close enough they could see Tyr’s wings, maybe other things about him as well, like his red-tinted eyes, his lack of a shirt, his pale blue and green tattoos, the overall strangeness of him.
Bystanders who couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
To Marion, he looked beautiful, even in the dark.
His faint outline looked like a shockingly gorgeous, living statue.
Clearly, however, his overall appearance, not to mention the enormous black and scarlet wings, were too much for the average human to process.
Luckily, his outline went in and out of clarity in the video.
The shadow elongated and shrank, indistinct, dark in the glare and contrast of lights from the nearby restaurants. There was a pause, then a flurry of movement, more screams, and that vague, indistinct shadow disappeared.
When the newscaster came back on, he smiled into the camera.
That smile verged on a smirk.
“There’s still some confusion about the driver of the vehicle,” the newscaster said. “Most witnesses agree that someone crawled out of that open doorway, but some heard an explosion when the door came loose, and there were reports of a man running away, holding a woman in his arms. It is still unknown if the woman was the driver, or a passenger in the car.”
The brunette, female newscaster spoke up when the male reporter paused.
“Right now,” she said in a melodious but sharp voice. “D.C. police are looking for any information or images relating to the two persons seen running from this vehicle following the accident. They are additionally looking for any information anyone could share about the owner of this vehicle, or who may have been driving it.”
The woman added in a lower voice, her eyes serious,
“There is significant concern that either the woman or the man in the video might have been hurt in the accident… or possibly both of them. For the same reason, authorities are monitoring admissions at metro area hospitals, both here in D.C. and in surrounding states. It is now believed the car was likely stolen, which is the probable reason for the driver and passenger running prior to ambulances arriving on the scene…”
The male newscaster picked up where she left off.
“…Some onlookers and bystanders reported seeing the driver of the McLaren as a giant man with some kind of mechanical wings,” the male newscaster added, smiling a touch wider as he glanced at his female co-anchor, winking at her subtly. “Of cou
rse, this was late at night, outside a bar, during the Christmas season… maybe it was Saint Nick out here, playing hero to a mystery damsel in distress? What do you think, Gretchen?”
The female co-anchor chuckled.
“…That being said,” the male anchor added, his voice shifting a few notes lower and again growing serious. “The driver of the overturned vehicle is wanted for questioning…”
The female anchor again picked up where he left off.
“…Two more cars were implicated in the incident,” she explained seriously. “One was almost completely destroyed in the accident, and featured a second driver who ran from the scene, most likely on foot. He, too, is wanted for questioning, and D.C. police are asking anyone with information to please come forward. It is believed the driver of the third vehicle left the scene in a black SUV with tinted windows…”
At that point, Marion looked at Tyr.
“Did you see them?” she said. “Who hit us?”
Tyr frowned, glancing at her from where he was still making his way through the thick slab of Filet Mignon with mushrooms.
“I did,” he said, cutting into a piece of the steak with a wooden-handled steak knife. “But I do not know how useful it will be to try and track them down specifically. I think the issue is less the hired help, and more about identifying the Syndicate as a whole. It is about whoever is leading this group. We will likely need your father’s resources for that.”
Marion nodded, thinking about Tyr’s words.
“Do you think Taggert could be their leader?” she said. “The scarred man?”
Tyr frowned again, but only shrugged, focusing back on his steak.
“I do not know, Marion. Personally, I do not feel he is likely the top leader. I think it is very possible he is close to whoever that leader is, however, that he works directly for him, unlike Lie Jie or even Gregor, Lia’s old boss. I am of the impression he at least has access to that person… and could identify him, if properly motivated.”
Marion nodded.
Tyr Page 13
