by Eva Chase
I stretched my wings farther, pushing myself up toward the sky. A stronger wind buffeted me, and I soared on it, its warm fingers teasing across my wings. The waning sunlight streaked over my skin, the fresh country air filled my lungs, and for an instant, I felt invincible. I could go anywhere. Do anything.
I dove and swooped upward again, and the exhilaration made me giddy. I laughed, reveling in the sensation. Loki strode after me, walking on the air. When our gazes met, he was beaming at me, as if he was as pleased as I was with this new discovery.
“That’s my girl,” he said.
His voice was pleased, maybe even proud, but the words brought my mind back to earth. I wasn’t his. I wouldn’t let myself be. The only person I belonged to was me, no matter who had brought me back into this altered—and really kind of amazing—body.
I flapped my wings faster to send myself speeding up even higher into the sky. Up and up, until the air pressure started to lift and a strange sensation filled my ears.
Loki ascended with me. When I stopped, hovering with steady sweeps of my wings, he brandished his arm toward the landscape around us.
“I’ve passed on more than the power of transformation to you,” he said. “You’ll find your valkyrie senses are much more honed than you’re used to. When you need to soar over battles, it helps to be able to zoom in on the details as you make your choices. Your eyes are sharper than a hawk’s, your ears keener than a wolf’s.”
“Like yours?” I said.
He chuckled. “Oh, no one can beat mine. Take a look. See what you can see.”
I hadn’t had the opportunity to stretch my sight before. As I peered down over the world, distant shapes and colors came into sharper relief when I focused on them. There was the Hudson River snaking along to my left. That sprawling patch of gray off in the distance—in the space of a breath, my vision narrowed in on shining skyscrapers with glinting windows. New York City. Could I even hear the distant honking of its cars? No, that had to be someplace closer. There. My eyes narrowed in again on a farmstead to the west where someone was honking at a cow that had wandered onto the road, miles from here.
If New York was over there, that meant that Philadelphia would be… this way. I spun around as if simply enjoying the movement, but at the same time I noted the direction relative to the house for later use. My home city was too far for even these honed eyes to make out, but I could almost feel its hum. All those human lives my valkyrie senses were created to be attuned to.
“The whole world, opened up to you,” Loki said. “Spectacular, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I had to admit. My gaze roved across the fields, my ears perked. More cars wove along other roads around us. A plow rumbled across a field. Things I could see without any special focus. I frowned. “Don’t we have to worry about regular people seeing us?”
Loki gave me a crooked smile. “You’re part of the godly realm now, pixie. No mortal can see you unless you make a conscious effort to let them.”
That was useful to know. I could fly anywhere then.
Bringing my attention back to my new body, I swooped and soared in another wide circle, swaying with the wind. Oh, this was spectacular, absolutely. I still wasn’t sold on the whole wings thing while I was on the ground, but up here… Yeah, I’d keep them.
The shadows of the trees were stretching all the way to the house now. A low rolling voice carried up to us from an open window.
“Loki! Get your ass down here for dinner. And ask Ari to please come too.”
Loki motioned to me, still smiling. “Best not to get between Thor and his preferred dinner time. He’s not the most pleasant company if you leave him hungry. Besides, I think you’ve come an awfully long way in one day.”
“I have,” I agreed as I soared with him toward the house. And I was going to go a whole lot farther the first moment I had the chance.
Tonight, if the gods slept, I could slip out of here without anyone noticing I’d left.
10
Aria
The pillow on my bed was so downy I almost wanted to burrow my head in it and give in to sleep. But my thoughts were still rattling through my head, keeping me way too alert, my body tensing and then relaxing at each creak of the house. I’d said I was exhausted from all the training I’d done today and headed up to the bedroom after dinner. Night had fallen outside the window now, stars showing against the deep black of the sky that I never really got in the city with the constant haze of streetlamps. I’d stopped hearing any sounds of movement an hour ago.
It seemed the gods did sleep. Which meant it was time for me to get moving.
I eased off of the bed and padded across the floor to the bedroom door. The hinges squeaked softly as I opened it. I winced and froze, but no one stirred in the rooms around and beneath me.
Had they really trusted me to just stay put? Maybe I’d put on a good enough show of enthusiasm today that they’d believed I’d bought into their whole plan completely. Not that I was going to assume as much and get careless. I had my own plans, my excuses all lined up.
I slipped down the hall to the dormer window that led onto the roof. The pane hissed open. I squeezed out into the warm night air.
Crickets were chirping somewhere below. Tiny glints of fireflies darted across the lawn, which was faintly lit by the light near-full moon. It was kind of pretty, if I’d come out here to admire the view. I crept away from the window across the pliant shingles and bowed my head.
The prickling, burning sensation of my emerging wings still made my nerves twitch, but I was getting used to it. Especially when I spread them and felt the air wafting against their feathers, the memory of how it had felt to soar up toward the sky that afternoon washing over me. My pulse gave a giddy leap.
I was going to feel that sensation again in a moment. And with luck I’d be seeing Petey not too long after that.
I sprang off the rooftop into the air with a flap of my wings. They caught the air before I even started to fall. I swept up over the house, inhaling sharply, the breeze streaking over my skin and ruffling my clothes.
For the first few minutes, I just glided around the house and yard, waiting to see what would happen. If the gods had some kind of safeguard in place, I could still play innocent, say I’d had trouble sleeping and wanted to practice my flying a little more. If I hadn’t actually left the property, they couldn’t accuse me of trying to flee.
But no one emerged from the house to see what I was doing. There was no sign that anyone had even noticed. I wet my lips. Could it really be this easy?
They might have ways of finding me after I woke up. I didn’t know what all magic they were capable of. But maybe it wouldn’t even come to that. I wasn’t completely sure yet what I was going to do after I saw Petey. I could always sneak back here and go to bed as if I’d never left, and they wouldn’t even know I’d gone. No point in trying to make a real run for it until I was sure I knew all the tricks I needed to evade them.
I took one last turn around the house, and then I banked to the right, pointing myself to the southwest. With a couple flaps of my wings, I was soaring toward home.
The wind raced over me, warbling in my ears. The landscape spilled out below me like I’d only seen before in aerial photographs. I grinned, reveling in the freedom.
And then a blob of shadow appeared in front of me, smacking into my body.
Cold tendrils wrapped around my limbs and my wings, weighing down on them. I yelped and struggled, but they resisted my efforts. The shadowy menace dragged me back down to earth.
Down to a field beyond the house where a dark-haired, dark-eyed god had his face tipped up to watch me fall.
The shadow didn’t hurt me. It deposited me on the ground feet first with just a faint thump. But the cool clinging of its tendrils was making me shudder. I squirmed against it, trying to break free.
“Get this thing off me!”
“I don’t think that you’re in a position to make demands, valkyrie,”
Hod said in his flat voice. “I’ll let you go when you tell me where you were going.”
Would he even then? Somehow I doubted it. I forced my body to stop moving in the tangle of shadow and stared back at him through the thin moonlight. He was turned toward me, but like before, his gaze didn’t quite meet mine. As if he thought I wasn’t even worthy of that much acknowledgment.
“Don’t lie,” he added. “I know you were going somewhere. I waited to make sure you were leaving before I stopped you.”
“Not much for sleeping, huh?” I said.
His gaze shifted, but it only seemed to move from my cheek to my forehead. “I’m the god of darkness,” he said. “This is when I’m most awake.”
“So you get to be the watchdog. Lucky you.”
He ignored my jab. “Where were you going, valkyrie? If you’d like, we could take this discussion back to the house with the others. I’m sure Thor would be in an excellent mood woken up in the middle of sleeping off that dinner.”
I let out a breath. I couldn’t think of any lie that he’d believe that would go over better than the truth. “I was going home. Just to see how things are. I was going to come back.”
“Sure you were,” Hod said. “What exactly were you planning to do out there? Showing off how your new powers could help the criminals you’ve been hanging out with? Maybe stealing a thing or two?”
I bristled. Obviously Freya had reported our conversation to the others. And not in the most flattering terms.
“No,” I snapped. “I’ll be happy never to see the assholes I worked for again, and what the hell would I want to steal? I just want to make sure my little brother is okay. That’s all. Sorry for having someone I can’t just up and leave without even saying good-bye.”
Hod blinked slowly. “Your little brother,” he repeated.
“Yeah.” My anger died down as I thought about Petey. “He’s only six. And I’m basically the only person he can count on. He needs me. If he’s heard I’m dead…” My throat choked up. I swallowed hard and managed to finish, a little raggedly. “I just need a few minutes with him. With all the stuff you guys want me to do for you, is that really too much to ask?”
The god was silent for a moment. I couldn’t read the expression on his chiseled face, but at least he didn’t look definitely pissed off anymore. His gaze slid farther to the side.
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “If that’s really all this is about, you can go. But I’m coming with you.”
He motioned, and the shadow that had clutched me released, slipping away from my skin. I rubbed my arms as if I could wipe the feeling of those cool tendrils from my memory. My body had tensed at the idea of having company for my visit. I didn’t have much choice, though, clearly.
“Can you even fly?” I asked. “How do you figure you’re going to keep up?”
His mouth slanted with a thin smile. “I’ll manage. Lead the way.”
I hopped off the ground with a tentative sweep of my wings, thinking I was going to have to go low and slow the whole way to the city. Beneath me, Hod made a tugging gesture toward him. The darkness of the night congealed around his feet into a thicker patch of shadow like the one he’d caught me with. He knelt on it, and it eased up into the air like some kind of bizarro flying carpet.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll give you props for that. It’s a pretty cool power. Is that what you’re going to teach me in my valkyrie lessons?”
He grimaced. “No. Are we going, or did you change your mind?”
“Just trying to make conversation. Come on.”
If he was going to be like that, I didn’t really want to talk to him anyway. I soared up into the air with a few beats of my wings and pushed on toward Philly, not bothering to check whether Hod could keep up. He was a god. I shouldn’t have to be holding back for him.
I sped across the landscape as fast as my wings would carry me, dipping down occasionally to check the highway signs and make sure I was on the right track. At maximum velocity, I could soar faster than the cars and trucks roaring along below me. When I bothered to glance back, Hod was keeping pace, perched securely on that patch of shadow, the wind only lightly ruffling his short black hair. He didn’t look at me but somewhere farther in the distance.
Definitely not the friendly type. I guessed the other three had gotten all the charisma.
A familiar skyline came into view up ahead, and relief swelled in my chest. Part of me hadn’t been convinced I’d even make it here until this moment. I flapped my wings even harder, putting in one last burst of speed to carry me the rest of the way home.
The scruffy-looking street outside Mom’s scruffy-looking house was quiet as I dropped down onto the neighbor’s roof. An old clunker sputtered past, and then the only noise was the faint rustle of the breeze through old Mrs. Jackman’s laundry on the line out back. It had to be after midnight now.
Hod came to a stop beside me. He drifted over as I edged along the roof to where I could see Petey’s window. His room was dark, but he’d left the curtains open, the window a few inches ajar. Like always.
Past evenings when I’d paid a stealthy visit, I’d scrambled onto the fence next door and then clambered the rest of the way using the ridge in the siding. Today I could be a little more graceful. I leapt with a stretch of my wings and glided onto that ridge, catching the window ledge with my hands.
Petey was asleep. I’d known he probably would be, but a twinge of disappointment ran through me anyway. His pale little face was slack, mushed against his pillow, his golden curls spilling every which way. His hand was clenched in a fist around the edge of his sheet.
It’d be mean to wake him up. He didn’t look sad, at least. No sign that he’d been crying. I’d only had fake ID on me when I’d been dropping off that package—the coroner or whoever might not even have figured out my real name.
I’d rather Petey never had to know exactly what had happened to me. As long as I could keep dropping in like I always had, he didn’t have to know.
I wasn’t going to wake him up, but I could leave him a sign that I’d been here. That I was thinking about him, always.
Hod had dipped down beside me on his flying shadow. “Where are you going now?” he said sharply when I left the window.
I shot him a glower. “To the corner store. To buy him a chocolate bar so he knows I came.” I paused. “Well, to steal a chocolate bar, unless you happen to have some cash on you. When you summoned me, you guys didn’t bother to summon the money I had on me when I died.”
Hod made a face, but he fished in his pocket, produced a wallet, and offered me a five-dollar bill.
“Thanks!” I said brightly. “Are you babysitting me all the way to the store, too?”
“You haven’t convinced me yet that you don’t need the babysitting,” he muttered. “You did try to take off on us twice this morning. How short do you think our memories are?”
I kept my voice sweet. “Well, you all did kind of materialize me out of some deathly void without any warning or explanation. Next time that happens, I’ll be a little more chill about it, I promise.”
Loki had told me I was invisible to mortals, but I didn’t totally believe it until I walked into the 24-hour shop a few blocks over and the lady working nights didn’t even look up from the magazine she was reading behind the counter. I waved my wings in the air. Not a blink. Ha! Now if only the gods couldn’t see me unless I wanted them to—then everything would have been a whole lot easier.
I grabbed a 3 Musketeers bar out of the row of boxes under the counter and tucked the five-dollar bill in its place. Payment and a tip.
Hod skulked after me the whole way back to Mom’s house. I flapped back up to Petey’s window and pushed it farther open with a creak of the frame. The screen had gotten torn years ago and Mom had never bothered to replace it, which had always suited me just fine. If she’d known how often I’d come in and out through this window over the last few years, she probably would have padlocked it shut.
>
Petey was so out he didn’t even stir. I tiptoed over and tucked the chocolate bar under the end of his pillow. It’d been his favorite kind for the last two years, and I always joked with him that he and I were the two musketeers. “Two is all we need!” He’d know who had left it, no question.
Back at the window, I sat down on the ledge. I didn’t really want to leave. Not right away. My brother’s body hunched, small and fragile, under the blanket. The rasps of his sleeping breath washed over me.
“Are we done here?” Hod said where he was hovering outside.
“Give me a second,” I said. “You’re lucky I’m not asking to stay the whole night. Just look at him.”
“I can’t, even if I wanted to.”
It took a second for me to process those words. My head jerked around. Hod gazed steadily back at me—except not into my eyes. Somewhere in the vicinity of my nose. Close, but not quite.
As if he couldn’t quite pinpoint where my eyes even were.
I could have smacked myself. “You’re blind.”
“And you’re not as observant as you’d like to think,” Hod replied, but there wasn’t much of an edge to the words. And it was a fair point.
“In my defense, I’ve been a little distracted in the last twenty-four hours,” I said, and paused. “How did you follow me on the way out here? How did you even know I was leaving the house?”
He might have heard the window or me on the roof if his ears were good, but he’d said he’d waited until I left the property. I’d already been up in the air then.
Hod’s lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “We brought you back to ‘life’,” he said. “We made you a valkyrie. That left a connection. If I concentrate, I can tell where you are. Any of the four of us could.”
Oh. That made my whole escape plan a lot trickier. I wanted to ask whether distance affected this connection thingy, but that would only raise his suspicions. I could find a subtler way to figure that out later.
The god of darkness, always in the dark. Or did it look dark, if you simply couldn’t see at all? Somehow I didn’t get the feeling he wanted me prying into the intricacies of his blindness either.
