Twilight Magic (Rune Witch Book 6)

by Jennifer Willis

  Maybe he’s just their ride home. It was a glimmer of charitable optimism, though Sally knew she was grasping at rose-tinted straws. She recognized one of the workers as the man who’d brushed past her in the store earlier in the day. The crack of magick she’d felt spark across her skin wasn’t her imagination. That had been nearly ten hours ago—a long shift for physical labor.

  So who was the man with the magick, and why were the men in the van watching him?

  Sally was out of her depth. She should have confided in Opal and Saga. She should have called Freya or Heimdall for advice, or consulted Thor about urban reconnaissance before she’d headed back here on her own. She had shared some of her speculations with Fenrir over lunch, not because she was trying to further bond with him but because watching him eat nearly raw meat followed by the text messages from Laika had thrown Sally off her game—and because she’d chickened out of talking to him about what was really on her mind. She was skilled at being secretive about her activities and reticent with her thoughts, and she hadn’t revealed enough to worry him, but that luncheon had rattled her.

  “How does a dog even send a text message?” Sally whispered as she watched the two men in the van. She narrowed her eyes and sent a particularly unkind thought in their direction.

  The guy in the passenger seat jumped as he spilled coffee on his thick sweater. Sally smiled with surprise. Had she made that happen? The driver scowled and barked some sharp words at his companion before he burst out laughing. The passenger wiped his dark sweater with a page of newsprint and then gestured toward the warehouse building.

  They were behind closed windows and too far away for Sally to hear, but she followed the man’s gesture and noticed that the workers were closing up the delivery truck as the last crates were carted inside. The empty truck pulled out of the loading area and Sally hunched in on herself and tried to sink deeper into the shadows as it drove past and made fresh tracks in the falling snow.

  A dozen workers shuffled out of the building and headed for parked cars and the bus stop. But the three workers who’d cast furtive glances at the van and who cowered before the angry supervisor weren’t anywhere to be seen. Maybe they were pulling an overnight shift inside the building? Sally hoped the Balkian Brothers paid a good overtime wage.

  She brushed snowflakes off her eyelashes. She was cold and she had to pee. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to glean from her frosty stakeout, but she didn’t know anything more now than she did two hours earlier.

  Sally got up from the sidewalk and shook the snow off her shoulders and knees. Her feet were numb and she had to march in place to warm her body up again. She was about to walk away when she heard the slam of car doors. She turned and saw the two guys from the van crossing the street. They climbed the short flight of concrete steps to the loading dock just before the warehouse lights cut out and the automated door lowered and locked into place.

  She hurried around to the front of the building. The Balkian Brothers Antiques storefront was dark. Mindful of the security cameras—watching cop shows on television had taught her that much—she sauntered by on the sidewalk and pretended that she wasn’t actually peering through the windows. There weren’t any lights on inside. Where had everybody gone? She remembered the warehouse behind the showroom. There were probably offices, too, in the back where she couldn’t see. She would have to come back another time. She had to know more about that man and his magick.

  It was past 11 p.m., and Loki sat by himself in the dark on the lumpy futon couch in the tiny apartment. It wasn’t such a bad place compared to the other student housing he’d seen, and though the studio wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t especially tidy either. The laundry was piling up in separate mounds of colors and whites on the dingy carpet, and three half-full glasses of soda sat on a desk next to ungainly stacks of rare books on ancient rune spells, sigil crafting, and the history of chaos magick.

  He’d been trying to wean her away from such books.

  Baron the cat nestled in beside him, a warm ball of purring bliss, as Loki traced the cat’s spine with his fingertips. Baron was looking ragged around the edges, his orange and black markings paling toward white and the knots of his vertebrae showing through his fur. But Baron was content with the company and wasn’t shy in his affection. He stretched his front paws out long, tucked his head, and showed Loki his furry belly.

  Loki kept petting the cat as he stretched his feet inside his leather boots and closed his eyes. He matched his breathing to the purring beside him, but he was beyond the comfort of meditation. His joints ached and his breath was heavy. His old joints creaked when he moved, and he didn’t understand how anyone could sit or sleep on this futon without an immediate need for a chiropractor.

  Loki opened his eyes at the sound of footsteps in the outer hall. The cat barely reacted when Sally’s keys jangled outside the door.

  Loki wasn’t sure why she insisted on such mundane measures as keys and locks when she had so many more powerful tools at her disposal. Even in his weakened state, Loki had gotten inside with minimal effort. He added that to the mental list of topics he wanted to cover with her while there was still time, though home security was farther down in priority.

  She closed and locked the door behind her before she switched on the single overhead light. She pretended not to notice he was there, inside her apartment. On her couch. Petting her cat. She kept her back to him and played at sorting her mail, though he could see from across the small room that it was all junk mailers and sportswear catalogs.

  She dumped the bundle of mail into a blue recycling bin by the door and heaved a sigh. “You have to stop following me.”

  “Then perhaps you should resume answering your phone,” he said.

  She dropped her keys on the chipped counter that separated the tiny, galley-style kitchen from the rest of the apartment. Loki studied her as she stood in profile. She was clearly angry and anxious and tired, but she looked otherwise pretty much the same as she always had in the few years he had known her. She was taller now, and her strawberry hair was a little darker and somewhat less blond, but she was still painfully young. She might be living on her own in this halfway house to human adulthood offered by the college experience, but she was rather far removed from the maturity she claimed.

  “I noticed your class attendance has been spotty.” He had to work not to laugh when the corners of her mouth pulled down into a scowl. Sally was a junior at Portland State University and was supposedly pursuing a degree in anthropology. He even knew the classes in which she was enrolled this semester—social theory, transnationalism and migration, and a seminar on cultural appropriation. The few textbooks in her apartment had barely been opened, but she always showed up for exams and turned in her assignments on time. She routinely banged out her research papers in stream-of-consciousness all-nighters that somehow arranged themselves into works of scholarly beauty with footnotes and flawless bibliographies. Sally’s parents were none the wiser, but Loki and Opal both knew that Sally’s high marks had nothing to do with actual studying.

  “There was quite the discussion today in your class on applications in crowdsourcing, about campaign ethics and accountability to donors,” he said. He’d been skeptical of this course choice at first, but the modern world was changing at dizzying speed. Not so far down the road, Sally might need to apply for a grant or run a Kickstarter to fund and feed a new Viking army in the event of an invading force of ice trolls or a roving band of drunken disir and their addled reindeer.

  “I was busy.” She still wouldn’t look at him.

  “Yes, I noticed that, too.”

  He waited for her to admit what he already knew, that she spent most of her time in the woods or along the banks of any of the area’s many rivers and streams. But she would know that he knew about her solo trips to the Oregon Coast to sit with the stones and the shore. He’d gone through similar periods of fitfulness over the centuries. Long periods of isolation were often the only remedy fo
r the company of others, and it was sometimes the only thing that kept him enough in balance so that he could be social.

  Sally turned to face him, arms crossed over her damp parka. “You can’t keep just showing up like this.”

  “That’s a fine way to greet a guest. And you’re out of orange juice, by the way.” Loki lifted a glass to his lips and drank down the last of the juice.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d let himself into her apartment. After the third time, she’d stopped changing the locks. Sally was doing her best to maintain an angry, offended frown, but Loki could see in her eyes that she was quietly relieved by his presence.

  “As long as you need me, I’ll be around every dark corner,” he replied with a smile.

  “Yeah, because that’s not the least bit creepy.”

  Sally shrugged off her coat and tossed it at the only upholstered chair in the apartment. She swung around the kitchen counter and opened the small refrigerator. Every appliance in the kitchen was a miniaturized version of the real thing. A two-cup coffee maker. A microwave barely big enough for a bowl of soup, and with pictograms instead of a keypad. And Loki had seen living dogs larger than Sally’s refrigerator. It was like she was living in a doll’s house.

  “I recommend the two-day-old Thai food,” Loki said as Baron stretched out all four legs and then curled up beside him again. The cat let out a sighing purr and then sank quickly into a deep sleep. “The spaghetti has green fuzz on it, and I think that half-empty jar of peanut butter may be older than I am.”

  He didn’t have to lift his head to feel the weight of the scowl Sally threw his way.

  She opened the white take-out box of Thai food and sniffed at it, then dumped the flat noodles and veggies into a bowl and shoved it into the microwave.

  “You really should take better care of yourself.” He knew his perpetually calm tone was perpetually irritating. He felt genuine affection for his young apprentice, and riling her was one of the few joys left to him in this world.

  And it was good for her to be knocked off-balance, again and again. It was good for her to be confused and disoriented, even angry. Every time she brought herself back to center was a victory, and it was a skill she’d need to have down cold before too much longer. He did feel a pang of not quite guilt or remorse, but sympathy when she got upset or found herself feeling giddily stupid as the magick inside her roiled and changed and transformed her from the inside out. From what he remembered of the process, it was an uncomfortable and exquisite experience.

  “I do okay.” She kept her back to him and watched the microwave’s digital countdown.

  Loki laughed. “Hubris. The fatal flaw of every young adult.”

  Her shoulders tensed, and then Loki watched her make a deliberate effort to relax. Given the amount of power she wielded, she needed a keen, vigilant awareness of her mind and body.

  “Very good.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he saw her shoulders hunch up again. He laughed at that, too.

  “You’re not helping, you know that?” The microwave beeped and Sally yanked the door open and pulled out the steaming food. Loki could see from her face that the hot bowl nearly burned her fingers, but she turned calmly to face Loki as she rested the bowl on the counter. “I don’t know why you bother to keep showing up. It’s not going to change anything.”

  He crossed one leg casually over the other without disturbing the sleeping cat. “It changes everything, Sally. You know that as well as I do.”

  Whenever magick was afoot, Loki brought its polar opposite into play. Prosperity spells were met with misfortune, and hexes flew up against blessings. He brought bedlam to tranquility and order to pandemonium. He was the god of chaos, and he drove pretty much everyone nuts.

  Everyone but Sally.

  Loki had presented himself as an ally from the start, when Sally was bloody in the street and desperate to right the wrongs she’d unintentionally wrought. He was the one who found her then—not Frigga or Freya or Heimdall. Loki. She should have known from the beginning what that meant. Or Frigga should have warned her. But Frigga hadn’t wanted to admit the truth, so the goddess of the hearth turned a blind eye to Sally’s true nature, or she’d sought to bend Sally’s magick to her own purposes and make the girl into the traditional Rune Witch she should have been.

  But destiny had other ideas. Sally had the same brand of magick in her blood as Loki.

  “I told you, I don’t want your help.” She nearly pulled the kitchen drawer off its hinges when she reached in to grab a fork, a dented aluminum thing stolen from one of the campus cafeterias. He couldn’t understand why she would use her magick to succeed in her coursework but wouldn’t extend her skills to get a better apartment or at least to feed herself properly.

  “I want to figure this out for myself.” She shoved a forkful of noodles into her mouth and started rage-chewing.

  “Because that’s gone so well for you thus far?” Loki chuckled again, and Sally looked ready to rake her fingernails across the counter. She had to know that he wasn’t laughing at her, but she was stubborn and tonight she seemed determined to start a new argument or resurrect an old one. The friction between them had been constant since Frigga and Odin went to Valhalla, and Sally won nearly every battle of wills—the smaller ones, the ones Loki no longer had the energy to fight. He was glad she was flexing those muscles, because she was going to need every inch of them.

  Sally swallowed hard and dropped her fork in her bowl. She crossed her arms over her chest again and stared at him. So now she was showing her defiance by refusing to eat? He knew for a fact that she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch other than an apple in the late afternoon. He was surprised her stomach wasn’t growling loud enough for him to hear across the room.

  “You’re being ridiculous, Sally. Stubbornness will be your downfall.”

  “I thought it was hubris,” Sally said with a smirk.

  Loki glanced at the dictionary on Sally’s tiny bookshelf. Its spine had never been cracked. “In your case, they’re one and the same. Eat your food. Pretend I’m not here.”

  Sally snorted. “That’s an impossibility.”

  “Then pretend I’m someone else.”

  “Equally unlikely.” Sally picked up her bowl, stepped around the counter, and settled into the upholstered chair across from the futon. Baron protested with a loud yawn when Loki leaned forward to push the rickety coffee table toward Sally across the carpet remnant, but she insisted on resting the hot bowl in her lap instead. At least she started eating again.

  Loki sighed and went back to petting the cat. The room wavered as his vision got a little fuzzy. He blinked a few times and used Baron’s soft fur as a sensory anchor. He tried not to make a big show of taking a deep breath, but he was sure she noticed. He dug in, and turned his head to meet her gaze.

  “You could at least get yourself some decent furniture.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me how to live my life,” Sally protested with a mouth full of noodles. “I’ve got parents for that.”

  “To whom you rarely speak.”

  Sally stopped chewing and glared at him. She hadn’t yet raised her voice with him, but Loki was lucky she hadn’t developed an ability to shoot death-lasers out of her eyes. “Stay out of my life.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” He dug a little too deep into Baron’s fur. The cat gave a purring growl of protest and leveled a lazy stink-eye at the god of chaos. Loki shrugged in apology and lightened his touch. The cat settled back down and started to snore.

  When Sally began as a sophomore at PSU, her promised schedule of weekly phone calls to her parents and dinners at home every other weekend hadn’t lasted long. She was living in the same city as her parents, but now she went months without seeing them.

  So Loki started visiting them in her stead. Sally’s parents had a pretty good idea of who and what he was, and they welcomed the god of chaos into their home as they would a trusted academic or spiritual advisor�
��technically, Loki was both. He kept them up to date on Sally’s activities and classes, information he gleaned largely through spying on her.

  “Your parents aren’t the only ones concerned about you,” Loki said.

  “I’m fine.” Sally shoveled another forkful of steaming noodles into her mouth. They were too hot, and her eyes watered. She sniffed hard and chewed anyway.

  “So I see.” He closed his eyes and waited for five breaths. He enjoyed the feel of Baron’s warmth pressed up against him, expanding and contracting with deep, satisfied rest. He ignored the ringing in his ears that was becoming a constant nuisance. He inhaled the aroma of onions, garlic, and cilantro from Sally’s reheated dinner, and his stomach grumbled.

  “Be careful that you’re picking the right battles, Sally,” he said at last.

  Sally’s fork clattered as she dropped it in the empty bowl. “So you were at the antiques warehouse, spying on me as usual.”

  Loki spread his hands out in front of him. He actually hadn’t been referring to Sally’s solo and amateur reconnaissance operation, though of course he’d been nearby, watching. But maybe focusing on this particular small tree would help her to see the much larger forest, eventually. “I suppose there’s no use pleading the Fifth.”

  Sally choked back a laugh. “I’m fairly sure the Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply to old Norse gods, even if you arrived on the continent centuries before the United States even existed.”

  “Today, I happened to be monitoring my son’s activities, not yours.” Loki picked up his empty juice glass and rose to walk toward the kitchen. On the futon, Baron sighed in displeasure and tucked his face into his paws. “Coincidence, really.”

  Sally slumped in the chair, and her discarded parka slipped down over her shoulders. “Frigga always said the Wargs couldn’t be trusted.”

  “Be that as it may, it is still the truth. And you know I have never lied to you, Sally.” Loki filled his glass with water from the tap, then came back to the futon and sat. Baron ignored his return, just like a cat.