Eventually, dinner was served, and the evening progressed. Percy Gruen, poker player extraordinaire, presented the proposed venue in Las Vegas and touted its investment potential. Thorin ignored me, and I tried hard not to fall asleep, face first, in my plate of chocolate lava cake. Thorin’s plate was empty, scraped clean, but damned if I ever saw him put a bite in his mouth.
At some point the lights flickered on and people rose to their feet. I blinked, trying to wake from my boredom-induced stupor. I slipped on my shoes, and Thorin pulled me to my feet. To my credit, I managed it without embarrassing myself, barely wobbling on my aching toes. Maybe I’m starting to get the hang of these heels. My side complained, my shoulder protested, and I wanted a pain pill and bed, but Thorin had something else in mind.
“Helen invited us to her room for drinks,” he said, leading me away from the dining room toward a bay of elevators.
I groaned. “God, if she’s the one trying to kill me, then let her do it. Fast. Anything but this slow torture.”
Thorin’s mouth quirked into a curious smile. “What’s the matter, Sunshine? You don’t enjoy being wined and dined?”
“Wined and dined? Is that what this is? I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
The elevator binged as the doors slid open. Thorin stepped in and tugged me in behind him. I lost my balance and fell against him. His hands slid around my hips, steadying me, but he didn’t let go after I regained my footing. My blood sizzled traitorously in response. His warm breath slinked across my cheek when he said, “Maybe you’re just out of your element.”
“I’m a simple girl, Thorin. So yes, I am a little out of my comfort zone. But I’d walk across a bed of nails, barefoot and naked, if it helped me find out the truth about my brother.”
Thorin released his grip on me and smiled. “It won’t be a bed of nails. But I don’t expect Helen will make it easy for us.”
“Nothing about this whole affair has been easy. Why should tonight be any different?”
Chapter Twenty
“She doesn’t like me,” I said as we stood outside Helen’s suite, waiting for her to let us in.
“Don’t worry,” Thorin said. “Helen doesn’t like anyone.”
“It looked as though she liked you very much.”
“She doesn’t like me, either—she just wants to get me into her bed.”
I cringed. “Don’t those two things usually go hand in hand?”
Thorin shook his head. “Not with Helen.”
Based on the little I knew about her so far, I thought Thorin was probably right. The door opened, and Nate ushered us into the room. Helen lounged on a loveseat, still elegant in her black crepe gown. She had worn her hair down throughout dinner but had since twisted the dark strands into a knot at the nape of her neck, revealing the elegant gold hoops in her ears. The earrings complemented a large gold nugget hanging from a chain around her neck. I hadn’t noticed the necklace earlier. The pendant’s shape reminded me of an arrowhead.
“Hello, again,” Helen said as she tucked bare feet beneath her. I was jealous of her unfettered toes. “Are you sure it isn’t past your curfew, Solina? Why don’t you go to bed and leave Alek here with me? I promise to take very good care of him.”
The time for holding my tongue had come to an end. “Are you offering a trade?”
“A trade for what?”
I raised a shoulder and let it drop, a nonchalant shrug. “You can have Thorin. He’s a pain in my neck anyway. I’ll be happy to take Nate in return.”
Helen froze for a moment, speechless. Laughter lit in her eyes before it pealed from her lips. “Oh, darling, this one has some spit in her after all. Would you like that, Nate? Would you like to keep company with Alek’s orchid?”
Nate, standing at the bar, drained a lowball of amber liquid while he painted an appraising and surprisingly hot look over me. Shed of his coat and tie, Nate McNary cut a striking figure. Although not as tall or as thick as Thorin, he still looked lethal; a long slim knife in contrast to Thorin’s broadsword.
“Youth and beauty are hard to resist,” Nate said.
Helen dragged her gaze up Thorin’s body and down again. “You can say that again.”
Helen rose to her feet and sashayed to the bar. “Have a seat, darlings. I’ll fix you a drink. Alek, Johnny Walker, if I remember correctly. Solina, I’m afraid we’re out of chocolate milk.”
“I’m fine,” I said. Helen could crack on my age all night if she wanted. Her sarcasm only made her sound bitter. Thorin and I took seats on the sofa adjacent to the loveseat on which Helen had been lounging when we arrived. My body sank into the cushions, extra heavy for want of sleep and fatigue from fending off the pending ache of my injuries.
Nate plopped into a wide chair perpendicular to the couch. He drained his whiskey and perched the emptied glass on his knee, never taking his eyes from me as he did. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Solina,” he said, “but you look exhausted.”
Helen returned from the bar, carrying a glass of scotch for Thorin and something pink in a martini glass for herself. “That’s the poorest pretext I’ve ever heard,” she said. Instead of returning to her loveseat, Helen perched next to Thorin on the sofa’s armrest. “Next you’ll ask her if she wants to use your bed to lie down, and would she like a massage as well?”
“Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” I said, only half in jest.
Thorin hacked like an angry cat, and his eyes smoldered darkly. “We did not come here to play games of innuendo,” he said.
Helen pouted and fingered a strand of Thorin’s pale hair, looping it around her finger. “But it’s so much fun. More fun than business.”
Thorin grabbed Helen’s hands and forced her to release his hair. “I’m not here about business either.”
In an imperceptible flash of movement, Thorin left the couch and yanked me to my feet. My tired brain couldn’t follow or form an objection when he brushed aside my hair and grasped the neckline of my dress. He eased the fabric aside in a way that exposed the joint of my neck and shoulder. The bandages didn’t cover everything. Several scratches extended up toward my ear, visible in close quarters.
Nate gasped and started to rise, but Thorin made a threatening gesture, stopping Nate in his place. I struggled against Thorin, but he held me so tightly that fighting was useless. He had the kind of strength that took great discipline to keep in check. He could probably snap my arm with a thought.
“I came here to find out what you know about this,” Thorin said.
Helen clucked her tongue a few times. “I’m no medical doctor, but it appears the poor girl has been mauled.”
“Did you order the hit, Helen?”
Helen’s nostrils flared. “Who am I, Al Capone? I am not a mobster. I do not make a habit of menacing little girls, and I resent your bellicosity.”
“If I were bellicose, I would have dispensed with words long ago, and there would be blood.”
“What is it you really want to know? A nasty beast nibbled on your girlfriend. So what? She survived.”
“That nasty beast doesn’t think for himself, Helen. Someone holds his leash.”
Helen raised a black eyebrow. “And you want to know who that someone is?”
Thorin pursed his lips and glared at her. We both waited for her answer.
Helen slipped off the sofa arm and went to her loveseat. She plopped on the cushion and fingered the hem of her skirt. “Damned non-smoking rooms,” she said. “Nate, bring me my clutch, would you?” Nate raised a beleaguered eyebrow, but he planted his feet and rose from his chair to do as Helen bid.
“Why do you think I know anything?” Helen said to Thorin.
“It’s your trade,” he said. “Your commerce is information.”
“Among other things,” Helen mumbled. Nate returned, toting Helen’s purse, and she shuffled through its contents until she found a pack of gum. “Nicotine gum. Disgusting stuff. I miss the old days.” She popped a piece bet
ween her teeth and sighed. “At least they let us keep our booze.”
“Helen,” Thorin said through gritted teeth. “You’re dissembling.”
Helen rolled her eyes. “This is really all about that boy who worked for you, isn’t it? The one who died? I don’t see why you’re so worked up over it. Boys die every day and you don’t come hunting me down and not-so-subtly accusing me of violence. He can’t possibly be worth all this unpleasantness.”
Helen’s vain chatter burned into the raw places in my heart. I closed my eyes and tried to shut them out—Thorin’s merciless grasp and Helen’s vapid stare. My body trembled. These people—these strangers—were playing games, and my brother was dead because of their scheming. If Mani even registered in their awareness, then to them he was merely a minor obstacle to overcome on their way to grander aspirations. Killing him was a box to check off on a scavenger hunt: Do a stoplight fire drill. Stuff ten people in a photo booth. Kill Chapman Mundy. Check! Check! Check!
Thorin said he cared for Mani, but my brother had been little more to him than a canary in a coal mine, a harbinger of danger. His only concern was for his own safety. For Helen Locke, Mani’s death registered no more sorrow or regret than an antelope for a lion. There was no way to make her understand or appreciate the void created by Mani’s absence. Mani was my twin, my other half. Helen and Thorin might as well have stood on another planet when it came to their ability to relate to what had happened in my world.
I couldn’t bear it another moment—Helen’s haughty apathy and Thorin’s cold caginess. Anger erupted as a physical presence under my skin. I shook harder, a seizure almost. The others fell silent; the atmosphere turned stilted. I opened my eyes, not realizing I had closed them.
I was doing it again.
Thorin hissed and dropped his hands away from me, burned by the heat of my skin. An essence of light exuded from my pores, soft at first, but strengthened by each beat of my heart until flames erupted over my body.
“Gods below,” Helen said, turning to shield her face from my heat and light. “It really is her.”
Thorin tried to touch me again but fell back before making contact. I reveled in his weakness. The last time this had happened, I was frightened, hurt, and surprised. Now, I kept a hold on my senses and explored the sensation. It radiated like a fever, or maybe it was more like a sunburn, where everything inside goes cold while heat rolls from the skin in waves. I back-tracked the heat waves, tracing them into my body, along my nervous system, up my spine, until I found it, the source of this strange ability, affixed to a place inside me so corporeal it might have shown on an MRI.
“Solina!” someone yelled. “Stop it.” The voice sounded anguished, and part of me liked it. “Solina, please.”
It was Thorin, begging. What had I done to hurt a giant like him? Hearing him cry out shattered my moment of insanity, and everything went cold and dark.
Chapter Twenty-one
I woke to a lurching sensation. Several moments passed before my vision cleared and I was able to identify my surroundings. I lay in the little bedroom in Thorin’s boat, and because of the noise and motion, I assumed we were underway. Nausea roiled up from the depths of my gut. I stumbled to my feet and scurried to the bathroom, making it in time to heave the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I vomited until nothing but spittle strung from my lips. When my stomach finally ceased its revolt, I closed my eyes and rested against the shower stall.
I didn’t hear him. I never heard him. He always just… appeared. I knew he was there because of the cold, wet cloth he pressed to my forehead and neck and because of the odor of rain and storms that followed him everywhere he went. Maybe he wasn’t the God of Thunder, but he sure smelled like one. “I brought you something to drink,” Thorin said.
I cracked open my eyes. Thorin crouched beside me, offering a glass of water. I sipped, waited to see if I could keep it down, then drank the rest in small, careful gulps. “Are we going back to Siqiniq?” I asked.
Thorin nodded. “Left Juneau a few minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t we leave last night?”
“Thought you’d sleep better if we stayed put. You were in bad shape. Didn’t want to be too far from civilization if you needed something.”
Dear Lord—a sympathetic Thorin? Not sure I can handle that. I passed him the empty glass and said, “Can I have a refill?”
“Do you want me to take you to your room first?” Thorin asked.
I nodded.
Thorin gathered me into his arms and toted me to bed. I sprawled across the mattress and almost passed out again before he returned and handed me another glass of water. He watched, his face impassive, until I drained the contents. I set the glass on the nightstand, closed my eyes, and slid under the covers with no idea what to do or say next. Go away, Thorin, and let’s pretend like nothing happened.
I wasn’t going to be that lucky.
Thorin sank onto the corner of the bed. “You set Helen’s hotel suite on fire.”
I pulled the covers over my head. When I was a little kid, I believed the boogey man couldn’t get me so long as nothing poked out from under my blankets, not even my hair. That trick would never fool Thorin, but it was a very broad hint; maybe he would take it.
“You singed Helen’s hair before the sprinklers kicked in,” he said, ignoring my amateur evasion tactics.
Something in his tone grated on me. “Are you laughing?” I asked, yanking the blankets down.
Thorin mastered his features, but not before a hint of mirth sparkled in his eyes. “She’ll need a week or two to grow out her eyebrows.”
“Are you serious?” I said, laughing. I had suffered no ill effects other than the nausea, and that I could blame on the alcohol.
The corner of Thorin’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t answer.
“What about Nate?” I asked.
“Unscathed, but wary.”
“And you? You look right as rain.”
Thorin ducked his head but held his palms out to me as if offering surrender. I didn’t understand at first, but then I spied angry red welts on his palms and fingertips. “That was an amazing display,” he said. “You still want to say you don’t know how it happens?”
“I think I’m starting to get an idea. But I still have no control over it. I’m still not sure I want it. It doesn’t feel like me. It feels like it’s all happening to someone else and I’m watching it all from the outside.”
“You won’t feel that way when you learn how to manage it.”
“A couple weeks ago I was a baker in my family’s business. That’s all I ever was, and I was pretty convinced it was all I would ever be. Now I discover I’m the reincarnation of an ancient goddess. How do I wrap my mind around that?”
“The same way you deal with any traumatic event.”
“Denial?”
Thorin chuckled. “I meant time. It’s the only thing that really works. Your grief for Mani is not as sharp as it was the first day, is it?”
My shoulders slumped. “I guess not.”
“The same applies to this situation. Eventually this new aspect of your life will become second nature.”
“I guess you speak from experience, don’t you?”
Thorin merely arched an eyebrow and ignored my question as he reached for the collar of my borrowed T-shirt, one belonging to him, judging by its size. I assumed my dress had not survived the fire. My cheeks reddened as I mourned the loss of my modesty. I hoped Thorin had possessed the decency to throw a blanket over my bare behind before carrying me to his boat.
“There’s one more thing you might want to know.” Thorin tugged the shirt collar down, reminding me of how he’d manhandled me in front of an audience the night before.
I slapped at his hands. “Stop doing that.”
“Look at yourself,” he said. “Your wounds are healed.”
“What?” I yanked up my shirt and examined my ribs. Thorin was right. The bandages were gone, and the skin wa
s smooth and white, as pure as if my flesh had never been rent by fangs and claws. “Ohh,” I moaned, clutching my stomach.
Thorin put his hand on my shoulder. “What is it?”
“I’m gonna be sick again.”
I sat in the fresh air on the deck of the Mjölnir as Thorin steered us into Resurrection Bay. It was early evening, but the sun was still high in the sky. I wondered if the long summer days were something people who weren’t born in Alaska adjusted to eventually. Or did they always long for more balance between darkness and light?
As Thorin reversed his yacht into its slip, Skyla and Val dashed onto the dock to meet us. Val jumped onto the dive platform and rushed up the steps into the interior of the boat before Thorin shut off the engine. I held my breath, waiting to see what Val would do. He shot a dirty look at Thorin and rushed to gather me into a hug. He wasn’t yelling yet, so I returned his embrace. Skyla ignored us and tied the mooring lines in place.
“Val, let up,” I said. “You’re squeezing the breath out of me.”
“It’s either hug you or shake you ’til your teeth clack.”
“I’m not your wayward child. You have no right to be upset with me.”
Val took me by my arms and held me so he could peer into my face. “I was scared for you. I care about you, and that gives me every right.”
“Not to threaten me, it doesn’t. At this point you’re either with me or against me. Please, Val, if you know something that can help us, tell me what it is.”
Val released me and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I imagine you know more than me. These things that have happened are familiar, but there’s no foretelling about this. None of it makes sense.”
“What did you find out from Helen Locke?” Skyla asked.
“Not bloody much,” Thorin said, joining the party after finishing his docking duties. “Our little ball of sunshine set the hotel room on fire before we could get any answers.”
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