Chaos Magic

by Jennifer Willis

  “Are you insane? With everything that’s going on, and everything that could happen—“

  “Everything that could happen.” Saga turned her attention back to her computer screen. “Nothing that’s happening yet.”

  Sally set her jaw. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “It’s only seven o’clock. Things won’t really heat up until later tonight. Probably not until tomorrow.”

  Sally looked around for a clock but the walls were bare. It felt more like the middle of the night than early evening. It didn’t seem possible that the journey to Helheim had taken only a couple of hours. Sally massaged her temples. If a few hours in Midgard felt like days in Helheim, what must centuries of banishment there be like? No wonder Hel had gone mad.

  Saga read Sally’s confusion. “Tomorrow is Halloween. The draugar have been using the cover of the holiday to move around the city. And they haven’t really hurt anybody yet. So.”

  Sally’s phone chimed and Saga tossed it to her. There was a new text message in a long conversational string. “Heading to Coffee Horde now. See you soon!”

  “You set me up,” Sally muttered. She made a mental note to add a password to her phone.

  Saga laughed. “You need this. Go. We’ve got this under control.”

  There was something very not right about all of this, but Sally’s muddled mind couldn’t nail it down. Viking zombies. She took a sip of water. Halloween flash mobs. The burnt apartment building. Another sip of water. Smart zombies building an army.

  Sally glanced at Opal, hoping she would be the voice of sanity. Opal would stand up to Saga and insist that they huddle together to figure out how to save the city from the gathering scourge. But Opal shrugged.

  “You should go,” Opal said.

  “It’s a bad idea,” Sally protested.

  “Look, you’re distracting me,” Saga replied. “I’m glad you’re okay and everything, and I do want your input. But I can work faster without all of this drama in my apartment.”

  Drama? Sally regarded Saga with genuine disbelief. She saw a similar reaction on Opal’s face.

  “Have fun on your coffee date, Sally!” Saga waved a hand in the air and went back to her laptop screen. “Maybe pat some foundation on your cheeks to cover those scratches?”

  Sally looked again at her phone. Maybe she did need the diversion of something normal and mundane. The shower had washed away the heavy residue of Helheim, but she didn’t feel fully back in the here and now.

  Was she capable of pleasant small talk with an attractive stranger? Her mind flashed to Zach’s deep eyes and disarming smile, and she felt a flutter in her stomach.

  Sally typed out a quick message to let Zach know she might be a few minutes late. She still had to get dressed and find her shoes. And do something about her face.

  “Fine. I’ll get out of your hair for a while,” she said. “But if anything happens, and I mean anything—”

  “We’ll call you,” Saga replied, a smile creeping across her face.

  Heimdall’s head hurt. He’d had the long drive back from Portland to consider his unproductive meeting with Thor, but his brother was clearly right: The Lodge and its scattered members were wholly unprepared for whatever crisis might strike next, and now that the fiasco-prone Sally was training with the locus of chaos himself, there probably wasn’t a lot of time before all hell broke loose. Again.

  He parked his truck under the boughs of an old-growth evergreen and stepped out onto a carpet of pine needles. The sky was mostly clear overhead. He gave himself the space of a few, quiet minutes to fill his lungs with cool, fresh air and to remember who and what he was, and why that was important.

  Then he climbed the wide steps and walked through the front door of the Lodge to be greeted by high-pitched shrieking and the kind of histrionic wailing rarely found outside of a Greek tragedy.

  The Norns.

  Heimdall pulled off his boots and trod carefully as he made his way to the great room, afraid that he would find the three Norse Fates sitting around the hearth beating their breasts and tearing at their hair for effect as they proclaimed their latest vision. Instead, he found Maggie sitting on the leather couch with her laptop. A Skype consultation, then.

  Maggie looked up at his entrance and hit the mute button. “They do go on, don’t they?”

  “It’s kind of their thing. You worried about something?”

  “They called me, so at least we won’t get charged for this session.” She frowned. “I don’t think.”

  She unmuted just as the three Norns started forming intelligible syllables from their piercing howls.

  “The restless are walking!” two voices shouted in unison while a third added a dramatic wail. “Shades of flesh. They seek their entry, desperate for peace!”

  Maggie glanced up at Heimdall. “Trick-or-treaters?”

  Heimdall shrugged. He’d seen plenty of costumes in the city—zombies, superheroes, fairy royals, and a couple of unicorns—even the night before Halloween. “Desperate for peace?”

  “Reese’s Pieces?” Maggie giggled. She turned her attention back to the screen, where the Norns keened with foreboding. “Thank you so much for the warning, ladies. We’ll keep an eye out. Our regards to your cats!”

  She shut the laptop to sever the connection. “They do have cats, don’t they?”

  Heimdall laughed and headed for the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of microbrew—Poison Pear, a favorite of Rod’s—and rummaged in the cupboard for a box of pepper crackers. They were store-bought, as was nearly everything else these days. He sighed, then smiled again. As frustrated as he was with Maggie’s halting progress in becoming a Norse goddess, he admired her no-nonsense approach to the Norns.

  “No.” Maggie’s voice was hard and flat.

  Heimdall returned to the great room. Maggie was on her feet. Loki stood on the other side of the hearth.

  When and how had Loki gotten here? One glance at Loki’s serious expression, and Heimdall felt the air rush out of his body. He set down his beer and stood beside Maggie. The steady flames of the fire disturbed the air and made Loki’s image waver like an otherworldly specter.

  Loki also looked like he’d forgotten how to breathe. His face was paler than Heimdall had ever seen it. He almost laughed at the idea that Loki might have seen a ghost, but Loki wouldn’t come to the Lodge uninvited without good reason.

  So. Midgard was likely falling apart.

  “Would someone care to enlighten me on the topic of conversation?” Heimdall asked.

  Maggie glared at Loki across the flames. “You can give him the same song and dance, but the answer will still be no.”

  Heimdall reached for his beer and took a long pull. Song and dance? How long had he been in the kitchen looking for crackers?

  “The draugar are in Portland,” Loki said. “And if Hel is preparing to make some kind of stand—“

  “Did you say draugar?” Heimdall felt a rush of adrenaline. The restless are walking. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even heard of one of those ghoulish creatures. “And Hel is involved? How and why, and when—”

  “If, if, if.” Maggie crossed her arms tightly. For someone who’d been a naive mortal a few years earlier, she was a stubborn force to be reckoned with now. “If Hel makes an appearance in Midgard, and if she launches an assault against the Lodge or its holdings, then we’ll make a plan to deal with it.”

  Heimdall winced. The Lodge’s holdings included the Yggdrasil and the Well and the Grove, but that left out pretty much everything and everyone else.

  “So unless there’s a specific threat against this property, you intend to stay out of it,” Heimdall said.

  Maggie gave a curt nod. “I believe I made that clear.”

  Heimdall glanced across the hearth at Loki, then turned to Maggie. “If there’s a credible threat, we can’t leave our kin to fend for themselves—”

  “You want to do this now?” Maggie’s voice was hard. “In front o
f our guest?”

  Loki moved away from the hearth. “It wasn’t my intention to instigate a domestic dispute.”

  “No.” Heimdall spoke louder than necessary as he tried to keep his cool. “Loki isn’t a guest. Loki is . . .”

  Heimdall glanced at Loki and tried to find the right word. “Family” must have been on his lips but he wasn’t there yet. Odin trusted the old trickster for reasons he didn’t divulge, and Heimdall didn’t think anything short of Ragnarok would prompt him to make such a declaration himself.

  Maggie lifted her eyebrows. “Go on. What is Loki?”

  A door opened and closed in the kitchen as Rod stepped in from the mudroom. Heimdall turned to greet him, but Rod froze when he spotted the standoff by the hearth.

  “Hey there, Rod,” Loki called out. “How are things in the world of homestead upkeep and renovation?”

  “Uh.” Rod drew out the syllable practically to the limits of his breath.

  “Now’s not a good time, Rod.” Maggie didn’t take her eyes off Heimdall.

  Heimdall waited for one of Loki’s old pranks. Maybe he’d leap across the hearth and land between Heimdall and Maggie to distract them from their battle of wills. Perhaps he’d break into a spontaneous round of the Macarena or launch into a humorous and meandering tale that had no discernible relevance or endpoint. But the trickster looked physically diminished as he stood by the fire. What had happened to the god of chaos?

  Loki cleared his throat and asked for a glass of water. Rod seemed grateful for the errand, and Loki followed him into the kitchen. As soon as they were out of earshot, Maggie’s eyes narrowed.

  “Why are you always minimizing and second-guessing me in front of your family?” Her voice was a low hiss.

  Heimdall was dumbfounded. Becoming an immortal against her will was the most strenuous challenge of Maggie’s existence, and Heimdall had done everything he could think of to be supportive. He’d botched the Winter Nights feast, but he’d eaten two helpings of that gelatin monstrosity despite how it numbed his gums and made his guts churn. He’d given Maggie all the space she’d asked for and more, but none of that would build her self-confidence.

  “I think you’re reading ill intent where there is none,” he said. “If Loki has come to warn us of impending danger, we need to listen.”

  He glanced toward the kitchen and tried to listen in on whatever conversation Rod might be having with Loki, but they’d made a quiet exit through the mudroom. He looked back at Maggie and knew he had to think fast to calm the storm he saw brewing on her face.

  “You want to make your mark,” Heimdall said. “Speaking your mind is good, and so is constructive change. Scrambling from crisis to crisis, even those not of our making, can get tiring and is probably a poor use of resources. You’re right there. But if you truly want to be a part of this family, you need to learn when to yield.”

  Maggie sucked in a ragged breath and her eyes filled with tears. She looked as though he’d struck her with an open hand instead of speaking to her as an equal. But then she swallowed hard and gestured toward the leather sofa.

  “Let’s talk this out then.” She cleared her throat. “Let’s discuss how we’re supposed to protect the Lodge and all of Portland and everybody else from whatever new mess Sally has created. And do it all with next to no resources. Shall we?”

  Heimdall gulped down the rest of his beer.

  Loki walked at a leisurely pace around the side of the Lodge. He’d followed Rod out of the kitchen and through the mudroom, and they’d exchanged brief pleasantries before Rod turned one way toward his workshop and Loki went the other.

  He breathed in the crisp air of the surrounding forest, then slumped as he thought of his lost friends. Frigga would have been horrified by the way her son and his partner were treating each other. She would have sent them on a vigorous hunt to force them to work together, or she might have insisted on professional help to prevent Heimdall and Maggie from pulling the Lodge down around them.

  And Odin would have been heartbroken over the division between his sons. There had only ever been one Lodge. How had the family fractured so quickly? Once this current crisis was over, Loki would turn his attention to mending the rifts. If he could.

  He paused in the clearing at the bottom of the broad steps that led to the Lodge’s front entrance. Three vehicles were parked out of the way—Maggie’s mini-SUV and Heimdall’s and Rod’s pickups. Thor’s truck should also have been there, parked beside Bonnie’s RAV4 and whatever trendy electric vehicle Saga was driving. And also Opal’s beat-up car and Tariq’s little hatchback, and the full fleet of the Valkyries’ motorcycles.

  Loki lowered himself to sit on the bottom step and ran his fingers over the wood Rod and Thor had planed by hand. Every board that made this house had been cut to show the wood grain to its best advantage and hand-stained for durability. Every square inch had been thoughtfully tended since the last nail was driven in this current incarnation of Odin’s Lodge.

  It wasn’t Odin’s Lodge anymore.

  Loki swept his hand across the wood’s smooth surface and considered how long it would take for the staircase to fall into disrepair to match the tempers and broken relationships. Perhaps his attempt to bring Odin and Frigga back to Midgard hadn’t been so mad after all.

  He heard muffled stomping and slamming of doors inside, followed by the relief of quiet. Loki peered up into the starlit sky. He traced the outlines of old friends and foes who had been immortalized as constellations. Dvalin the sleeper, old drooping-ears Duneyr, even Ratatosk the gnaw-toothed squirrel. His breath caught as he recognized the pattern of the Hellewagen. The wagon of the dead. Loki closed his eyes.

  He must have drifted off, because he startled when a familiar voice spoke his name. He opened his eyes and found Rod and Heimdall standing before him, their faces illuminated by the yellow porch light against a background of dark evergreens and twinkling stars.

  “You okay?” Rod looked concerned.

  Loki offered a weak smile as a token of reassurance. “It’s been a long day.”

  “I’d imagine.” Heimdall propped one socked foot on the bottom step where Loki was sitting. He must have sneaked out through the kitchen, too, to be outdoors without his boots. Heimdall alone continued to observe his mother’s preference for removing shoes inside the front door.

  Loki could see on Heimdall’s face that he wasn’t anxious to head back inside. Before too long Loki expected Heimdall would take to stashing an overnight bag in his truck or Rod’s workshop.

  “I don’t wish to overstay my welcome.” Loki pushed himself to his feet. More truthfully, he didn’t want an earful of whatever Maggie had been dishing out to Heimdall should she venture outside and find Loki still on Lodge property.

  Heimdall lifted a hand and asked him to wait. “She isn’t wrong about protecting the Lodge.” He made a face. There was something he was holding back, and it pained him. “But we don’t leave our people undefended.”

  Loki nodded and ignored the ache and the sick feeling in his chest. This was his mess and perhaps it was just that he be the one to clean it up. With Sally, of course. There was very little he could do anymore without the witch’s assistance.

  “I’ll do what I can. Maybe Thor . . .” Loki let his voice trail off and hoped Heimdall would complete the thought, but there was only silence.

  Loki became keenly aware of a throbbing around his eyes and nose, though the swelling and bruising had faded. Thor might not respond to Loki’s direct request for help, but if he couched it in terms of coming to Sally’s aid . . .

  “Thor might surprise you,” Heimdall said at last.

  “Whatever rift exists between the sons of Odin, I won’t be a cause for it to widen,” Loki replied.

  Heimdall laughed, but it was a bitter, tired sound. “You let me worry about the cold war.” He lifted his gaze to the Lodge’s door. “And its many fronts. But I can offer you Rod. If Rod is willing to get involved.”

  Rod
glanced between Loki and Heimdall, apparently uncertain who was in charge. “Whatever you need.”

  Loki was surprised when he realized Heimdall was leaving it up to him to make the call. Since when did Heimdall look to Loki for a strategic decision?

  Rod and Heimdall both eyed Loki with uneasy expectation. Loki shrugged.

  “You should remain here until we have a better idea of what we’re up against,” Loki said. “I shall make other inquiries.”

  Loki pushed past them and headed down the gentle slope of grass leading away from the Lodge.

  “Hey!” Rod called after him. “Do you want a ride? Aren’t you headed back to Portland?”

  Loki waved without turning around. “I’m good, thank you.”

  He enjoyed Rod’s confusion, even without seeing it. Heimdall and Rod’s muffled conversation receded as Loki made his way toward the White Oak Yggdrasil. He missed the Sitka Spruce Yggdrasil, though it had been difficult to consult once the state’s largest tree became a tourist attraction along the highway to the Oregon Coast.

  But this World Tree was on protected land, surrounded by acres and acres owned by the Lodge.

  Loki stopped a dozen meters from the base of the Yggdrasil and admired its broad, scarred trunk that towered into the stars.

  It didn’t take long to find his portal. None of the others, save perhaps Freya, had learned to travel the network of trees. He’d picked it up only recently, mostly as a means of entertaining himself while he babysat the Frost Giants. And it wasn’t something he did casually. It was too easy to draw the wrong kind of attention when zipping along the network of anchoring roots. It took quite a bit of energy and he sometimes got lost even when he knew where he was going. A wrong turn could land him thousands of miles from his destination, or even in another realm.

  It was something he’d teach to Sally. After her work in the woods and her journey to Helheim, the veils were less rigid and the travel easier.

  That poor girl. She would never be truly ready for what was coming her way.

  He knelt and pressed his palm against the cool grass. The spot looked like any other for acres around, but it pulsed with a slow and subtle signature Loki had come to recognize. He closed his eyes and took a breath, and then he was gone.