by S. T. Bende
“You only work with her?” Finnea managed to inject so much disdain in the last word, it was all I could do not to stick my tongue out at her. As Finnea glared at Henrik, he glanced at me. There was none of the usual affection in his eyes, and not so much as a hint of the mortifying moment we’d just shared. His neutral face was the picture of practiced calm.
But his right eye twitched.
Whatever. I’d just decided to bolt back to the Bifrost when Finnea turned to examine her nails, her self-satisfied smirk reflecting off the pond. The minute her gaze left Henrik, his expression shifted and morphed into a mask of remorse. I blinked back tears that were so not invited to this party, and Henrik shook his head. He mouthed the word please, and glanced down at his bracelet. What did that even mean? Henrik usually made sense. He was predictable and steadfast and logical, and above all else, consistent. In battle and in life, his actions aligned with whichever strategy would yield the most favorable outcome.
So what the Helheim was he doing dissing me for this… this… fairy?
Before I could wrap my head around the nightmare that was my day, Finnea turned around and Henrik became the picture of apathy once again. Well, not apathy, exactly. More like ice king. The expression he gave me was firmly on the jotun side of frosty. He ran his hands up Finnea’s bare arms and let his eyes linger on those unfairly oversized boobs. “Good to see you again, Nea-Nea,” he murmured.
Nea-Nea? The black box of pent-up emotion wanted to explode in my chest. So they did have a past. Or maybe a present. Mia’s birthday cake threatened to make a violent and unsightly return. Don’t be sick, don’t be sick. Don’t let the stupid fairy know she’s winning.
Finnea’s existence wasn’t a surprise; Henrik had been going to see an älva for years—long before I’d joined Tyr’s team, and on one occasion right after I signed on as Tyr’s second. I’d thought the fairy was his dust supplier—a benevolent drug dealer who sprinkled magic fairy dust on worthy Asgardians as part of Odin’s plan for the greater good. But seeing her here spilling out of her stupid mini-dress and into Henrik’s ogling eyes…well, skit. Finnea didn’t look like a drug dealer. And something told me they didn’t just work together.
With Henrik’s attention locked on her boobs, Finnea’s smirk developed into a full-fledged grin. “It’s good to see you too, darling. Why don’t we go back to my tree and get reacquainted?” She flicked a hand in my direction. “Your little work friend here can enjoy the waterfall. Be a dear, won’t you, Brie, and pick us some berries to go with breakfast?”
“It’s Brynn,” I corrected through gritted teeth. “And I’m not going anywhere. Not without my partner.” I planted my hands firmly on my hips and stared Henrik down. I shot a pointed glance at his bracelet. If the charm blocker worked as well as he claimed it did, this little display with Finnea was all his idiot boy hormones.
“Actually, Brynn, I do need a few minutes alone with Finnea.” Henrik spoke impassively. My jaw burned as I ground my teeth together. Whatever, Henrik.
“Mmm.” Finnea ran her finger along Henrik’s cheek. She was so tall, she barely had to reach up to touch his traitorous face. “I think I’ll need more than a few minutes.”
Henrik locked his hands firmly around Finnea’s waist and picked her up. She gave a soft giggle that echoed across the pond like a chorus of tinkling bells. “Henrik!” she squealed. But her laughter slowed when he set her down an arm’s length away. My stomach settled at her indignant expression. Been there, sister. And by the time he dropped his hands and folded them across his chest, her amusement was completely gone. “What the Hel?”
“Listen, I really enjoy our time together. I mean, believe me, I really enjoy it,” Henrik began. My stomach resumed the fevered churn of an Olympic rower. Now he was just being a troll.
Finnea stamped her foot. “Are you saying we’re over?”
The churning slowed. Was he?
“I do need to talk to you about our… arrangement, ja. But first, I need you to do something for me.” Henrik stepped into her space and whispered in her ear. Finnea’s face went hard, then softened just a bit, then finally broke into a satisfied expression.
“I see.” She gave a small nod. “And in exchange you’ll…” She leaned forward to whisper in Henrik’s ear. Since her shiny wall of hair blocked my view, I couldn’t read his expression, but his voice sounded clear as a bell when he pulled back and swore to do what she asked. Finnea broke into an ear-splitting grin, and pulled a small pink satchel out of the top of her boot. “You have yourself a deal, darling. Hold this.” She passed him the satchel. I shot Henrik a look. What was going on?
Finnea tossed her lavender hair and looked over her shoulder, flexing her wings as she did so. They took on a pearlescent glow, and she flapped them nine times. With each pulse she rose a foot off the ground, so that on the final movement she hovered well above us, one leg bent with her toe pointed at her knee. She twirled a tight spiral, creating a shower of glitter I assumed came from her wings. It rained down, peppering the ground—and my right arm—in a glimmering hue. With hands cupped together, Finnea captured a portion of the glitter in her palms, then slowly lowered herself to the ground. Henrik held out the pouch and she emptied her hands with care, dusting the granules into the pink sleeve.
So that was where älva dust came from.
“Brie, love, be a dear and take this back to your colleagues.” Finnea took the pouch from Henrik’s hands and held it out.
I swiped sparkles off my arm as my eyes found Henrik’s. “Come on, Henrik. We got what we came for. Let’s go.”
“Not so fast.” Finnea trailed her finger along Henrik’s chest. “I believe we have a little matter of payment to work out.”
Henrik grimaced. “I’m afraid she’s right. Brynn, Heimdall can drop the Bifrost on the east side of the waterfall. It’s secure enough. Take the dust to the safe house, and come back when Tyr has new orders.”
“You want me to leave without you?” I balked. Raging fire giants, spear-throwing jotuns, and homicidal dwarves I could handle. But bailing on your partner in the middle of a recon mission? That was unprecedented. And so unacceptable.
Finnea thrust the pouch at me, and I snatched it up with a scowl.
“A deal’s a deal.” Henrik sounded resigned, but he gave me a firm nod. “If you’re not back within three hours, I’ll meet you at the compound.”
Finnea looked absolutely giddy. I felt well beyond nauseated.
“Whatever, Henrik. It’s your funeral.” I turned around.
“Heimdall,” Henrik called out. “Open the Bifrost.”
A brilliant beam shot across the sky and over the waterfall, and landed just behind the pond. I didn’t feel my legs move as I covered the ground. Without a backward glance, I stepped into the rainbow’s light and gripped the straps of my shouldered backpack. “To the safe house,” I said in a level tone, no longer caring that perfect Finnea was twirling her perfect hair and positioning her perfect body as close to Henrik as inhumanly possible. I’d bypassed anger as I sped through mortification, and I was officially over it. Hundreds of years of love and friendship stuffed themselves firmly into the black box in my chest, to be dealt with later. Or never. I didn’t care.
When the Bifrost failed to transport me, I repeated myself, slightly louder this time. “To the safe house. Fast.”
Black boxes were indestructible, ja. But just in case mine had a leak, a timely departure from this stupid realm would be nice.
The wind began with a deafening roar as I was sucked into the sky. But it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the tinkling giggles I heard beneath me. Or the low murmur of the voice I wanted reassurance from more than anything in all the realms, whispering sweet nothings to a girl who was my opposite in every conceivable way.
CHAPTER SIX
“THAT WAS FAST.” TYR looked up from his tinkering as I stormed across the porch and yanked open the door. He sat at the kitchen table of his house in the compound. The time freeze
r lay in front of him, casing open and wires spilling out.
“Ja.” I ripped the charm blocker off my wrist and reached behind me to shove it into my backpack, catching the door with my hip. Stupid fairy charms.
“Oh my god, Brynn. Are you okay?” Mia jumped up from her seat next to Tyr and raced to my side. She threw her arms around me in a characteristic display of warmth, and pulled me through the French doors that separated the thick grey boards of the porch from the honey wood floors of the beach house. I wiped my feet on the rug as I walked, not wanting to track sand into Tyr’s pristine abode. He and Mia were sticklers for tidiness. And Hel hath no fury like two obsessive cleaners thwarted.
“Hei,” I mumbled into Mia’s shoulder. “I got the dust.”
Mia released me, and I tossed the small pink bag toward the table. It sprouted the paper-thin wings of a butterfly and fluttered onto the surface with a delicate plink. Mia’s eyes only widened a little.
“You’re getting used to all the weird, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Not in the slightest.” She shook her head. “But I’m getting a better poker face.”
Behind her, Tyr snorted.
“Hush your mouth, Fredriksen.” Mia shot him a glare that was more adoring than she probably intended. “Sit down, Brynn. I’ll get you something to eat. You must be starving. And exhausted. And… upset? Why are you crying? Where’s Henrik? Is he okay? Oh my god, what happened?”
“Henrik’s fine.” Better than fine. “And I’m not crying.” I touched my cheeks, checking for evidence. Nope. Dry.
“I can still see the tire marks where your mascara drove the getaway car down your face.” Mia pulled a tissue from the box on the table and passed it over. I swiped it beneath my eyes and sure enough, it came up dirty. Stupid mascara.
“What happened?” she asked again.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” My fingers shredded the tissue into tiny pieces. I felt Mia’s stare, but I refused to look up. It wasn’t like I was all goopy about my feelings for Henrik. Mia knew I liked him, and nothing got past Tyr, but it wasn’t exactly something I wanted to dissect right here at the kitchen table. I’d thrown myself at my best friend, and he’d shot me down like an enemy drone in friendly territory. And now he was alone with Finnea, paying her back in ways I didn’t even want to think about for the stupid magic dust we needed to save our friend. Sometimes life sucked so hard, I wanted to scream.
Knowing my life could literally go on forever made the screaming slightly less palatable. Asgardian Proverb #39: Today’s heartache would be tomorrow’s repressed memory.
“Fair enough,” Mia said, after a long pause. I snuck a glance at Tyr and saw him shake his head at his girlfriend. I appreciated him keeping the female inquisition at bay, but I doubted it would last. Humans had this unfathomable desire to talk everything out. Asgardians knew the value of locking negative feelings deep in a vault and never, ever thinking about them again.
Well, every Asgardian except for Asgardian mothers. Apparently parental concern transcended realms.
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” Mia offered. “Tyr, can you show Brynn what I did to Barney?”
Thank you, I mouthed to Tyr as Mia busied herself in the kitchen.
Tyr just shrugged, but his eyes softened as he took in my expression. No doubt I looked like I’d been to Helheim and back. “Wanna see Barney?” he offered.
“Sure.” I let out a breath as I smoothed the hairs of my unruly blond ponytail. I pulled out a chair and tugged my backpack over my shoulder. Setting it on the table, I rifled through the contents, checking to see what I should restock while I was here.
When my fingers wrapped around two tiny spheres, I stilled. I’d totally forgotten about the forgetters. Henrik and I had invented them after playing a particularly mortifying game of “I Never” with his brother and sister-in-law. Since Gunnar and Inga had been married for-bloody-ever, and were best friends long before that, they already knew each other’s embarrassing stories. And they knew just enough about me and Henrik to ask the kinds of questions that left us wishing we’d never agreed to play with them. So, being the brilliant scientific minds that we were, we’d hit the lab the very next morning and didn’t leave until we came up with the forgetters. They were tiny balls that, when thrown, exploded and emitted an odorless gas that wiped the events of the previous twenty-four hours from memory. It was the manufactured equivalent of what Tyr could do with his magic—a brain wipe. We’d only made a dozen, half of which were functional. Since we’d used four in the test phase, there were only two left.
My mind weighed the pros and cons of using defensive technology to delete mortifying personal memories of one overly busty älva with a really stupid nickname. Probably not the most judicious use of limited tech, Aksel. But maybe if I only used one of them…
“Are you sure you want see Barney?” Tyr repeated.
“Ja,” I murmured distractedly, releasing the forgetters and zipping the backpack shut. Apparently I’d be living with my humiliation for years to come. “Wait, who’s Barney? Did you guys get a cat?”
“No. No cats.” Mia’s voice was muffled by the thick refrigerator door. She pulled bread, cheese, meat, mustard and pickles out and deposited them on the counter, and set to work making one of her famous triple decker sandwiches.
My mood lifted infinitesimally as my friend moved around the kitchen. Gods, I was so glad Tyr got over himself and started dating her.
“Thanks for this. So who’s Barney, if he’s not a cat?” I asked.
“Well, we have Fred.” She gestured to Tyr’s prosthetic arm, which now bore all the realism of his original arm, thanks to that stupid älva dust. “We had to call the time freezer something, didn’t we? Fred needed his best friend.”
I stared blankly.
“Barney,” she said slowly, as if talking to a small child. “You know, Fred and Barney?”
“Huh. Oh! Ha!” It was a pity laugh, and she knew it. “Sorry, long day. I’m not exactly running on all cylinders.”
“Please.” Mia picked up the plate, now teeming with food, and carried it to the table. She studied me with concern, and I lifted the sandwich to my lips to ease her worry. Mia was raised to believe a good meal could heal any injury, and since I had a black box of a Band-Aid on mine at the moment, I wasn’t about to turn down anything my friend cooked. Ever. “You on your worst day are still better than the rest of us at our intellectual peak.”
“Speak for yourself.” Tyr winked at Mia and reached for the pickle on my plate.
“Hey!” I swatted his hand. “So what did you guys do to Barney?”
“Not what we did,” Tyr corrected. “This was all Mia. She reconfigured the wiring so the circuits would stop overheating. She just moved this here”—he pointed—“to here, and added a neutralizing thermo-layer.”
“You came up with that? That’s brilliant.” I bit into my sandwich. Yum.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” Mia said drily.
“It’s not that. It’s just that Henrik’s been playing with this design a lot lately, and he never thought of doing it that way.” I shook my head. Saying Henrik’s name made the black box rattle. Bury it, Brynn. I drew air through my nose, then exhaled on a slow breath. I repeated the action, visualizing myself being anchored to the earth, to the present, to this moment in this kitchen with these two people. Asgardian Proverb #67: The past and the future were beyond my reach. The only moment I could control was the present.
“Well sometimes all you need is a fresh perspective to make you realize what you need has been sitting right in front of you all along.” Mia tilted her head and gave me a significant look.
I bit into my sandwich again, forcing myself to focus on the texture of the bread. Grainy. “This is really good. Where do you get the spicy mustard?”
“I think it comes from England. I’m not sure. One of your people dropped in on one of those flying horses with a fresh shipment this morning.” Mia played wit
h her necklace.
“The flying horses are pegasuses,” I reminded her. “Who’d you get for your domestic valkyrie?” I took another bite and concentrated on the taste of each ingredient. Spicy mustard and peppered turkey danced a fiery tango in my mouth, and the weight in my chest lifted. There. I’d done it. Perfekt control. I rocked at this.
“Mist.” Tyr eyed my pickle with longing, so I picked it up and took a bite.
“Delicious. Get your own lunch, Captain Klepto.” I bit again.
“You’re mean when you’re hungry.” Tyr pushed his chair back and stood.
“You want a sandwich, baby? I’ll make it for you.” Mia put her hands on the table and started to rise.
“Sit. Relax. You and Brynn need to catch up.” Tyr kissed the top of her head as she sat. “I’ll be upstairs in the study if you need me.” He picked up Barney and the älva dust and walked toward the stairs, and I fought the urge to throw my sandwich at him. If he left, how was I going to fend off Mia’s Henrik-related questions? Get back here, War. For the love of Odin, please don’t leave me alone with the mortal inquisition. On the second step, Tyr turned turned around, and my heart soared. He’s staying. Thank gods.
Tyr opened his mouth and squashed my hopes flat. “Takk for securing the älva dust, Brynn. I’ll talk to Forse and we’ll get the coordinates for your next destination squared away with Heimdall.”
“How long do I have?” I stifled my glare. “Henrik told me to retrieve him if he wasn’t back in three hours.”
“I’ll send you back within two. I want to speak with Odin to make sure nobody else has seen anything, and try to move Barney into beta phase. Now that we’ve got the dust, I can use my magic to implant it. But I don’t anticipate the device being fully operational any time today. We have a few kinks to work out. We’ll get you and Henrik rerouted and bring you back to base when you pick up more intel.”
My fingers touched my forehead in mock salute. “Aye, aye.”
Tyr rolled his eyes at me and took another step. Then he paused, and looked at me with an unreadable expression on his face. “Henrik okay out there?”
