* * *
So between two gods it was apparently possible to instant-transport said two gods, two college kids, and a wolf with an itchy ear. And Conrad was nauseous before because the whole crack your skull open but don’t worry you’ll be fine hopefully thing wasn’t really sitting well with his stomach, but he was pretty sure that somewhere in this instant transport thing, someone Loki-shaped had forgotten to put all his organs back in the right spots.
Trying not to vomit up beer and bar snacks next to a sign for a really weird-sounding monster truck rally, Conrad stood very still and willed the world to stop spinning. He watched Lily out of the corner of his eye, because she was normal and not spinning, and if she puked up her organs, he’d get to hold her hair. But she looked alright. Pale, but alright, sitting very still at the base of the sign and, hey, she’d probably done this before, so Conrad joined her in the patch of worn-out, yellow grass, looking at the CONSOL Energy Center looming across the way.
Alert, but wary, Fenris padded over and settled between them, staring out into the semi-lit parking lot. The cars sulked in shadow, painfully normal after the day they’d been having. Off in the distance, Conrad could sort of see a guy skulking around, probably waiting for someone to mug, seeing as how the parking lot was mostly only lit by the floodlights from the rally area in the far distance.
For a second, he wondered if this was some god or another who found them already and was about to tear them apart. But no, judging by the look of what the…? on the guy’s face as he regarded the sudden arrival of two gods, two college kids and a wolf, he was probably pretty normal. He was also headed quite determinedly in the other direction.
Conrad kind of missed him. Even a would-be mugger was better than this.
“What exactly is your plan?” Hothe asked, running fingers through his hair.
Loki shrugged. “We wait.”
“For someone to show up and pry my head open?” Conrad muttered. “Great plan.”
“I expect that is precisely what we are waiting for.” Hothe fixed Conrad’s head with a dangerous look. “Perhaps Mimir could offer a less dangerous plan?”
It was not a question. In that moment, Conrad suspected he could see the family resemblance.
“Mimir is paying Loki an extravagant amount for the express privilege of not offering a less dangerous plan to anyone ever again,” the voice woke long enough to grumble. “Bugger off.”
Glaring, Lily turned to look at Conrad, and he knew it was Mimir she was glaring at and sort of glowing in a threatening way, but, whoa, hey, it’d be nice if she’d stop pointing that kind of firepower at the guy actually housing the sarcastic British geezer.
“Mimir is going back into the well if Mimir doesn’t keep us from getting killed,” she snarled.
Loki paused from where he’d been circling a car, and Conrad kind of wondered if he’d been thinking about stealing it. Because that was just what they needed, actually. To be pulled over by the cops in a stolen car, a weirdo, a history professor with a wolf, and two college kids. The officers would totally believe that they were gods and chosen ones on the run from other gods.
“Play nice, kids. Mimir’s an asshole, but that doesn’t mean anyone’s getting killed.”
“No, but someone most definitely is getting banished back into the well if this doesn’t stop,” Lily snarled and stood. She was a bit shaky, but her eyes were dark as light flickered along her skin. “You may play in the big leagues, Loki, but I play dirty. And I am sick and tired of running headlong into certain death for you. I want a solid plan, now.”
And, whoa, whoa, hey, suicide alert!
Conrad jolted to his feet. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do. Let’s be honest here, he wasn’t good for much as far as magic went. But whatever Loki wanted to do to Lily, he was damn sure going to get between it and her and, wow, pretty heroic of him, actually. They should make a movie about him or something, after they finished chipping his fried and liquefied corpse off the Monster Guts sign.
But Loki only smiled, a sort of impressed look in his eyes, and Conrad’s Not Good alarms flashed like mad.
“You’re tired?” he asked, and his voice was gentle. Kind of like razor blades in a pile of baby blankets.
“She’s got a point,” Conrad snapped, because the You Don’t Know What I Do For You lecture was a doozy and Lily really didn’t need the nightmares that would have him wetting the bed until he turned forty. “You shanghaied us into—into whatever the hell this is that you have shanghaied us into. I’m carrying a really irritating parasite of an old dude around that everybody in Asgard apparently wants to crack open my skull for, but all they know is that you, me, or Lily might have it. Well, hey, guess what? If you haven’t noticed, me and Lily are the easier targets.”
To the left of them, Hothe shot Conrad a look that said shut up. But it also said I know. And, okay, whatever—if he was so great and kind and sympathetic, why wasn’t he helping?
“Stop it! Just stop,” Conrad snarled, and his brain-mouth filter wasn’t just busted, it was working in reverse. “You are not on my side. You’re just going along with this like it’s some kind of fantastic parade.”
He should shut up. He should. But so what if Loki was tired? Loki was a god with loads of magic and tricks and pockets full of people and powerful friends and whatever else. Conrad wasn’t.
Conrad had all the mystical, lifesaving powers of student loans on his side. Conrad had a minimum wage job that barely paid his rent and, guess what, he probably didn’t even have that when this was all over because calling into work had not exactly been his top priority when British people got shoved into his skull and sent him running for his life. Also, his apartment? Shambles. Half his stuff would be missing when he got back, stolen or shat on by who even knew what. And he’d been running, fueled by terror and adrenaline forever now, and if Loki was tired, he was exhausted.
“Conrad—” the professor started.
“No. Fuck you, dude,” he shouted, wrenching fingers in his hair. “Oh, look how noble you are, not doing what your daddy wanted you to do. I’m so grateful—You know what? Fuck that, okay? Did you get this asshole out of my head? Did you send Loki packing? No, you did not. You come galloping along like this is some kind of adventure for you—like you do this every summer break and, hell, maybe you do. I don’t even know you. But you’re not exactly some white knight, okay? You’re probably going to sell us both out to your dad as soon as he shows up.”
Conrad laughed, and it kind of sounded like Loki, creepy and not one hundred percent human, but, wow, was he an idiot.
“No, wait,” he said. “We’re here for your brother, aren’t we? We’re waiting for Thor. Goddamn, and I trusted you, you know? Life-altering decision type things. Actually went to you for advice.”
Hothe looked at him like he’d just kicked his puppy and stabbed his grandma, and for a second Conrad felt almost bad. But wait, no, he still wasn’t alone in his head, so drop-kick that regret right out the window because this man right here did not even deserve it.
“I could remove Mimir,” he offered. “But it wouldn’t help. No more than not having Mimir helps your friend here.”
Lily shook her head, sort of smiling, but she stood shoulder to shoulder with Conrad, bristling like a Christmas tree on fire.
“You know what I don’t understand?” Her voice was low and reasonable. “Odin wouldn’t suspect his own son. If you and Loki are so close, why isn’t Mimir in your head, Hod?”
Hothe flinched at the sound of his name.
“I go by Howard, now. And the power clash would render us both… well, helpless. Mimir could not reach his energy through mine, nor I through his. We’d be essentially human for the duration.”
“Yeah, being human kind of sucks, doesn’t it?” Conrad snapped. “Funny how I didn’t get a choice in the matter.”
“Well, bitching about it ain’t gonna keep you alive, princess,” Loki announced, pulling a cigarette from
one of his ten thousand pockets, and Conrad had never wanted to risk certain death more than he had in that moment because, goddamn, punching him would feel good. “We’re here. We’re stuck together. Deal with it.”
“No,” Lily pressed. “You’re only telling half the story. The way I see it, if Mimir turns up in the well, we’re home free.”
Loki looked at her. Their eyes locked for a long moment and Conrad froze. Was he doing the thing with the oh god I wish they were dead bodies? No, he couldn’t be, because Lily was glaring at him, staring him down and glowing like a bonfire, and maybe she could stop him.
Maybe she was doing it right back.
At last, Loki chuckled and closed his eyes, leaning back against a tree. “You’ve got balls as big as mine, sweetheart, I give you that.”
“How about you stop giving me anything and tell me what the hell is going on?”
“My father will make your life a living hell for no better reason than Loki likes you,” Hothe said, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. “He’ll give you diluted immortality so he can destroy you slowly, over several lifetimes. So the precise moment your suffering finally ends is his to decide.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Conrad blurted. “This’ll work out great. It figures.”
The professor’s eyes flashed. “I am not my father. I’d appreciate the benefit of your doubt, Conrad.”
“You see, kids,” Loki said, far too damn cheerfully, with a grin that pulled his lips in ways lips should never be pulled. “We’re all stuck in this boat together. Now put on a smile and try not to die, because here comes Thor.”
Oh, of course, Thor. It figured. They were running for their lives so hard there wasn’t even a solid ten minutes to have a proper argument, and hell if this was over. Arguing might not work, but a brick to the head might.
Except Conrad could see the air rippling up in the distance in a foreboding sort of way, and as much as he wanted to run, he was pretty sure Lily didn’t know a trick fast enough and strong enough to get them out of there alive if they tried to wing it.
As much as Conrad hated the world right now, best bet looked like staying put, in plain sight, and well behind the wall of gods who had better not be selling them out or the university board of directors would totally be hearing about… well, about some sort of tenure-ending conduct, that was for damn sure.
Watching the rippling air for signs of oncoming gods, Conrad reached over to twine his fingers through Lily’s.
“I swear, when this is over, I am going to find a way to castrate him,” he whispered.
Lily sighed, closing her eyes, but a flicker of a smile twitched at her lips. “I know someone who’d pay a fortune for them stuffed and mounted.”
“You know some really weird people.”
The twitch turned into a real, honest to—honest to someone who wasn’t a god smile that did weird things to Conrad’s innards. “They’re embarrassing sometimes. Gamer geeks, but with real magic. Still, they’re family.”
“Yeah, well, apparently I’m related to him,” he said, swinging their locked hands in Loki’s direction with a shrug. “So I can’t even talk about family.”
Over by the trees, the rippling rash on the fabric of realty belched, spitting out a fog that smelled of alcohol and raw steak, which Conrad’s already tender stomach did not appreciate. Covering their noses with free hands, he and Lily backed into the sign for what little protection a salvaged piece of steel could offer and watched Thor stride out of the cloud of strange bar stink toward them.
Conrad had expected a bodybuilder, with hair Fabio would covet, a giant beard, and a war hammer. Except the reality looked… well, like a construction worker.
From Kentucky.
The guy had about a day’s worth of blond stubble spattering his broad jaw. He wore faded jeans with a pair of heavy work gloves tucked into a huge-ass belt that might have had something to do with Elvis, a T-shirt older than Conrad advertising something with a busty model, and a giant, somehow… normal-looking sledge hammer strapped to his back.
This could not be Thor. Except, no, Hothe’s hands clenched at his sides while he glowered at him, like he wanted to explode his head and then afterward, maybe reminisce about the old days. Conrad was pretty sure that particular look only happened around family. And wow, family.
Thor was his history professor’s brother.
Which kind of made Loki their uncle. Step-uncle? Godfather? Whatever. Family reunion from hell at any rate. Except wait, Loki’s daughter ran hell. So, er… maybe not.
“Loki, you gotta come home now,” Thor announced, looking… embarrassed. He looked kind of like a guy whose girlfriend sent him out to buy lady things.
“Grow a spine,” Hothe suggested in a way that would have been pleasant if it hadn’t accompanied bloodless knuckles and a suggestion of fire. “Or better yet, Thor, borrow a brain cell.”
Oh yeah. They were absolutely related.
“Stay out of it!” Thor snapped. “Dad lets you play with your humans and, oh yeah, if you’re so smart, why haven’t you gotten Loki back like he asked?”
Hothe arched an eyebrow, smiling sort of like a velociraptor might, were they inclined toward smiling.
“Because I possess a little of something called self-determination and I refuse to be a part of this any longer,” he said. “Mimir has been in the well for how long now? Whatever he did, it wasn’t worth this.”
“He betrayed—”
“Did he?” Hothe demanded. “Or did Dad say he did?”
Thor rolled his eyes and made a face. “Isn’t it the same thing?”
Hothe shook his head. “How are we even related?”
Grinning, Loki clapped his hands and looked between Hothe and Thor.
“And now that you’ve gotten that cleared up, it’s probably the time to mention that I’m not coming back.”
For a second, Conrad wondered if this would be when the whole by force thing got busted out. Except Thor didn’t… well, do anything, just looked worried and upset.
“Dad really isn’t joking this time. He’s pissed. Sent Garm out and everything.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Loki said, smiling. “Where is Odin, by the way?”
Hothe snorted. “He doesn’t know. Daddy Dearest never tells this one what he’s planning, only points at things he wants bashed to bits.”
Thor glared at him and, okay, wow, if this kept up there really would be a god fight.
“You’re only angry he doesn’t talk to you, either,” he snapped. “And anyway, just because I don’t know what he’s doing doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
Loki sidled between the two of them, still smiling, looking like he was here with his two best friends and absolutely not in any way breaking up a fight.
“Well, if you want my opinion, you’re the only one doing something important. Odin’s probably just off buggering the dead. He’s good for that.”
“Shut up, Loki,” Thor grumbled. “Look, I don’t want to kill you, but Dad said—”
“Dude, you are how old now? Like a thousand?” Conrad blurted and, wow, not a good idea now that three gods were looking at him, but hell, if they were going to kill him, he’d damned well go down in a blaze of sarcastic glory. “Screw your dad. What happened to Thor, king of the jungle, ruler of all he surveyed?”
Silence greeted him. Conrad could feel Lily’s glare burning a hole in the side of his head and, ow, yeah, maybe he deserved the elbow in his side, being as three gods who had more or less forgotten them were now staring in this direction. But Loki looked like he was about to giggle, the asshole. Thor looked thoughtful, and Hothe couldn’t decide between irritation and affection. Conrad glared back at them, as irritated as he figured he could get away with, parts intact.
“Don’t talk about my father like that,” Thor decided at last.
Loki shrugged. “Eh. Kid’s got a point. Odin runs you from one end of the globe to another. When was the last time you got to do something fun?”
Off in the far distance, a roar went up from the crowd. The barest tip of a truck hurtling over something flashed in the flood lights and a look of naked longing crossed Thor’s face.
“The eighties were fun.”
“Thirty years ago?” Loki pressed, sounding so sympathetic Conrad wondered if he’d teleported out and left a fake behind because Loki? Sympathetic?
But Thor shook his head, pulling the heavy work gloves from his belt and onto his huge hands.
“Thirty years is nothing to a god,” he said, swinging the sledgehammer down from his back. “We have to go now. Are you coming, or is this going to get messy?”
Loki shrugged and turned, sauntering back to where Conrad crouched, protecting his tender parts from godly wrath.
“Alright then,” he sighed. “If you’re not interested, I guess it gets messy.”
“Wait.” Thor’s hammer drooped. “Not interested in what?”
And, wow, okay, Conrad had known Loki was probably the world’s first conman and really good at what he did, but he had no idea he could look so… dejected.
“Well, I had a gift for you, but Odin wouldn’t want you to have it, and I can see you wouldn’t want to go behind your father’s back.”
Thor turned to glare suspiciously at his brother. “You’re trying to trick me.”
Hothe glared right back, and together the two of them looked more like pissed off teenagers than actual pissed off teenagers, and if Conrad wasn’t so furious with Hothe, he’d have made a mental note to tease him about it later.
“I have no idea what shiny trinket he has in his pocket this time, Thor. Though tinfoil could amuse you, so I have no doubt you’ll be pleased.”
Thor did something with his hand in his brother’s direction. It wasn’t quite the finger. Rather, it looked more like a condensed history of rude gestures.
“What is it?” he asked Loki, still waiting for the trap.
Grinning, Loki pulled out a keychain that kind of looked like a bottle opener with tits. On it was a single key, glinting dimly in the half-light.
Thor shrugged, managing to look nonchalant for the most part, but Conrad could see him staring at the key like it was the answer everything. “I have a car. A Thunderbird. One of the old ones. It’s pretty awesome. Even has my name on it and everything.”
Loki’s smile got even wider. “So you can go fast. So what? Know what you could be doing if you let your father win his own glory?” he said and paused for dramatic effect. “Driving a monster truck.”
The dramatic effect thing worked because Thor’s eyes went huge.
“Here? Now? Those are keys to a truck in there?”
Hothe rolled his eyes and shot his brother a look. The look spoke of many things. Mostly it wondered how they shared the same gene pool. But he kept his mouth shut and restrained himself to crossing the sad little patch of grass to lean against the sign next to where Conrad crouched, still protecting his tender bits just in case.
Loki tossed Thor the key. “It’s the big red one.”
“Of course it is,” Hothe muttered.
Moving pretty fast for a guy carrying a giant sledgehammer, Thor strapped that bad boy on his back again in a hurry and lunged, grabbing Loki up in a bear hug that cracked his spine.
“Dad’s gonna be pissed. You be careful,” he said in one breath.
And then, in a manly cloud of fog, disappeared again.
“Now what happens?” Fenris asked from where he’d managed to sprawl onto both of their laps. “End of the world? Giant booby traps? Odin?”
Amused, Loki shrugged. “Now we try not to die.”
“Oh, great. We try. Wonderful plan,” Conrad snapped, standing. “Except, I’m pretty sure me and Lily will be doing the trying, while you and Hothe here do the running away.”
“Conrad…” Hothe started, sounding like he had a reason to be hurt about this whole situation. “When exactly have I given you cause not to trust me? If you haven’t noticed, I happen to be rather intent on keeping you alive.”
Sure. Sure he was, standing there in his tweed coat, looking bewildered and upset, like he’d just come home to find a frat party in his apartment and his favorite—his favorite whatever broken on the floor—and way to pretend this was all just as abnormal as it was to him, dude, but it wasn’t, okay? This was his family, and if Loki was right about the whole you are my great-great-something-kid thing, why hadn’t Hothe tried to help him out before, give him a ward or something? Because really, honestly, was it so obvious Loki could pick it out from twenty feet away on the street, but Hothe couldn’t see it sitting across from him every other afternoon in his own goddamned office?
“You’re not human,” Conrad snarled, and he knew that wasn’t the truth, because Lily wasn’t one hundred percent normal and human either. But the truth hurt. The truth screamed things like I trusted you who even are you now help me I don’t understand and the look on Hothe’s face said he knew it.
“And if I’d mentioned that while choosing your dissertation board?” he pressed. “By the way, Conrad, I don’t think I should sit for you—I’m considered a god in some circles?”
“Your father wants to kill me!”
“Perhaps, yes,” he insisted. “But I don’t.”
Loki glared at the both of them, digging in his pockets. “Okay, kid, look. I hate to break up the whole-life crisis thing—”
And suddenly, all at once Lily was standing.
“You started his whole-life crisis thing, you giant plague-ridden ass,” she snarled.
“Fine, look, Hothe. You don’t want to kill me. Okay, that’s great,” Conrad hissed, running his hands through his hair, and he probably looked like a dork, but if no one had noticed, giant chunks of world were crashing to the ground around them here. “But get this guy the hell out of my head then. I just want to go home to my demolished apartment to have my nice mental breakdown in the bird shit and shattered electronics.”
Fenris growled, hackles rising, pointing toward a nearby alleyway. “I smell a little piggy somewhere far from home.”
Conrad barely noticed, fixed on the apologetic I can but I won’t look on Hothe’s face.
“I can’t do that,” he said softly.
“No, you’re right. I knew that already. Daddy told you—”
“Shut up, kid,” Loki snapped, black-eyed and peevish. “You’re not going anywhere. You’ve got a job to finish.”
Glowing like a bonfire, Lily pulled a hand back and slapped him.
With a resounding crack of flesh on flesh, Loki’s head snapped back, probably more out of shock than pain. Lily’s eyes were wild, her breathing fast, but she stood her ground, staring him down and glowing, and she had no hope in hell of beating him, but Conrad didn’t need to know a mage to know that was a fighting stance.
“Finish your own job,” she snarled, her voice quiet and mean like fast water.
Somewhere in the shadows, somebody started to clap. Fenris growled, earthquake low, and pressed Conrad back into Lily with his body, hemming the two of them in. Snorting and huffing, a boar strode out from between trash cans, tiny yellow eyes set like fireflies from hell in its vast skull, jutting with stained teeth as big, as long, and thicker than Conrad’s forearm.
Conrad looked away. He couldn’t meet those glowing eyes. Something lived behind there, something old and intelligent, the monster so big he could probably ride the thing and it wouldn’t even notice he was there. Blood caked the bristles stubbling those massive jowls. Conrad was afraid that if he looked too close, he’d know what it’d eaten.
“Oh wonderful,” Loki muttered.
Conrad followed his gaze to find a thinnish man in a long coat, leaning against the building, just close enough for them to see now that they knew to look. Air coiled from his direction where a breeze hadn’t been the moment before, strange somehow, smelling of things Conrad didn’t know to name. Disheveled and rumpled, the man smiled like a saint, a .44 in his hand, and it didn’t take a genius
to see him and know that not only had he used it before, he really liked using it.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Loki drawled with a smirk, stepping forward.
Jolting him from his deer in the headlights staring, Lily wrenched Conrad down to crouch at the base of the sign again, lifting a shield that glimmered like spider silk. Hothe very casually strode forward, putting himself unobtrusively between the newcomer and them, glowing all the while. And hey, new guy, way to be the only one with a modern weapon, because no one around him looked really confident that a god and a glowing wall of magic could stop a bullet.
The new guy smiled, looking around at the lot of them, and the air around him roiled and twisted, smelling of things Conrad realized he didn’t want to name, but he looked human. Not human like Hothe. No, this guy looked like the prototype of humanity. When Cro-Magnons had finally stood upright and decided to shave, this man had been there already. He didn’t have the Fate’s pulsing magic or the muddled cloud of possibilities that followed Loki.
He had nothing.
Just a void. An ancient, ravenous void.
“I told Odin to send Tyr or Vali, but he insisted on sending his oldest boys and, like always, here we are,” the newcomer announced pleasantly and then, looking at Hothe, he nodded. “Evening, Hod.”
“Freyr,” Hothe answered, sounding strained. “Still haven’t got your sword, I see.”
“Something better,” he said and grinned, lifting the gun.
Loki snorted. “It’s not even enchanted.”
The grin twisted at Freyr’s lips, revealing more teeth than could possibly be healthy, and Conrad felt like he was falling. Time slipped backward, millennia crumbled away and he found himself staring at the original hunter, a creature of the forests so old it had no name.
“It doesn’t need to be,” he said. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
In a flash, the gun was up. Freyr aimed casually down the barrel. And he wasn’t going to fire, Conrad thought, huddled under Lily’s shield. He wouldn’t fire. Odin was his boss—he wouldn’t want his kids killed even if they were misbehaving. He wouldn’t fire.
And then he fired.
The gun made a sound like the world sobbing, an unholy explosion of too much light and noise, and the gun wasn’t enchanted but the bullets were, and Hothe’s head rocketed back, the right lens of his horn-rimmed glasses shattering and, oh, oh shit—
Someone screamed, a short, panicked burst of wordless oh god no, and Conrad didn’t know if it’d been him or Lily, but he scrambled to his feet, rocketing up and nearly out of the shield, catching Hothe and lowering him to the ground. He didn’t know what to do. What did anyone do in a situation like this, because his history professor was dead and a god and now he was a dead god, and Loki’s daughter—how would they even go about finding her and this was bad, beyond wretched, seriously—
Hothe coughed, sat up and spat a bullet into his palm.
“Mistletoe?” he asked, glowering up at Freyr. “Really?”
Freyr looked only very slightly put out and what the hell was going on? Why was this normal? Better yet, why was no one killing the psychopath?
“Poetic, I thought. Pity it didn’t work.”
Hothe’s eye blazed through the broken lens and, hey, apparently the glasses were enchanted because his right eye didn’t look human anymore. It looked black—other side of the mirror black, infinite black, the lonely darkness between galaxies—and Hothe wasn’t looking at him, but Conrad could see everything that terrified him swimming in that endless ink.
“You must be confusing me with my brother,” he growled, and in a second he was across the field, standing toe to toe with Freyr, who was avoiding his blazing, horrible eye like he could avoid for the Olympics. “My brother is dead.”
And then he punched him. Soft-spoken Professor Hothe, whose biting sarcasm was the most violent thing about him, punched a guy holding a gun so hard he staggered back and hit the tree behind him. He raised the gun with a white-knuckled hand, but Hothe was back across the parking lot in a flash, fixing an eye full of nightmare on him from where he planted himself in front of Conrad and Lily’s sorely unprotected little corner of hell, tweed-bedecked shoulders squared.
Norse god, huh? Suddenly Conrad could see it.
Freyr laughed, but he still wasn’t looking at Hothe, and so had to turn to grin at Loki instead.
“Doesn’t matter. It’ll work well enough on the children,” he said, still smiling even though his mouth was full of blood—go Hothe!—but wait, children?
As in the two cowering humans who were most certainly not children, thanks very much, and would really rather not be shot? And alright, Conrad’s priorities were a little bit twisted, because his first thought staring down the barrel of the .44 was that student loans followed you, bankrupt or dead, and hey—he wasn’t dead yet.
Why wasn’t he dead yet?
Conrad stopped cowering and tore his gaze away from the very distressing gun barrel fixed in his direction. Next to him, Lily was doing the same, peeking up from where she’d buried her face in Fenris’s fur—Fenris grinning in a disconcerting kind of way—and over to Freyr, shoving and hitting his apparently jammed gun like he didn’t know what to do with it.
“It’s not even enchanted,” Loki repeated and, yeah, that was one smug bastard right there. “I mean honestly, Freyr. What in the hell were you thinking? That I’d just stand here and let you do it? I’m a god too, dumbass.”
“You’re not a god,” he snarled. “You’re a stray dog, just happened to follow Odin home.”
Loki shrugged. “Yes, well. At least I’ve got a weapon I can use,” he said and pulled a sword from his coat pocket. Which, what?
But no, swords from coat pockets seemed comparatively normal next to the British guy in his head and his history professor being immune to certain death, so Conrad just watched as Freyr’s mouth fell open and his eyes about popped out of his head.
“My sword…”
“Nice, isn’t it?” and then, adding in a sing-song like he just couldn’t help it, “Enchanted.”
“I gave it to Skirnir,” Freyr breathed. “What happened to him?”
Loki laughed, spinning the sword over the backs of his hands.
“He got married a few dozen times, changed his name about seven, and now lives in Los Angeles in a house full of young, beautiful women.”
Eyes narrowing, Freyr tried to force the slide of his gun. “You killed him.”
Loki laughed. “When was the last time you stopped by Valhalla? I mean really, Freyr. It may be many things—including a seedy bar in cold as fuck nowhere—but its clientele most certainly does not include young, beautiful women.”
“You…” he started, menacing and terrifying. But then he trailed off, his eyes fixed on his former blade—and why exactly was there a phone number written in black Sharpie on a magic sword? “What is that?”
Loki grinned like a cat with an entire whorehouse full of canaries. “It happens to be the phone number of a certain no-longer-so-young woman you may have asked Skirnir to locate for you.”
“You didn’t. She’d have cut you down at the knees. If I couldn’t—” remembering his badassery, he stopped, cutting himself off. Conrad sniggered. Apparently he was not the only one having trouble with the ladies.
“It’s a matter of charm,” Loki purred, throwing the sword into the ground between them. “Call her.”
Freyr actually looked frightened at the thought. “You’re lying.”
“Call her.”
“This is another of your tricks.”
Loki shrugged, pulled a cell phone from his pocket, and started to dial.
“What are you doing?” Freyr demanded, his voice an octave too high.
Loki held up a finger.
“Loki,” he growled, a warning made much less ominous by the note of fear in his voice and, hey, did he sound like that when it came to Lily? Conrad suspected he might.
For his part, Loki held up another
finger and grinned.
Two rings.
Freyr broke.
“Give me that!” he snarled and lunged. Loki tossed the phone to him before he managed a few feet. Freyr fumbled to catch it and shove it to his ear all in one go.
Conrad heard the tinny sound of the other end picking up and a woman’s voice asking, “Hello? Gertha Negymir speaking.”
Suddenly really, super pale, Freyr gestured for them to leave, all together and at the speed of light, if his hand signal could be believed, before he managed to stutter his greeting into the phone.
Wow. He had it bad.
But oh, hey, they were still alive.
Conrad grinned at Lily, who looked bewildered, one arm still wrapped around Fenris’s neck.
“He changed his mind about killing us because of a phone number?”
Hothe chuckled, sounding more tired than amused. “Men are simple creatures.”
Lily stared at him for a long moment before turning back to Conrad. “Would you stop your quest for revenge for some chick’s phone number?”
Weakly, Conrad grinned. “I’d stop my quest for revenge for your phone number,” he offered.
“Well, it looks like you don’t have to worry about it. We’re on the same quest for revenge,” she said and turned. “Loki—”
Loki fixed her with a look that promised less than wonderful things. “Sweetheart, I love you. Stop bitching at me.”
And that was it. Lily stopped, looking as exhausted as Conrad felt. “And the Edda calls you charming.”
“Yeah, well, the Edda says I’m tied to a snake or something,” he said, managing to look both shifty and amused. “Those monks always got all the interesting bits wrong.”
“Probably because if they’d written down what you’d really been doing with that snake…” Hothe murmured.
Behind them, in the sad little patch of grass, struggling though his conversation, Freyr glared and updated the now, at the speed of light signal with on pain of messy death.
Loki sniggered and ignored him. “Would you like to tell the children just what I was doing with that snake, Hod?”
The professor sighed and fished a brown leather glasses case from his pocket. Inside was an unbroken pair of glasses that differed only marginally from the first pair.
“You are a horrible influence on us all.”
Grinning, Loki dug through his pockets and came up with a cigarette. “I try to be.”
Conrad glanced at Lily. She was generally in control of these sorts of situations. He was just unlucky and along for the ride because of Mr. Lookie Loo in his head. But right now, Lily looked lost and exhausted and entirely out of helpful tricks to stop Norse gods from probably killing them.
Sighing, she caught his eye and shrugged.
“Whatever. Let’s just get this over with. Loki’s charmed the people hell bent on killing him so far. Maybe it’ll work on Odin too.”
Loki grinned.
“That’s the spirit, kids.”
“I wouldn’t put money on it actually,” Hothe muttered, adjusting the spell coating his glasses.
“See, this is why they make movies about me, while you’re stuck lecturing college kids about the old days,” Loki announced, draping an arm over Hothe’s shoulders. “You’re unlovable.”
Hothe arched an eyebrow, regarding him like the kind of thing you might find on your shoe after you’d been to a toxic waste dump.
“How many people want you more than dead right now, precisely?” he asked.
And off they went, walking through the parking lot, bickering like an old married couple. Together, he and Lily followed, though Lily looked kind of like she was wondering how laundry got her into this mess, and Conrad opened his mouth to apologize again, when the parking lot shifted and emptied. The buildings around them dropped out of sight, trees springing up around the square of asphalt.
Alarmed, Conrad looked up to find an ugly little convenience store squatting like a pimple where there hadn’t been an ugly little convenience store squatting like a pimple the moment before. A dog-eared sign out front advertised a sale on Miracle-Gro, and you know what?
He was done.
Conrad absolutely could not handle any more of this. No more suddenly being somewhere else that didn’t actually exist in the real world. No more people he talked to about his pretty demented family turning into deadly fantasy creatures. For that matter, no more deadly fantasy creatures. No invisible dragons, no giant crows, no wolves, no boars, no shirt, no shoes, and no more service because he was done.
Crossing the parking lot as quickly as his shaking legs could carry him, Conrad sat down hard on a bench older than the city. Arguing with Loki hadn’t gotten him anywhere so far. So, know what? No more arguing. He was done with arguing too. He would just have a nice sit on this lovely, obliging hunk of outdoor décor for the rest of forever.
Off in the parking lot, Loki muttered something that almost sounded concerned, which was great, really, and so very useful at this stage of the game.
Vaguely, Conrad realized he must look sort of psychotic or something, because Lily eased down next to him like he might explode at any second. But fine, cool, because he couldn’t think of a better person to share the rest of forever with on this actually pretty uncomfortable bench he was nevertheless not moving from, not ever. Odin could damn well come to him.
“You okay?” she asked, looking as torn and tired and bullied as he felt.
“Yeah. I’m just going to stay here. Until, you know, Mimir leaves or Odin gives up or Loki gets horribly murdered. Something.”
Head in his hands, Conrad could just see Loki come to a halt next to him, grinning like the cocky bastard he was, but having to make an effort at it.
“C’mon, kid. Don’t give up on me now.”
“Why do I have to give you anything at all?” he demanded. Well, tried to demand. Really he just ended up sounding like an overtired three-year-old who wanted a teddy and a cuddle—and alright, a cuddle would be fabulous right now. “Why can’t you go convince Odin to find another hobby by yourself?”
Conrad sat up to find Loki looking at him, the closest to apologetic he’d ever seen. “Because I need Mimir.”
“So take Mimir. I’m sure as hell not using him.”
“Can’t. Not worth the risk. I don’t want to move him until I’m moving him into his body.”
“And let me guess,” Lily asked, sounding sort of dangerous again. “Odin’s with his body now.”
Loki shrugged and smiled, looking actually apologetic, and Conrad wanted to punch him more than anything in the world.
“Yeah. That’s why he hasn’t shown up yet. Dead weight is a bugger to move. He’s probably going to make a show of it somewhere.”
“Where somewhere, goddammit?” Conrad snarled, dangerously close to tears. “I don’t want to die, alright? I don’t want to run or jump or play hide-the-Norse-myth anymore. I want to sit here, maybe have a Popsicle or something—I don’t know, something normal. As normal as a place like this stocks, anyway. I can’t be your chosen one, Loki. I just can’t do it.”
Loki shot Hothe a look. Conrad didn’t know what it meant, but he was going to have a nervous breakdown in a minute if someone didn’t get the old dude out of his head and tell him everything would be okay.
Slowly, like Conrad might bite him—and he honestly might at this point—Loki sat down on the bench next to him.
“I need to get Mimir back in his body. It’s the only thing that’ll get Odin to call off the hounds,” he said, pretty gently, considering the entire scope of events. “The second that happens, I’ll get you home.”
“You’re lying.”
“I might be. But I’ll try.”
Conrad closed his eyes. And then he dropped his face back into his hands for good measure.
“Why me? Out of all the people wandering the city, why me?”
“Because you asked for it,” he said gently, like he meant it. Like he really, honestly rememb
ered a time when Conrad had gone to the hot dog stand on Sixth for two with cheese and almost certain death and, hey, why not make it a combo with a side of Norse gods and a Coke?
But Conrad didn’t look up. He didn’t ask. He didn’t even cuss the guy out because it wasn’t worth it. Nothing would come of it. Loki had been a crazy asshole a millennium ago, he was even farther out of his head now, and nothing this puny mortal said was ever going to change his plans. Maybe if it’d been Lily, she could static shock him into agreeing with her over a TV show or something, but Conrad didn’t even have that.
Patting his shoulder, Loki stood up and walked through the sliding doors with Fenris, who carried on muttering something about Slim Jims the whole way, leaving Hothe standing awkwardly alone inside Conrad’s circle of awareness.
“I don’t suppose it’s any consolation,” he offered, “but the chaos in your blood would have called to him.”
“You’re not helping,” Lily snapped, and she had a hand on his shoulder, which, yay… if only he weren’t going off to die in a minute.
Hothe shifted, probably smiled. He tended to do that when he got all awkward and socially obsolete, but Conrad was not about to sit up and see.
“Can you… I don’t know—just go somewhere?” Conrad muttered, trying to be nice about it because otherwise, Hothe would stand there and wait for him to need something, and he was a pretty decent guy really, but Conrad hated him for being all the things he couldn’t help being right now and that wasn’t fair, no, but it was true. “I don’t want to look at anyone associated with Odin right now.”
Amidst more shifting of tweed, Hothe sighed. “I understand,” he said. “I’ll go try to talk sense at Loki. We all know he won’t listen, but I suppose it’s worth a try.”
Conrad listened to him walk away, through the sliding door in desperate need of some oil. When the door finally complained its way shut, he looked up and over at Lily.
“I’m sorry.”
“What, for this?” She sort of half-laughed, but the utter exhaustion didn’t hide so well. “What could you have done to stop it, exactly?
He tried to grin, for her sake. “Counted the right number of quarters? I’d still be here, but you’d be happily avoiding the advances of those dungeons and dragons geeks and… and doing whatever it is you do when you’re not dying with me.”
Lily cracked a smile. “Maybe I kind of like dying with you.”
“That’s nice of you, but even I don’t like dying with me. I’d ditch me in a second if I could. I’m a real bastard like that, you know?”
“Oh yeah?” Lily laughed and kissed him.
Just like that, she actually kissed him. All at once, he had his arms full of Lily, like she’d always been there, her lips pressed against his, slow and nice and sweet, and not desperate, which was pretty great, because it made him feel things were normal. And they were normal, and this was just a normal first kiss with a beautiful, normal girl who was really good at kissing, and maybe, okay, she was a little abnormal with the whole glowing thing, but he liked the glowing thing, especially now with the sunlight on her skin flickering like butterfly wings where her hands held his face and, whoa… breathing? So soon? Since when has he had lungs anyway?
“Let’s go inside,” she said, smiling.
Conrad stared at her, wondering sort of vaguely if she could see the stars in his eyes. “Okay.”
Fingers locked together in a very promising sort of way, they meandered inside together to find Hothe just leaving the cash register. He smiled, slipped a bag of Squirrel Nut Zippers into his pocket and handed them both Flintstone sherbet push-up Popsicles. And Conrad had no idea what his face was doing, but wow. Really wow. He hadn’t seen one of these since he was a kid, just old enough to run down to the corner store himself with lost couch money. Conrad could remember sitting on the sidewalk in the summer, eating one of those bad boys as it melted down his hand and all the sugar got stuck between his fingers no matter how much dew-wet grass he found to run his hands through, and he’d only mentioned it to Hothe the once.
“You remembered,” Conrad managed at last. “That’s great. This is… thanks.”
Lily smiled at his sudden conversational ineptitude and nodded at Hothe.
“Thank you.”
“May as well enjoy something before going off to meet my father,” he murmured and smiled, walking outside just as Loki came up to the cash register.
With Miracle-Gro.
They’d come all the way from who even knew where, to this convenience store in the middle of life or death circumstances because Loki needed Miracle-Gro.
“What?” Loki muttered at Conrad’s disbelieving look, digging out a wallet from one of his many pockets. “We’re gonna need a miracle, alright?”
And Conrad wanted to mention it was only for plants. He really, really wanted to.
But wait, no, last week it was only for plants. This week, for all he knew, it would probably grow a magic bean sprout if you pointed it in the right direction, except that Jotuns were the giants of Norse mythology and, hey, maybe that was the plan. Things got bad, Loki would just grow an express root—har har—home.
“Hey,” Fenris growled, dragging an entire Slim Jim display case behind him. “Somebody buy me these.”
Wordlessly, Conrad turned and walked back outside, Lily close at his side.
What he needed right now was a slim slice of sanity and this Popsicle. Especially the Popsicle. If only pocket change could still buy a nice, safe sidewalk, some sunshine, and a stick of sherbet in a cheap cardboard tube.
And yeah, the slim slice of sanity was grasping at straws a little. Because a minute later Loki emerged from the store and blasted him in the chest with Miracle-Gro.
“What in the hell—” he started, but Loki had already moved on to dousing Lily in Miracle-Gro.
“Miracles,” Loki insisted, and he turned to spray Hothe.
Hothe gave him a look over the tops of his horn-rimmed glasses. Loki’s finger missed the trigger.
“Your funeral,” he muttered and, unscrewing the spray nozzle instead, downed half the bottle.
Conrad shuddered. Loki only grinned and handed him the bottle.
“Spray Odin with it,” he said, shoving it into his hands. And then, after a moment just a touch too long for Conrad’s hey I’d like to not die sensibilities, Loki added, “And try not to get killed,” before patting his shoulder fondly and striding off.
Chaos gods.
So fucking weird.
Conrad took a tentative sniff at the bottle anyway, and he didn’t really remember what normal Miracle-Gro smelled like, being that the last time he’d used it had been in the third grade science fair, and even that had only been in theory as he’d actually dug up plants two days before the date rather than remembering to grow his own. But this stuff smelled weird.
“If you drink that,” Lily said, giving him a Look, “I absolutely will not kiss you again, ever.”
Fenris’s head rocketed up from where he’d been gnawing a Slim Jim, managed an extremely too-interested, voyeuristic eyebrow thing he really shouldn’t be physically able to accomplish, and mouthed oh yeah? in a way that suggested both you will tell me later and I’ll join you, which no, none of that would happen, he absolutely would not, no.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Lily started, looking at where Loki had laid his coat out on the asphalt to better spray it with yet another bottle of Miracle-Gro, a Slim Jim clenched between his teeth like a cigar. “But now what?”
“Oh no, don’t ask. I only just got to the yellow bit,” Conrad muttered.
“Now we go speak with my father,” Hothe answered.
“Where would that be exactly?” she pressed. “Conrad and I—well, no, Conrad’s in his happy place, never mind—but I sure as hell can’t take much more of this.”
Hothe shook his head, and he hid it well, but Conrad had been paying attention sitting across the desk from him every other whenever, and right now he looked
really, honestly worried.
Loki grinned, runes sliding in a strangely comforting, threatening way under his skin and, wow, almost squirming like a puppy delighted to have found the most disgusting dead thing ever to roll in and taking an inordinate amount of glee from the look of not a single word Hothe fixed him with.
“My lips are sewn shut,” he said, sniggering and, yes, judging by the increase of Glare from the professor’s corner, it was almost definitely at his expense. “Hod thinks I’ll just worry you.”
Conrad twitched.
“You just told me your dad wants to crack my skull open like a clam, but Loki is going to worry me? Hothe, he shoved a god in my head when we first met. Worry has pretty much been my constant state since then.”
Hothe sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you happen to remember my telling you to never under any circumstances invest in the stock market?”
Well, that was about as expected as… as something totally unexpected.
“Yeah…?” he asked, feeling his synapses frying.
Hothe gave him a pointed look. Fenris rolled his eyes. Loki giggled. For a second, Conrad looked at them wondering when the hell they’d both lost their minds—not that Loki was that far away from total lunacy on a good day—and then, unfortunately, it clicked.
“Oh god.”
Lily laughed in a quiet, it appears someone stole the world when I wasn’t looking sort of way.
“I think that’s the problem.”
“Salted, in a nutshell,” Loki agreed, throwing his coat back on and losing the Miracle-Gro in one of the many pockets.
On the moss-eaten bench, Hothe sighed and unwrapped a candy. In the glow tumbling from the twenty-four hour magical convenience store windows, he looked much worse for the wear. His hair stuck up where he’d run his hands through it too many times, and dark circles ringed his eyes. Somewhere along the line, the buttons of his vest had all come undone, his shirt dangled loose from his belt, and he’d started looking less like a history professor and more like someone who just at the moment had a bit of trouble being human.
“Loki,” he said. “Shut up.”
The Trickster Edda Page 11
