Mist

10

It took Mist a moment to grasp what he was saying. “What war?” she asked, her hand slipping to the sheath of her knife.

Ryan didn’t seem to notice her tension. “Winter that never ends. Fire and ice. Things rising up.” His voice turned pensive. “I didn’t understand until now. I must have known you would be here.”

“ How did you know?” Mist asked, her muscles tensing to ward off an attack.

“In the dreams,” he said. “Gabi told me to wait, but I had to find you.” He stared around him at the old buildings and pockmarked street. “It didn’t think it would happen this way.”

Half of what he was saying made no sense. Some of it made all too much. This could have been a trap all along. Jotunar attacking an innocent mortal for no apparent reason. Loki knowing she wouldn’t walk away from someone in trouble.

Was it possible that she was facing Loki himself?

Wouldn’t I know?, she thought. The Jotunar hadn’t been faking their treatment of the kid.

Still, she kept her distance until the boy began to sway on his feet. She caught his arm, and he flinched as if he expected to be hit. Mist concentrated, hoping she’d recognize the taint of Loki’s influence if she found it.

Nothing. But she did feel a wisp of emotion like a cirrus cloud quickly stretched and dispersed by the wind, an echo of what she had felt when she and Dainn had linked minds to search for Loki. Even the feelings were much the same: fear, shame, anger. Mostly at himself.

Mist let him go and weighed her options. If he’d been part of a trap, it surely would have been sprung by now. Still, the safest thing would be to leave him here.. From the looks of him, he’d been in pretty bad shape even before she’d found him—a street kid, most likely, trying to survive in any way he could. At least she could give him a little money for clothes and food.

But if there was a reason the Jotunar had wanted him . . .

“Dreams,” he’d said. Dreams of war and winter and “things rising up.” They almost sounded like visions.

“You were having a seizure back there, weren’t you?” she asked.

He nodded, as if the question made perfect sense after her long silence. “It happens sometimes. When I have the dreams.”

Curse it, Mist thought. The last thing she wanted to do was take the kid home, a total stranger who could be anybody, anything at all.

She looked him up and down, from ragged sneakers to jeans riddled with holes and a long- sleeved T-shirt that had seen much better days. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“I don’t know. A couple days, maybe.” He stared at the ground. “Look,” he said. “I know I sound crazy, but I can help.”

“Help with what?” Mist asked cautiously.

“I can—” Without warning he fell onto his back, cracking his head on the pavement as he began to convulse. His eyes rolled back in his head again, and his feet drummed on the ground in a violent, uneven rhythm.

Mist dropped down beside him and turned him on his side. She retrieved her fallen jacket, bunched it up, and touched him just long enough lift his head and lay it on the jacket.

An ambulance, she thought, reaching for her cell phone.

But she stopped before she could punch in the first digit. Ryan had suddenly gone still, his body still jerking a little but no longer in the throes of the seizure. He grabbed her wrist and hung on as if she were his last hope of salvation. He coughed and rolled his head toward her. There were tears in his eyes.

“Don’t call them,” he whispered. “There’s nothing they can do.”

“Ryan—”

“I have to go with you,” he said. “I think you need me. And Gabi.”

Whoever she was. Mist lifted Ryan’s head from the jacket and cradled it in her hand.

“Do you always dream like this, Ryan?” she asked.

“Long as I can remember.”

“Can you get up?”

“Yeah.” He bit his lip and tried to sit. Mist helped him, and when he was ready she supported him and helped him stand. His skin twitched like that of a horse shaking off flies.

“I’m taking you with me,” she said when he was steady on his feet. “You can tell me everything you know. But you’ll have to trust me completely.”

He nodded slowly. “I get it.” He smiled, the corners of his lips trembling. “I won’t freak out, I promise.”

Realizing she might be making a very bad mistake, Mist helped him to Eddy Street. She phoned for a taxi, and in less than fifteen minutes one pulled up to the curb. The cabbie glanced at Mist with interest, staring just a little too long, but she stared back until he found it prudent to look away and do his job.

The cabbie let them off in front of the loft, and she threw the money down on the passenger seat as she walked with Ryan to the front door, ready to catch him if he started to fall.

Dainn was waiting at the door. He glanced at Ryan with a frown. “It seems we are to have another visitor,” he said.

Mist stopped, holding Ryan by the arm. “Another?”

Dainn stepped back to let her in. Ryan sucked in a sharp breath and turned his head to look at Dainn as he and Mist went by.

“What’s going on?” Mist asked as soon as Dainn closed the door.

“Come and see for yourself,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the kitchen.

Mist practically dragged Ryan with her and stopped in the kitchen doorway. A Latina of about sixteen sat at the kitchen table devouring a sandwich, a glass of Sprite beside her place. She looked up as Mist approached, almost bolting from her seat.

“Gabi!” Ryan said.

She shoved her chair back and rushed to Ryan, wrapping her thin brown arms around his waist. He returned her hug and pulled away.

“Estupido!” she exclaimed. “Idioto! I told you to wait until I made sure it was safe!”

“I couldn’t,” Ryan said in a soft, apologetic voice. “I had to find her.” He smiled at Mist over his shoulder. “She saved me.”

Gabi stared at Mist. “He said you were coming,” she said, jerking her head toward Dainn, who watched the entire exchange with a perfectly bland expression.

But Mist saw the aftermath of worry written in the lines between his brows and around his mouth, and she suffered a brief moment of guilt knowing she’d caused it.

Very brief.

“This is the one we heard lurking outside the door,” Dainn said. “Gabriella Torres, she calls herself.”

“You let her in without knowing anything about her?”

“I would not have, if I’d thought she had any connection to Loki,” he said, unruffled. “Nevertheless, she was behaving in a clandestine manner. I thought it best to detain her until you returned.”

Mist turned to catch Ryan’s gaze. “Since you seem to know this girl, you can start by telling me why she was spying on my house.”

“Ryan said we had to come,” Gabi said, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

Mist sighed again. This was going to be as difficult an interrogation as anything she’d gone through with Dainn. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” she asked.

Ryan, sitting next to Dainn across the table, swallowed his last bite of sandwich. “We don’t go to school,” he said, gazing at the tabletop.

The girl scraped back her chair. “If you’re going to report us—”

“I’m not.” Mist gestured for Gabi to sit down again. “No one asked you to watch me?”

“Ryan told you,” Gabi said, flashing Mist an exasperated glance.

“Gabi said she wanted to check things out before we just showed up,” Ryan said, his head still bowed and his cheeks flushed. “She told me to wait until she thought it was safe. But I saw . . . I felt something I had to follow. I left, and he—” Ryan flashed a sideways glance at Dainn. “Well, you know the rest.”

The young man’s apparent interest in the elf intrigued Mist. There didn’t seem to be anything suspicious about it, but he’d barely met Dainn, whom Mist had introduced as her “cousin.”

Had he seen Dainn in one of his “dreams,” too?

If he had, that would come to light eventually. “Okay,” she said. “You said you were looking for me. You saw me in one of your dreams.”

Ryan dragged his lank blond hair back from his forehead in a gesture of frustration. “I know we’re supposed to be here. With you.”

She looked at Gabi. “What were you planning to do when you came to my door?”

Shoving her plate aside, Gabi took a long drink from her glass of Sprite. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was all Ry’s idea.”

Ryan gnawed his lower lip, already chapped and ragged from previous abuse. “Gabi always thought I was crazy. I knew I had to show her.”

“I still haven’t seen anything,” Gabi said, “except this cabrón with the funny ears.”

“Ears?” Mist asked Dainn with a frown.

“During our . . . struggle,” Dainn said in a tone that made Mist believe he wasn’t too worried about it. And considering what Ryan had already seen, maybe he didn’t have much cause to.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Mist asked Gabi.

Dainn gave her an almost offended glance. Gabi mumbled an answer as she took another sip, finishing off the drink.

“I merely brought her inside,” Dainn said.

“Yeah,” Gabi said sarcastically. “That’s all.”

Mist quickly realized it was going to be much easier to talk to Ryan. “Where do you live?” she asked, addressing the top of his wheat-colored head.

“We don’t live anywhere,” Gabi snapped.

“Where are your families?”

“Don’t got any.”

Mist doubted that, but she’d already guessed they were on their own. They were both too thin, their clothes soiled and torn, and Gabi’s suspicion suggested she’d had a few less-than-pleasant experiences with people in general. They were two of the many teens to be found in any city, runaways fleeing abuse or neglect, addicts living hand to mouth, children rejected by their parents.

“Do you want more to eat?” Mist asked.

Unexpected hope lit the girl’s eyes. “Maybe another soda?” she said.

Mist got up, took another diet Sierra Mist from the very back of the fridge where several inoffensive cans had managed to escape the Great Soda Purge and set it down on the table. Gabi popped the tab without waiting to pour it in the glass. As Mist resumed her seat, she glanced toward the open laundry room door. The sun was going down fast, and the air held the tang of snow. It was going to be another bitter night.

“Are you willing to trust your friend?” she asked Gabi.

“You mean about coming here?”

It was the first time she had spoken in a relatively calm voice. Mist nodded.

“I have a lot more questions for both of you,” Mist said. “If it turns out that Ryan was . . . mistaken in his reasons for finding me—”

“I’m not,” Ryan said. “You don’t have to let us stay here. We can find somewhere else.”

Under a piece of cardboard in some doorway, Mist thought, or maybe even in the park where she’d found Dainn.

“You can stay here to night,” Mist said, “and we’ll talk more about this later.” Which meant she’d have to give up on the idea of looking for Loki a little while longer. She got up from the table again, already thinking about where she could put the kids.

Lee strolled out of the laundry room on his big, silent paws, a bit of fluff clinging to one of his long whis kers.

“Un gatito!” Gabi exclaimed. She slid from her chair and extended her hand.

“Gabi—” Mist began, intending to warn her that Lee didn’t care for most strangers. But the cat surprised her by running straight to the girl and touching his nose to her fingertips. A moment later Kirby, not to be deprived of his rightful share of affection, trotted out and butted his broad head against Gabi’s leg.

It meant something that the cats liked her. It meant they, at least, found Gabi trustworthy. Mist had never found any reason to doubt their judgment, though their attitude toward Dainn had been cautious. That was good sense, too.

Gabi gathered Lee under his front legs, lifted him and kissed his nose. He didn’t so much as bare a claw. Kirby meowed piteously.

Mist knew he cats could keep this up for hours if Gabi let them. “Ryan,” she said, “If you and Gabi will come with me, I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

“But it’s still so early!” Gabi protested.

“No arguments,” Mist said.

With a final stroke of gray, white, and red fur, Gabi got to her feet and waited for Ryan to join her. They stood back to let Mist precede them into the hall. Ryan glanced over his shoulder at Dainn and followed with obvious reluctance.

The stairway was on the other side of the hall from the living room, a very short distance from the kitchen door. Mist started up the stairs and took an immediate right at the top, where a couple of half-finished rooms looked out onto a large open area scattered with the kind of dubiously useful junk you’d find in many long-forgotten attics.

“ “They’re beds in both rooms,” Mist said. She pointed to the first door. “You can have that one, Gabi. Ryan, the other room isn’t completely furnished and the mattress is pretty near shot, but I’ve got a sleeping bag somewhere. I’ll get you extra blankets and a pillow.”

Ryan stared at her as if she’d offered him Donald Trump’s Florida mansion. “I don’t need anything,” he said.

“I’m staying with Ry,” Gabi said. “We always stay together, and I have to be with him if he gets sick again.”

That was true. Someone had to be available, and Mist didn’t feel comfortable watching him. The kid probably wouldn’t feel too comfortable either, even if he had come here of his own free will.

“He can have the bed in the first room, and I’ll take the sleeping bag,” Gabi said.

“Gab—” Ryan began.

“You sort it out between yourselves,” Mist said, remembering why she’d never considered having kids, even if she hadn’t had to worry about their inevitable mortality. “I think I have a spare toothbrush or two, and when you’re ready I’ll show you the bathroom.”

Mist left Ryan and Gabi staring at each other, Ryan still vaguely apologetic and Gabi belligerent. Mist was slightly amazed that they could be friends, and so obviously loyal to each other.

She returned to the kitchen, where Dainn was standing just inside the doorway to the laundry room. Kirby was winding around his feet, tail straight up and purring like a well-tuned engine.

“Dainn,” she said.

He bent to scratch Kirby’s head, turned and followed Mist into the hall. Mist strode past the stairs and the ward room, where the Rune-wards still streaked the wall above like black paint applied by a toddler’s messy fingers, and went into the gym.

The largest room in the loft was a vast, silent space in the darkness, but when Mist closed her eyes she could hear her last duel with Eric, the sound of his laughing voice, the caressing touch of his fingers.

She flicked on the light. “Did you see this when you were here alone?” she asked.

Dainn walked into the center of the gym. “No,” he said. He circled the room, taking in the weights and equipment before stopping at the barrel of staffs and the rack of swords and axes standing against the far wall. Four of the swords were made of wood in various shapes and weights. There were also eight functional swords, including a katana, two rapiers, a broadsword, a pair of Viking spathas, and a two-handed claymore. Mist and Eric had sparred with the wooden swords until very recently, when they’d switched to the spathas. Hardly more than twelve hours ago Mist had told Eric that he had become almost as skilled as she was.

Another joke on her.

“An impressive collection,” Dainn said, leaning closer to the rack.

Mist came up behind him. “I make them,” she said.

Carefully Dainn lifted one of the spathas from the rack and examined it with interest and something very like admiration. Alfar were not known to wield weapons even in battle, preferring the less “messy” method of fighting with magic. But Dainn held the sword expertly, as if he had fought with such weapons all his long life.

“You know how to use that?” Mist asked.

Dainn quickly replaced the sword and dragged his hand along the thigh of his jeans as if he’d been touching something filthy. He backed away and leaned against the nearest wall.

“What are we to do with these children?” he asked.

She told him what had happened with the Jotunar. He listened intently, thoughts racing behind his dark blue eyes.

“Visions?” he asked. “Are you suggesting he may be a spamadr?”

“A seer?” She paced in front of him, scarcely aware of her own movements. “I don’t know. There have always been mortals with that skill. Some say they were the children of the Norns. Most were killed as witches centuries ago, but some had to have survived to pass the trait on to descendants. It’s not like Galdr, or even the simpler forms of Seidr. It can’t be taught.”

“He claimed to have seen a winter that never ends,” Dainn said. “ ‘War and fire and things rising up.’ The winters have been harsh in many places, and there are always wars in Midgard.”

“I know,” Mist said, coming to a halt. “But you did say that mortals with magical abilities might show up.”

Dainn stared down at his folded arms. “It seems too convenient.”

“Do you really think he could be working for Loki?”

“No. One of us would surely have sensed it.” He sighed. “It’s possible, even likely, that Loki will use improbable agents to put us off our guard, but I think my wards would have detected something amiss when they entered the house.”

“And those giants hurt Ryan,” she said. “That would be a taking authenticity a little too far, don’t you think? Loki wanted him for something. And he knew where Ryan was, or at least he had Jotunar following him.” She blew out her breath. “The question is, how did Loki know about Ryan? We’ve known all along that Laufeyson will have someone watching the loft, even if they can’t get in. If Gabi had been casing the loft when Ryan supposedly came after me, did the Jotunar follow him from here?”

“I have no answer.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? The girl doesn’t seem to have any significance except as Ryan’s friend and protector, but a spamadr would be extremely useful to us, just as he would to Loki.” She gazed unseeing at the sword rack. “By now, Loki must know I took him. I think we should hold off any decision until we get more information, especially about these visions.”

“They may steal your valuables and run off before you can question them again,” Dainn said.

“Somehow I doubt that’s going to be a problem.”

“As you wish.”

Dainn didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic, but then he seldom did.

“I’ll finish up with the kids,” she said. “You check the wards again, just to be on the safe side.”

She turned to leave. Dainn was right behind her before she’d gone three steps toward the door.

“I am glad you didn’t find Loki,” he said.

His voice was gruff, more like a Jotunn’s than an elf ’s, and she could hear the suppressed emotion in it. Emotion she certainly didn’t want directed at her.

“You couldn’t have been too worried,” she said lightly, turning to face him again, “or you would have come running after me.”

“I am sorry,” he said, dropping his gaze. “I was not sufficiently recovered to be of any use to you.”

“I told you not to come, anyway.”

“Do you think that alone would have stopped me?”

They stared at each other in charged silence, and Mist knew then he hadn’t been worried about her just because of Freya. It had been personal for him..”

That scared her. “I won’t be treated like some swooning Victorian maiden in need of a big strong man to protect her,” she said coldly.

“I am not a man,” Dainn said. “And I have done a very poor job of protecting you. But I will continue to keep your warnings in mind.”

He’d gone back to his dry, almost remote tone, and she was relieved. “We’ll have this out later,” she said. “You obviously need more rest, and so do I.”

“You rest first,” he said. “It will be necessary to begin our lessons later tonight.”

Magic lessons, he meant. She knew she needed them, badly, in spite of her idiotic insistence on going after Gungnir by herself. But the mere idea made her wish she could sleep for a century or so and wake up to find this was all a bad dream.

She had a feeling bad dreams were only the beginning.

“Okay,” she said, turning her face away so he couldn’t see her fear. “I’ll rest for a while. Just don’t let me sleep too long.”

Before he could answer she was striding across the gym and into the hall. She found her sleeping bag rolled up in a storage closet, picked up a few blankets and a pair of pillows, and went upstairs.

Though it was only midafternoon, Ryan was already sprawled on the bed in the nearly finished room, snoring lightly. Gabi was sitting half asleep on the bare floor next to him, all thick black hair and oversized hoodie. Her eyes flew open when Mist came in.

“Don’t wake him up,” she whispered. “I’ll take care of that stuff.”

Mist set the blankets and pillows down on the single chair. “Do you want to see the bathroom?” she asked.

“Sí.” Gabi hesitated. “Gracias. Thank you for letting us stay here.” She cast a worried glance at Ryan. “It’s been a long time since he’s slept on anything but the ground.”

“But you look after him.”

“He needs it.” She frowned at Mist. “I don’t trust you, but Ry does. He says you’re okay. Maybe you can help him, so he don’t get sick no more.”

“From the dreams?”

“All they do is hurt him, and I can’t make him better.” She hugged herself, pulling the hoodie tight to her chest. “Can we go now?”

Mist showed her the bathroom, clean towels, and a spare, unused toothbrush. She needed a shower herself. Suddenly the prospect of lying down on a soft bed seemed more important than saving the world.

“There are a couple of frozen dinners in the freezer,” she said as she left the bathroom. “You can borrow some of my clothes, and Ryan can have—”

Eric’s, she thought. She hadn’t had a chance to get rid of his stuff, but now his clothes would do more good covering the kid than providing fuel for the small bonfire she’d had in mind.

“I’ll leave some clean clothes outside the door,” she said. “Throw the ones you have on into the washer.”

Gabi nodded and retreated into the bathroom. Once in her own room, Mist pulled a shirt out of her closet, found some new underwear and fairly new socks in a drawer, and picked out a pair of jeans for Gabi. The girl was considerably shorter than Mist, but at least the clothes would be clean.

Eric’s clothes still hung in the other half of the closet, as if he planned to return any moment to put them on again. Four business suits, neatly pressed polo shirts, pants carefully arranged on glossy wood hangers. Eric had almost never worn jeans. He’d always been . . .

Stop it, Mist told herself. She snatched a pair of khakis, sending the hanger clattering to the floor, and threw one of the polo shirts on the bed. She rummaged for a pair of socks in Eric’s drawer and gathered them up, holding them away from her chest as if they were soaked in venom.

She left both sets of clothes on the floor outside the bathroom and returned to the bedroom, too exhausted to dwell on the ugly fact that she and a man who hadn’t really existed had slept together in this room only yesterday morning. She removed her belt and knife, flipped back the blankets, and toppled onto the bed.

A faint, rhythmic noise woke her a little while later. She stared blearily at the alarm clock and sat up, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.

It was a voice. An elf ’s voice, singing spells of protection outside her door.

Curse him. He should be . . .

She never reached the end of the thought.