Mist

12

The elf was sitting cross-legged on the area rug in the middle of the small living room, facing the black rectangle of the flat-screen TV as if it were the doorway to some uncharted dimension. His feet were bare, and he was wearing a pair of Eric’s sweatpants and a deep purple T-shirt—also Eric’s—which Mist realized had been left in the laundry basket after the last wash.

It was a shock to see him in Eric’s things— things Loki had worn—but she couldn’t fault Dainn for his practicality. Without interrupting his meditation, she took a seat on the leather couch Eric had bought a few months ago. She had to get rid of that, too. Curse him, she’d nearly have to strip the loft bare to get rid of every reminder.

She cleared her throat, a sudden tide of heat surging into her face. “Dainn?”

He turned around and looked up at her, as remote as Lee on one of his more standoffish days. “I have been considering explanations for the sudden closure of the bridges.”

Thank the Norns Dainn was going to pretend their awkward meeting in the hall hadn’t happened. But the way he’d looked at her . . .

“What did you decide?” she asked quickly.

“As you said regarding the young mortals, we must have more information. We must find other bridges and test them as well.”

“Just put it on the list,” Mist said, biting off the words.

Dainn cocked his head. “Loki will be doing the same.”

She clasped her hands between her knees. “Okay, you tell me. What should I do first, now that I’ve got Vali working on helping us find my Sisters? I thought getting Gungnir back should be at the top, but I admit that was . . . probably not the greatest idea I’ve ever had.”

She hadn’t meant to sound so vulnerable, so uncertain, but Dainn didn’t seem to notice. “Without the understanding and control of your magic,” he said, “anything else you attempt against Loki will ultimately be futile.”

“My, but we’re Mr. Sunshine tonight, aren’t we?”

“The sun seldom shines at night,” he said. “And there may soon be no sun at all if we fail.”

“Gods.” She spiked her hands through her hair, pulling more strands free of the messy braid. “Have you got anything useful to say?”

“I doubt you’ll like it.”

“I’m sure I won’t. Go ahead.”

“I don’t believe it is a coincidence that the boy found you today.”

“According to him, it wasn’t. And I thought you said Loki didn’t send him.”

“Yes. But did you consider that it might be more than his visions that brought him to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Even if Ryan is a seer, he doesn’t seem to have any other magical skill. He has never seen you before. It is unlikely that he could have found you with only the help of the images he has described.” Dainn tensed and inhaled deeply, like a high diver about to plunge into icy water. “You may have summoned him here yourself.”

“What?”

“When you confronted Loki in Asbrew with your mother’s power,” he said, “you used a certain type of magic against him.”

Mist suddenly realized she had forgotten to turn on the heater. The house was freezing. “Do you think I’ve forgotten that?” she said. “I don’t care what Freya does. That kind of . . .” She shuddered. “I won’t use those tricks on anyone again.”

“They were not tricks, Mist. They will be among Freya’s primary weapons when she is ready to confront Loki directly.”

“And that’s why we’re here?” Mist said, beginning to rise. “I’m supposed to learn more of that kind of magic?”

“No,” Dainn said steadily, holding her gaze. “Not today.”

“Not ever.”

“Listen to me. The Lady possesses a glamour that can have a profound effect on anyone who sees her, god or mortal. She can induce feelings of lust, love, and devotion with only the slightest effort and draw all attention to her with no more than a glance. As Freya’s daughter—”

“Forget it.”

“It is not a feature you can remove as you would your shirt.”

Heat flared in Mist’s face again. “I’m not Freya.”

Dainn dropped his eyes. Mist stared at the top of Dainn’s head and turned the dial up to heavy sarcasm.

“Look at me,” she said. “Do my eyes sparkle like the dew? Am I shaped like Raquel Welch rising out of the ocean on a clamshell? Is mine the face that launched a thousand ships?” She laughed. “Loki wasn’t seeing me in there. Maybe if I hadn’t created some kind of illusion . . .”

Dainn declined her invitation to gaze upon her glorious perfection. “It is not only a matter of beauty,” he said quietly, “but in the very nature of the goddess. Your nature.”

Mist shivered, getting colder by the second. “So what exactly are you trying to say? That this nature of mine made Ryan look for me?”

“Or simply find you, since he already had some idea of who he was looking for.”

“But you were talking about drawing attention with a glance, making someone fall in love . . . I never met Ryan before in my life!”

“Your innermost self—what Freud called the unconscious mind— knows what you, what Midgard, must have to survive. Just as it did in Asbrew. Perhaps Ryan heard you call in his dreams.”

“That’s unbelievable. I wasn’t even thinking—”

“You do not have to think,” Dainn said, his voice suddenly harsh with anger.

Mist flinched. “So you’re saying I’m . . . some kind of living, breathing homing signal?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“That’s why you were so sure all along that we’d find mortal allies?”

“Yes.”

“So they show up here, and then they fall in love with me? But Ryan certainly doesn’t have any interest, and Gabi—”

“They will recognize the need to follow you, regardless of gender.”

“Then I’ll send them away.”

“You will be denying them what they most desire, which is to save their world. You will merely make them aware of why they must fight.”

“Like I said before, it isn’t going to happen. People being drawn to us by some general magical knowledge or feeling I can understand, but I won’t accept this kind of responsibility.”

“And as I said,” Dainn said, meeting her gaze again, “you cannot simply choose to rid yourself of it. Your inherent abilities were already at work before Ryan and Gabi arrived to declare their allegiance.”

“You mean in the fight with Loki?”

Dainn didn’t answer, but Mist heard him anyway. He wasn’t talking about Loki now.

He was speaking of himself. This was why he’d stared at her in the hall. Not because he decided she was “hot” in her bathrobe, but because she’d somehow made him . . .

Loki’s piss. No wonder he couldn’t stand to look at her half the time.

“You should leave,” she said, hopping off the couch. “Go back to Freya. Tell her . . . tell her . . .”

“You know that is impossible.”

Mist felt her guts twist as if they were about to burst out of her stomach like some alien parasite. “If I can’t turn this off myself, you’ll have to teach me.”

“There are more important skills you must learn.”

“Then you can do it, if you want to.”

“Not without great risk.”

“To who? Me?” She stood over him, clenching her fists. “I’m not giving you any choice. I’m ordering you to help me.”

“Freya will never permit it.”

“You said she can’t read your mind. She doesn’t have to find out until it’s done.” Mist crouched before him, very careful not to get too close. “At least teach me to control it, like the other magic. Let me have some choice.”

“I cannot,” Dainn said, turning his face away.

“So you’ll let yourself suffer from some artificial emotion every second you’re around me? How effective can you be as a teacher then?”

Dainn didn’t move a muscle. He hardly even seemed to be breathing. “I am not suffering,” he said.

Mist rubbed her tattoo over and over again. “Did she make you love her?”

“She has never deprived me of my will,” Dainn said, his gaze fixed in a two-thousand-yard stare.

“Did you love her? Do you still?”

Dainn unfolded his body and rose, moving aimlessly around the room. “No,” he said.

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. But this is wrong, Dainn. You know who else does this kind of thing? Loki. I’ll slit my own throat before I play his kind of game.”

“Mist. Look at me.”

Even before she met his gaze she could feel him—the inner agitation and desire he didn’t want her to see, the worry, the anger. All aimed inward, not at her.

“Loki uses his magic to manipulate others,” he said. “You will never do so. It is not in your character. Eventually you will learn to govern this ability like all the others. After you know how to help defend Midgard, and yourself.”

Mist swore, carefully backing away as she got to her feet. “I wish I could find out who or what prevented Ragnarok so I could squeeze the life out of it.”

“Then this world as you know it would no longer exist.”

War. Starvation. Disease. Constant misery for so many of Midgard’s inhabitants. She had seen the slaughter of innocents by evil men who considered those different from themselves of less worth than cattle. How could the loss of such suffering be a bad thing? Midgard would have become a paradise, as the Prophecy foretold.

But then there would have been no Aristotle, no Leonardo da Vinci, no Einstein, no Gandhi. No Geir and no Rebekka.

“I guess I really don’t have any choice, do I?” she asked bitterly.

There was such real sorrow in Dainn’s expression that she had to look away again. “There is another benefit to this ability you may not have considered,” he said. “You may attract one or more of your Sisters.”

Would that make it worthwhile? Mist thought. She didn’t know. There was always a price. Always.

“We should waste no time in commencing your instruction,” Dainn said briskly, almost as if the whole painful conversation had never taken place. “If you are ready, we will begin.”

“Now?”

“The young mortals are asleep, are they not?”

She got up again. “I need a little time to . . . make sense of all this in my mind. Can you give me another hour?”

“Of course. I, too, will prepare.”

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” she asked.

“Much will be demanded of both of us. But we will survive.”

Somehow that didn’t make Mist feel a whole lot better. She grabbed an energy bar from a cupboard in the kitchen and went outside. A light sleet glossed the pavement. The lots across the street, occupied only by rusting warehouses and long-abandoned factories, were still and silent, even during the day, and only the occasional patrol car, making a desultory sweep of the area, ever came close to interrupting Mist’s work. She’d set up her workshop in one of the least decayed buildings, where the noise and smells of hot slag wouldn’t disturb the neighbors or raise unwanted questions about zoning laws.

Once in the workshop, she fired up the forge and set about tempering the blade of the custom gladius she had been making for one of San Francisco’s more influential citizens, an overbearing politician who had never fought a real battle in his life. After she’d heated the blade to the proper temperature and quenched it, she put the sword on the cooling rack and stared into the low-burning flames of the forge. Making a sword properly was a kind of magic. She would have been happy if it were the only kind she’d ever have to perform, but that decision had been taken out of her hands.

She would dearly have liked to pick up one of her billets and pound the living daylights out of it with her hammer. But that wasn’t going to change a thing.

And, truth to tell, she’d rather pound on Loki instead.

She cleaned up, took off her gloves and returned to the loft, turning her face up to the delicate kiss of the snow.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Loki demanded.

Hrimgrimir shook his massive shoulders and stared down at Loki with an insolent sneer. Dim moonlight, filtered through a heavy mat of clouds and the panoramic window overlooking the sleeping Financial District, silhouetted the giant in a way that made him seem half again as large as the thuggish shape he had chosen.

“You wouldn’t want me to bother you with something like this until I was sure,” the Jotunn said, his colloquial English thick with mockery. “Sometimes I think you don’t trust me.”

“Don’t push it,” Loki said irritably. “Just because you worked for my daughter doesn’t give you leave to forget your place.” He jerked the sash of his silk Derek Rose dressing gown tight around his waist. “I gave you a chance to take the initiative, and you failed.”

“ You didn’t find the kid,” Hrimgrimir said. “We did.”

“And you lost him.”

Hrimgrimir cracked his knuckles, the sound loud enough to rattle the windows. “The bitch had a bit of luck. It won’t last.”

“Luck? She and Dainn tossed the rest of your crew halfway around the world, and now I have to waste precious time and resources getting them back.”

“You could have stopped it, if you hadn’t—”

“Silence,” Loki snapped. “The fact is that you discovered the presence of a mortal who could have been useful to us, and you let him slip through your fingers.”

“We’ll get him back,” Hrimgrimir said with a toothy grin. “Then maybe you’ll realize you can’t treat us like a bunch of disposable leg-breakers.. We’re all you’ve got.”

Loki clung to his temper by the merest thread, reminding himself that tolerating the frost giants’ generally bad dispositions was a small enough price to pay for their obedience. Such as it was. It had been obvious from the beginning that Hrimgrimir was going to be trouble, but the others respected Loki. And Loki was smart enough to know what open rebellion would mean.

He didn’t have the magic to defeat Freya, not even with all the frost giants behind him. And they wanted their share of the prize when Midgard was taken.

“Not even you are indispensable,” Loki said, striding back to the bathroom, which—like the rest of the Ritz-Carlton’s Presidential Suite—was almost fit for a god. “And I forbid you to attack Freya’s daughter merely to retrieve a mortal who may or may not be what you seem to believe. I will not waste the opportunity for surprise when it arises.”

“That’s your plan? Waiting for an opportunity to arise?”

“Patience has never been a virtue of your kind,” Loki said, “but—”

Hrimgrimir cut him off with a nasty laugh. “You’re our kind,”

he said. “You’re the son of two frost giants, even if you did hang around with the Aesir. Do you think they ever counted you their equal?”

Hearing Hrimgrimir state the obvious was almost more than Loki could tolerate. “Hold your tongue,” he said, “or I may let the maid have it in place of toilet paper.”

Hrimgrimir grumbled ominously as Loki stopped before the vast marble sink. He looked into the mirror, ran his hand through his wet hair to dry it, and met Hrimgrimir’s reflected stare. It was time to change tactics.

“I’ll have plenty to keep you busy soon enough, in any case,” he said in his most soothing voice. “You won’t be idle, I assure you.” The Jotunn’s densely muscled body overfilled the door frame behind him. “You’re going to break the rules again?”

“Oh, not openly. To act precipitously now would force Freya to take the very actions she threatened when we struck our bargain.

And we must continue to look for functioning bridges if we are to bring more of your brothers to Midgard.”

“And the humans? Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Naturally.” Loki smiled at himself, admiring his perfect white teeth. “An excellent addition to my growing stable of corrupt mortals, and just as easily manipulated. The effects will not be immediate, but they will be too subtle for Freya to detect until I am well established.”

“What did you do to get to this guy?” Hrimgrimir asked with leering curiosity.

“A method you could certainly never employ.”

Suddenly the Jotunn began to shrink in on himself, his body seeming to grow leaner and shorter until he resembled a flawed copy of Loki.

“Are you so sure, Scar-lip?”

Loki spun lightly around and struck Hrimgrimir hard across the face. No magic, only a Jotunn’s power and the element of surprise.

Hrimgrimir lost his hold on his new shape, staggered back, and crashed into a delicate chair, shattering it as if it had been built of toothpicks and spit.

“Don’t ever call me that again,” Loki said pleasantly, leaning against the doorjamb.

Hrimgrimir groaned and sat up, rubbing at his bloody lip. “One of these days, Laufeyson,” he snarled, “you’ll go too far.”

“Unless you get there first.” Loki sighed and extended his hand.

“Come, kinsman. Let us quarrel no more.”

Ignoring Loki’s offer of assistance, Hrimgrimir heaved himself to his feet and shook himself like a woolly mammoth in molt. He opened his broad mouth, closed it again, and dropped his head between his shoulders.

“What do you want us to do now?” he asked sullenly. “I’ll be meeting with a few of my shady characters tomorrow,” he said. “They don’t know just how much their petty lives are about to change.”

“When we take over,” Hrimgrimir said.

“It will not be done in a day. We must move slowly and with subtlety.”

“You mean you don’t want us to have any fun.”

The other Jotunn, silent until that moment, muttered and shifted restlessly. Loki gave them a quelling glance.

“I do not know how to make it any clearer,” he said. “You will have your ‘fun’ when matters are arranged to my satisfaction, and no sooner. When that happens, however . . .” He strode to the window and flung his arms wide. “This city shall quite literally be your stomping ground.” He turned around again. “In the meantime, continue what you’ve been doing—without the failure, of course. Keep watch on the loft and on the streets. Report anything of interest to me before you act.” He dropped his arms. “Now, go. And go quietly. I don’t want to find myself in the position of covering up any clumsy mistakes.”

Hrimgrimir looked into Loki’s eyes for a measure of a dozen heartbeats and then lowered his head. “We will make no mistakes,”

he said. “But will you, Laufeyson? What about him?”

“Your concern is touching,” Loki said in a dangerously soft voice, “but he cannot take me off guard again. I fully intend to draw him away from Freya’s daughter. Now get out.”

Hrimgrimir thumped out the door of the suite, his lieutenants at his heels, all taking on more ordinary forms as they left. Loki stared at the door, lost in thought. On the city streets far below he could hear the wail of a siren, approaching and then fading away.

There were likely to be plenty more where that came from if the Jotunar broke too soon. But he didn’t think they would. He was no fool, and they knew it.

He was certainly not fool enough to tell them what he had discovered about Freya’s plans for Mist.

Returning to the bathroom, Loki untied the robe and let it fall to his feet. He conjured up a conservative, rather ordinary-looking business suit and critically studied the effect. He’d already made arrangements to have representatives from Saks, Wilkes Bashford, Armani, and Bottega Veneta come to his room at eight in the morning with their best selection of fine ready-made menswear.

But nothing could match the hedonistic pleasure of having a $10,000 handmade suit cut from the finest fabrics mortal money could buy, even if he could only wear it in private for the time being. When he was satisfied with his appearance, he placed a call to Fredkin and Associates and made an appointment for the next morning. After making clear to the tailor that he would be giving them regular business and was more than willing to pay for a rush order over the Yule holidays, he grabbed his cane and went downstairs to the magnificent dining room. He was shown to the best table in the place and ordered a Blood and Sand.

He sipped the drink, his mind busy with strategic calculations.

Sometime over the next few days, while he handled any number of other problems and concerns, he would be meeting Briggs for a long and very private discussion about his vital role in shaping the senator’s very promising future. And then there was the matter of the criminal element, who would soon learn that this city was theirs no longer. And once he had opened the bridges again, he wouldn’t only bring more Jotunar into Midgard.

Fenrisulfr, Loki thought, would be first. They had not always been on good terms, but the boy knew that his failure to kill Odin was a nearly unforgivable black mark against him and would therefore be unquestioningly obedient and enthusiastic in his work. The crisply dressed server, a young man with bedroom eyes and very kissable lips, expertly delivered a second cocktail, smiling with more-than-professional enthusiasm. A female server had stopped a few feet behind him, a water tray balance on one hand, and was staring at Loki with a rapt expression. She licked her lips.

Midgard, Loki thought, was a world of endless opportunities. He sipped his drink again and crooked a finger.