Mist

4

Mist dashed out the front door, barely pausing to lock it with a brief spell before continuing on to the driveway. She already had the Volvo in gear and was pulling out by the time Dainn had jumped into the passenger seat.

“If you have any spells that can work on an engine,” she said, “you’d better use them.”

“You know Alfar magic is not of a mechanical nature,” he said dryly.

She was almost relieved he was back to sarcasm. Of course, he was right. Elf magic was of nature and growing things—or, apparently, in at least one case, digging into someone else’s thoughts. But even that had used imagery of nature.

The Volvo coughed as she backed into Illinois Street. Dainn buckled in and braced himself on the dashboard and armrest as he had before. Mist kept her foot on the accelerator as they drove north on Highway 101, merged onto the Central Freeway, and continued north on Van Ness. The traffic was still light, but it took far too long to reach the Presidio and the bridge.

“Can you feel anything?” she asked Dainn.

He touched his forehead, still streaked with ash and sweat. “Somewhere over the water,” he said.

“No,” she muttered sarcastically. But they were faced with a very real problem. Even though there was a pedestrian walkway across the bridge, there wasn’t any way to access it from the San Francisco side without attracting unwelcome attention. She sure as Hel didn’t want any mortals involved.

“We’ll have to drive across,” she said. “You tell me where to stop.”

She gunned the engine and sped for the toll plaza, slowing only to pay the toll and pretend she had no intention of breaking every speed law on the books. The moment she was on the bridge she ground her foot down on the gas pedal as if she were in a race against Odin’s mighty six-legged stallion Sleipnir himself.

“Here,” Dainn said when they were half a mile across. Mist pulled up in the right lane and jumped out of the car.

There was nothing to show that this span of the bridge was different from any other. Dainn vaulted over the railing that separated the pedestrian walkway from traffic. Mist followed him to the suicide barrier. Blue- gray water seethed far beneath them, choppy with a rising wind driving west from the bay. Icy rain blew into Mist’s face.

Almost at once she felt the strangeness, a sense of an opening she hadn’t recognized when she’d faced Hrimgrimir. Her wrist began to ache again.

“I feel it,” she whispered.

“The water is disturbed,” Dainn said, leaning far over the railing. He closed his eyes. The air around him shimmered, and the cement under Mist’s feet vibrated with barely leashed energy.

And there was more. She could also sense Eric’s presence, a shadow of his being altered and twisted into a form almost unrecognizable. She drew her knife.

“Where is he?”

Dainn spread his hands in front of him as if he were reaching for something solid. “He was here,” he said, frowning. “But he did not pass over.”

Mist peered in every direction. “Are you sure?”

“The location of the bridge is very clear to me, and it is obvious that Loki expended a great deal of effort here. But it appears that something blocked his way.”

“Something? Like what?”

“It is as if someone had bricked over a doorway, but I detect no magical signature to indicate that it was done deliberately.”

“You mean by Freya or one of the other Aesir?”

He shrugged, which meant he didn’t know, and she didn’t want to waste any time trying to figure it out now. “If this one doesn’t work,” she said, “he’ll probably look for another.”

“I still see ‘Golden,’ ” Dainn said.

“Then we need to get to the park.” Mist jumped back over the barrier and returned to the Volvo. A red Jaguar streaked past, blaring its horn. Dainn got in, and Mist made a sharp and very illegal U-turn, heading back toward the city.

It was a straight shot south on Highway 1 to the park, but the minutes were ticking by, and Mist’s hopes of catching Loki dwindled a little more with every mile. When they got as close as they could to the area where Hrimgrimir had appeared, Mist swerved toward the nearest curb.

She and Dainn jumped out of the Volvo and ran across frostbrittle grass toward the spot they had left just a few hours ago. Dainn slowed and stopped a good ten yards short of their destination.

Mist turned around and strode back to him. “What is it?”

He looked straight through her, his face taut with concentration. “The bridge is gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Loki was here, and the residue of magic suggests he made a powerful effort, but again he was unable to enter. This one is not only closed, but absent.” He met Mist’s gaze. “The passage on the bridge was blocked, and this one has disappeared. This may work to our advantage.”

“How?”

“Loki may be trapped in Midgard.”

“May be? You think the other bridges Freya saw are blocked, too?”

“I told you that little is known about how the bridges function. If he cannot leave Midgard—”

“But you don’t know he can’t. Maybe you’ve heard that California is called the Golden State?”

“I have said that all the bridges we have identified are in this city.”

“What if you’re wrong, and there are bridges to Ginnungagap all over the country, or even the planet?”

“Freya is not wrong in this,” Dainn said.

“Okay. But Loki . . . Eric claimed he was a security consultant doing work for the government and frequently traveled around the world. Do you think he, personally, is stuck in San Francisco?”

“If the bridges are here, he would wish to stay where he could easily summon more Jotunar.”

“So why hasn’t he? Why doesn’t he have an army covering every square inch of this city?”

“He cannot have enough Jotunar here yet to constitute an army. If he desired to avoid Freya’s notice, and we can assume that was always his purpose, he would not have risked using too much magic or disrupting the daily business of this world. To do so would send echoes across Ginnungagap that Freya would surely have heard.”

“But he could have been looking for the Treasures every time he was away. Are you sure he doesn’t have any of the others?”

Dainn’s composure remained impregnable. “As certain as we can be. Again, his obtaining any of the Treasures would have made it very difficult to hide his presence in Midgard and transport more Jotunar over the bridges.” He paused. “It is also very likely that making use of the bridges is a heavy drain on his magical energy, and searching for the other Valkyrie, even with the Jotunar to aid him, would be too dangerous.”

“You mean even Loki has his limits,” she said, catching a little glimpse of hope.

“There is always a price for magic, especially of such a sustained and complex nature.”

She wondered again if that was Dainn’s problem. “Even if the bridges are closed to him now,” she said, “and he’s stuck in Midgard, he wouldn’t have any trouble hiding Gungnir and getting through airport security if he wanted to leave the country.”

“I do not believe he would attempt it.”

“He’d have plenty of money to do it. I know Eric—” She broke off and exhaled sharply. “Loki wasn’t hurting for money, and he wouldn’t have to work very hard to get it. He could just conjure it up if he wanted to.”

“Again, such conjuring would have been ill-advised for many reasons. And Loki has always found it more satisfying to use trickery to get what he wants. He has undoubtedly found very mundane methods of acquiring large sums of currency to finance his efforts, and he would do so without arousing the suspicions of mortal authorities and law enforcement.”

“So he’s ahead of us there, too.”

“Perhaps it would be best if we return to your home and wait to see what he will do next.”

Dainn shifted gears so fast that Mist felt like a commuter watching a BART train shoot past without realizing it had ever reached the station. “I’ll put both my hands between Fenrisulfr’s jaws and ask him to bite them off before I’ll let Loki win without a fight.”

He stared at her with such intensity that she found herself instinctively reaching for Kettlingr’s hilt. But the moment passed, and Dainn looked away as if nothing had happened.

“You know him better than I do,” he said. “Where would he go?”

“We’re talking about a city that covers almost forty-seven square miles and has a population of nearly 800,000. He could be anywhere.”

“How much did you know of the background he created for himself? Were there any locations he frequented, places he preferred to all others?”

As much as she hated being reminded of her own gullibility, Mist recognized what Dainn was getting at. “He needs more than just Jotunar to help him conquer Midgard,” she said. “So he’ll have been looking for mortal allies wherever he can find them.” She dragged her hand across her face, which felt about as rough as corrugated cardboard. “He could have been building a whole underground empire, and I wouldn’t have known it.”

“As I said before, he will not have wished to disrupt mortal society in any way that would alert Freya to his presence here. But he almost certainly has been laying the groundwork, and he will no longer have any reason to delay finding such allies.”

Mist flipped her braid behind her shoulders again, searching her mind for anything that would help them. “Loki had a computer at the loft, but even if he’d kept his contacts on it he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave the information for me to find.”

“There is another possible source of information in this city which you yourself mentioned,” Dainn said.

Mist snapped her fingers. “Vidarr and Vali,” she said. An ugly thought settled in the pit of her belly. What if Odin’s sons had known all along that the Aesir were still alive? What if they’d known about Loki, and hadn’t warned her?

The idea was flatly ridiculous, as ridiculous as the idea that Odin had known there would be no Ragnarok. Vidarr and Vali would never go over to the enemy.

“Loki can’t have gone anywhere near them before,” she said aloud, “or they would have recognized him. They’ll probably be just as shocked by all this as I was.”

And Vidarr wouldn’t like it. Not one bit. Though he’d said he didn’t remember how he and Vali had come to Midgard, Mist had always had her doubts. He had certainly rejected most of his divine heritage years before Mist had made the decision to leave the past behind. Knowing he’d have to become involved all over again . . .

No, it wasn’t going to be easy to tell him. Vidarr hadn’t been able to accept that Mist had radically changed from the willing servant she’d been in Asgard, even if he was different himself. He’d resented that mere Valkyrie had been entrusted with the Treasures.

But there was no question that he’d take a stand against Loki once he understood what was going on, even if didn’t want any part of this new Ragnarok. This was his city.

“We’ll go to Asbrew,” Mist said.

Dainn shot her an inquiring look. “The Rainbow Bridge? I told you it had been destroyed along with Asgard.”

It was a natural mistake on his part, since Asbru was another name for Bifrost. “As-b-r-e-w,” she spelled out. “God’s brew. It’s a pun. I don’t suppose you know what that means.”

“I am aware of puns,” he said. “I have been on this world a very long time.” He arched a dark brow. “I believe the English writer Samuel Johnson referred to them as the lowest form of humor.”

Dainn’s reference to Johnson made her wonder what he’d been doing in Midgard over the centuries. She knew that he, like she, would have had to keep moving or change his identity every few decades to avoid calling attention to his extremely slow aging.

Even the Aesir eventually aged without the divine Apples of Idunn, and that had been one of the Treasures Odin had sent to Midgard. But Dainn had indicated that the gods weren’t aging in Ginnungagap, and Mist had changed hardly at all since the Last Battle.

As much as she wanted to hear about Dainn’s past, she knew her curiosity would have to wait a little longer. Assuming she and Dainn were still alive when she had the chance to ask.

Without another word between them, she and Dainn ran back to the Volvo, which looked to Mist as it were on the verge of literal collapse.

“Hang in there, girl,” she whispered, patting the dashboard. Dainn stared resolutely out the window as they set off again.

Vidarr’s bar was in the Tenderloin, once known as the “soft underbelly” of San Francisco for its history of crime and vice, a tradition that hadn’t completely been eradicated by the gradual gentrification of the area. Tucked between the wealth of Nob Hill and the busy downtown of Civic Center, the district was a seedy patch in an otherwise respectable neighborhood.

In spite of the dubious location, Asbrew was pop u lar with artists, musicians, and the more affluent youth from the best addresses in the city. Mist hadn’t been inside for a de cade, but she assumed that things hadn’t changed much since Pink and Avril Lavigne were basking in the Top Ten.

The Volvo, having been pressed far beyond its capacity, decided to give up the ghost at the corner of Van Ness, a little over a mile short of their goal. Mist eased the failing vehicle to the curb and set it in park.

“We’ll have to hoof it,” she said.

Dainn was out of the car a second after she was. She set off north on busy Van Ness, fiercely grateful for the chance to move her body again. She might not trust her own feeble magic, but legs and arms, muscle and bone were tools she had honed to obey her will without thought or hesitation. Dainn kept pace, lithe as a cheetah in spite of his rags, his long legs covering the ground with ease.

At McAllister Mist turned east, leading Dainn past City Hall, and then jogged north on Hyde to Eddy. Suddenly they were in the midst of Southeast Asian restaurants, fleabag hotels, and boardedup mom-and-pop markets, running past indigents with overflowing shopping carts and more than one dealer on the prowl for addicts looking to score. Panhandlers and drunks stared after her and Dainn with dull astonishment, but they were only a blur in Mist’s eyes.

Though it was barely seven o’clock in the morning, Mist knew that Asbrew would already be jumping. It never actually stopped. No cops would come knocking for the simple reason that Vidarr had set Rune-wards to repel them; she could feel their potency as she reached the scarred and graffitied doorway squashed between a rundown residential hotel and a pawn shop. Vidarr might have rejected his heritage, but he could still call upon it when it suited him.

Mist opened the door and walked in. Vidarr employed a doorman to keep out any “undesirables” who might slip past the wards, but she didn’t recognize the bruiser with the underbite standing just inside. He did a double take when Dainn came up behind her.

“Where’s Vid?” Mist asked the doorman.

He folded his massive arms across his chest. “He ain’t available.”

“My name is Mist Bjorgsen. He’ll see me.”

“We don’t allow no bums in here,” the man said, jerking his thumb at Dainn. “And he stinks.”

Dainn showed no reaction to the insult. He began to hum under his breath. The doorman was oblivious, but Mist felt the stirring of magic—simple magic, to be sure, but potent enough to repel a mortal, no matter how big and menacing he was.

The last thing Mist could afford was to provoke Vidarr by causing a disturbance. She took Dainn’s arm, shoved the doorman out of the way and started toward the back of the bar.

“Hey, bitch!” The doorman clamped one beefy hand over her shoulder. “You ain’t—”

Mist spun around and punched him in the stomach. He let her go with a woof of astonished pain. She nodded to Dainn, who offered no comment, and they continued into the dark, smoky pit of the bar. There were three rooms stretching along Asbrew’s narrow length, one after another like those of a railroad flat. It was the third one she wanted.

A dozen sets of eyes assessed them from the shadows as they passed through the public room. The radio blasted Norwegian death metal from huge speakers hung on the walls. Sullen kids with multiple piercings huddled over tables strung against the wall opposite the bar, and aging hipsters, ignoring the citywide smoking ban, argued over espresso and cigarettes.

They were of no interest to Mist. She didn’t bother to ask the bartender where she could find Vidarr but kept moving through a tightly packed crowd of sleepy- eyed slackers and entered the door behind them.

The clientele in the second room was of a caliber far different from the kids in the public area. The dozen men and women were all mature, attractive, and reeking of wealth . . . the kind who dined every other night at French Laundry, had their clothes tailor-made in Paris, and lived in apartments and penthouses worth more than all Freya’s gold.

But there was something off about them, a strangeness that went beyond the fact that they didn’t belong in a place like this, especially early on a weekday morning. They stared at her as if she had crashed an exclusive wedding wearing nothing but her sword.

As if she was an enemy.

“Leave,” Dainn whispered at her back. “Leave now.”

Mist barely heard him. “Who are you?” she asked, looking at each hostile face in turn.

Glances were exchanged, but no one answered. Dainn gripped her arm. “There are too many,” he said.

And suddenly she knew. “Where is he?” she demanded of the crowd in the Old Tongue, loosening her knife. “Where is your master?”

Hard eyes fixed on hers. Several of the men began moving toward her, getting taller by the second. Faces blurred, becoming coarse and ugly with hate. Fists lifted. An unmistakable chill rose in the room.

Hrimgrimir emerged from the crowd, grinning with hideous delight. “So we meet again, halfling. Or should I call you cousin?” His pointed teeth were red in the dim light, as if they were already stained with blood. “You must be eager for death. We will be happy to oblige you.”

For a moment Mist couldn’t process his words. Halfling? Cousin? It made no sense. None of it did. Why were the Jotunar in Asbrew? Where in Hel was Vid?

Pulling her knife free, Mist chanted the Rune- spell of change. Dim light raced along Kettlingr’s blade. She felt Dainn’s touch on her shoulder.

“If you must fight,” he said, as if from very far away, “know that youhave far more strength than you realize..Feel it, warrior. Let it come.”

She didn’t understand what in Baldr’s name he was talking about, but suddenly he was gone, and Hrimgrimir and his kin were upon her.

Kettlingr flew up to meet the attack. The blade skittered against a wall of ice that dissolved as soon as the sword completed its arc. She swung again, narrowly missing a giant’s arm.

Dainn had been right. There were too many, and she didn’t have the time or means to draw the physical symbols, the staves, that anchored her rudimentary magic and gave the Runes their power.

You can build them in your mind, she thought. She’d never even considered the possibility before this morning, but somehow she and Dainn had made it work.

Unfortunately, Dainn wasn’t here. She danced out of the way of a blow that would have flattened an elephant and tried to shape a repelling Bind-Rune out of her frantic thoughts.

The giantess who had swung at her gave a yelp of surprise and fell back. In the clear for a few precious seconds, Mist shaped a second Bind-Rune for strength and speed.

Suddenly a song rose in her chest—not merely a chant or a simple tune, but a robust, unfamiliar melody that throbbed with unexpected power. Strength greater than that of mortal or Valkyrie pulsed in her blood and blossomed in bone. Battle staves flared before her eyes. Driven by a compulsion she didn’t understand, she released the Runes from the pit of her belly like an opera bass reaching for his deepest note.

The giants retreated with cries of rage and dismay. She advanced, slashing at any flesh within reach. Dark blue blood sprayed walls and spattered the floor. For a moment it seemed that she might even win.

But the new power didn’t last. It drained out of her all at once, and she felt herself falter under the weight of uncertainty and sudden weakness. Hrimgrimir roared and struck with his enormous fist, knocking her against the wall.

Somehow she kept her grip on Kettlingr, but the strike had paralyzed her arm. She knew then that she was going to die, and she, unlike the giants and elves and gods who had survived Ragnarok, would not be returning. What became of the Aesir and their Treasures would be beyond her concern.

Sliding up the wall on rubbery legs, she grinned into the Jotunn’s face and prepared herself for the final, crushing blow. Hrimgrimir bellowed and raised his hand again. Then the door to the bar swung open, and a thickset blond man staggered into the room, his head swinging right and left in confusion.

“Wa’s goin’ on here?” he drawled, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “Can’ a man get any sleep?”

Hrimgrimir and the other giants turned to face the man. “Get out!” Hrimgrimir snarled.

“Mist?” The man took another step into the room, eyes widening. “Issat you?”

She caught her breath and worked her shoulder, feeling it come back to life again. Vali was a hard drinker and usually under the thumb of his elder half-brother, but he wasn’t as stupid as he sounded. He hadn’t just been wakened out of some drunken stupor. One look at his face told her that he knew what was happening. And he was trying to help her.

With a hoot of laughter, Vali stumbled past the Jotunar blocking the doorway. “So . . . gla’ to see you,” he said, his full weight crashing into Mist. “Missed you.”

Smothered in his bearish embrace, Mist felt the pressure of his body pushing her away from the wall. He was moving her toward the door, inch by subtle inch.

“Get out of here,” he hissed, his mouth pressed to her ear.

“Where is Vidarr?” she whispered.

“You can’t see him.” They reached the door, and Mist heard the hinges creak. “Save yourself.”

“Where is he?” she demanded. “Is he in trouble?”

“I said, you can’t—”

Without warning Mist shoved Vali aside, swinging Kettlingr before her, and ran for the back door. Hrimgrimir swiped at her and missed. The rest were too startled to intercept her before she got to the back door and flung it open.

Vidarr sat in a battered chair the room that served as his office, his face blank as uncarved stone. His eyes barely flickered as Mist burst through the door. She slammed it behind her and scanned the room. Gungnir lay in plain sight on the wide, battered desk behind Vidarr’s chair.

“Your manners disappoint me, my dear Mist,” a voice said from the shadows behind the desk. “And so does your judgment. I had hoped you would take warning and flee. After all the pleasure you’ve given me, I had intended to spare you.”

Eric. But it wasn’t Eric’s voice. And the figure that emerged from the shadows was not tall and broad-shouldered, but as lean and wiry as a stoat. He was dressed in black from neck to toe, modified biker’s leathers adorned with flashy metal trimmings and emblazoned with a stylized flame. His eyes were brilliant green, the irises rimmed with orange. His red hair was artfully styled, and his long, handsome face was smiling.

He looked nothing at all like the man she’d come to love. But her heart lurched under her ribs as she realized who she was seeing. Loki, the great Trickster, once beloved of Odin. The child of powerful giants, Loki was one of the few divine beings— not quite a god— who could change his shape completely without relying on illusion or possessing the body of an animal or man. At times he had saved the Aesir, at other times opposed them. His constant scheming had been overlooked until he had killed Baldr, the blind god, with malice and treachery.

The punishment they had set for him had planted the seeds of the Last Battle.

But he had many flaws besides a propensity for duplicity, not least of which was overweening pride and belief in his own ultimate superiority.

And that meant he could be beaten. Not now, not by her, but by those who were coming.

Swallowing her instinctive fear, she faced him squarely. “I’ve come for Gungnir, Slanderer,” she said.

“How charming.” Loki walked past Vidarr without a glance in his direction and stood before her, hands on hips. “You always were impulsive, darling. That was what made you so entertaining in bed, even if your other skills were not”— he looked her up and down— ”quite as well developed as I might have preferred.”

Mist swung Kettlingr at his head. Loki sent the sword spinning to the floor with three short words and a wave of his hand, violently twisting Mist’s fingers.

“It’s no use,” Vidarr said, his voice thick with despair. “You can’t beat him.”

“Listen to the Silent One, villkatt,” Loki said. “Like you, Odin’s son has been corrupted by his long residence in Midgard. He let his magic fade over the years. He proved remarkably ineffective in his attempts to resist.” Loki reached for the glass of red wine that stood on the nearby desk and sniffed it critically. “I confess I am a little surprised that you found me so quickly.”

Mist made a show of nursing her twisted fingers. They hurt like the devil, so it wasn’t really a show at all. “You didn’t make much of an effort to hide your trail,” she said.

“Your magic never amounted to much, nor did I have anything to fear from you should you find me . . . as our meeting here has proven.” He took a very small sip of the wine and held it on his tongue. “Amusing, isn’t it, that you thought ‘Eric’ might not be able to handle the truth about you?”

“The Eric I knew was a good man,” she said, edging toward Kettlingr. “Who would have thought you’d have it in you to play someone so completely the opposite of what you are?”

“I was rather good, wasn’t I?” he said. His brow wrinkled in perplexity that was almost convincing. “But how do you know how different I am? I don’t believe we ever met in Asgard.”

Mist gauged the distance to her sword out of the corner of her eye. “Your reputation precedes you,” she said. “No one in any of the Homeworlds was spared the tales of your ‘exploits.’ Especially since you wouldn’t let anyone forget them.”

Loki put on an expression of patently false hurt feelings. “I’m not surprised you think so ill of me, but you haven’t given me much of a chance.”

“I gave you six months, Laufeyson,” she said. “But you knew if you ever let me see your true nature, the game would be up.”

“Game? That implies some measure of equality between the two parties playing it. I could have taken Gungnir any time.”

“But something stopped you.” She was only a couple of feet from Kettlingr now. “If I’m as weak as you say, how did I get through your cohorts outside?”

“Ah, Mist,” he said, grinning again. “Do you actually believe I didn’t instruct them to let you through?”

“I think you forgot to tell Hrimgrimir that.”

“He can be . . . shall we say, a little overenthusiastic.”

“You might have trouble with him later if you don’t keep him in line.”

“Your concern for me is touching. However, since you have come here alone with no hope of prevailing, I think it is your well-being we must consider.”

Mist weighed Loki’s words. He spoke as if he believed she’d come alone, so either he didn’t know the Aesir’s messenger was with her in Asbrew or he simply didn’t care. That put paid to the theory that Dainn’s arrival, anonymous or otherwise, had convinced Loki to move when he did. Or perhaps Hrimgrimir had simply reported that the elf he had met in the park was no threat to him, and a rank coward to boot.

So, for that matter, was Vidarr, if he had let Loki take him. She moved another few inches sideways and looked at Odin’s son, barely able to conceal her contempt.

“How long has this been going on?” she asked. “Did you know Loki was in Midgard?”

“Let us give him some credit, my dear,” Loki said with a faint smile in Vid’s direction. “He was as fully blind as you were until I opened his eyes. Odin’s son saw the wisdom in reaching a certain understanding with me.”

“What understanding?”

“Why, to keep his interfering nose out of my affairs.”

“And your ‘affairs’ are the Treasures.”

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “Ah,” he said. “The elf told you, did he? Hrimgrimir was quite certain he had killed the Alfr, but I gather he managed to survive after all.” He glanced toward the door. “Where is he now, I wonder?”

“I don’t need him.”

“That useful, was he?”

“Do you know who he is?” Mist asked.

“Should I?” Loki said, taking another sip of the wine. “Is he significant in some way?”

“I’ve never seen him before,” Mist said, quite truthfully.

“And now he has abandoned you.” Loki clucked his tongue. “What can Freya have been thinking when she sent an elf to do a god’s work? Only more proof of how weak she is. Of course, it’s clear none of the Aesir knew I was here at all.”

His dismissive attitude was just what Mist wanted to encourage. She knew she had a small window of opportunity to make use of Loki’s legendary ego.

“You do seem to have all the advantages,” she said, adjusting her position against the wall so that she could grab Kettlingr the moment Loki was distracted. “How did you hide yourself so well?”

He touched the side of his long, rather elegant nose. “A magician never reveals his secrets, and I am somewhat more than a magician. Let us say that the gods make a habit of underestimating me, to their lasting regret.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not really quite a god yourself.”

Green eyes narrowed, flaring around the edges with the dancing light of flame that was barely metaphorical. “I am more than a god.”

“In that case,” she said, “why did you stay with me so long, when, as you said, you could have taken Gungnir any time? Was it because you couldn’t find the other Treasures on your own? Did you think I could help you?”

She could see that she’d hit the target by the way Loki tried to hide his scowl. “You overestimate your value to me.”

“Overestimate, underestimate. Confusing, isn’t it?” She slid down into a crouch. “You’re not going to be able to hide yourself now. I wouldn’t want to be in your flying shoes when she comes after you.”

Loki’s fingers tightened on the stem of the glass. “What good is the Sow without her body?”

Mist had heard all the stories about Loki’s unrequited lust for the Goddess of Love. Loki wasn’t nearly as sanguine about Freya as he wanted Mist to believe. And the Lady had far more magic available to her than the seductive, irresistible curves of her voluptuous body.

“In all the stories I’ve heard about you,” Mist said, “you always make the same mistake. You assume your enemies are too stupid to keep up with you.”

Abruptly Loki seemed to relax. He laughed the way Eric used to, with sunny good nature and easy confidence.

“Do you think I’m so eager to destroy them that I will make such mistakes?” he asked. He set his glass on the desk and stroked the front of his jacket like a peacock preening its breast feathers. “Asgard is no more. The time of the Aesir is over. Midgard survives, but it is in dire need of change. The mortals have yet to learn the meaning of true freedom.” He grinned. “Fortunately, they now have me.”