Mist

22

They were halfway home when Mist realized they were being followed.

Dainn knew it, too. His arms tightened around her waist, and she could almost feel him pricking his ears as he looked over his shoulder. She wondered if he was using the beast’s superior senses or only the extremely good ones any elf was born with.

“See anything?” she said over the roar of the bike and surrounding traffic.

“Nothing,” Dainn said. “But I do not believe they are Jotunar.”

Maybe human minions, then. She hadn’t seen any of Loki’s mortal followers yet, but she was sure he’d already recruited a number of them by now.

“I’ll take some side roads and try to shake them,” she said.

The bike responded to her hand like her old Valkyrie steed. She veered and dodged down narrow streets and between apartment buildings, through the Mission District, Dolores Heights, and back around via Cesar Chavez Street.

“We aren’t shaking them, are we?” she asked Dainn.

“They are still following,” he said.

“I’m not taking them back to the loft.” She looked for a place public enough to discourage their pursuers from direct attack. If they looked as if they were going to try, she’d lead them away. She’d have to attempt the Galdr again, and she wondered how she was going to find the energy when she could barely keep the bike moving in a straight line.

“Whatever you do,” she said to Dainn, pulling over into a rare empty parking space along the curb, “leave any fighting to me.”

He didn’t answer, and she didn’t press him. They remained on the bike, watching and listening, but no one showed up. After about an hour, Mist decided they should try moving again. She pulled out of the parking space and drove as slowly as she could, choosing bigger streets as a test.

“They are gone,” Dainn said.

Expelling her breath, Mist turned for home. She stayed on the alert, but she was sure Dainn was right. Either they’d both been paranoid, or their pursuers had given up.

Still, she didn’t hurry. When she reached Third, she pulled over again to watch the nearly empty street. After another hour, she finally accepted that they were safe.

She rolled into the loft’s side driveway and dismounted. The place seemed quiet, every sound in the neighborhood muffled by the soft, heavy snow.

“Let me go in first,” she said.

Dainn gave her a long look, and she shrugged. They went in by the outside door to the gym.

It was empty, as Mist had expected. Dainn’s gaze swept over the room. He stood very still, as if the memory of what he had done there had assumed a physical presence that bound him as he had tried to bind the beast.

“You did very well,” he said.

She knew she should have been far more angry with him. He had no right to talk to her as if she needed his approval. But his praise felt like a rare and precious thing, a gift she couldn’t afford to accept.

It was also comfortingly mundane, as if everything had gone back to normal.

Maybe someday there would be a new kind of “normal.” But she wasn’t counting on it happening anytime soon.

They continued across the gym toward the door to the hall. Dainn stopped suddenly, tensing like a hound on the scent.

“Someone is in the house,” he said.

Mist reached for Kettlingr. “Who?”

“Vali. And the young mortals.”

“Nidhogg’s teeth! I told Vali to take them away!” She strode through the door and along the hall, narrowly avoiding a pair of very animated cats, and burst into the kitchen without giving the occupants a whisper of warning.

Vali shot out of his chair at the kitchen table, knocking it over. Gabi and Ryan looked up from their plates, Ryan with a sandwich suspended in midair. He dropped it, and his face lit with joy and relief.

“You’re back!” he said, rising almost as quickly as Vali had. “Are you okay?”

“It’s about time,” Gabi said with some asperity. “Did you get Loki?”

“We can discuss that later,” Mist said, staring at Vali. “I told you to get them away.”

Vali shoved his hands in his pockets like a boy who’d been caught playing with Mama’s swords. “I did,” he said, “but—”

“He got away from you.”

“Uh—”

“He’s very good at that.”

“The kid did say he had to be here when you came back.”

“I knew you would,” Ryan said softly. “Come back, I mean.”

“Did you have another seizure?” Mist asked him.

“Do you think we’d just be sitting here if he had?” Vali asked indignantly. He took a step toward her as if he would have liked to hug her. “You’re . . . you’re not hurt?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

“He—” Vali glanced furtively at Dainn, who seemed not to hear them. “He was going to kill Loki, wasn’t he?”

“That was his plan. It didn’t quite work out that way, but we got something out of Loki before we left.” She took Gungnir from inside her jacket.

“Hey,” Vali said, his open face breaking into a grin. “Good job, Mist. Wish I could have seen Loki’s face.”

Mist tucked Gungnir away again, remembering her promise to Vidarr. “Nothing’s really changed,” she said, her legs beginning to shake. “But Loki’s going to be a just a little more careful from now on, I think.”

Vali searched her eyes. “I believe it,” he said. “I’ve never seen you look this way before.”

I’ve never felt this way before, Mist thought. “Magic has a way of changing a Valkyrie,” she said. She stared down at her scuffed boots. “I never wanted this, Val.”

“I know you didn’t,” he said, tentatively laying a broad hand on her shoulder. “I’ll always be here to help you, Mist. Whatever you need.”

“I know.” She smiled and covered his hand with hers. “Right now the first thing we have to do is reset the wards. I don’t know how much use Dain’ll be to us right now.”

“I sort of get that impression,” Vali said. “I’m not sure how much good I’ll be, but I’ll do whatever I can.”

“That’s all I ask.” She glanced at Ryan, who stood halfway between a silent Dainn and the table, as if he didn’t know where he should be. “Since Tashiro’s not going to be a problem—”

“Why not?” Ryan asked. “You never told us.”

Mist ignored him. “I’ll be calling him first thing tomorrow so he can meet with Ryan. He’s a lawyer, so maybe he can figure out a more permanent way to get these kids off the streets and into a decent life.”

“You’re still going to make us leave?” Gabi asked, starting up from her chair.

“Nothing’s changed. I’m doing whatever I have to keep you safe.”

Ryan sank back into his chair, and Gabi pouted very effectively for a kid who worked so hard to make herself look and sound tough. Mist noticed that her hands were still red, and there was a swollen, stiff look to her fingers.

She moved to stand over Gabi. “Let me see your hands.”

“They’re okay.”

“Show me.”

Reluctantly she let Mist examine them. “They don’t hurt as bad as they look,” she said.

“We’re going to the hospital.”

Gabi flinched away. “Sin médicos! I can fix myself, I promise!”

Mist hesitated. There was genuine terror in the girl’s voice, and considering what she’d been through already, Mist was reluctant to make her face another traumatic situation.

“We’ll see what we can do here,” she said. “But if it doesn’t get better . . .”

“Sí,” Gabi said, slumping in relief.

Mist sighed and glanced at the half-eaten sandwich on the girl’s plate. Right on cue, her stomach rumbled loudly.

“Funny,” she said to no one in particular, “but I feel as if I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“Magic,” Dainn said, suddenly coming back to life. “You must eat more than you did in the past.”

“You’d better follow your own advice,” she said. “Sit down. Make yourself a sandwich while Vali and I see about the wards.”

It was a measure of Dainn’s exhaustion that he obeyed her immediately and took a seat at the table. Ryan edged into the chair beside him. Vali leaned against the counter as Mist opened the fridge. There was still a little sliced turkey and Jarlsberg left.

“We’re going to need groceries,” she said, amazed that she could discuss such banal matters without breaking into gales of incredulous laughter. “Dainn, make me a sandwich too, will you?”

He stared at her blankly. He was a long way from returning from that dark place he’d barely escaped such a short time ago, but she didn’t intend to let him wallow. She had to pull him back from the brink.

“As I remember,” she said, “you can make a sandwich.” She set the makings on the table in front of him. “Go to it.”

Mist found Dainn’s wards shattered in every place he’d set them. Once they had been a series of carefully drawn Runes made of scrolled staves interlocked with intricate vines so complex in design that it was difficult to make out where one ended and the other began. Now they were torn apart as if someone had stampeded through a pristine forest with a blowtorch.

Not much could be done to salvage them now. Vali and Mist began to set their own, Vali struggling to call up abilities he had put aside years ago, Mist trying to find appropriate imagery to help her engrave new Runes into the brick and cement.

After a while she settled on drawing every fighting weapon she had in the gym and painstakingly reproduced them with a black permanent pen, interspersed with appropriate Runes, along every wall of the loft. She drew the weapons pointing up, so that their protection would be extended to the second floor, and then smeared her blood across every image.

Vali went over them again, drawing the name of Odin between the figures of every sword, spear, and ax. He added his blood to hers, wincing a little as he drew the blade of his Swiss Army knife across his palm.

“I think we done good,” he said, stepping back to examine the product of their efforts. “If these don’t hold for a while, I don’t know what will.”

“We need more than wards,” Mist said. “We need better defenses, better ways of telling when Loki might plan to attack.”

“To get Ryan back, or to kill you?”

“Like I said, I don’t think he’ll try anything again too soon, and he denied sending the Jotunar to the gym. He certainly never mentioned Ryan. But the default position is that he’s always lying.”

“And what about Dainn?” Vali asked quietly.

Mist’s heart thudded like an iron ball striking a trampoline and bouncing up again. “There’s a lot of stuff, Vali. I’ll tell you when I feel . . . when I have it all figured out myself.”

Vali glanced down, and she knew what he was thinking. But the more she protested, the more he’d believe his guess was right.

“We’ve done all we can out here,” she said. “Dainn told me you were bringing some of your equipment in when you found him. Can you start setting up in the morning?”

Vali glanced at his watch. “It’s already three a.m. No point in leaving now.”

“Vidarr—”

“Screw Vidarr,” Vali said.

She wondered what he’d say if he knew about her recent conversation with his brother. Turning the Spear over to Vidarr was the wrong thing to do. It wasn’t just that he’d pretty much coerced her into it. There was something else that bothered her about the bargain. Until she figured it out, she was going to stall Vidarr as long as possible. Or, better yet, tell him she hadn’t gotten it back.

It would a dangerous deception, given Vidarr’s temper. And she’d have to tell Vali to lie to his own brother. She would be manipulating him the same way she’d manipulated Tashiro.

“Just make sure you don’t burn yourself out,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. “I hope we won’t have to rely completely on technology to find my Sisters, but right now I don’t have any magical solutions.”

“Give yourself some time,” Vali said. “You just came out of a fight with Loki on his own turf, and I’m guessing you must have worked some pretty major magic to come out of it alive. You’ll figure it out.” He glanced away with an embarrassed shrug. “I have faith in you.”

“You’re a good friend, Vali. Keep reminding me, okay?” She looked over their work one more time. “I think I’d better go get that sandwich. Did you get enough to eat?”

He slapped his slightly oversized belly. “A couple of sandwiches?” he said. “You want me to stick around, you’d better be ready to feed me better than that.”

“I think it can be arranged.”

They went inside. Vali stopped to look over his new workspace again. Mist went into her bedroom, struggling to keep her eyes open and wondering if the garage where the Volvo was supposedly being repaired had made any progress. She suspected that she was going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new car. Or, better yet, a bike. Streetcars and buses just wouldn’t cut it now. But how she was going to find the time . . .

Maybe she could offer the owner of the “borrowed” bike enough money that he’d sell it to her and overlook her larceny.

Somewhat cheered by the prospect, Mist took a shower, changed her clothes, and returned to the kitchen and the sandwich Dainn had—she hoped— made for her.

Groceries, she reminded herself, wondering if she could get Vali to go for her. The idea of battling supermarket crowds during the holidays was almost as daunting as another duel with Loki.

Despite Gabi’s vigorous protests, Mist sent the teenagers up to bed not long after they’d finished their makeshift dinner. Mist had given the kids only the sketchiest account of what had happened with Loki, figuring they wouldn’t need to know too much before they left for good.

“It’s time to make a new plan,” Mist said once she, Dainn, and Odin’s son were sitting in the living room.

“Sitting” not being a very accurate description, Mist thought, with Dainn hunkered on the floor against the far wall and Vali slumped in the armchair by the cold fireplace with his broad, bearded chin resting on his fist. She wasn’t doing much better, sprawled out on the couch as if someone had dropped a cartoon anvil on her chest. “Our first priority must still be increasing your knowledge of magic,”

Dainn said, his eyes glittering through the black veil of his hair. “We can have more than one priority now that Vali’s with us,”

Mist said with a wry twist of her lips. “And I can multitask, remember?” She glanced at Odin’s son. “Did Dainn tell you I have a superpowered homing signal? He thinks I unconsciously called to Ryan somehow. And I’m going to keep calling until I get a handle on it.”

“I’m sorry, Mist,” Vali said. “I know you don’t want this.”

“I didn’t mention it before,” Mist said, rolling onto her side without lifting her still-throbbing head, “but my convenient little glamour is why Tashiro won’t be a problem. I made him forget most of what happened in the gym, except that there was some kind of home invasion and no one was hurt.”

Dainn looked at her sharply. He’d been pretty sanguine about the glamour thing before, but he didn’t look quite so happy about it now. “Of course, when Freya’s allies show up, we’ll have to do a lot more work to keep people from noticing,” she went on. “I assume she doesn’t want a citywide panic to break out the second they cross the bridges, and it’s not going to be that easy to hide an army of swollen-headed Alfar and hard- drinking Einherjar, even in San Francisco. Dainn, did Freya have a plan about where they’re all go ing to stay, or did she leave that up to you?”

“It was never discussed,” Dainn said, apparently fascinated by the worn Celtic design on the carpet.

“Then you’d better discuss it with her soon.”

“I will attempt to reach her tonight.”

“Good.”

The room went very quiet, so quiet that Mist could hear the snow falling outside even over the hum of the heater and the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. She tried to stay awake. There was so much left to discuss. But her eyes wouldn’t cooperate, and after a while she didn’t care.

“Mist!”

Someone’s hand shook her awake. Mist felt for Kettlingr, remembering too late that she’d left it in the bedroom.

“It’s okay,” Vali said. He backed away hastily. “That guy Tashiro is at the door.”

Mist peered at the clock with blurry eyes. “For Baldr’s sake, it’s only seven in the morning. What’s he doing here? Where’s Dainn?”

“Keeping an eye on Tashiro. I don’t think he likes the man.” The beast didn’t, that was certain.

“I’ll talk to Tashiro,” she said, self- consciously tucking the tail of her shirt into the waistband of her jeans. She combed her hair with her fingers, wondering what the lawyer would see when he looked at her. There was nothing left of the Lady in her now.

Tashiro was standing in the kitchen, looking around the room as if to avoid noticing the way Dainn stared at him. Dainn had obviously showered and changed into another pair of Eric’s pants and an incongruous dress shirt, minus tie, but he didn’t look as if he had any ordinary “business” in mind.

He was deliberately trying to find out if Tashiro had really forgotten him.

Mist stepped hastily into the breach and offered her hand to their visitor. “Mr. Tashiro,” she said. “I was going to call you, but I didn’t expect—”

“Sorry,” he said, clasping her hand longer than was strictly necessary. “I know it’s early, but I—” He gave her an abashed, charming smile. “The fact is, I thought you might be available to talk about Ryan, and I’d like to get that moving along as quickly as possible.”

“Fine,” Mist said. “That’s great.” She waved Vali to her side.

“Mr. Tashiro, this is my friend Vali. Vali, Mr. Tashiro.”

“Koji,” Tashiro said, extending his hand. Vali’s was nearly twice the size of his, but Odin’s son didn’t try to flaunt his superior strength.

He let go as soon as he could.

“This is my . . . cousin, Dainn,” Mist said, watching Koji’s face.

“Dainn Alfgrim.”

Dainn shot her an unreadable glance and nodded curtly to Koji.

“Mr. Tashiro,” he said.

The lawyer looked him over with a slight frown. “Have we met before, Mr. Alfgrim?”

They stared at each other like stags sizing each other up for a little autumn jousting. Mist took Tashiro’s arm.

“Ryan is in bed right now, Mr. Tashiro—”

“Koji,” he corrected.

“Koji. I thought you and I could talk in the living room.”

“Of course,” he said, meeting her gaze with a little too much personal interest. No, he didn’t remember the fight, or Dainn, or what Mist had done to him. But the aftereffects of her glamour were still working, and she hated herself for it.

She wasn’t sure if Dainn would try to join the conversation, but he remained outside with Vali. Mist forced herself to relax. “Sit down,” she said, offering Koji a seat in the armchair. “I can light a fire if you’d like.”

“Not necessary,” he said, “but thanks.”

“Okay.” Mist sat on the sofa and dropped her hands between her knees. “Here’s the situation.”

She’d gotten about two sentences into the story she’d prepared for him when she heard the roaring outside on Illinois Street. Her first thought was that Ryan or Gabi had sneaked out of the house and was making off with the borrowed motorcycle.

But it was soon obvious that it wasn’t only one bike making the noise.

“Excuse me,” Mist said, jumping up from the couch. Vali and Dainn were already standing at the closed front door.

“What’s going on out there?” Mist asked as the engines grumbled and snarled like a pack of ill-tempered hyenas.

“Do you remember when we sensed that someone was following us?” Dainn asked.

“Someone followed you?” Vali asked.

“We thought we’d shaken them,” Mist said, considering a quick dash to her bedroom for Kettlingr. “If that’s who’s out there, they didn’t exactly try to hide their approach.”

“Mortals,” Dainn said. “As you once said of the Jotunar, mere cannon-fodder for the Slanderer.”

“I guess we’d better find out what they want. Hang on.” She jogged to the bedroom, snatched Kettlingr from the bedside table, and returned to the front hall. Holding the knife in a battle-ready grip, she grasped the doorknob with her free hand.

Dainn stepped in front of her. “You are in no condition to confront them,” he said.

“I’m in better condition than you are,” she retorted.

They locked stares, and Mist saw the flare of the beast in his eyes. But he bowed his head and stood aside. Vali cast him a troubled glance and followed Mist, nearly treading on her heels as she opened the door.