r the Wild Hunt every year.”
“Okay,” I said wearily, not because I understood what he was talking about, but because it was simpler just to go with it.
But, of course, Pritkin had to argue. “But Artemis wasn’t a death goddess.”
“Oh, but she was, dear boy,” Jonas said. “Most certainly. If you wanted a quick death in ancient Greece, you didn’t pray to Persephone or Hecate, but to Artemis, who would give you ‘a death as swift as her arrows.’”
“But Hecate is more traditionally associated—”
“But we don’t care about tradition,” Jonas interrupted, a little sharply. “Hecate has nothing to do with our current situation, whereas Artemis has been deeply involved from the beginning. I think there is little doubt that the goddess we are searching for is Artemis.”
“Searching for?” I asked. “When did we decide—”
Jonas leaned over the table. “If we assume that Artemis and Hel are the same individual, as Thor and Apollo were, then she becomes a person of the utmost importance. According to legend, she is protected by a fierce guard dog named Garm, and together they are destined to defeat Tyr in Ragnarok.”
“Tyr?” I asked, feeling more confused by the minute.
“Ares,” Pritkin said. “If Jonas’s reasoning is correct.”
“Yes, the identification is a bit easier there,” Jonas agreed. “As far back as ancient Rome, it was assumed that the war gods were one and the same. They even celebrated Ares, or Mars as they called him, on Tuesday.”
“Why Tuesday?” I asked, my head spinning.
“Because it means ‘Tyr’s day.’ Just as Thursday was named after Thor.” He looked at the chalkboard. “There is, of course, a third child of Loki, the wolf Fenrir. He was shackled by Odin, king of the gods, but eventually escaped and killed him. But I do not believe we are there yet.”
I stared at the wildly decorated chalkboard for a moment, and the sick feeling in my stomach settled into a familiar, ulcer-inducing burn. “Wait. Are you trying to tell me that to win the war, we have to kill two more gods?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Jonas said, and I felt my spine unknot slightly. “We have to help the children of Loki kill them.”
Chapter Nineteen
“That what you call lunch?”
I looked up to see Marco loitering in the doorway of the kitchen, massive arms crossed over an even bigger chest. When Marco fills a doorway, I thought vaguely, he does it right. I wiped chocolate off my mouth and swilled some now-tepid tea. “Only thing here.”
“Gonna make you sick.”
I shrugged.
He sighed and swung a massive thigh over a kitchen chair. It groaned. “Wanna tell Papa Marco about it?”
“You’re not my papa.”
“Coulda been. I had a little girl once.”
I looked up from sorting through the mage’s abandoned candy box, trying to find another cream. “I didn’t know that.”
He nodded. “Kinda looked like you. ’Cept she smiled more.”
I thought briefly about asking what had happened to her, but that sort of thing was risky with vamps. The answer usually didn’t make anybody happy. “I smile,” I said instead.
“Just not today.”
“The damn mage ate all the creams.”
One bushy eyebrow rose. “And here I thought it was that old coot pissing you off.”
“That, too.”