She snorted. “Sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? An atheist and a Muslim walk into a pagan afterlife. Anyway, Alex being transgender is the least of my problems. I’m more worried about her…connection to our father.”
Sam traced the life line on her palm. “Alex changes shape so often. She doesn’t realize how dangerous it is to rely on Loki’s power. You can’t give him any more of a hold than he already has.”
I frowned. Samirah had told me something like this before—how she didn’t like to shape-shift because she didn’t want to become like her dad—but I didn’t understand it. Personally, if I could shape-shift, I’d be turning into a polar bear, like, every two minutes and scaring the Saehrimnir out of people.
“What kind of hold are we talking about?”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Forget it. You didn’t fly after me to talk about Alex Fierro, did you?”
“True.” I described what had happened on the battlefield—the dragon, and the way Loki had invaded my head wearing an offensive tuxedo and invited me to a wedding. Then I told her about my dreams and how apparently this marriage just happened to be Sam’s, to some bar-owning, walrus-voiced giant named Thrym who served the worst-smelling pickles in Jotunheim.
Some of this Jack hadn’t heard yet, either. Despite his promise to remain inanimate, he gasped and cried “You’re kidding me!” at all the appropriate spots and some of the inappropriate ones.
When I was done, Sam stayed quiet. A waft of cold passed between us like a Freon leak from an AC.
Down below, the cleaning crew had moved in. Ravens picked up the plates and cups. Bands of wolves ate the leftover food and licked the floor clean. We were all about hygiene here in Valhalla.
“I wanted to tell you,” Sam said at last. “It all happened so quickly. It just…came crashing down on me.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek. I’d never seen Sam cry. I wanted to console her—give her a hug, pat her hand or something, but Sam didn’t do physical contact, even if I was part of her extended Valhalla family.
“That’s how Loki is messing with your personal life,” I guessed. “He came to see your grandparents? Amir?”
“He gave them invitations.” Sam dug one from her pocket and handed it across: gold cursive on green card stock, just like the one Loki had tucked into Uncle Randolph’s pocket.
The incomparable Loki and some other people invite you to celebrate with them the marriage of
Samirah Al-Abbas Bint Loki
and
Thrym, Son of Thrym, Son of Thrym
WHEN:
Five Days Hence
WHERE:
We’ll Get Back to You
WHY:
Because It’s Better than Doomsday
Gifts Are Welcome
Dancing and Wild Pagan Sacrifices to Follow
I looked up. “Wild pagan sacrifices?”
“You can imagine how that went over with my grandparents.”
I studied the invitation again. The when section shimmered, the five slowly fading, turning into a four. The where section also had a holographic sheen, as if it might eventually change to a specific address. “Couldn’t you tell your grandparents this was a prank?”
“Not when my father delivered it personally.”
“Oh.”
I pictured Loki sitting at the al-Abbases’ dining table, sipping tea from one of their lovely gold cups. I imagined Jid’s Santa Claus face getting redder and redder, Bibi doing her best to keep her regal poise while angry steam spewed from the edges of her hijab.
“Loki told them everything,” Sam said. “How he met my mom, how I became a Valkyrie, everything. He told them they had no right to arrange a marriage for me because he was my dad and he had already arranged one.”
Jack quivered in my hand. “On the bright side,” he said, “that’s a very nice invitation.”
“Jack…” I said.
“Right. Inanimate.”
“Please tell me your grandparents were not okay with that,” I said. “They don’t expect you to marry a giant.”
“They don’t know what to think.” Sam took back the invitation. She stared at it as if hoping it would burst into flames. “They’d had their suspicions about my mother’s relationship. Like I told you, my family has been interacting with the Norse gods for generations. The gods have this…this attraction to my clan.”
“Welcome to the club,” I muttered.
“But Jid and Bibi had no idea of the extent of it until Loki showed up and sent them reeling. What hurt them most was that I’d kept my life as a Valkyrie from them.” Another tear traced the base of her nose. “And Amir…”
“The video we saw on Valkyrie Vision,” I guessed. “He and his father came over this morning, and you tried to explain.”
She nodded, picking at the corner of the invitation. “Mr. Fadlan doesn’t understand what’s going on, just that there’s a disagreement of some kind. But Amir…we talked again this afternoon, and I—I told him the truth. All of it. And I promised that I would never agree to this crazy marriage with Thrym. But I don’t know if Amir can even hear me at this point. He must think I’m out of my mind….”
“We’ll figure it out,” I promised. “There’s no way you are going to be forced to marry a giant.”
“You don’t know Loki like I do, Magnus. He can burn down my whole life. He’s already started. He has ways of…” She faltered. “The point is, he’s decided that he is the only one who can negotiate for Thor’s hammer. I can’t imagine what he wants out of the deal, but it can’t be good. The only way to stop him is to find the hammer first.”
“Then we’ll do that,” I said. “We know this guy Thrym has it. Let’s go get it. Or even better, just tell Thor and make him do it.”
Across my knees, Jack hummed and glowed. “It won’t be that easy, señor. Even if you could find Thrym’s fortress, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep Thor’s hammer there. He’s an earth giant. He could have buried it literally anywhere under the earth.”
“The wight’s barrow,” Sam said.
“In Provincetown,” I said. “You still think that’s our best bet? Even with this goat-killer stalking us, telling us it’s a trap?”
Sam stared right through me. She seemed to be watching the horizon, imagining a mushroom cloud rising from the nuke Loki had dropped on her future. “I have to try, Magnus. The wight’s tomb. First thing in the morning.”
I hated this idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a better one.
“Fine. You contacted Hearth and Blitz?”
“They’re meeting us on Cape Cod.” She rose and crumpled up the we
dding invitation. Before I could object that we might need it, she tossed it to the ravens and wolves. “Meet you after breakfast. And bring a coat. It’ll be a chilly morning to fly.”
Relax, It’s Just a Little Death Prophecy
SURE ENOUGH, once Jack became a pendant again, I passed out for twelve hours.
In the morning, I woke with sore arms and legs, feeling like I’d spent the whole night flapping through the air with an einherji hanging from my ankle.
Alex Fierro was conspicuously absent from breakfast, though T.J. assured me he’d slipped a note under her door explaining where the lounge was for floor nineteen.
“She’s probably still asleep,” T.J. said. “She had a big first day.”
“Unless she’s that mosquito right there.” Halfborn pointed to an insect crawling across the saltshaker. “That you, Fierro?”
The mosquito said nothing.
My friends promised to stay on high alert, ready to do whatever was needed to help stop Loki from holding his shotgun wedding in five (now four) days.
“We’ll also keep an eye on Fierro,” Mallory promised, scowling at the mosquito.
I just had time to scarf down a bagel before Sam arrived and led me to the stables above the floor 422 exercise room.
Whenever Sam said, “We’re going to fly,” I couldn’t be sure what she meant.
Valkyries were perfectly capable of flying on their own. They were strong enough to carry at least one other person, so maybe she intended to put me in a large tote bag and schlep me to Cape Cod.
Or she might have meant fly as in we’re going to tumble off a cliff and plummet to our deaths. We seemed to spend a lot of time doing that.
Today, she meant riding a flying horse. I wasn’t clear on why Valkyries had flying horses. Probably just because they looked cool. Besides, nobody wanted to ride into battle on a lindworm, flapping and bouncing around like a turkey-snake cowboy.
Sam saddled a white stallion. She climbed on his back and pulled me up behind her, then we galloped out the gates of the stable, straight into the skies above Boston.
She was right about the cold. That didn’t bother me, but the winds were strong, and Sam’s hijab kept fluttering into my mouth. Since hijabs represented modesty and piety, I doubted Sam wanted hers to look like I’d been chewing on it.
“How much farther?” I asked.
She glanced back. The bruise under her eye had faded, but she still seemed distracted and exhausted. I wondered if she’d slept at all.
“Not long now,” she said. “Hang on.”
I’d flown with Sam enough times to take that warning seriously. I clenched my knees against the horse’s rib cage and wrapped my hands around Sam’s waist. As we plunged straight through the clouds, I may have screamed “Meinfretr!”
My butt went weightless in the saddle. FYI, I do not like having a weightless butt. I wondered if Sam flew her airplane like this, and if so, how many flight instructors she had sent into cardiac arrest.
We broke through the clouds. In front of us, Cape Cod stretched to the horizon—a parenthesis of green and gold in a blue sea. Directly below, the northern tip of the peninsula made a gentle curlicue around Provincetown harbor. A few sailboats dotted the bay, but it was too early in the spring for many visitors.
Sam leveled us off at about five hundred feet and flew us along the coast, racing over dunes and marshes, then following the arc of Commercial Street with its gray shingled cottages and neon-painted gingerbread houses. The shops were