I wasn’t so sure about that. What had I accomplished? I felt like I’d spent the last six days scrambling around doing damage control, trying to keep my friends alive, trying to minimize the fallout from Loki’s plot.
I imagined what Samirah would say: That’s enough, Magnus. She’d probably point out that I’d helped Amir. I’d managed to heal Blitzen. I’d gotten Thor’s assault team into the giants’ lair to retrieve the hammer. I’d bowled a really mean game of doubles with my partner the African bush elephant.
Still…Loki was free. He’d hurt Sam. He’d crushed her confidence badly. And then there was that little thing about all the Nine Worlds now at risk of being thrown into chaos.
“I feel terrible, Blitz,” I admitted. “The more I train, the more powers I learn…It just seems like the problems get ten times bigger than what I can handle. Is that ever going to stop?”
Blitz didn’t answer. His chin rested on his chest. He was quietly snoring.
I put a blanket over him. I sat for a long time watching the stars through the tree branches and thinking about holes in people’s hearts.
I wondered what Loki was doing right now. If I were him, I would be planning the most massive revenge spree the Nine Worlds had ever seen. Maybe that’s why Vidar, the god of vengeance, had seemed so gentle and quiet. He knew it didn’t take much to start a chain reaction of violence and death. One insult. One theft. One severed chain. Thrym and Thrynga had nursed a grudge for generations. They’d been used by Loki not just once, but twice. And now they were dead.
I don’t remember falling asleep. When I woke the next morning, Blitz and Hearth were gone. A bed of daisies bloomed where Hearthstone had slept—maybe it was his way of saying good-bye, thank you, see you soon. I still felt depressed.
I showered and got dressed. Just brushing my teeth felt ridiculously normal after the last few days. I was about to head to breakfast when I noticed a note slipped under my door, in Samirah’s elegant cursive:
Some ideas. Thinking Cup? I’ll be there all morning.
I stepped into the hallway. I liked the idea of getting out of Valhalla for a little while. I wanted to talk to Sam. I wanted good mortal coffee. I wanted to sit in the sunshine and eat a poppy seed muffin and pretend that I wasn’t an einherji with a fugitive god to catch.
Then I looked across the hall.
First I needed to do one more difficult and dangerous thing. I needed to check on Alex Fierro.
Alex opened the door and greeted me with a cheerful “Get lost.”
Wet clay spackled Alex’s face and hands. I glanced inside and saw the project sitting on the potter’s wheel. “Dude…”
I stepped inside. For some reason, Alex let me.
All the shattered pottery had been cleaned up. The racks were filled with new pots and cups, just drying and still unglazed. On the wheel stood a huge vase, about three feet tall, shaped like a trophy.
I grinned. “For Sif?”
Alex shrugged. “Yeah. If it turns out okay.”
“Is this gift ironic, or serious?”
“You’re going to make me choose? I dunno. It just…felt right to do. At first I hated her. She reminded me of my stepmother, all fussy and uptight. But…maybe I should cut her some slack.”
Over on the bed lay the gold-and-white wedding dress, still spattered with blood, the hem caked in dust and spotted with acid stains. Nevertheless, Alex had smoothed it out very carefully, like it was something worth keeping.
“Ahem. Magnus, you had some reason to stop by?”
“Yeah…” I found it hard to concentrate. I stared at the rows of pots, all perfectly shaped. “You made all these last night?”
I picked one up.
Alex took it out of my hands. “No, you can’t touch it, Magnus. Thanks for asking, Magnus. Yes, most of these were last night. I couldn’t sleep. The pottery…it makes me feel better. Now you were about to say why you came over and then quickly get out of my hair?”
“I’m going to meet Sam in Boston. I thought—”
“That I’d want to come with? No, thanks. When Sam is ready to talk, she knows where to find me.”
Alex marched back to the wheel, picked up a scraper, and started smoothing the sides of the trophy cup.
“You’re angry with her.”
Alex kept scraping.
“That’s a pretty impressive vase,” I offered. “I don’t know how you can shape something that large without it falling apart. I tried to use a wheel in, like, fifth grade art class. The best I could manage was an off-center lump.”
“A self-portrait, then?”
“Ha, ha. Just saying I wish I could do something this cool.”
No immediate reply. Maybe because I hadn’t left much room for a witty insult.
Finally, Alex glanced up warily. “You heal people, Magnus. Your dad is actually a helpful god. You’ve got this whole…sunshiny, warm, friendly thing going on. That’s not enough cool stuff for you?”
“I’ve never been called sunshiny before.”
“Oh, please. You pretend like you’re all tough and sarcastic or whatever, but you’re a big softie. And to answer your question, yes, I’m mad at Sam. Unless she changes her attitude, I’m not sure I can teach her.”
“To…resist Loki.”
Alex picked up a lump of clay and squeezed it. “The secret is, you have to be comfortable changing. All the time. You have to make Loki’s power your power.”
“Like your tattoo.”
Alex shrugged. “Clay can be shaped and reshaped, over and over, but if it gets too dry, if it sets…then there’s only so much you can do with it. When it gets to that point, you’d better be sure it’s in the shape you want it to have forever.”
“You’re saying Sam can’t change.”
“I don’t know if she can, or even if she wants to. But I do know this: if she won’t let me teach her how I resist Loki, if she won’t at least try—then the next time we face him, we’re all dead.”
I took a shaky breath. “Okay, good pep talk. I guess I’ll see you at dinner tonight.”
When I got to the door, Alex said, “How did you know?”
I turned. “Know what?”
“When you walked in, you said dude. How did you know I was male?”
I thought about it. At first I wondered if it had just been a throwaway comment—a non-gender-specific dude. The more I considered, though, the more I realized I’d genuinely picked up on the fact that Alex was male. Or rather, Alex had been male. Now, after we’d been talking for a few minutes, she definitely seemed like a she. But how I’d sensed that, I had no idea.
“Just my perceptive nature, I guess.”
Alex snorted. “Right.”
“But you’re a girl now.”
/> She hesitated. “Yeah.”
“Interesting.”
“You can leave now.”
“Will you make me a trophy for my perceptiveness?”
She picked up a pottery shard and threw it at me.
I closed the door just as it shattered on the inside.
Let’s Try This Whole “Meeting for Coffee” Thing Again
JUDGING FROM the line of empty cups, Sam was on her third espresso.
The idea of approaching an armed Valkyrie with three espressos in her system was usually not advisable, but I walked up slowly and sat across from her. She didn’t look at me. Her attention was on the two raven feathers in front of her. It was a windy morning. Sam’s green hijab rippled around her face like waves on a beach, but the two raven feathers didn’t flutter.
“Hey,” she said.
It was a lot friendlier than get lost. Sam was so different from Alex, but there was something similar in their eyes—a sense of urgency churning just below the surface. It wasn’t easy thinking about Loki’s inheritance battling inside my two friends, trying to take control.
“You got feathers,” I noted.
She touched the one of the left. “A memory. And this one”—she tapped the right—“a thought. The ravens don’t really speak. They stare at you and let you stroke their plumage until the right feathers drop out.”
“So what do they mean?”
“This one, the memory…” Sam ran a finger down the barbs. “It’s ancestral. From my distant forefather, Ahmad Ibn Fadlan Ibn al-Abbas.”
“The guy who traveled among the Vikings.”
Sam nodded. “When I took the feather, I could see his journey like I was there. I learned a lot of things he never wrote about—things he didn’t think would go over well in the court of the caliph of Baghdad.”
“He saw Norse gods?” I guessed. “Valkyries? Giants?”
“And more. He also heard legends about the ship Naglfar. The place where it’s docked, the Eastern Shores, lies on the border between Jotunheim and Niflheim—the wildest, most remote part of either world. It’s completely inaccessible, locked in ice except for one day of the year—Midsummer.”
“So that’s when Loki will plan to set sail.”
“And that’s when we’ll have to be there to stop him.”
I craved an espresso, but my heart was racing so fast I doubted I needed one. “So what now? We just wait until summer?”
“It’s going to take time to find his location. And before we can leave, we’ll need to prepare, train, make sure we can beat him.”
I remembered what Alex had said: I’m not sure I can teach her.
“We’ll make it happen.” I tried to sound confident. “What did the second feather tell you?”
“That’s a thought,” Samirah said. “A plan to move forward. To reach the Eastern Shores, we’ll need to sail through the farthest branches of the World Tree, through the old Viking lands. That’s where giant magic is strongest, and where we’ll find the sea passage to Naglfar’s dock.”
“The old Viking lands.” My fingers tingled. I wasn’t sure whether it was with