فصل 55

Daisies in the Shape of an Elf

AS SOON AS we left the office, the ravens led Sam up another staircase. She glanced back at us uneasily, but Helgi had been pretty clear that the rest of us weren’t invited.

Alex turned on her heel and marched off in the opposite direction.

“Hey,” I called. “Where—?”

She looked back, her eyes so angry I couldn’t finish my question.

“Later, Magnus,” she said. “I have to…” She made a strangling gesture with her hands. “Just later.”

That left me with Blitzen and Hearthstone, who were both swaying on their feet.

“You guys want to—?”

“Sleep,” Blitzen said. “Please. Immediately.”

I led them back to my room. The three of us camped in the grass in the middle of my atrium. It reminded me of the old days, sleeping in the Public Garden, but I’m not going to tell you I was nostalgic for being homeless. Homelessness is not something any sane person would ever be nostalgic about. Still, like I’ve said, it was a lot simpler than being an undead warrior who chased fugitive gods across the Nine Worlds and conducted serious conversations while a monstrous squirrel made faces at you in the window.

Hearthstone conked out first. He curled up, sighed gently, and went right to sleep. When he was still, despite his black clothes, he seemed to blend into the shadows of the grass. Maybe it was elf camouflage—a remnant of the time when they were one with nature.

Blitz wedged his back against a tree and stared at Hearth with concern.

“We’re going to Blitzen’s Best tomorrow,” he told me. “Reopen the shop. Spend a few weeks trying to regroup and get back to…whatever normal is. Before we have to go and find…” The prospect of taking on Loki again was so daunting he couldn’t even finish the thought.

I felt guilty that I hadn’t considered Hearthstone’s grief the past few days. I’d been too preoccupied with Thor’s stupid TV hammer.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Alfheim was rough for him.”

Blitz clasped his hands near where the Skofnung Sword had pierced him. “Yeah, I’m worried about Hearth’s unfinished business there.”

“I wish I’d been more help to him,” I said. “To both of you.”

“Nah, kid. Some kinds of help you have to do for yourself. Hearth…he’s got a dad-shaped hole in his heart. You can’t do anything about that.”

“His dad will never be a nice guy.”

“No kidding. But Hearth has to come to terms with that. Sooner or later, he’ll have to go back and face him…get his inheritance rune back one way or another. When and how that will happen, though…” He shrugged helplessly.

I thought about my Uncle Randolph. How did you decide when someone was irretrievably lost—when they were so evil or toxic or just plain set in their ways that you had to face the fact they were never going to change? How long could you keep trying to save them, and when did you give up and grieve for them as though they were dead?

It was easy for me to advise Hearthstone on his father. The dude was way past horrible. But my own uncle, who had gotten me killed, stabbed my friend, and freed the god of evil…I still couldn’t quite bring myself to write him off.

Blitzen patted my hand. “Whatever happens, kid, we’ll be ready when you need us. We’ll see this through and get Loki back in chains, even if I have to make those chains myself.”

“Yours would be a lot more fashionable,” I said.

Blitz’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. Yeah, they would. And don’t feel guilty, kid. You did good.”

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.