“I can’t say that your taste in decorating has improved,” she said.

  Thor glanced at Saga, who was stuffing smaller pieces of debris into a large plastic trash bag. He gestured to her for help, but she rolled her eyes before stooping to ball up some shredded upholstery fabric and shove it in the bag.

  Thor looked through the shattered windows on either side of the pulverized front doorway and saw Freyr jogging toward the roadway. The Frost Giants and Loki were arriving with their sacks of apples. Maggie lagged at the back of the group. There was a great deal of gesticulation and raised voices, but it looked like Freyr was doing a good job of keeping Thrym and his mountainous goons from entering the house.

  Ignoring the commotion outside, Iduna crossed her arms loosely over her chest. Still clad in her traditional robes of the grove, she looked especially out of place in the war zone that used to be the living room. A loose chunk of ceiling plaster gave up its fight against gravity and landed with a dusty thump at her feet.

  Thor made an effort to soften his voice. “Iduna.”

  “Of course, if you’re going to be entertaining Køjer Devils—” her voice caught, and her smug smile cracked. Her face twisted into a grimace as she turned to survey what was left of the living room.

  Thor stepped up beside her. “Iduna, don’t.”

  “After all,” she cleared her throat, “everyone knows that when you open up that barrel of tatzelwurms—”

  A stream of tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “I just didn’t think it would end like this.”

  Saga looked up from her trash bag, and Thor pulled the single surviving dining chair closer to Iduna and motioned for her to sit. “Who said anything about an ending?”

  Iduna sank into the chair and pressed her palm flat against her chest. “The final stage of Ragnarok.”

  Thor stood in front of her. “Iduna, this is not Ragnarok. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.”

  Iduna scowled at him. “How blind are you? Why do you fight what simply must be?”

  Saga dropped her trash bag and stomped across the floor toward her. “You’re kidding me, right? Have you forgotten what we went through last fall? Managarm nearly took the Yggdrasil, but we stopped him. Odin faced Fenrir and survived. Some of us thought that was Ragnarok, but we got through it. Why should now be any different?”

  Iduna nodded sadly. “And at what cost?”

  Saga fell silent. Thor knelt in front of Iduna.

  “You lost your husband,” Thor said. “I lost my brother.”

  Iduna leaned forward in her chair and sobbed.

  Saga rested a hand on Iduna’s shoulder. “Bragi’s death was a tragic loss. But he died defending the Yggdrasil so that the entire Cosmos might be saved. His was a hero’s death, and now he rests in the Halls of Valhalla with valiant warriors from throughout the ages.”

  “There’s no grove. Not now.” Iduna wiped her nose on one of the folds of her gown. “And I’m guessing no one believes in funeral pyres anymore.”

  Thor looked up at the ceiling. Now that the first moments of actual concern and compassion had passed, he felt his tempestuous nature taking hold again. He looked hard at Iduna and was sorely tempted to point out that funeral pyres had gone out of style at pretty much the same time as the grieving goddess’s fashion choices, but he didn’t want Saga kicking him in the shins.

  “So?” he said instead.

  “Always so freaking melodramatic,” Saga sighed. “You’re either prickly or a puddle, aren’t you?”

  Iduna and Thor both looked at Saga in bewilderment. She nodded toward Iduna. “She’s upset about not getting to throw herself on her husband’s pyre.”

  “That sounds extreme,” Thor replied.

  “Tell me about it.” Saga crossed her arms and looked down at Iduna. “If you want to give up, that’s fine with me.”

  “I figured this would be the last harvest,” Iduna sobbed. “And then, all of this happened.”

  Thor crouched down in front of her. “If you’re set on joining Bragi in Valhalla, I can’t fault you for that.” He leaned back onto his heels. “And I won’t stop you, either. But I do ask one favor.”

  “What’s that?” Iduna asked.

  “That you not take us with you.”

  Sally sat on the bed in a spot where Freya had cleared away some of the collapsed ceiling. She tried not to cry.

  Heimdall stood over her. “How many of them?”

  Sally shook her head. “I don’t know. They came out of nowhere. I tried to hide.”

  Freya placed a supportive hand on Sally’s back. “Did you get a look at them?”

  “I peeked under the door after I’d finished the shielding spell.” Sally closed her eyes and felt her heart hammering against her ribs. “I saw clawed feet. Dark red and black. With kind of lizard skin. That’s all.”

  Sally shuddered.

  “That’s probably about as much confirmation as we’re going to get,” Freya said.

  Heimdall kicked at the debris by his feet, sending a handful of shell flakes ricocheting off the wall and onto the floor.

  “My runes!” Sally leapt up from the bed and scrambled around collecting the flakes. “I left them on the bed when I ran into the closet. They were flying all over the place before I took cover.” She sorted through the flakes in her hands, turning over each one. Sally frowned and held one up. “But none of these are marked.”

  “Scales,” Freya spat.

  Sally turned at the sound of throat-clearing and found Loki standing outside on the back deck and looking in through the bedroom’s broken window.

  “Excuse me,” he began, lifting his eyebrows at the level of destruction in the room. “It appears we missed quite the party.”

  “Not all of us missed it.” Freya cocked her head toward Sally.

  Loki caught Sally’s eye. “I’m very glad to see you in one piece.”

  Sally tried to think of something noble or witty to say, but she gave up and sank back down onto what was left of the bed.

  “Did you need something right now?” Heimdall’s voice was hard and impatient. “We’re kind of in the middle of figuring out what in the Nine Realms to do next.”

  “Yes, about that.” Loki brushed the shards of glass away from the window, then rested his hands on the frame and leaned inside. “I was thinking about our not-so-polite adversaries on the way down from the mountain, and I suspect I might know what they’re after. And where they might be headed next.”

  16

  Beneath the glow of the Vanagon’s overhead light, Sally lowered the knife blade toward the Køjer Devil scale that Loki was holding in place on the camper’s fold-out table. The ferry rocked on its crossing from the Lofoten Islands back to Bodø, and Sally nearly lost her footing. She really hoped she wouldn’t get seasick inside a car.

  “This is insane.” She took a step back from the table in the cramped quarters. “I’m going to end up carving into your hand instead of the scale.”

  Loki looked up from his seat at the table. “We must keep moving. It’s this or try to do it when we’re on the road.” He glanced out the Vanagon’s window at the water beyond the car ferry’s railing. “I think our odds are better here.”

  He was right. Sally had already experimented with branding the scales while the gods and giants—plus Maggie and Sally—wound their way around twists and turns in their fleet of rented campers. She’d felt nothing short of genius when she thought of using the cigarette lighter to heat up a screwdriver from the glove compartment, but when she tried to burn any number of rune symbols into the scales, they skittered off the table and set fire to the carpeting.

  “The devils like heat,” Loki had explained in his casual, matter-of-fact tone that apparently couldn’t be cracked by any crisis. “Using fire on the scales will merely make them misbehave.”

  “You could have mentioned that before,” Sally had replied while stamping out the embers on the floor of the Vanagon. Then she’d examined the burn holes in her top from where the screwdriver had missed the scale and punctured her clothing instead. Another sweatshirt ruined. She made a mental note to wear only her most-hated hand-me-downs when she was due to hang out with the Norse clan in the future.

  Loki held the scale on the table and motioned Sally back to try again. She lifted Freyr’s blade and exhaled.

  “Algiz,” she said. “Heimdall’s rune. Protection.”

  “You’ve got this,” Loki offered.

  Leaning forward, Sally brought the blade down at the top of the scale to draw the long vertical line at the center of the symbol. She scratched hard on the scale’s surface, but the blade left no trace of a mark.

  “Bear down harder,” Loki suggested.

  “I’m trying!” Sally gritted her teeth and leaned her body weight into the blade. With a loud CREAK, the metal gave way and Sally fell forward onto the table. Picking herself up, she frowned at the knife—the blade was bent at a ridiculous angle. The scale remained untouched.

  “Freyr’s going to kill me.”

  “He’ll get another knife.” Loki twirled the scale in his fingers. “Although this doesn’t bode well for going hand-to-hand with the devils.”

  Sally sat down across from him and started digging through her bag. “I guess we’re back to ink, then.”

  She pulled out a box of markers and spilled them onto the table. She’d picked them up at the convenience store next to the car rental when Heimdall was negotiating for the Vanagons.

  Thor and the Frost Giants made the sales rep kind of nervous, so Freya had taken them all next-door for some Arctic Icees. With sticky syrup congealing on his cheeks, Thiassen even commented that perhaps humans weren’t such offensive abominations of nature if they could invent such brightly colored confections. And Skittles. The Frost Giants had approached something near rapture when they tasted the rainbow.

  Sally picked up the empty marker box and tried reading the text. It was all in Norwegian. “I don’t suppose you know anything about making non-permanent ink into permanent ink?”

  “Sadly, I do not.” Loki pocketed Freyr’s bent knife.

  Sally reached for the scale and started drawing on it with a purple marker. At least it didn’t spring away and set the car on fire. “How many of these do you need?”

  “As many as we have,” Loki replied. “It’s been a long time since any Æsir, Vanir, or Frost Giant went hand-to-claw with a Køjer Devil, and we’re not exactly at full strength right now.”

  “I don’t understand. If these devil guys are so big and scary, why isn’t there any record of them?” Sally kept tracing rune symbols—mostly Algiz, Thurisaz, Kenaz, and Isa, with less frequent instances of Othila and Sowilu. “I’ve read just about everything I could get my hands on about Norse legends and history, and I’ve never heard of them before.”

  “Some stories get buried for a reason.”

  Sally gave him a hard look, then gestured for him to continue.

  “As the eldest of this merry bunch,” Loki nodded toward the van’s window at Maggie, the Frost Giants, and the rest of his kin standing in clumps at the ferry’s railing, “I suppose I know more history than most of Thor’s generation has forgotten. But even I don’t have the full picture.”

  Bragi would have known, Sally thought as she organized her new runes into neat rows. She imagined the Bard of the Gods would have been able to relate the entire history not only of his own kind, but of any creature who’d ever drawn breath. But Bragi feasted in the Halls of Valhalla now.

  “I never got to meet Bragi,” Sally muttered.

  Loki sighed. “I wish I’d known him better.”

  Sally looked out at the passing watery landscape. The Frost Giants stood apart from the rest, no doubt complaining about mortals smelling funny or too great a reliance on electronics. The others all looked so serious, gesticulating and arguing as they drew up battle plans. At least, that’s what Sally hoped they were doing.

  Iduna, the strange goddess in shining robes who was uppity one minute and weeping the next, sat alone in one of the other Vanagons. Sally had been relieved when Iduna declined to help with the runes.

  Sally rubbed at the mark of Sowilu on one of the scales, and the ink smudged.

  “Okay. I’m going to try something here.” Sally grabbed the orange and green pens and held one in each hand. “And if it doesn’t work, you’re the only one who knows about it.”

  Loki smiled.

  “I just wish I’d read more about alchemy.” Sally sighed. “Or that I’d paid better attention in chemistry class.”

  Maggie stood at the railing and looked out over the water. She’d been unconscious when she made the crossing to the Lofoten Islands with the Frost Giants—assuming they’d taken the ferry. She’d been careful not to ask for details.

  But now Freya was pressing her for information. How many apples had she eaten? Over how many days? What had her dreams been like? Had she felt especially light-headed or experienced moments of sudden clairvoyance? How had she known how to heal Loki and Heimdall?

  Maggie held up her hands in defeat. “I don’t know what I can tell you.”

  Freya offered a tight smile and placed a hand on Maggie’s back. Maggie was too tired to step away.

  “This is not how it’s usually done.” The wind whipped through Freya’s hair, and she pulled a wayward strand out of her mouth and tucked it behind one ear. “There’s always been a careful vetting process to make sure the candidate was fully cognizant of their future role and responsibilities, and to ensure the mortal in question was a good fit for life among us.”

  “Immortal life.” Maggie looked back out at the water. It’s not like she’d never thought of it. As soon as she’d learned Heimdall’s true identity—and that of his family—the possibility of being offered immortality herself had screamed into her thoughts and dreams, and her nightmares. But unlike an angst-ridden teenager with a vampire fixation, Maggie didn’t find the idea particularly appealing.

  She loved Heimdall—for now. But would she still love him in three hundred years? What about just next year? They’d been together barely twelve months and she wasn’t entirely comfortable stacking her thirty years of life experience next to his millennia of memory.

  Heimdall never brought it up, and for that she was grateful. When her own parents asked about marriage plans, Maggie quickly changed the subject. Heimdall was always so serious, carrying the weight of responsibility for his family—for the whole freaking Cosmos—on his shoulders. An eternity of marriage? She honestly didn’t know how Odin and Frigga did it.

  And she’d have to watch her own family and friends wither away and die.

  No. Maggie was quite certain she had no interest in that.

  “It’s not so bad.” Freya patted Maggie’s shoulder, and Maggie tried not to shiver at Freya’s uncanny ability to read her mind.

  Maggie shook her head. No matter the pros and cons of immortality, it was all academic now. She’d eaten the apples.

  “I know you’re trying to help.” Maggie looked out over the water, her cheeks stinging in the cold breeze. “But you’ve never known anything different.”

  Freyr stepped up on Maggie’s other side. “Don’t be so sure.”

  Maggie looked from one twin to the other. “What are you talking about?”

  Freyr tapped the railing post with the toe of his boot. “Not long after the Asgard attack on Vanaheim, Iduna’s Grove came into harvest.” He looked quickly at Freya, then back to Maggie. “I wasn’t going to eat the apples, but my sister convinced me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Maggie said.

  “I was choosing death, Maggie, rather than being absorbed into Odin’s Lodge among his kin. You saw what happened to Loki, and to Heimdall, without the apples.”

  “But why?” Maggie asked. “You all seem to get along so well. Unless you’d told me that you were—well, I guess adopted really is the only word that works?”

  “That was a long time ago,” Freya said. “Being ripped away from your home and your people is traumatic. Even when it’s in the cause of lasting peace, you don’t get over it so easily.”

  “And you thought dying would be a better option,” Maggie said.

  Freyr shrugged. “At the time, I did. But things change.”

  A chill settled into Maggie’s bones. How long would it take before she had such a distant perspective on her own mortality? Years from now—whole lifetimes and even centuries in the future—would she remember this conversation, or any of her human life?

  “The process may not yet be irreversible.” Freya squeezed Maggie’s shoulder. “We’ll know more when we can get you back to Frigga and the Norns, but there’s a good chance you have an important choice to make.”

  Maggie breathed deeply. She wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or mortified.

  “Let’s get through today’s challenges, and worry about the rest later,” Freyr offered with another tap to the railing post.

  “I like that plan,” Maggie replied. “Don’t freak out today over what can send you into a full, existential panic tomorrow.”

  Maggie turned her face to the water and tried to imagine what it would feel like to embrace this landscape as her adopted homeland. Vanaheim, the name of Freyr and Freya’s home, echoed in her thoughts. Even after she’d arrived in Norway, she’d had difficulty connecting Heimdall’s family history to real-world geography. If Asgard was the home of the Æsir—and as near as she could tell, they were in Asgard now, or what was left of it—then what or where was Vanaheim?

  “It’s all Midgard now,” Freya interrupted Maggie’s train of thought. “The Frost Giants are right about this being a human world. And it’s not so much my reading your mind as it is you projecting your thoughts,” she added. “The apples do make it easier for us to read each other—but for you, really, it’s written all over your face.” Freya smiled. “But to answer your question: Yes, Vanaheim is a real place.”

  “Where?”

  “I think we’ve got something here.” Heimdall approached them at the railing. Sally walked at his side and Thor and Loki fell in behind. The Frost Giants crowded around them.