Sally held up her hands to show Freya a small pile of cold cinders in her palm. The wind rose from the water and scattered the ash on the air—and directly into Geirrod’s face. He choked, and Thor clapped him on the back.

  “Umm, that was a Køjer Devil scale,” Sally said.

  “Seems our little Rune Witch is rather clever with her magick.” Thor smiled down at Sally. “You’ve given us options.”

  “You!” Saga bellowed from across the ferry deck. She stormed toward Thor, shaking her phone in her hand. Thor’s face fell.

  “You want to tell me why my boss is texting me to ask for your freaking hat size?” Saga stopped in front of her hulking brother and shoved her screen into his face. “Says she found the perfect mohair yarn in your favorite color and has a knitting pattern she’s sure you’ll love.” Her eyebrows shot up in exasperation. “Well?”

  “Uh . . .” Thor looked to Freyr for help, but the nature god just shook his head with a bemused smile.

  Thor was on his own. He met his sister’s eyes. “Yeah. You’re going to kill me.”

  Heimdall raised his hand. “The Køjer Devils first, please. After that, there will be plenty of time to sort out our individual dramas.” He looked around at the assembly of anxious faces. “I promise.”

  17

  Standing at the center of the warehouse roof, Sally paused. The sun was about halfway up from the horizon to the zenith, but she’d lost track of both cardinal directions and time. She had stopped worrying about what day it was. She still hadn’t slept.

  She looked down at the one-meter-square sigil she’d drawn on the pristine PVC roofing material. She’d combined a pair of Dagaz symbols, flagged with Thurisaz on either side and topped with a single instance of Eihwaz.

  “Beginnings and endings,” she muttered as her eyes traced the dark blue lines she’d drawn with her newly enchanted “magick” marker. The stubborn thorns of protection. An empowered trap.

  The spell for infusing magick into the ink had been deceptively simple. Only two pens were required for drawing magick—one for her, and one for Freya on the building’s ground floor. Sally was surprised no one had tried it before—or if anyone had, they weren’t talking about it. At least Sally would have one key accomplishment to lay at Frigga’s feet upon returning to Oregon. Assuming they made it back.

  “You’re sure this is going to hold?” Freyr called from one of the corners of the roof. The sun glinted off the white surface, making him flicker like a mirage before Sally’s eyes.

  “As long as they don’t choose dead center to come crashing through,” Loki replied. He stepped up next to Sally and admired her drawing. “I’ve set the last of the marked scales in place, as you directed.”

  While the fleet of Vanagons had bumped along the road from Bodø’s ferry ramp to the warehouse’s empty parking lot, Sally brainstormed an army of new sigils and bindrunes for them all to use—when she wasn’t working trial-and-error spells to alter the chemical composition of box after box of colored markers. They’d cleaned out the one art supply store they found, and the vans were littered with the melted marker casings and splattered ink of her failures.

  She’d had no idea she could do so much magickal work so quickly—and in such cramped, car-sick quarters. It wasn’t an experiment she wanted to repeat.

  At least the warehouse was deserted. The furniture store hadn’t opened yet to the public, and the two students working a lonely shift as security guards had been easily bribed away with tickets to the Norway v. Denmark Viking Tri-Nations rugby match up in Bergen—care of Maggie’s generous credit card limit. Not every problem had to be solved with magick.

  The Køjer Devils were already on their way. It might take them longer to cross the water, and they’d be distracted by mischief-making. There were already news radio reports of mad pranksters in strikingly realistic lizard costumes tearing up a convenience store in Svolvær. But they’d home in on this Bodø warehouse—probably much sooner than later.

  An IKEA superstore was the last place Sally would have thought to stage a battle. But Saga jumped on her smartphone as soon as she had a clear data signal, and with some sophisticated mapping—and some dowsing help from Sally—she and Heimdall worked out that the new warehouse had the unfortunate distinction of sitting directly atop the easiest on-shore access point to a newly discovered oil reserve.

  Sally shifted uncomfortably on the roof. There was the equivalent of 17.3 billion barrels of oil, untapped, directly beneath her feet—more accurately, some distance below the building. And apparently devils liked oil. It had something to do with ancestor worship, according to a vague legend Loki relayed and that Sally didn’t quite understand.

  Why did it always have to come down to petroleum? She shook her head. There was no point getting riled up about environmental politics when there were more immediate concerns. Like trying not to get everyone killed.

  Sally watched Freyr as he lay down a handful of Køjer Devil scales in one of the combinations she’d designed. Given his placement, he was marking the binding pattern of quadruple Algiz with just as many Sowilu symbols shooting off like lightning bolts. Freyr looked across at her and nodded.

  Sally’s stomach tightened. Her magick accounted for way more of Heimdall’s plan than she was comfortable with. Sure, she’d used magick to hold off a couple of bulldozers and to command an entire battalion of Berserkers to stand down at the Battle of the White Oak, but there had been Thor and Freya and Odin and the Einherjar on the field that day, too. The hand-to-hand combat had been fierce, but it was a lot more evenly matched than the odds they were facing now.

  This time, everything hinged on just how well Sally Dahl knew her runes.

  Loki rested a hand on her shoulder. “It will be fine.”

  Sally slipped the blue marker into her pocket. “Now I just need to do some work to make all of this invisible. To them, at least.”

  Loki stepped back. Sally held her hands out over the large sigil and closed her eyes. She imagined all of the sigils and bindrunes piling up on top of each other, then conjured the image of a blue mist swirling up around them. In her mind’s eye, she traced Algiz, Isa, Raido, and Uruz in scarlet fire and sent the symbols into the misty sapphire shield.

  Sally took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she opened her eyes. She turned and nodded to Loki and Freyr, standing behind her. “Okay. I think we’re ready.”

  One floor below in the Bedrooms section, Thor was trying to keep the Frost Giants off the furniture. While he’d been walking the showroom layout, looking for defensive positions as well as possible hiding places, bottlenecks, and herding opportunities through Living Rooms, Media Storage, and Kitchen & Dining, the Frost Giants had decided to sample the merchandise.

  He found Thiassen stretched out on a super-king bed with a lattice headboard of pine and steel. The giant’s mailbox-size feet dangled off the end. Valthrudnir was curled up like a baby goat on the bottom shelf of a bunk bed at the other end of the showroom. He was snoring.

  “Soft,” Thiassen pronounced with unveiled disdain as he tried to get comfortable.

  “We’re not here for furniture shopping.” Thor kicked at Thiassen’s fur-lined boots. Thiassen snarled at Thor, then got up from the display bed—leaving a permanent, Frost Giant-shaped depression in the mattress.

  “And you!” Thor shouted as he hurled a bean bag pillow at Valthrudnir, hitting him squarely in the face.

  Valthrudnir sat up with a dark growl, banging his head on the upper bunk and denting the metal frame.

  “We can’t let these guys catch us napping,” Thor scoffed.

  “We will not be unprepared,” Valthrudnir grumbled back as he got up from the bunk. Thor was amazed the furniture had withstood his bulk.

  “We forgive you your criticism,” Thiassen said as Valthrudnir lumbered across the floor toward them. “It is not easy for either of our kind to find ourselves fighting side by side.”

  “That’s mighty big of you,” Thor answered with cold sarcasm, then choked back a laugh at his accidental joke. Thiassen looked down at him with a confused expression.

  “Big,” Thor attempted in explanation. “Because you’re Frost Giants. You guys are like freaking trees. And I said, ‘That’s mighty big of you’ . . . It was funny.” He looked from Thiassen to Valthrudnir, then sighed in defeat.

  Four loud bangs echoed down from the ceiling.

  “That’s Freyr’s signal,” Thor said. “They’re ready on the roof.”

  “Perhaps we should take our positions as well.” Valthrudnir headed toward Kitchen & Dining. Thiassen lingered beside Thor.

  “You have not spoken what weighs on your mind,” Thiassen said.

  Thor’s face darkened. “You don’t want to hear it, so I’m trying hard not to think about it. Now, if you’d just make your way to Living Rooms . . .”

  “You believe we are responsible for the re-emergence of the Køjer Devils.”

  “Well, you can’t deny it’s quite a coincidence,” Thor grumbled. “Your lot is back on the scene, and suddenly those fire lizards are throwing rocks at us. The temple where they were interred wasn’t too far from your own prison—”

  “Which only proves, perhaps, that imprisoning your enemies underground is not always permanent.”

  “—giving you plenty of time to negotiate some kind of deal with the devils!” Thor spat. “Maybe you all got together and built yourselves some kind of rumpus room down there under the ice, and spent centuries planning this whole thing.”

  Thiassen laughed. Thor felt his face flush as he balled his hands into angry fists.

  “Negotiate with the Køjer Devils?” Thiassen asked with a smirk. “There is no reasoning with their kind.” He paused. “Trust me. We tried.”

  Thor felt his feet rooted to the spot. “It’s true? You actually tried to enlist their help in staging this violent return to Midgard?”

  Thiassen shook his head. “Millennia ago, when they were rampaging across the Earth. We sought to join forces with them to defeat the Æsir.”

  “And the Vanir?”

  “The Vanir were occupied with teaching birds to sing and flowers to bloom,” Thiassen replied.

  Thor made a mental note to mock Freyr about that remark at the earliest opportunity.

  “We hold no treaty with the devils,” Thiassen continued. “Not now, not then. As you may recall, the Frost Giants instead joined you in driving them into the ground.”

  Alliances of convenience, Thor thought bitterly. As though he needed another reminder why he didn’t trust Frost Giants. Who was to say Thiassen and his kin wouldn’t try teaming up with the devils again right in the middle of the IKEA shelving units and dinette sets? He opened his mouth to make a biting comment to that effect, but Thiassen cut him off.

  “And then you did the same to us,” Thiassen said. “Committing our entire race to an icy prison.”

  “Well, not right away,” Thor replied. He wanted to point out that whole generations had passed between the defeat of the Køjer Devils and the final battle with the Frost Giants—and that it hadn’t been Thor but his ancestors who had dealt with the devils—but he got the feeling it wouldn’t make a difference.

  “Yet here I stand, as do my kin, prepared to fight again at your side,” Thiassen stated coolly. “Make of that what you will.”

  The giant walked off to take up his position among the love seats and coffee tables.

  “Yeah, well, you still smell like a two-weeks-dead weasel,” Thor grumbled.

  Maggie shifted the Vanagon into park and looked up at the brilliant blue-and-yellow warehouse. From the parking lot, she couldn’t see any sign of Sally or anyone else on the roof. It didn’t look like there were any lights on inside the store, and there was no one standing by the windows.

  “You sure they’ll be all right in there?” Maggie asked.

  “Of course not, dear,” Iduna responded dryly from the passenger seat. “That’s why they sent us away to the Federal Express office, to keep us out of harm’s way.”

  “Our errand was to send a shipment of sacred apples to the All-Father and his bride,” Geirrod said, shifting uncomfortably on the floor behind them.

  Maggie frowned and leaned toward Iduna. “I know I’m missing a lot of the backstory with the Frost Giants. But why would one of them refer to Odin as the All-Father?”

  “Sarcasm,” Iduna replied flatly.

  Maggie glanced in the rearview mirror at Geirrod. He grimaced back at her.

  “Apples dispatched to Odin and Frigga.” He patted a sack of fruit on the floor next to him. “And apples for the survivors of the battle against the Køjer Devils, to restore them after their fight.”

  “If there are any survivors,” Iduna added.

  Maggie closed her eyes and gripped the steering wheel. Heimdall’s face flashed into her mind. “We can’t just sit here.”

  “Well, of course not, dear,” Iduna replied. “But I don’t think he would let us set one foot outside this vehicle.” She cocked her head toward Geirrod.

  “The goddess Iduna is known to harbor a death wish, and so is believed to be a liability in battle,” the Frost Giant offered. Iduna nodded with only the hint of a frown on her brow.

  “The human,” Geirrod spat the word like so much spoiled meat, “must be protected at all costs.”

  Maggie pushed up her long sleeves and looked at the bindrunes Sally had drawn on her arms for protection—magick sigils that Iduna and Geirrod had refused. What did these two know that she didn’t? She would be a possibly deadly distraction to Heimdall if she marched into the warehouse in her current state, but she couldn’t just sit in the car and do nothing. She felt sick to her stomach.

  “What if I ate some more apples, right now?” She turned to Iduna. “Wouldn’t that turn me into one of you, and then I could go in there and help fight?”

  Geirrod groaned his disapproval—he still hadn’t gotten over waiting on a human back in the fortress. Iduna shook her head.

  “It doesn’t take hold quite that quickly, not by the apples alone,” Iduna said. “And Heimdall would be falling all over himself trying to protect you instead of focusing on defeating the enemy. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

  Maggie leaned back in the driver’s seat, willing herself not to cry.

  Heimdall kicked at the boxes of kitchen knives in the Cooking & Eating section of IKEA’s ground floor marketplace.

  “So many weapons,” he muttered. “All of them useless.”

  Freya stepped away from the wall where she’d been drawing Sally’s bindrunes on the newly painted plaster. She walked to the center of the room and bent low to draw a wide circle on the floor in dark blue ink.

  “Trust the Rune Witch,” Freya said. “She’s young, but she knows what she’s doing. More than she realizes.”

  “I’ll say.” Saga approached from the far side of the shower curtain display, where the Bath section met Home Organization. She stepped over the collapsible shoe racks and ceramic soap dishes that sat in unpacked boxes on the floor, then glanced at a map mounted in the middle of the space to direct future consumer traffic.

  “I’ll put up some more bindrunes in Lighting,” Saga offered. “Just in case they make it past.”

  Freya handed her marker over to Saga, and she and Heimdall watched Saga make her way past the wicker laundry baskets and racks of bath towels to the wide doorway beyond which every manner of light fixture was displayed in a dizzying spectacle of chrome, plastic, and glass.

  “You put too much faith in the human child,” grumbled Thrym, stepping away from the Textiles section where he’d been ripping down all of the display rugs from their hanging hooks. They’d spent the last two hours scouring the self-serve marketplace to eliminate any spot a stray Køjer Devil or two might seek to hide.

  They’d narrowed down the floor plan to the IKEA Bath Shop as offering the best access to the oil reserves below. Yes, the devils would have to dig through the concrete flooring and about a thousand meters of dirt, rock, and clay—but then they’d hit an empty lava tube that led almost directly to the petroleum.

  It had taken Saga and Heimdall several hours to map out the underground route. It would take minutes for the Køjer Devils and their instinctive drive for oil to find it.

  Freya handed Thrym a handful of the markers Sally had transformed into weapons. The Frost Giant scoffed.

  “And so we are to simply doodle on the devils to overpower them?” Thrym asked. “There is nothing in the archives about defeating them thus.”

  Heimdall rested his hands on his hips. “There’s nothing much in the archives about the Køjer Devils, period. That’s kind of the problem.” He nodded at the colored markers in Thrym’s hands. “This is what we’ve come up with. If you have a better plan, we’ve been all ears for a good while now.”

  Thrym held up a placating hand. “You misunderstand me. We are simply unaccustomed to relying on human magick.”

  “Are the nets ready?” Heimdall asked.

  Thrym nodded. “May the goddess Iduna’s mists be true.” He bowed graciously to Freya, then lingered a moment while trying to catch her eye. Unsuccessful, he stepped away.

  Heimdall leaned over to his cousin. “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  Freya waited for Thrym to walk out of hearing distance. “He doesn’t like this alliance. He doesn’t like working with Sally, or Maggie for that matter.” She looked down at the bindrunes Sally had drawn on her arms and nodded at the protective marks on Heimdall as well. “Doesn’t approve of such close association with humans.”

  “But he’s making nice, hoping he still has a shot with you.” Heimdall rolled his three markers in his hands, hoping they would be enough. Sally assured them that the color of the ink wouldn’t make a difference, but Heimdall was glad he’d gotten two red markers and one black one—better to fight fire with fire.

  Freya turned away, and Heimdall reached out to place a hand on her shoulder. “Hang on, you don’t have feelings for him, do you?”