“Good point.” Karl added, “I just don’t trust her.”

  “Nor do I, but not trusting someone doesn’t make them evil.”

  Selene’s mouth twitched. “Setting aside whether she was involved, and the available evidence suggests she isn’t, the device recovered wasn’t a nuclear bomb.”

  Karl shot out of his seat. “What?”

  “They were trying to arm it,” Zaena noted. “They used their pills and risked their lives to do so. Why bother with a fake?”

  “The device wasn’t a fake,” Selene explained. “It was a high-powered explosive, but strictly a conventional device. It would have caused massive damage, but given where it was placed, it might not even have sunk the ship. If it went off right next to you, I doubt you would have survived, even with the help of your magic and armor.”

  Karl sat back with a scowl. “Then someone on your end screwed up. You could have blown the hell out of them with your jets whenever you wanted.”

  “It’s possible someone with significant resources went out of their way to both help the terrorists acquire the pills while also attempting to convince US and French intelligence that a nuclear device was involved,” Selene explained. “Either a nation-state or a powerful private actor.”

  “Why would they do that?” Zaena asked. “What could they hope to gain?”

  “That’s a good question.” Karl crossed his arms. “You’re the one with the big picture, D’Arcy. Right now, I don’t understand all this. It feels like we all got played, but I don’t see how sinking a cargo ship and wasting magic pills on a weird-ass terrorist cult accomplishes that. If it was about taking Zaena down, she’s here, and they’re not.”

  Selene looked annoyed. She didn’t respond.

  “If we’re going to be working together, I think you should share your thoughts,” Zaena told her. “It’s as Karl says. There’s something you’re not telling us.”

  “One possibility was this was a test,” Selena offered, her mouth tight.

  “A test of what?” Karl asked. “US response to nuclear terrorism?”

  “No, a test of Princess Zaena,” Selene suggested. “It’s hard to ignore the confluence of unusual events, including the potential targeting of San Francisco and the involvement of magic. My analyst background does lead me to believe in a simple truism: sometimes the most obvious explanation is the best.”

  Zaena sighed. She didn’t like the idea that someone was pointing terrorists at her. She didn’t fear them, but she wouldn’t tolerate innocent people getting hurt to get at her.

  The magic and planning on display only reinforced an unpleasant possibility.

  “Mark Wong could have been responsible for the pills, but he’s been dead far too long to have coordinated the other matters,” Zaena noted. “Are you sure there’s not another wicked elf behind this incident?”

  “There’s not enough information to confirm anything at this point,” Selene replied. “That’s certainly possible, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

  “It’s not the obvious explanation?” Karl asked with a smirk.

  “With magic, things aren’t always obvious, but I hope this doesn’t change your thoughts about working with the government, Princess Zaena. I think this incident proves that your talents shouldn’t be wasted on dealing with low-level street scum.”

  It was hard to figure out what she should take away from the incident, other than she needed to be more careful when dealing with human combatants. She could no longer take for granted they wouldn’t have magical abilities.

  “I have my mission,” Zaena noted.

  “Yes, and I don’t intend to stand in the way of that,” Selena replied. “I do want to make sure we’re approaching this issue with the same assumptions. That way, we won’t have any misunderstandings.”

  “If there is a hostile elf behind this, I’ll likely need your help to find them and deliver justice,” Zaena explained. “The lack of a nuclear bomb doesn’t change that these terrorists have killed innocent people in the past.”

  Selene replied, “To be clear, the bomb was decently powerful, according to the EOD personnel who disarmed it. Assuming it wasn’t all a trap for you, the terrorists might have used it to sink the boat once they arrived at the dock or smuggled it into the city to kill people. Your actions still saved people, and these men have killed innocent people in the past. Given everything that’s happened, though, I think there should be a slight change in how we handle matters.”

  “What is that?”

  “We’ll continue using Agents Lyle and Waves as your local contacts,” Selene explained, “but now that we’ve been formally introduced, I’ll deal directly with you. Given your status and rank, it’s appropriate.”

  “I don’t object to that,” Zaena responded.

  Karl chuckled. “Now we just need someone to drive us back to my car.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Helga blinked her eyes open and stared at the ceiling. She’d spent most of her time in bed for the last few days, reading news on the internet and trying to find any scraps of information that might be related to the Huldufólk and the incident.

  She was still recovering from her time on the glacier, but her emotional rather than physical wounds bothered her more now. The enchantments on the petal had saved her from serious damage.

  It was hard to know what information to trust. The old myths and legends offered competing truths. Very few mentioned anything close to bird masks.

  There had to be some meaning to what had happened and the deaths of her colleagues. She had too many questions both about that and what might happen in the future.

  Why had it happened there and then? Was it nothing but terrible luck? And how did it fit in with what had been happening over the last year in San Francisco? Was it all over?

  Helga had assumed the Crimson Wind was a Huldufólk because of her unusual abilities and reports that the vigilante could turn invisible. That was the one power consistent in all stories: the ability to hide from human eyes. It was in their very name.

  It was hard to determine the answers to the questions without more information. The Crimson Wind had demonstrated powers that might be magical, but she couldn’t be sure they weren’t technological.

  Although strange human-like creatures were part of the lore of every country, it didn’t make sense for a Huldufólk to travel to America and fight criminals. They wanted to avoid human attention, not draw it.

  Helga threw off her blanket and slid out of bed. She put on a robe and walked to her back door. The cheese and bread she’d left on the plate were gone. There wasn’t a single crumb left.

  They’d been left as an offering, but it didn’t prove anything. An animal rather than a hidden magical being might have taken them.

  That was the problem. Every piece of evidence had multiple explanations. The only certainty was that something strange had happened on the glacier.

  There was another problem. The offering seemed ridiculous. A being as powerful as the bird-masked woman wouldn’t want cheese and bread as tribute. It would be an insult.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. The only thing Helga could conclude was the exact offering might not be the point. It was what the offering represented: respect.

  Everything she’d said to Aron and Magnus was true. She might not have always been sure she believed, but she still paid her respect to the Huldufólk.

  Helga closed the door. After retrieving her phone from the bedroom, she headed to the couch.

  Part of her problem was she didn’t have much to do except sit and think. She’d already spoken with the authorities about the incident. She’d spun a tale full of lies focused on weather and broken snowmobiles, just as she had in the village.

  The police had sent her on her way, and she’d been given six weeks off by the university to recover from her ordeal.

  No one had questioned her story. Vaguely believing in the Huldufólk wasn’t the same thing as assuming they’d be involved in a serious incident costing human lives. No one would ever seriously suggest them as killers.

  She turned on her phone. There was an article from 1943 that she’d been reading before going to sleep the night before on the screen. It concerned a young girl who claimed she’d seen Huldufólk near a river. Everyone treated it as a playful indulgence, someone trying to find some joy during a difficult time, though, like many articles about the strange beings, there was no blanket dismissal of their existence.

  “What do I do now?” Helga whispered. “How do I keep going after what I’ve seen?”

  Part of her doubted what she remembered. People went insane all the time from trauma. It wasn’t impossible that seeing her colleagues die had shattered her mind, and she’d invented a complicated supernatural scenario to explain it.

  Everything was clear in her mind, though. It would have been easier if she could dismiss it as a hallucination birthed of desperate fear if things had kept changing.

  That hadn’t happened. The details stayed firm, no matter how much she thought about them.

  Helga set her phone down. There was something else that had been weighing on her since the incident, a childhood memory she’d not thought about for a long time. When a woman had nothing to do but sit and think, a lot of old memories surfaced, even if she wasn’t searching for them.

  When she was seven years old, she’d been climbing a tree without anyone around. She’d scampered up the trunk, filled with excitement and pride over her achievement. It was the first time she’d managed it by herself.

  She’d walked out on a thin branch, determined to further prove her bravery. It swayed under her weight but didn’t break. That only made her braver. Once she got to the middle, she let out a yelp of triumph.

  Then a stiff gust hit the tree and she fell. Her hands clawed for the branch, but she missed and fell toward the rock-strewn ground below.

  Years later, the few times she’d managed to remember the incident, Helga had told herself it must not have been that far a fall. After all, she had not broken anything. The only evidence she’d fallen was the dirt and tears in her dress.

  A short fall wasn’t what she remembered. She remembered falling and the ground rising and curving as if to meet her. Instead of a steep fall and a serious injury, the shifting ground had caught her and changed her fall into a rolling stop.

  When she had stood and looked around, everything had looked normal. Cracks and disturbed dirt marked the ground around her, but she couldn’t be sure they hadn’t been there before.

  Even at the time, Helga had assumed fear had led her to misinterpret what she’d seen. After all, even little children knew the ground didn’t suddenly rise and change shape to save them from stupid mistakes.

  Recalling the memory led her to other incidents she’d long since forgotten or suppressed. It was like a wall in her mind had fallen. The memories now spilled out freely.

  There was another time she’d been walking near a road as a child and tripped. She should have fallen right into the path of an oncoming truck.

  She remembered it clearly. The driver had slammed on his brakes. His tires had squealed like a cruel monster. People around her had screamed, and she had stared at the coming source of her death, terror gripping her heart.

  Something had pulled her back. The truck had missed her by centimeters before screeching to a halt.

  She had sat there staring at the truck, her heart thundering. She’d been grateful to be alive and turned to thank whoever had helped her.

  There was no one near her. People were running toward her, but they were too far away to have saved her.

  Yet, she hadn’t been alone. There was something strange near her, a distortion in the air. She’d dismissed it as a trick of the light at the time, but after dealing with the Huldufólk on the glacier, she wasn’t so sure.

  Helga sighed and closed her eyes. Was it possible something inhuman had saved her life more than once as a child?

  Why would a Huldufólk bother? She wasn’t special or different. She was a scientist, not a politician or a powerful businesswoman.

  She opened her eyes and held up her hand to stare at the scar. Her alleged protector hadn’t saved her from all childhood harm.

  Helga gasped. She had not been lying when she’d told the doctor she couldn’t remember, but now she did.

  She had been young, probably four or five, and was admiring a beautiful puffin. An older boy came along holding a huge rock. He’d planned to kill it with the rock. It was cruelty with no point.

  Helga threw herself on him and hammered away, desperate to save the bird. In the struggle, she’d fallen and gouged her head and hand on a nearby boulder. The boy had run off.

  Just before she fell unconscious, Helga had heard something, strange words in a language she didn’t recognize. She remembered the conversation she’d had with her mother after awakening in the hospital.

  Her mother had found Helga unconscious behind her house, but she’d fallen unconscious a good ten minutes away. Her mother had dismissed it as a blackout from a concussion.

  “It was the Language of the Birds,” Helga had insisted. “The puffin called his friends, and they carried me home.”

  “It was just the wind,” her mother replied. “Don’t worry about it. Concentrate on getting better.”

  Helga swallowed. Now that she thought about it, the words in the distant memory reminded her of those she’d heard the Huldufólk speak.

  She had not even been able to remember the incident until just now. How could she be sure she wasn’t filling in long-forgotten details with her more recent memories?

  A chill passed over Helga. It was as if the room had gotten colder. She rubbed her shoulders. There was still too much she didn’t understand.

  Helga’s eyes widened. A distortion passed in front of her. It was too close to dismiss as a trick of the light.

  “Is it you?” she whispered. “Are you there?”

  “You’ve been honoring me.” It was the same voice from before, still speaking accented Icelandic. “As you said you would.”

  “Yes.” Helga gave a shallow nod. “Thank you for saving me.” She almost thanked her for the earlier times but stopped herself.

  “Have you told anyone what you saw? Are humans looking for me or others?”

  “No. They believe it was nothing more than an accident and bad weather. No one suspects the involvement of the Huldufólk. I’m grateful I was spared and protected.” Helga bowed her head. “I’m grateful, but I don’t understand why you saved me.”

  “Both debt and destiny,” the Huldufólk replied. “I did what I thought had to be done, and I thank you for honoring your agreement, human. But I’ll be watching. You might pay in another way, but I’m seeking to stop that.”

  “What way?” Helga asked.

  The distortion moved toward the back. “A terrible way unless I can stop it. Stopping a small pebble will let me stop a larger one, I hope.” A quiet sigh followed. “The world is about to change. It must change. The others deny it, but it’s clear. It’s already started in America. That which is hidden must become known, but what happens later is what’s important.”

  “America? Are you talking about the Crimson Wind? Is she one of your people?”

  “Yes and no. She is the same but also something different.” The back door opened. “The ancient kings and queens now walk again. It is either the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. What’s been set in motion can’t be undone. I can see the path, but even I don’t know where it ends.”

  The door slammed closed. Helga was left in silence to wonder what would come.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Karl crossed his arms and scowled from his gray folding metal chair. He had not been expecting to be looking at Selene on a computer screen again so soon after the terrorist incident. Someday he’d force the woman to be in the same room.

  It had been only a couple of days since Zaena had recovered the bomb. As Selene had claimed, the news was playing it up as a terrible accident, not the government bombing the hell out of a cargo ship filled with deadly terrorists. The fact that they could do that and get away with it was chilling.

  He looked at Zaena. When the agents called and told them to prepare for another Selene meeting, neither Karl nor Zaena had known what to expect. It was hard for him to let go of his natural distrust of the government when he analyzed their actions.

  They were blatantly lying to the public, which made him uneasy. At the same time, he understood that telling everyone they had been worried about a nuclear bomb and magical terrorists taking out San Francisco would lead to mass panic.

  It wasn’t like he’d announced everything to the world about Zaena. Sometimes secrets needed to be kept for the greater good. He just wasn’t always sure what that was.

  Selene offered Zaena and Karl a nod. “I apologize for calling upon you again so soon after the incident.”

  “I don’t mind,” Zaena replied. “Any new leads you can provide will be most appreciated. One aspect I didn’t highlight last time was to stress to you that not all elves are hostile. I hope you understand that.”

  “We’re well aware of that, Princess. Rogue actors are a plague in international relations for humans as well.”

  “In such cases, it might be better that I contact them before you do,” Zaena noted. “I might be able to convince them when you can’t.”

  “When those situations arise, we can potentially approach it that way, which is one of the reasons I called you today,” Selene stated.

  Zaena leaned forward, her eyes alight with interest. “You found more elves?”

  “We’re not sure. This situation is unusually complicated, given our previous conversation.”

  Karl grunted. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I’m contacting you to direct you to meet with Amanda Morton,” Selene explained. “She has her resources, and she might possibly have found something of interest that escaped our attention.”