The Fox and the Falcon (No Other Gods #2)

Chapter Eleven

Time and date in the Norse pantheon unknown, age 26

“Really? None of you can fix this?” The too-beautiful man thrust a hand toward me, and I could only assume he was referring to my explosion of levity and colors.

Fauna washed her hands of responsibility. “I cause chaos, I don’t undo it. Plus, I thought I was helping her out. She’s a ball of anxiety, this one.”

“Chaos is an understatement. You’re going to be the end of us, Fauna,” he grumbled. “You’re lucky we like you.”

“What’s not to like?”

Great-grandmother. Mother of mother of mother. I rolled the words from one side of my mouth to the other, tasting the same silver clanging sensation I’d felt the moment I understood precisely who stood before me. I could barely hear the exchange over the ting, ting, ting as bright, starlit metal swirled around the woman. She looked really good for someone who’d been dead for thirty years. I turned away from the very solid-looking ghost of my ancestor to see what the other pretty colors were saying.

“Where were they?” Ella asked Estrid.

Very serious. Too serious. Not nearly enough shimmer.

“Jotunheimr,” she responded.

Oh, that word was fun to hear, but no fun to see.

I was certain the exchange was supposed to make sense, but I couldn’t unravel the bundle of colorful yarn as their sentences wove together. I knew Jotunheimr was where the frost giants lived. Primordial chaos. They continued to speak about the land of giants and lawlessness in a way that invoked loud music, sharp colors, and shades of black, gray, and ice. I didn’t think I wanted to go there.

The man approached me through my hazy tunnel of vision. I struggle to focus on him, as the kaleidoscope surrounding him was utterly distracting. He was so pretty. He looked like an angel. I giggled at the thought, because no, he looked nothing like Silas. Estrid looked like Silas. Estrid, with her magenta colors…What were his colors? This man’s? Silas’s? This man had spoken a little. I couldn’t remember what shade—

“You’re too beautiful to be a great-grandfather,” I said. “You look like an angel. Well,” I amended with a giggle, “maybe not an angel. They can be shitheads.”

“ Tsch .” Fauna made a hissing, corrective noise while waving her hand across her throat as if to tell me to stop speaking. My, she was funny when she wasn’t being a bully. I loved her so much. Maybe when she was done scolding me, she would come cuddle.

His answering smile was patient, if a bit patronizing.

To Fauna, he said, “You get one pass when it comes to my family. Pull a stunt like this again and I’ll see to it that you’re kicked out of álfheimr and sent back to the snow.”

I waited for her retort, but in a curious shift, her greens and golds faded into shades of gray as she glared at her feet. My lips parted to ask her what was wrong, but before the words left my mouth, the beautiful man pushed a hand against my forehead.

The touch had no physical force, but every sparkling piece of my colorful energy lurched backward as if thrust into the seat behind me.

“Holy shit,” I gasped, horrified.

“I told you not to curse,” Fauna whispered with reproach.

His palm moved from my forehead to my palm, gathering my hand in his own as levity abandoned me.

“We both know Fauna well enough to know you’re not to blame for this. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I go by Geir.”

“Eir is the one in the Norse pantheon known for healing, and she’s a woman,” I said to him with surprising confidence.

Estrid stretched an arm behind Ella on the sofa. “Humans and their gender binaries.”

“Humanity’s getting better,” Fauna said quietly. Whatever had bothered her earlier hadn’t passed. I couldn’t place her discomfort, but she defended me as she said, “Mortals used collective nonbinary pronouns long ago, and there’s a renaissance in their language and perception as of late.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said the man with the dark hair and the black-trimmed wolf coat. He’d fully defrosted now, revealing the various shades of leather and fur. “Please, use my chosen name and pronouns, and understand why Aloisa prefers this as my form. Let me be the first to tell you that your great-grandmother and I are proud of you.”

Aloisa .

“You may be proud of your lineage,” Aloisa said. “I’m not sure I can say the same.”

I stared at the woman with the white-blond hair that matched my mother’s perfectly. She was practically my age, if not younger. I’d always assumed that the wool bunad was the reason for her shapeliness, but as I looked at her now, I saw healthy, curvaceous hips and a chest and thighs that had nothing to do with weighty traditional dresses. She looked like she’d stepped out of the grainy black-and-white photo that remained pinned to my refrigerator. She was human, and also…not. I saw the familiar ocean eyes I knew from Grandma Dagny. Her nose had been passed down to her daughter, and to her daughter’s daughter. But there was a glow to her that reminded me of the bits of starlight that had bobbed in the grassy meadow beyond the tree.

She was related to Lisbeth, all right. I’d known her for ten seconds and she was already a bitch.

“It’s nice to meet you,” came her cordial voice from across the room.

It wasn’t a very familial welcome by most accounts, but it tracked for the chill that ran through my maternal lineage.

Geir rose from his position in front of the couch to fetch a chair for himself and my long-dead great-grandmother. I was quite sure that I’d sobered up, yet I had to be higher than ever. I no longer saw words and colors, but I sat in a circle with a valkyrie, a faun, a Norse goddess, an elf responsible for my fae blood, and my deceased relative.

But I was incomplete without my demon.

I spoke my truth and asked: “Are ghosts…? Is the afterlife…? Is this real? Am I still high?”

Fauna made a pitying noise. “Yes. My methods were voted out, peanut. You’re woefully sober.”

My shoulders sagged as I thought of how many times I’d asked Caliban the exact same question, confident I was crazy simply because I refused to accept any reality beyond my own. True insanity was denying the facts before your naked eye because they didn’t fit into your worldview.

Fauna offered tea of the non-hallucinogenic variety that was presumably not hers to offer. They both politely declined. Ella moved to the kitchen and returned with six frosted glasses and a gallon of spiced mead.

I was grateful for the booze as anxiety claimed me once more. I shook my head, sinking deeper into the couch. I looked between the beautiful home, the mythical figures, the two newcomers, and her. The only thing I could think to say was “There’s no such thing as this.”

Fauna was the first to chuckle, asking, “Is this really where you draw the line?”

“No.” I bristled. “Ghosts are a different thing entirely. I’ve swallowed gods and fae and demons and the veil. But she’s—” I gestured to my long-dead relative.

Aloisa cut her off as she crossed to me. She hugged Geir, fingers slipping through the black fur on his shoulder before she gestured for me to get to my feet.

“I’ll take it from here. Let me take a look at you, girl,” she said. She spoke with the force of someone three times her age. She took my face in a single hand, giving my cheeks a squeeze almost as if she were a rancher inspecting horse teeth. She chuckled before giving me a light hug. “You’re my stock after all, aren’t you?”

“But—” I stopped myself.

There was a game often played by children in the church, called When I Get to Heaven . It was something we played to busy our minds with the mysteries of the universe. We all had things we wanted to ask God, whether it be about the creation of the universe, the existence of mosquitos, or why he let good people suffer and die. Our curiosity usually stayed positive, lest we risk blasphemy by questioning his will or implying he’d been imperfect.

She may not be God, but I did have questions.

“I didn’t see this realm on the list of afterlives,” I said, gesturing to their living room. “How are you here?”

“I ended my cycle to be with Geir,” she said with neither emotion nor explanation.

Shaking myself into a more productive line of thought, I said, “Fine. If you’re my ancestor, then there’s something I need to ask.”

She frowned at the seriousness in my voice and stepped backward to rejoin Geir. She indicated for me to continue. I clung to my newfound sobriety, glad for the rage that bubbled like a dark tar to replace the colors. It was a curious thing to meet one’s deceased ancestor.

But I didn’t feel curious. I felt betrayed.

“Never mind your cycle or why you’re standing in álfheimr. I’m sure I won’t understand the explanation. You’re here. I just need to know…why didn’t you intervene? Why would you let your daughter—my grandma—spend her life thinking she was insane? Why did you leave Norway? Why, with my mother—”

“If I may?” Geir asked.

My anger expanded. I failed to control my irritation at his interruption.

Aloisa raised an eyebrow. “Give it a go.”

He touched his heart for emphasis. “Dagny was not being spared from me, or from the Nordes. Aloisa took her overseas to escape other mortals, as they were both still in the realm. Do you know of bonding?”

“She does,” Fauna answered for me.

Geir nodded appreciatively. “Aloisa couldn’t very well bond herself to me with a half-mortal, half-fae child. Her child needed her more in the human realm. So, I gave her a talisman.”

“The s?lje.” An image of the silver broach flashed before me.

He nodded once more. “Precisely. But it wasn’t Dagny’s time to come or go. She was in a new cycle as a soul, and her decisions couldn’t be taken from her. Aloisa ended her mortal cycles with me and remained with the Nordes.”

Fauna wiggled her shoulders as if shaking off whatever had burdened her. She settled into familiar irreverence as she said, “That’s what brings us here. Apparently, love for the preternatural runs in the family. Your granddaughter has shacked up with the Prince of Hell. It’s very romantic. Thousands of years of lifetimes and all that. We’ve since gotten ourselves into a sticky situation when Heaven laid its claim on her.”

I didn’t miss the pointed look that Fauna shot at Aloisa.

“The Prince?” Aloisa avoided me altogether. She stared at Geir, but his gaze remained trained on me.

Geir held my eyes as if searching me for something. He looked at Aloisa at long last and they exchanged a long, unspoken conversation.

“Do you have a dog in the fight between Heaven and Hell?” I dared a question.

Her face twisted. “I have a grievance or two with Heaven.”

“Join the club,” Estrid muttered.

“I thought we were going to the land of religious freedom,” Aloisa said. “But it was a fairy tale. A lie. The persecutions were no better there. The only benefit was that I didn’t speak English—at least, I could feign foreignness with anyone who had ill intent. It’s a luxury I couldn’t have afforded if Farsi, Cantonese, or Swahili had been coming out of my mouth. But I was a Western face in a time when xenophobic neighbors assumed if you looked like them, you must think like them. They didn’t speak enough Norwegian to find me guilty for my pagan ways. I spared my child. My daughter grew up using English with her little American neighbors. She wasn’t cursed with the hiding forced on immigrants. I gave Dagny her best shot at life.”

“We know,” Geir said to Aloisa supportively as he gave her knee a squeeze.

“No,” I bit, “we don’t know. Do you have any idea what my grandma—what Dagny’s—life was like? She didn’t leave her house for thirty years because she saw what she thought were angels and demons everywhere she went. She was paralyzed with fear, and you just let her believe—”

“Mar—” Fauna cautioned.

“No.” I got to my feet. “Grandma Dagny was sweet, and kind, and good, and everyone thought she was crazy. She raised my mother, and my mom is definitely crazy. Lisbeth continued to see angels and demons or whatever manner of fae wanders our earth unseen to everyone else around them, but it drove her so deep into the church that now I have an angel up my ass laying claim on me. That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t abandoned your daughter and hoped that luck took care of her.”

“I didn’t abandon her,” Aloisa snapped. “And I’d watch my tongue on things I don’t know about. How many children have you had? How many around you were being killed or accused of witchcraft? What were the persecutions like? How many countries have you had to flee to keep your loved ones safe?”

My hands clenched into fists. “I—”

“Furthermore”—Aloisa widened her stance as if ready for a fight—“would you have the spine to do it if it needed to be done? Could you shelve your selfish desires for love and sex and romance if your family—if your child—needed you? What do you know of sacrifice?”

I tried to hold my glare but felt like a defiant child. I looked at the wall as I received my tongue lashing.

“Aloisa…” Geir reached for her hand.

“I’m not done!” Aloisa continued. “Your mother saw what the fae blood did to Dagny, so what did she do? She found a way to manage it. She found a worldview that allowed her to navigate her clairsentience. You think your mother is cruel? I think she’s practical. You think she’s crazy? I think she’s using the only lens that allowed her to accept that what she was seeing was real while still functioning in the mortal realm. Did you do that, Merit? Did you find a way to accept two realities?”

This time when I looked at her, I saw only my mother. I came from a long line of women who knew how to instill deep wells of fear.

“Told you she was a spitfire,” Fauna muttered under her breath.

I released my fists, fingers flexing at my side. “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?” Aloisa demanded.

I set my jaw. “It’s not fair to leave everyone in your family to their own devices and hope for the best. Passing psychic abilities through your bloodline…it’s like you gave infants tools to build houses and expected them to come back with a mansion. Instead, they beat themselves over the head.”

“Is that what I did?” Aloisa threw up her hands. “Because I think I fled to a new country to keep them safe. I think I found a new society, a new language, a way to shelter my family. I think I set them up for success—which, by the way, who are you to complain? Success drips from you, Merit Finnegan .” She said the name as if she tasted its falsehood.

“I was born in poverty.”

My great-grandmother rolled her eyes with the angst of someone in their teens rather than over a century of years to her name. She squared up against me. “Gods and goddesses, Marlow,” she said, dropping the pretense. She knew exactly who I was. “You were poor by wealthy, modern Western standards. I’ve looked into your lives long before your success, Marlow Esther Thorson. This is one of your most privileged cycles. You had food, shelter, and running water. You are an attractive, talented, smart white woman in a world that’s rolled out the red carpet for you. You live in luxury. The cards were stacked in your favor, and your ingratitude is not a pretty color. Play the victim all you want, but no blood of mine walks through the world with that attitude. My daughter didn’t, and neither did her daughter. The only one I’m disappointed in is you .”

Adrenaline crackled through my veins. Her cruel, invalidating words stole the air from my lungs.

“How can you be on Lisbeth’s side? She’s sided with Heaven when you’ve literally bound yourself to the pagan Nordes—”

Fauna raised a finger. “Actually, pagan is a—”

“Not now, Fauna!” I returned to my great-grandmother with a snarl. “If you want to wash your hands of familial responsibility, just say that.”

She crossed her arms and asked, “What familial responsibility are you taking, Marlow?”

“I…” I planted my feet. An accusatory finger came up in anger as I said, “I am breaking intergenerational curses. I am—”

The room turned to me conspicuously, which gave me pause. I caught Fauna’s eyes, her eyebrows lifted in a curious test. She wasn’t warning me. In fact, I think she was equally prepared to be offended by whatever I said next, as if I’d gone so far off the rails that even my eccentric companion could no longer laugh off my words. I deflated slightly as I considered the rest of my sentence. I was—what?—banishing the falsehood of the veil? I was choosing the sanity of the mortal realm over my mother’s delusions of angels and demons? My life was in shambles. I’d lost Caliban. My career as an author would be in ruins by the time I returned as Merit Finnegan, the doxxed escort, pariah of the publishing community. This was all I had, yet my grandmother was pushing me out of her preternatural embrace.

“They were abusive,” I said quietly.

Aloisa was relentless, but my words did have a mitigating effect. She appraised me with a long, slow exhale. The room thrummed with tension until she spoke. “Tell me, Marlow. I want you to picture a child in your arms. Your baby. A soul you created, and one for whom you’re responsible. Now let’s say you believe at your core that this tiny child, your baby, the love of your life, will burn in a lake of sulfur unless it believes in a specific god. Now, if you’re convinced that eternal torture is a possibility, is it kind to bow out and let your offspring do whatever they want? If you truly believe your child will be pulled limb from limb until the end of time unless it worships a specific deity—if that’s your core belief—what would love look like?”

My lips parted, but no sound came out.

“It’s not rhetorical. I’m actually asking,” she said firmly.

“I’m…” I blinked in disbelief. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Because I think it would be loving for her to do everything she could to try to get her daughter to accept that deity and go to her version of an afterlife. She might be wrong, but she doesn’t know that. All she knows is that she can see angels and demons, and that she loves you. She knows she doesn’t want her child to be tormented for eternity. Given the foundations of her perceived reality, she has no other avenue.”

I’d never been so lightheaded. I suddenly understood why Fauna had attempted to do me the kindness of drugging me. This was worse than anything I could have fathomed. I swallowed, tears spiking hot and angry at the inner corners of my eyes while I stared at the cold, unfeeling statue of a woman before me.

“Are you saying she wasn’t abusive?” I asked.

Her answer was impassive. “I’m saying two things can be true at once, and that’s uncomfortable. You don’t have to accept or live with abuse. You should distance yourself from it. You should stand on your own feet. But it’s a lie to write a narrative wherein your mother doesn’t love you. There are several dishonest things about you, Marlow, and they’re all tightly wrapped around your victimhood. Now, we came here because we were told you needed aid, but I think I understand the help you need.”

Ella perked up from the corner. “But, if your great-granddaughter truly is the Prince’s…”

I didn’t understand the silencing look Fauna shot in Ella’s direction, nor was it in the top ten most distressing things at the moment.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Aloisa replied. “There’s no reason to believe this life will be any different. And if it is, maybe that’s a path for her to forge on her own.”

At a loss for words, I reached for Fauna. Her expression went from confused as she took my hand in hers, to kind as she squeezed my fingers in return. Things weren’t going our way. But I was not alone.

“Aloisa.” There was pain in the word as Geir whispered his partner’s voice, akin to a futile plea.

“No,” Aloisa said. “This is Marlow’s battle. And if she keeps looking at herself as the one who needs saving, she won’t learn the lessons she needs to learn. She certainly won’t have the spine she needs if all things come to pass. Grow up, Marlow. Be worthy of my genes.”

Aloisa took a backward step into the air, vanishing into nothing. Geir stayed behind in the wake of her disappearance, looking at me with empathetic eyes. “The Prince of Hell? Truly?”

I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to say more. I couldn’t feel my legs. I may as well have been standing on mist and clouds. I was glad Aloisa was gone, as I knew I’d begin to cry any minute. Geir seemed to sense it.

“Tough love is her thing,” he said.

My ears rang with shock. I answered numbly. “It’s my mom’s, too.”

His frown was understanding, but not apologetic. “Her spirit is half of why I fell for her. And she’s quick-tempered, but she’s a good person. She has the fire to survive anything, in her human life and in this one. I’m sorry this was your first meeting. For what it’s worth, you’re both equally right and equally wrong. And I heard what she said. But this is bigger than your mother, or grandmother, or my partner. What you might mean for the realms…we’ll be there for you at the end.”

Fauna shook her head at my side, and he stopped speaking.

I swallowed down the bubbling tears.

When he spoke again, it was with renewed conviction. “She will show up for you, as will I. You are family, and I’m proud to call you such. You’ll never be alone.” He clasped my free hand between his again, and I stared into the eyes of a striking man who could have easily been two years my junior, rather than thousands my senior. He was level-headed, he was pretty, and he was kind to me without invalidating his partner.

“It was nice to meet you,” I said quietly, knowing it was polite, but I wasn’t sure if it was true. He took a backward step into nothing, and I was left staring at the empty space he left behind.

A long, uncomfortable silence stretched between the four of us who remained. At long last, Fauna squeezed my hand and said, “I honestly don’t know why I assumed that would go better.”