Chapter 1
The vittra had no idea how close it was to death.
The ground was covered in leaves, and the vittra just hunched there, gnawing at the carcass of what appeared to have once been a two-headed rat.
Its focus was on prying every chunk of meat from the rat’s bones, not on the trees above where Charlie crouched, concealed by bright fall foliage, bow in hand, ready to take its head off.
It was just past dawn. Early morning light filtered through the leaves, illuminating the hideous creature below.
The vittra was goblin-like, with corpse-gray skin, bulging eyes, poison-tipped teeth, and nails like newly sharpened kitchen knives.
Nearly four weeks ago, a whole pack had chased her and Elias through the forest. Thankfully, they’d been able to escape by diving headfirst into Lake Michigan. Vittra loathed bodies of water.
Charlie shuddered to remember how woefully unprepared she’d been for the dangers of Asgard. She had no idea how to defend herself. Had never even wielded a knife before then, let alone a sword or spear or bow and arrow.
Which was why she was perched in a tree.
A twig snapped beside her, and the goblin paused, stubby ears perking up. Charlie swallowed a gasp and ducked behind a cluster of orange-red leaves just before the creature’s head whipped around.
Hunched over, she found herself staring down at Henry, who squatted beside her on the tree branch.
The v?tte’s little foot rested atop a broken twig.
She narrowed her eyes. His tiny arms shrugged, and even though she couldn’t see his eyes, she somehow knew they were wide with apology.
She rolled her eyes and pressed a finger to her lips.
Ever since Charlie had given Henry his name and solidified their bond, he rarely left her side.
He sat on her shoulder during training, slept at the bottom of her backpack during history class, stole slices of turkey from Lou’s sandwiches during lunch.
He was her shadow. To an outsider, his never-ending presence might sound irritating, like a little sibling who won’t leave you alone.
To Charlie, however, it was exactly right.
He was a part of her now. A piece of her soul that lived outside her body.
Not to mention her personal security.
It might seem odd, thinking a pint-size gnome could keep a human safe.
But it wasn’t. Not when Charlie knew what her tiny friend was capable of.
Not when she’d witnessed him transform into something akin to a Tasmanian Devil and take down a draugar like it was nothing, like he faced gigantic undead monsters every day.
Plus, now that she and Henry were tethered together, her v?tte partner would always know whenever she was in trouble—and vice versa. It was a comforting thought, when danger lurked around every tree trunk and street corner here in Silver Shores.
Three weeks had passed since homecoming. Three weeks since she barely escaped death. Since she and her friends faced down the Fenrir in the cave under the beach. Since Elias betrayed her.
Three weeks since she first saw her father.
Mason thought Charlie was a fool for even entertaining the idea that Loki might be their biological father.
And maybe she was. It did sound absurd. The Hudson children, raised in a small town in Michigan …
children of a god? Outrageous. Still, she couldn’t scrub away her memory of Loki’s face: handsome and overwhelmingly familiar, with crow’s feet, salt-and-pepper hair, and tanned skin that turned ghostly white the moment he saw Charlie and Mason.
But it was his eyes, more than anything. His eyes were an exact match for hers.
Hers and her sister’s, of course. The twin she had thought was dead until three weeks earlier.
The morning after homecoming, when Charlie had finally gathered her thoughts, she wrote Sophie a letter.
It wasn’t much: a few quick scribbles containing the riddle that the Fenrir had given them in the cave—the riddle that, according to the wolf, would eventually lead them to the location of the Seal, the magical barrier between Earth and Asgard that Odin created to keep humanity safe—and the question she hoped Sophie would be able to answer:
Loki called us his children. Is it true?
When she was done writing, she slipped the paper into a plastic Ziploc and staked it to the roof outside her bedroom window using a hammer and nail stolen from the tool kit in the garage.
She had no idea how to contact Sophie, but she knew that her twin came to check in on her every so often.
She hoped, perhaps foolishly, that Sophie might visit one night and find the letter addressed to her.
That she would bring it to Odin and come back with answers, maybe even the solution to the riddle.
There’s no way the Allfather didn’t have a ton of brilliant minds serving in his court.
The next morning, the letter was still there.
And the next.
And the next.
It stayed there, blowing in the brisk fall breeze, and Charlie began to feel silly. What were the odds that her Valkyrie sister, busy fighting the monsters trying to sneak through the ever-multiplying cracks in the Seal, had time to drop by her mortal sister’s window? Not great.
On the fourth morning, she went to open the window and take back the letter. But when she pushed aside the curtains and looked out … it was gone. Letter, Ziploc, nail and all.
Now, Charlie stayed low on the branch, holding her breath. She might have the high ground on the vittra, but if it realized she was there before she had a chance to shoot one of her arrows, her advantage was gone. Goblins were perfectly capable of climbing trees using their razor-sharp claws.
She’d learned that the hard way.
She lifted a hand to her chest, rolling the thin steel chain that hung there between her thumb and pointer finger.
A gift from Elias. She would gladly be rid of it, but steel was the element that spirits of nature loathed most. Against an army of vittra, the necklace would be no good, but against only one, it should provide her with a modicum of safety.
Hopefully. Theoretically. Unless the vittra in question was so pissed off that it was willing to brave the steel in the name of vengeance.
After homecoming, Charlie had gone online and ordered four more steel necklaces—one each for Lou, Abigail, Mason, and her mom.
Trish had been touched by the present, albeit clearly confused.
Charlie made up a story about a crafts class at school and told her mom that it would mean a lot if she wore the necklace every day. Seriously: Every. Single. Day.
She’d also duct-taped steel bars around the outside of their house’s windows. Her mom wasn’t one to go snooping around the house’s exterior for no reason, but Charlie knew she would discover them eventually. After that, she’d have to get more creative with her protective tactics—and her lies.
She let the necklace fall back to her chest. After counting to ten, she lifted her head and squinted through the bright foliage.
Thankfully, the goblin seemed to have written off the snapping twig as harmless forest noise and returned to gnawing on the two-headed rat. Charlie exhaled, her breath rustling the leaves, and reached behind herself to touch the lucky deck of cards always in her back pocket.
Lately, she’d had no time for magic. Not the false kind, anyway—the kind that uses sleight of hand.
She was too busy with all the real magic running around town.
Ever since she had eaten the eyaerberry—the tiny fruit that revealed a new world hidden in plain sight—she saw magic everywhere.
On the streets, on the sidewalks, in front yards, in the gutters.
Overall, however, things had been oddly quiet since homecoming.
And by oddly quiet, Charlie meant that she’d only had to dive into a bush when she saw something black and spiderlike creep out of the gutter once, sprint into the lake to avoid being chased by a pack of vittra twice, and swerve to avoid hitting a variety of enormous golden reindeer with her car four or five times.
For Silver Shores, that was just another Monday.
The presence of magic was especially strong in the forest. She herself felt stronger there. Everything was brighter, more beautiful, more ethereal. If she stayed away from it for too long, she started to feel weak, as if metal and machinery were vacuums that sucked the life clean out of her.
Still, even if the thrill of sleight of hand had become somewhat dimmed by the presence of real magic, she never forgot to slip those cards into her back pocket.
These days, Charlie needed all the luck she could get.
She shook her head, focusing on the task at hand. Now was her moment. She needed to shoot before the vittra finished its meal.
She lifted the bow, pulling an arrow from the quiver slung over her back.
As silently as possible, she nocked the arrow and took aim.
The vittra was partly obscured by foliage; she needed to scoot down the branch to get a good shot.
Thanking Odin for her years of training on the tightrope, she slid silently down the wood, feeling the tree bend beneath her.
Just a little more to the right, and she’d have a clear—
Crack!
Charlie yelped as the limb snapped and her body tumbled through the air.
She hit the ground hard, her right shoulder and side taking the brunt of the fall.
Henry squeaked as his tiny body bounced off her legs.
Pain lanced through her, little forks of lightning in her muscles that she knew would leave nasty bruises.
She had little time to think on the pain, however, because the vittra was barreling toward her, teeth bared and claws flashing.
She screamed and squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the attack—
A whoosh sounded over her, followed by a loud thunk.
The vittra’s claws never pierced her flesh.
Charlie popped one eye open, peering nervously upward. The goblin was no longer over her.
It was skewered to the trunk of the tree she had fallen from, an axe through its chest.
“For Odin’s sake, girl,” came Vidar’s familiar booming voice. Charlie glanced over to find his enormous frame towering above the bushes in which he had previously been hiding. The axe that normally dangled from his belt was noticeably missing. “Have I taught you nothing?”