Chapter 19
“Can’t this wait?” Abigail snapped as Charlie and Lou dragged her under the bleachers, Mason close behind. “I have money to count, and I can’t afford to waste time on—”
“No one cares about accounting right now,” Lou said, holding up her phone screen. “Look.”
Abigail stared at the screen for several blank seconds.
“Shit,” she said at last.
“Yeah,” agreed Lou.
“Shit.” Abigail looked between Charlie and Mason. “It’s you two. You’re the ones Rattatosk is looking for.”
The Hudsons could only nod.
“Did someone forget to invite me to the party?”
Charlie stifled a groan. Of course Elias had already found them. He could probably smell their fear from all the way in the bathroom. She started to tell him to get lost but remembered just in time that she was supposed to be friendly. Or, if not friendly, then not outright hostile.
Mason had no such limitations. “Go away. No traitors allowed.”
“No, it’s fine,” Charlie said quickly.
Her brother shot her a bewildered look.
“I mean…” She backtracked. Gods. How was she supposed to buddy up to Elias without making her brother hate her even more? She would have to share her plan with him later. If he would even listen. “I mean, he needs to see the photo. Since we’re working together to find Rattatosk’s master.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed to little slits.
“What photo?” asked Elias.
“This one.” Lou held her phone up.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh. That’s gruesome.” He leaned forward, eagerly using two fingers to zoom in. “Wow. Amazing attention to detail. The claw marks on the garage? Gorgeous stuff, honestly.”
“You’re a sociopath,” said Mason.
Elias inclined his head in a slight bow. “Thank you.” He moved the image, zooming in on a blurry close-up of one of the hand stumps. “That’s Rattatosk for sure. Guy is a master of terror.” He laid a fist over his heart and looked meaningfully around the circle. “Respect.”
“Why are you here, again?” Abigail asked, glaring at him. “I, for one, am not too keen on sharing privileged information with a known murderer.”
“It’s like Charlie said,” Elias said. “We’re on the same side now.”
“Nope. I don’t buy that for a second. I’m with Mason here. You’re a sociopath who can’t be trusted.”
“Trust or not, you need me,” Elias pressed. “I have information.”
“What kind of information?” Abigail snapped.
“On the riddle, for one.”
“Excuse me?” Abigail’s eyes flared. “No. Absolutely not. The riddle is my project. I’m the one who’s going to solve it.”
“Really?” Lou asked. “I thought obsessively studying the Valkyrie was your project now.”
Abigail groaned. “I told you already: I am not obsessing over the Valkyrie. I’m merely intrigued. Like, in an academic fashion.”
Lou nodded sagely. “Linnea’s ample chest is worthy of academic analysis.”
Abigail opened her mouth, ready with a retort, but Lou went on.
“Come on, Abigail,” said Lou. “Let Elias lend a hand. Sharing is caring. We could use the help.”
Abigail narrowed her eyes. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side that gets us answers as soon as possible.” Lou crossed her arms. “Come on. You can’t really be that stubborn, can you?”
It was scary how fast Abigail’s face went from furious disbelief to deadly calm. Perfect detachment. No emotion at all.
“Well, that’s just great,” she said, voice thick with sarcasm.
“Looks like you guys have it all in hand. You stay over here in fantasyland and carry on with the idiotic decision to let Satan Junior in on our plans. I’ll be back at the check-in desk, dealing with the very real problem of running this car wash, without which OET could never even happen. ”
With one final look of pure disdain, she turned on her heel and stormed back to the check-in desk.
“Gee,” said Elias, watching her go. “Who spit in Lady Mussolini’s coffee?”
“She’s scared,” Lou explained. “Control is how she copes. Whenever she gets upset, her first instinct is to try and take over a small to midsize European country.”
“And barring that,” Elias filled in, “the nearest school fundraiser?”
Lou winked. “You catch on fast.”
Turning away, Mason made a noise of disgust.
“Cool it, Hudson,” said Lou. “The mare is on our side. He was sent here to protect you and Charlie. He wants to stop Rattatosk as badly as we do.”
Mason shot Elias a nasty look. “So he says.”
“You’re welcome to continue hating me for as long as you want,” said Elias, shrugging. “I’m still going to protect you and Charlie. I’ll get fired if I don’t.”
“Speaking of which…” Lou held her phone back up. “What are we going to do? If there was any doubt about who Rattatosk is targeting before, it’s gone now. He’s after Charlie and Mason.”
“Clearly,” Elias agreed. “But there’s no need to fret, kiddos. This’s exactly why Loki sent me. No harm will come to the Hudson children as long as Daddy Mare is in town.”
Lou made a gagging sound. “Elias, you might be ridiculously handsome, but please, please, please don’t refer to yourself as ‘Daddy’ ever again.”
“My apologies,” he said, eyes glinting. “I forgot: Mason is the only daddy when it comes to you.”
Mason lunged before Elias had even finished his sentence.
His arm reared back, ready to slug Elias in the face again.
Charlie dove forward without thinking, shoving Elias’s chest and pushing him out of Mason’s reach.
Elias stumbled backward into the scaffolding, and Mason’s fist whizzed through open air, missing the mare’s jaw by an inch.
It was over as quickly as it started.
The four of them stood in a broken circle, chests heaving.
Mason was hunched over, fist dangling beside his knee.
Charlie stared down at her hands, horrified at what they had just done.
When she glanced up at Elias, she saw that he was staring at her with wide, confused eyes, as if he couldn’t believe it, either.
Charlie hadn’t planned to protect Elias. It wasn’t a ploy to earn his trust. She wished it were. Instead, she’d acted on pure instinct, and instinct had told her to save Elias.
The whole thing had taken no more than two seconds. But Charlie had the inexplicable feeling that, in those two seconds, everything had changed.
“Great,” said Mason at last, his sarcasm splitting open the awkward silence as he drew back up to his full height. “Really nice, Charlie. Glad to see you’re hopping right back into bed with the enemy.”
Charlie flinched. “I am not—”
“Save it,” he spat, before turning and storming away.
She opened her mouth to call after him, but Lou shook her head.
“He didn’t mean that,” she said, squeezing Charlie’s wrist.
Charlie stared at his retreating form. “I’m fairly certain he did.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Lou ducked under the scaffolding and started after Mason. “Don’t worry. We’ll smooth this over.”
And then there were two.
Fury was building within Charlie again. Frustrating, confusing, hand-quaking fury.
She couldn’t do anything right in Mason’s eyes.
She protected him from the secrets of Asgard; he got angry that she lied.
She let him and everyone else in on it; he got angry that she put their lives at risk.
She understood why he was mad about her keeping Sophie a secret, but this thing between them felt like it was about far more than one mistake.
It felt as if a lifetime of grudges were bubbling to the surface.
Ones she could never have guessed even existed inside her brother.
Her laughing, joking, carefree, party-boy brother.
Shaking her head, Charlie looked over at Elias, ready to ask if he was okay. When her eyes landed on him, however, the words stopped in her mouth.
Elias still hadn’t moved out of the position he’d landed in after she shoved him.
His head and back were pressed up against the scaffolding, chest rising and falling as he stared down at where she’d touched him.
His eyes were searching, confused, as if he expected to find something there.
As if her palms had left permanent prints.
He let out a ragged breath and glanced up.
For a brief moment, their eyes met, and the confusion on his face deepened, as if he wasn’t sure who or what he was looking at. What just happened? Why did you protect me? he seemed to be asking.
Before Charlie could open her mouth, Elias darted out from under the bleachers, making his escape.
After the fight, there was nothing left to do but help Abigail clean up.
Charlie worked her way around the parking lot, grabbing the buckets filled with dirty water and lugging them over to the grass under the bleachers.
Once there, she dumped them out. She wasn’t paying too much attention to where the water went and, on several occasions, accidentally gave a few tiny stone creatures a particularly disgusting bath.
They howled what could only be the rock language equivalent of a swear word and tottered away.
Charlie could have sworn she heard Henry giggle whenever that happened.
Elias followed in her wake, picking up dirty rags and sponges and stuffing them into an oversize plastic bag. Though he remained close by, he worked in silence.
Normally, Charlie would be grateful for it, but now she yearned for a distraction. Anything would do. Even the crass, sadistic remarks of her sworn enemy. Because without those, Charlie had nothing for company but buckets of dirty water and the inside of her own mind.
And her mind was not a pleasant companion.
She and Mason were in grave danger. And not just them.
Rattatosk didn’t seem to know exactly who they were—only that they were siblings around a certain age.
He could come for anyone in the area who matched that description.
Not to mention if he did eventually find them, who was to say he wouldn’t kill the people around them, too?
Their mom, Lou, Abigail … Charlie had a feeling that Rattatosk would do whatever it took to get to his real targets.
Charlie didn’t want to admit it, but she was scared. Scared as Hel.