Chapter 36 #2
First, Charlie pictured where they were: a torn-up clearing bathed in moonlight.
Then, she pictured where she wanted to go: the cave under the beach.
She pictured the tunnels that led there, the puzzle you had to solve to get inside, the smooth walls and ceiling lit with pale green light, the smooth stone floor, the platform at its center.
The divot in the platform that was their key to entering Helheim.
She pictured it with as much detail as she could, even imagining the things that surrounded it: the fence the Vikings had sliced up that the city mended in less than a day, the churning lake, the forest filled with spirits.
That was where they needed to go. That was where the currents had to take them.
Finally, when she felt as if she couldn’t make the image any clearer in her mind, she dove into the river of magic, pulling Elias, Mason, and Henry in with her.
For a brief moment, Charlie felt as if she actually had plunged them into a river. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. She opened her eyes, but there was only darkness, only empty space. Her ears filled with an awful roaring sound, as if she were standing next to a jet engine.
Then, as soon as it began, it was over.
The roaring silenced. Breath rushed into her lungs. And when she opened her eyes, she found herself staring around at the familiar sight of the sandy coast of Lake Michigan. They’d landed just inside the repaired fence, a few hundred feet from the entrance to the cave.
Not the cave itself, but close enough.
And they were all there—her, Mason, Henry, and Elias.
It worked.
It actually worked!
Charlie shot up from the ground and punched the air, letting out an elated whoop.
“Holy shit.” Still crouched on his knees, Mason stared around the beach, mouth hanging slightly open. “You did it. You freaking did it.”
WOW, said Henry, the word set against glittering silver wonder.
Charlie beamed down at them both. “Confidence, baby.”
Compared to teleportation, the rest of the journey to the cave was a breeze.
The stone hatch protecting its entrance was still carved open—courtesy of Sophie’s Valkyrie blade a month before—so they needed only to lower Elias’s body down into the dim corridor and carry him to the cave.
Henry skittered ahead, checking the tunnel for danger.
“Too bad he didn’t shift into shadow form before he decided to pass out,” Mason grunted when they were halfway down the tunnel. “He probably wouldn’t be so godsdamned heavy.”
“If he had been in shadow form, we wouldn’t be in this mess at all,” Charlie reminded him. “Here, set him down.”
Mason did as he was told, then straightened up. “Quick break?”
“Even better.” Charlie shut her eyes, holding her hands out over Elias’s body. Down the corridor, she heard the familiar pitter-patter of Henry’s steps as he scouted the premises. She exhaled, grabbing hold of a current and using it to raise him into the air without touching him.
When her eyes opened, Mason was staring incredulously. “You couldn’t have done that before I almost threw my back out?”
Rolling her eyes, Charlie said, “Let’s go. Every second counts.”
She turned and kept walking, keeping one hand over Elias’s floating body at all times. Like she’d hoped, it was easy to harness a second current—one to keep him afloat, one to push him forward—and direct his body down the tunnel beside her.
Now that Mason didn’t have to carry anyone, he strolled merrily beside her. “So.” He clapped his hands. “Not to bring up the awkward make-out session I walked in on earlier…”
Charlie groaned. “Seriously, Mason?”
“Look, I’d prefer it if I could wipe it from my mind, too,” he said, holding up his hands. “But since I possess no such mind-erasing abilities, I suppose I’ll have to face this trauma head-on.”
“Or we could just … not talk about it,” she suggested. “And never bring it up again. Ever.”
“I don’t need to hear any specifics. Believe me. I just want to ask…” Mason hesitated. “Do you know what you’re doing, Charlie? I mean, three days ago, you could barely even look at the guy.”
Charlie waved dismissively with the hand not controlling Elias’s body.
She was surprised at how easy it was to keep him afloat while simultaneously carrying out an entirely separate conversation.
Two days ago, she could barely find her magic, let alone perform it while doing something else.
Was she truly that fast of a learner? Or had Elias been right all along that urgency was the best teacher?
Probably the latter, because given the circumstances, she had no other option but to learn fast. It was either that or let Elias die.
“It was nothing,” she said finally. “We were wasted. Of course we made out.”
When Mason didn’t immediately respond, Charlie couldn’t help but glance over. He was looking at her with a strange expression.
“What?” she asked.
“Elias wasn’t wasted,” he said.
“Of course he was. Every time I looked over, there was a new beer in his hand.”
Mason hesitated again, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to say the next part out loud.
“What?” she pushed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Elias wasn’t drinking, Charlie,” he said at last. “He told me when he was helping me sober up by the cooler. I asked how drunk he was, and he said not at all. That he was just holding the beer for show.”
She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m serious. I’m pretty sure he thought I would be too drunk to remember anything he said, but I do.
” He looked down at Elias’s floating figure.
His face had gone very pale. His lips were quivering, and sweat was starting to bead on his forehead.
“He said that it was important he stay sober tonight, in case Rattatosk showed up.”
Gears stalled in Charlie’s head. Not drunk? But that made no sense. The breezy way he’d acted … how he kept telling her to just relax and enjoy the party … the hazy lust in his eyes … those words he’d mouthed to her underwater.
You’re so beautiful.
Surely Elias wasn’t sober when he said that. Surely that had been an alcohol-fueled slip of the tongue. Surely.
No, Charlie didn’t believe that Elias had been sober. She couldn’t. Because the only other option was … what? That he’d meant what he said? That he’d withheld from drinking so she could be wild and carefree while he kept a close watch on the forest? That he’d done it to protect her?
She saw it again: his expression when she said it was a drunken mistake.
The way his jaw had clenched, his eyes had gone dead.
The way his entire being had seemed to shut down, to seal himself off from the outside world.
And the question that followed, the one she still couldn’t believe had even crossed her mind:
Does Elias Everhart have feelings for me?
She might have stopped to worry about the answer to that question.
To worry about what it meant for Elias’s reawakened emotions or the friendship that had begun to grow between them or whether she had squashed all of that under her clumsy feet before she’d even known what she was doing.
But she couldn’t, because all she could think, over and over, were those three words, the ones that scared her to her very core:
Elias is dying.
They were a knife at her throat.
All she could do was focus on making sure he didn’t.
They reached the end of the tunnel, where Henry sat on the floor, waiting.
The last time they had been there, the entrance to the cavern had been sealed off.
They’d had to solve a puzzle box containing the key to the door.
This time, there was nothing but a giant hole where the door should have been, as if someone had gotten frustrated with having to do the trick too many times and decided to blow the wall up instead.
Charlie and Mason exchanged a look. In unison, they said, “Elias.”
Inside, the cave was just how they remembered it: smooth stone floors, walls lined with glowing green light, and a low platform in the middle of the room. At the center of the pedestal was a small divot—the slot in which Charlie would place the dodssten jostling about in her pocket.
Scattered across the floor were chunks of the door that Elias had blown apart.
They littered the space like the remnants of a long-forgotten battle.
Charlie, Mason, and Henry picked their way over the rocks until they made it to the pedestal.
Only then did Charlie finally relax her magic, allowing Elias to settle gently onto the floor.
She rearranged his body so that his head and torso leaned against the pedestal, then crouched down and took out the dodssten.
Henry scampered up her side, coming to sit in his usual spot on her shoulder.
Mason squatted, resting one knee on the pedestal.
Charlie held the stone aloft between them. The light at its center was burning far brighter than it had in the woods, as if it sensed the portal to Helheim was near. Neon green illuminated Charlie’s and Mason’s faces, their eyes transfixed by the death stone.
Charlie broke the silence first. “Are you sure you want to come with me?”
Mason nodded, not looking away from the stone. “I’m sure.”
“Because there’s still time to change—”
“Charlie.”
She tore her gaze away from the dodssten to find Mason staring at her intently.
“Remember this moment,” he said. “Remember that I am choosing to come with you. Okay? This is my choice. You haven’t made me do anything. So, if things go sideways down there and anything happens to me, it’s not your fault. Understand?”
Charlie gave a noncommittal mmm.
“Do. You. Understand?” Mason asked, enunciating each word carefully, as if he were plunging three distinct swords into the earth.
Finally, Charlie sighed. “I understand.”
“Good. Now. Do we just put it in the platform? Last time Elias did that, it summoned Loki from Helhrim, rather than sending Elias there himself.”
Charlie hesitated. “I’m not sure. Maybe if you say aloud that we’re trying to enter, not allow someone to exit…?”
Mason shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
Slowly, he laid his right hand on Elias’s chest. He nodded for Charlie to do the same with her left.
She complied. Then Mason reached out with his free hand and closed his fingers over Charlie’s fist—the one holding the dodssten.
When that was done, the three of them were connected in a loose triangle, the death stone at its tip.
Mason looked into Charlie’s eyes and asked, “Are you ready?”
She nodded, even as her stomach lit up with fluttering nerves.
We’re doing this, she thought. We’re really going to see our father.
“With this stone,” Mason said, filling his voice with a ringing authority, “we send ourselves to Helheim.”
Together, Charlie and Mason slammed the dodssten into the hole at the center of the pedestal.
For a split second, nothing happened.
Then, the cave gave a sudden lurch, causing them to stumble and fall to the side. Henry crowed with surprise as he tumbled from Charlie’s shoulder. When Charlie and Mason’s eyes locked across the platform, she knew with certainty that her brother was thinking the same thing she was:
Did we just make a huge mistake?
Mason’s lips parted, but before he could get any words out, the cave lurched again, tossing them sideways. Charlie braced for impact, for her elbows and knees to catch the stone floor, but it never happened.
Instead …
Instead, she fell through space and time, deep into rainbow-streaked oblivion.