Chapter 16 #2
“Yeah. But it felt good to say it out loud. It’s as if a dam broke and all the words came flooding out.”
“I think you needed to get it off your chest,” I offer. “And I’m glad you did.”
I also think her poor friend deserves to know, but I think I’ll keep that to myself for now.
“Thank you.” She presses her lips together. “If you don’t mind, would you keep that away from the other book club members? I’m not exactly ready to out myself to the masses. I don’t think I ever will be. In fact, I’m shocked I told you so freely.”
“I won’t tell a single book club member.”
Those outside of the book club are another story. Not that I’m a gossip, but I am a sleuth with some serious intel to share with my fellow detectives. There’s a difference. Mine involves a body count. Gossips only wish they had my credentials.
A thought comes to me, and I take a breath, feeling bold and most likely stupid. Historically, those two feelings travel together in my world. They even split the gas money.
“Can I ask you something random?”
“Sure.” She blinks my way. “It can’t get weirder than what I just confessed.”
“Freya, have you ever heard of someone named Magnus Darkwater?”
Magnus gasps violently beside me, a full, theatrical, ghostly gasp that only I can hear.
Freya flinches back slightly. “Wow. That’s a blast from the past. Why are you asking about him?”
My pulse picks up speed. “Just curious. Someone mentioned the name.”
Magnus growls as loud as a jet engine, and it’s all I can do not to cover my ears.
“Magnus Darkwater was part of Astrid’s LARP group.
” She says it casually, as though this is common knowledge and not earth-shattering information.
“Live-action role play. They’d spend weekends dressing up as Vikings, acting out battles and feasts and whatever else Vikings did for fun.
It was very immersive and very committed. ”
“He was a LARPer,” I say faintly as I turn to look at the LARPing menace hovering to my left.
“Yeah. Astrid was obsessed with it for a while. Must have been ten, twelve years ago? She’d come back from those weekends with stories about epic quests and dramatic betrayals.” Freya smirks. “And Magnus Darkwater, this guy who was completely smitten with her.”
“Smitten,” Magnus mutters. “I was devoted. There’s a difference.”
“What was he like?” I ask, working hard to keep my voice at a normal human register.
“Total sweetheart, actually. Kind of geeky. Very into the role-playing aspect.” Freya tilts her head, thinking. “His real name was Eugene something. Eugene Pemberton?”
“Eugene?” Magnus looks personally attacked. “I would never.”
Magnus lifts a brow.
“No, wait. Gerald. Gerald Winklebottom. Something ridiculous like that.”
I nearly choke on my own tongue.
Winklebottom.
I glance over at the overgrown Winklebottom in question, and he winces.
“He was an accountant,” Freya continues, gloriously oblivious to my crisis.
“Used to give book club members discounts around tax season. Very generous. Very boring in real life, but he absolutely committed to the Magnus Darkwater persona on weekends. Shirtless, wielding a spear, the whole nine yards. He used to wear these boots that added like a foot to his height. He was a hoot.”
Magnus growls once again and, oddly, grows taller by the moment. It’s clear he no longer needs the shoes.
I’m picturing the business cards. Gerald Winklebottom, certified public accountant. Pillaging by appointment only. Now accepting new clients and blood feuds.
“She makes me sound pathetic,” Magnus grumbles.
No comment. A wise woman knows when to plead the Fifth, and I’m pleading it so hard right now I could use a gavel.
“Astrid dated him for a minute,” Freya says. “But I think she got bored. He was too... earnest, maybe? Too devoted. Astrid liked a challenge, and Gerald, or Magnus, whatever, was basically a puppy following her around.”
“What happened to him?”
Freya shrugs. “No idea. He moved away, I think? Or maybe he died? I can’t remember. Astrid stopped talking about the LARP group after a while. Moved on to the book club and left that whole scene behind.”
Or maybe he died. She says it the way you’d wonder about a casserole recipe.
I look at Magnus, who’s standing very still, his expression stuck somewhere between mortified and furious.
“Well,” I manage. “That’s interesting.”
Interesting. The smoldering specter who’s been strutting around my ship in furs used to itemize deductions for a living. All this time I’ve been getting haunted by a man whose battle cry was once let’s talk about your withholdings.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just... researching. For a thing.”
I’m a terrible liar. A thing. Somewhere, my husband’s entire federal career just shed a single tear.
“Thank you for sharing,” I tell her. “About everything.”
“Thank you for listening.” Freya squeezes my hand. “And for not immediately calling me a terrible person.”
“We’ve all got complicated stuff,” I say. “Yours just happens to involve an affair and a murder investigation.”
“Lucky me.”
If she only knew the ghost of the club’s old tax preparer was hovering three feet away, she’d amend that statement.
Sienna’s voice cuts through the chatter. “Ladies! Break’s over! Please return to your seats for our dramatic reading portion!”
Freya and I head back toward our chairs, and I notice Magnus isn’t following.
He stands at the windows, staring out at the ocean, his body radiating tension.
Then he disappears with a roar, a sound equal parts rage and humiliation, and a shower of silver stars scatters across the Observation Lounge before fading into nothing.
Even his exits are dramatic. The man committed to the bit so hard he carried it into the afterlife.
Women settle into their seats, mimosas refreshed, ready for whatever steaminess is about to be read aloud in accents of their own invention.
My money’s on Nettie for worst Viking growl.
She’s been practicing all week, and it lands less Norse warrior, more washing machine with a sock caught in the drum.
Nettie leans over as I sit down. “Where’d you go?”
“Talking to Freya.”
“Learn anything good?”
“More than I bargained for.”
Sienna stands at the front, clapping her hands to regain order. “All right, ladies! Let’s continue our discussion. Next question—what’s the most morally questionable thing your favorite Viking hero has done that you absolutely forgave him for?”
Nettie’s hand shoots up immediately. “Kidnapping!”
The room erupts in laughter.
“Elaborate,” Sienna says, grinning.
“In The Berserker’s Conquest, Ragnar literally throws the heroine over his shoulder, carries her onto his ship, and sails away while she’s screaming about property rights and consent.
” Nettie’s eyes are sparkling. “And by chapter three, I’m rooting for him.
The man is a menace, but he’s her menace. ”
“That’s Stockholm syndrome,” Bess mutters.
We were docked in Stockholm two days ago. I’m choosing to believe that’s a coincidence.
“That’s romance!” Nettie counters.
“That’s a felony in most civilized nations,” Bess fires back. “And Vermont.”
“At my age, if a man throws me over his shoulder and carries me anywhere, that’s not a felony.” Nettie fans herself. “That’s a spa day.”
“You’d dislocate a hip,” Bess says.
“It would be worth it. They make new hips. They don’t make new Ragnars.”
The room dissolves into debate, women calling out their own examples—theft, pillaging, general disregard for modern legal systems—and I’m sitting here trying to process the fact that my flirtatious ghost used to do people’s taxes.
And somewhere on this ship, or in whatever realm ghosts sulk when they’re not haunting cruise ships, Magnus Darkwater, also known as Gerald Winklebottom, accountant and LARP enthusiast, is having a full-blown existential crisis. Presumably itemized.
Turns out my sexy Viking ghost is a tax professional who got friend-zoned by Astrid Storm and never got over it.
Gerald Winklebottom became Magnus Darkwater to win Astrid’s heart—and someone else became a murderer to stop it.
I’m running out of time to figure out who.