Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Izzy
We stop in a local pub to order burgers and chips for everyone back at the castle.
It’s dark paneled and full of voices and laughter, and some of my sense of foreboding melts away.
This really is a beautiful place--if there’s a darkness here, it comes from my sister and the other gods she’s traveling with.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to track down the bartender so we can actually order,” Reid promises me, rising from his bar stool. We’ve been waiting with our menus forever for what was supposed to be a quick stop. He hesitates. “You okay?”
“I think I’ll be okay,” I say. “Never really alone, anyway.” I’ve always got Loki’s mischievous presence floating in the back of my mind. I can almost feel him whisper, Lucky, and you don’t even show your gratitude. Humans are so rude.
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, because that’s comforting.”
He drops a quick kiss into my hair--I smile because he can’t even leave the room without kissing me goodbye, and there’s something so warm and sweet in the way he loves me--and then heads to the back.
The truth is, I do think it’s kind of reassuring.
I can never get comfortable with Loki; he’ll always have a dangerous edge.
But I don’t entirely mind him either. Carrying the trickster god has helped me get in touch with my other sides.
I always tried so hard to be the good girl, to be worthy even though I felt abandoned by everyone who ever loved me.
Loki may have been trouble--so much trouble--but whether he meant to or not, he also helped me find the strength to be exactly who I want to be.
A strange tingle runs up my spine, sharp like a nail tracing over my skin. I turn to see the same man I saw outside, framed in the doorway. But now he’s smiling, and it transforms his whole face.
The bartender comes from the kitchen, pushing open the swinging doors, and goes behind the bar. “What will you have?”
I stiffen, looking between the man and the bartender. “Actually, my friend is in the back room looking for you with the menu…”
Suddenly, I hear someone sit down a few chairs away from me at the bar. “I’d like an ale, please, any ale.”
I turn slowly and find the strange guy from outside. He’s still smiling, and his body language screams that he’s calm and relaxed. What’s more, he’s got a Scottish accent, so it sounds as if he belongs here. But still, he makes me uneasy.
The bartender nods, staying on the opposite end of the bar as he begins to make his drink.
The strange man glances over at me. “New here?”
I don’t want to answer him, but I can’t see another choice, so I choose my words with care. “Visiting,” I say.
“Family?” he asks.
I think of how I already told that woman I was looking for my long-lost sister, and my mind whirls, trying to decide if I should stick with that lie.
If I tell different stories to different townspeople, they may realize, and they might not trust us.
If things go badly with my sister, and we have to ask the people who live here to evacuate, we might need to have the best chance they will listen to us.
All of that runs through my mind in a second, and even though I don’t want to talk to him, I smile and say, “Yes, how did you guess?”
“It’s a small village,” he says. “Not a lot of people find us unless they come here for a reason.”
The bartender slides his glass over to him.
There’s something watchful in the bartender’s gaze, in the stiffness of his posture, and it sends that creepy feeling up my spine again.
I glance toward the back, wondering where Reid is, and more importantly, where our food is.
I don’t want to be suspicious and run out of here early.
“It’s a pity,” he says, “because it’s such a beautiful place. I moved here, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago now. I fell in love the first time I visited here.”
He sounds so pleasant that I almost wonder if I’ve lost my mind and I see danger and villains everywhere now. This guy seems like he just lives here. Maybe he and the bartender have a history.
“What brought you here?” I ask.
“I was looking for family too,” he says.
His eyes are very bright as they stare into mine, almost mesmerizing.
“I lost my wife in an accident years ago. My brother owned a house in Aberdeenshire, so I moved here. Seeing my nephews grow up gave me a bit of my life back. It wasn’t the one I expected, but that's all right. Life has a habit of throwing curveballs our way.”
He hefts his glass toward me. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Thank you. And I’m sorry about your wife.” Conversation over. He seems friendly, but I’m going to listen to my instincts.
“It was many years ago.” He leans toward me, his eyes bright. When they meet mine, I can’t seem to tear my gaze away. “Why did you come here?”
“To find my sister.” I can’t stop the words from leaving my lips, and I frown.
“Oh, a long lost sister,” he murmurs. “What happened? How did you lose each other?”
“When we were little, there was a house fire, and my mother managed to rescue us. But after that, I guess I was put into foster care. I never saw my mother or my sister again.”
“Oh, do you think your mother kept her, but put you into foster care?” He sounds so sympathetic.
I frown. The words suddenly make sense, but I’ve never thought about it that way. “No,” I say. “I’m sure she did her best. I’m sure she wanted me.”
The words are a struggle to say. I’ve never been sure about that. Every kid in foster care clings to a story, and after a while of hearing everyone else’s, it becomes hard to believe your own. At least that’s the case for me.
“What do you want with your sister?”
“I want to save her,” I admit. Then I press my lips together, glaring at him.
Somehow he’s using some kind of magic on me, I just know it.
I don’t know how, but I would never spill my guts like this to a stranger.
It’s hard enough for me to open up about these parts of my life with the men I love.
I’m getting better at talking about it, at being vulnerable, every day that passes--but not with anyone but them.
Another trickster, Loki murmurs in my ear. But not a god. He’s so much weaker than you are.
And I should be better than Loki but this guy is trying to manipulate me and it pisses me off.
Is he part of Thea’s crew? Maybe he’s even the man who’s tormented her so much, at least if Oliver’s stories are to be believed?
He either took Thea from my mother or from foster care, and after what he insinuated, I’m desperate to know which.
Suddenly it comes to me that I could transform into my mother, and see how he reacts.
If that doesn’t work, well, there are all kinds of things I can transform into.
Let’s show him just how weak he is, I think, and Loki exults in the back of my mind.
I summon the memory of the photo of my mother, the one I found on the microfiche in the library the night this all began, and transform into her. It makes me ache, to imagine her features coming over mine.
But it’s worth it, because he suddenly flails back, almost falling off the bar stool. He grips the edge of the counter, his eyes widening.
I reach out to him with Loki’s trickster magic, the power to persuade people to see things the way you want them to…even beyond the simple ability to transform. I don’t want to use this power on anyone, because it’s more power than anyone should have… Anyone but him.
I will him to believe it’s really my mother who sits across from him.
His fingernails on the edge of the bar are white, and his eyes have gone wide. “It can’t be. I killed you!”
The words send a shockwave through my chest. He killed my mother.
“Get up,” I tell him pleasantly.
He rises to his feet awkwardly. The bartender comes out just then with greasy paper bags.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him, forgetting that he won’t recognize me now. “We’re just stepping outside for a…smoke.”
I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, and I can feel Loki laughing at me.
This man and I march outside.
“Who the hell are you?” I demand as we walk. He killed my mother. I’m going to kill him too.
“My name is Viggo. But if you were who you’re pretending to be, you’d already know that,” he says. He walks with me but he cuts his eyes toward me as if he can tell I’ve got him under some kind of thrall.
I’ve learned so much about my powers lately.
Sometimes they scare me. But sometimes, like right now, they feel so right. Loki is thrilled. I can feel his joy shimmering through me, this restless, mischievous, bright energy. It feels so good. Addictive. Dangerous.
“Why did you kill my mother?” I ask, before I push open the door.
“Because she tried to keep me away from Izzy and Thea,” he says, and my throat is suddenly tight. “She had to be punished for thwarting me. I wanted to be the one to raise those two girls and she took them from me.”
He wanted to steal us both. But somehow, he only found Thea.
Would I be just as bad as she was if he’d found us both? If I’d grown up the way she had?
Then the two of us are out in the drizzling afternoon, rounding the corner of the restaurant. I expect us to have privacy behind the pub, in the gravel parking lot with only a handful of cars.
But Reid is out here. Magic sizzles through the air. He’s fighting with a god, and he looks at me wide-eyed.
“I wondered where you were,” I say.
The god turns toward me, throwing a bolt of magic my way.
I leap into the air, already transforming into a bird, and fly above the bolt toward his head.
He gawks at me, losing his focus just for a second.
Then he’s trying to throw a second bolt, but he’s too late.
Reid sends a blast of icy magic toward him, striking him in the chest, and the god falls.
He scrambles away. I turn as the strange man throws a handful of powder at us, then I run off too. I’m about to chase them when my chest suddenly feels tight.
Which is not good. Really not good. What the hell hurts a god?
I realize he’s tried to poison us, but besides a few rasping breaths, it doesn’t have much effect.
“I got held up,” Reid says with a cough. He grabs my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I promise. “That was so weird. That man… He’s the one who took Thea. He killed my mom.”
Reid starts to fold me into a hug, but honestly, this time, that’s not what I need.
“I’m going to kill him,” I say, and when Loki sings, I tell him to shut up.
There’s no joy in killing, no matter how much some people need it.
But some part of me has always hoped one day I’d find my mom again, and now I know I never will.
It’s the end of the last of the stories I wanted to tell myself.
“Let’s get our burgers and go back,” I tell Reid. “We’ve got work to do tonight.”