Chapter 4
Chapter Four
So, Nina’s hoodie caught fire.
And did she ever let Dom know it, too. Yes siree.
“Are you fucking insane?” she yelped, as Dom used a kitchen towel to beat at the flames sizzling across the shoulder of the vampire’s hoodie. “Get the fuck off me!” She swatted at Dom, the wind she created with her hands alone akin to a gale force.
Dom winced, backing off immediately. “I’m sorry, Nina! I didn’t know… How could I have known that would happen?”
Nina’s eyes narrowed in her direction, and if coal-black eyes could glow red, hers were on fire. “This was my favorite goddamn hoodie!”
Marty rasped a sigh, tugging at the hoodie to pull it off her friend’s shoulders. “You have ten others just like it, and you can afford a hundred more. Can it, Drama Queen.”
Wanda booped the tip of Nina’s perfect nose with an indulgent grin. “Look at it this way, Dark Lord, at least it wasn’t your hair this time.” Then she laughed at some private joke they all clearly shared.
“On one of our cases, Nina’s hair caught on fire,” Marty informed Dom. “No one died, and look at her hair now. It’s like a shampoo commercial. No harm, no foul.”
To be fair, Nina’s locks were glorious. Long, shiny, hanging to almost her waist with only a slight wave to them. Dom would be pretty angry if she had hair like that and someone burned it.
Nina flicked her fingers under Marty’s nose. “That’s because it wasn’t your fucking hair, Blondie. You’d have shit a damn llama if your specially curated locks were fried to a crisp.”
Harvey, who didn’t appear at all surprised there was a crater in the middle of her living room, looked at them, his green eyes capturing the group. “Are we ready to discuss this now? May I explain what just happened?”
Taking a deep breath, Dom bit the inside of her cheek. “Does your explanation come with a contractor? Because I think my floor’s going to need one.”
MC laughed from his place on the floor, where she’d dropped him. “Hah! She has a sense of humor, Harvey. Lucky you! Now, can you please pick me up, Dominique? Don’t leave me here, exposed and vulnerable.”
“MC? Quiet,” Harvey demanded, his chiseled face hard. “Let me explain to Dom.”
“Well, I know I’d love an explanation,” Wanda said, smoothing her trousers. “What just happened, Harvey?”
Harvey raked a large hand through his hair. “The only person who can pick up MC is Dominique. She’s been chosen to represent Asgard and protect Midgard. No one else is capable of using the hammer but her, as evidenced by the hole in your floor.”
“Meet your new best friend!” MC chirped.
“That’s fucking ridiculous. I thought you said this wasn’t anything like the movies, and in the movie, only Thor can pick up the damn hammer,” Nina crowed, as she stooped and put her hand on MC.
When she wrapped her hand around the handle and tried to lift it, it wouldn’t budge.
This from the woman who’d all but twirled Dom’s couch on two fingers while in the process of showing off her vampiric strength.
Marty tried her hand at it, too. She grunted as she attempted to peel MC from the floor, but to no avail. “He’s telling the truth, ladies,” she whispered.
Dom backed away from the hole with its splintered boards, cracked and scattered.
“You’re all crazy. I don’t mean to be ugly, but you’re all crazy.
I’m a thirty-four-year-old single woman—a Greek woman, no less, not Norse—trying to get by each day by taking care of her elderly grandfather and bracing herself for a world without him.
I barely have time to wash my hair these days, let alone rule Mid-Earth—”
“Midgard. It’s Midgard, Dominique,” MC corrected, his articulate words putting the fear of God in her. “But fear not, we’ll teach you how to use me if the need presents itself, right, Harvey?”
When Harvey said nothing, his lips thinning into a line of anger, Dom scooped MC up with ease.
“Let’s put a pin in the animosity between you two for a moment, please.
Can you explain to me, why am I the person—nobody me—in all the wide, wide world, by reason of some vision you had while meditating, who should rule Midwhatever. ”
“Midgard,” MC corrected again. “Because you are pure of heart, my dear. You’re kind, selfless, smart but strong-willed, as evidenced by your grandfather and your fight to find him proper care. All qualities necessary to rule Midgard.”
Gulping, her fear returning, she held MC up to meet her gaze. “What do you know about my grandfather—how do you know about my grandfather?”
MC, in his soothing tone, offered a gentle explanation.
“Don’t be frightened, Dominique. I know all there is to know about you.
I don’t say that to threaten you, I say that because it’s a necessity that I know every aspect of your life.
Making a decision as serious as this requires an in-depth evaluation of your character. ”
Suddenly, every mistake, every misstep she’d made in her life, every fib she’d told, all of it flashed before her eyes, leaving her feeling exposed.
But there was no way she’d allow them to involve her ailing grandfather in anything, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect him. “Leave my grandfather out of this. Do you hear me?” she hissed, giving MC a good shake. “You leave him alone!”
Harvey put his hand on her arm. “MC would never hurt you or your grandfather, Dom. That wasn’t in any way a threat. You’re one of us now, and by proxy, so is your grandfather. Neither of us would allow any harm to come to you.”
Though his touch was light and not at all threatening, it made her shiver, but not in the way she would have expected. It left her feeling warm, comforted, and she didn’t understand the roar of emotion he stirred with nothing more than his palm on her skin.
“Oh, Odin, no! Never,” MC insisted ardently. “I would never allow any harm to come to him or you. I know how hard you’ve championed for Stavros. Your spirit is that of a fine Norse warrior, Dominique, even if your heritage is Greek.”
Dom’s head spun as her stomach churned. He even knew her grandfather’s name? How was any of this possible?
Nina, quite obviously growing impatient, stuck her face between Dom and Harvey. “Listen, while this moment is tender as fucking hell, we need to get this show on the road. We can do the rest of this at my castle. So if you’re done with the loyalty speech, let’s do that.”
“At your castle?” both Dom and Harvey asked in unison.
She rolled her eyes, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jeans.
“Yeah. I have a castle. In Long Island. It’s big enough for everybody.
I have rooms for days, and experience tells me that you’ll need time to work out all this batshittery.
So let’s get your shit together, pack a bag, get your lip gloss and scarves or whatever that is around your neck, and move it.
” She pointed to the door while Fletcher continued to perch on her shoulder.
Wanda nodded with a decisive bob of her head. “Yes. That’s a good idea, Nina. We have plenty of room for you in the car, Dom. And Nina’s castle is amazing.”
As Dom toyed with the scarf around her neck, the one she’d put on this morning to cheer herself up, her mouth fell open.
There was no reason it should. She’d heard plenty of outrageous statements tonight.
Why learning Nina had a castle, in Long Island of all places, should become her tipping point, would remain a mystery.
But she wasn’t going anywhere.
Nope. Not today. Not to a castle. Not in a boat. Not on a float. Not to Mars, and definitely not with complete strangers in cars.
When Nina realized she wasn’t making a move to do as she’d instructed, she shrugged her shoulders, walking toward the front of her townhouse and pulling open the window.
“Look, we can fuck around all night long, but I have kids and a husband I want to say good night to. So either come or don’t. It’s no skin off my nose, accidental Viking. You ready, Fletcher?”
With that question, she stepped out of the window, onto the sill and disappeared.
* * *
“What the hell are you up to, MC? This has to be the craziest plan to date,” Harvey commented, as he followed Marty’s SUV back to Nina’s castle.
MC had opted to ride with him in order to give poor Dom, who was hysterical about the safety of her beloved Fletcher, a break.
She’d gone with Marty and Wanda under duress, but she’d gone nevertheless, worried for her pet, and Nina had surely known that was how she’d react when she took flight out the window. She’d taken Dom’s bird hostage as a way to entice her back to her home.
He’d known a vampire or two in his time, but he’d never seen one fly.
“I’m doing my duty, Harvey, and you well know what my duties to Midgard, Asgard, and the gods are.” His reply was dry and all business.
He pinched his temples, so over this redundant conversation that led them nowhere but in a big circle. “Is this your way of pressuring me to take charge?”
MC was quiet for a moment, his battered handle flashing beneath the lights of oncoming cars. “I can’t pressure you to do anything, young man. That much is obvious. If pressure was all it required, you’d have been at the helm long ago.”
The gods could have chosen any of his many brothers, or even sisters, to take the reins as ruler. They were certainly more qualified than Harvey, if not in character, then in battle experience. But they insisted Harvey was the right choice.
He gripped the steering wheel harder when he remembered that conversation. It had been long and tedious, and full of angry bolts of thunder and lightning.
But he and MC had endured this argument for months now, and it left him exhausted.
“You know I can’t pick you up, MC. Despite the fact that I don’t want my father’s job, I can’t wield you, even if I wanted to.
That obviously means I don’t have the qualifications for the job.
No amount of nagging me can change that. ”