“Is this more of you being flippant because that’s how you cope with stress?”

My eyebrows flickered up. He knows me so well, does he? “Better than a firebomb, amiright?”

“Sunshine…” he rumbled.

“Okay, okay.” I waved off his censure. “This is hard for me. I need a second to work up to it.”

Thorin’s brow furrowed, and he tilted his head, clearly interested.

I bit my lip, turned my back to him, and stepped away, moving into our private courtyard’s grassy lawn. “You were right.”

Silence. “I’m sorry. Could you say that again? I think I misunderstood.”

I whirled around and shoved a hand on my hip. “You heard me.”

He bit back a smile, but humor danced in his eyes. “I’d like to hear it again.”

“Don’t press your luck.”

“I was right about what, specifically?”

I bunched my hands in my jeans pockets and kicked the grass at my feet. “This doesn’t have to be my fight. I can let the Valkyries go on their own. My fire is no good against those things, and I don’t know how to shoot or throw hand grenades or whatever it is the Valkyries do. I’m sorry for being bullheaded.”

Thorin sucked in a breath and stood up straighter. He unfolded his arms, strolled over to my side, and snatched something from the air. He rubbed it against the hem of his T-shirt and grinned as he presented the imaginary offering. “That was a real gem of an apology.”

“You’re going to polish it up, get a setting made, and wear it around to make everyone jealous?” It was our old joke. Huh. We have a joke. Next thing you know, we’ll have a song.

“Yup. We’ll have a matching set.”

I snorted. “Whatever. Maybe it’s good if I stay behind, in case Baldur’s network inadvertently comes up with another lead for me to look into while you’re gone.”

“No, Sunshine, I’m staying here with you. We’ll ask Skyla to arrange for a Valkyrie to stay with us, too.”

I blinked at him. “You’re not going?”

He pointed to himself. “Wall that everyone has to go through to get to you, remember?”

Chapter 4

“Maybe I should stay, too,” Skyla said, when I broke the news that I intended to let the Valkyries go to Helen’s warehouses without me. She had found Thorin and me outside on the patio. Probably, she had come to see if I was going to burn down the hotel, or if he was going to demolish any more walls.

“No.” He jabbed a finger at her. “I want you in that warehouse. You’re the only one I trust to bring back a truthful response.”

“What would the others have to hide?”

“If I have my way, I’ll never know because you’ll be there to prevent them from covering anything up. The Valkyries are unstable, Skyla. Their loyalties are uncertain.”

Her eyes blazed, but she said nothing.

“Skyla,” I said. “He’s right.”

“I know he is,” she spat. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“But we all trust you.”

Her expression softened. “I’ll see if Amala will stay behind, then. I think she’s on the up and up.”

Thorin nodded. “Better to be safe than sorry.”

A few minutes after sundown, Thorin teleported out to Helen’s warehouses, found them fortified by a small army of security guards, and transported back. “She’s certainly protecting something out there,” he said upon his return.

“Couldn’t you get a look inside?” I asked. Skyla and I sat with Thorin in the living room. The Valkyries stood sentry around us, listening to his report. He had sunk onto the loveseat across from me and stretched his arms along the back. Although it was meant to seat two, Thorin made the chair look like a throne built for a king. “You had Nate’s key card.”

“It didn’t work,” he grumbled.

“You could blip around from place to place, inside and out, couldn’t you?”

His lips thinned. His voice lowered. “If you’ll recall, I didn’t have complete control of my faculties the last time I was there. It’s difficult to ‘blip’ inside a place I’ve never seen before, not without making a commotion or drawing a lot of unwanted attention, which would have negated the purpose of me going there, right? You wanted to know if the place had been abandoned. It hasn’t.”

Val had explained the look-before-you-leap rule when we had attempted to break into the Valkyries’ library. Magic came with more restrictions than I’d expected. “Sorry.” I shrugged.

He waved aside my apology. “I did manage to get a look at the building that houses those shipping containers you described. Several stone men patrolled the exterior.”

“They were?”

He nodded.

“How long do you suppose it would take the Valkyries to tear that army apart?”

Skyla’s lips split into a devious smile. “I don’t know. Why don’t you give me a chance to time them?”

Thorin nodded and rose to his feet. “There’s no reason to wait. Call them together. You’ll head out tonight.”

“How are you going to get a dozen women out to Laughlin in the middle of the night?” I asked.

Skyla tapped a finger against her bottom lip as she thought it over. Inspiration struck, and she grinned. “You know those big black buses that go around town, hauling bachelor parties back and forth?”

“A party bus?” I said.

She nodded and jabbed a finger at Thorin. “Make sure to get us one with a disco ball.”

Thorin made Skyla show him her cell phone before she left, proving she had it powered on and close at hand. “If anything happens, anything, if you get a sore throat or an itchy nose, you call me.”

She rolled her eyes. “The last time you said something like that, you ran off after Baldur, and your asshole brother tried to freeze Solina to death in an ice cave.”

He growled—an actual angry lion sound rumbled from this throat.