I approached her the way I might approach a skittish dog. She stood in place and let me wrap my arms around her. For several heartbeats, she didn’t respond, but then she sighed and hugged me back. “I’m here, Mom. I’m alive, and this is very real. And I want to take you where you’ll be safe for a little while. I can’t apologize for misleading you or for staying away so long. The things I did were necessary and important. But I do apologize for causing you hurt. I would have prevented it if I could have, but I couldn’t think of any other way.”
Dad squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll get through this, Solina. We’re just so glad—” He paused and cleared his throat. “We’re just so glad to have you back.”
The three of us embraced, and Mom tried her best to swallow her sobs. My parents smelled like cake batter, spices, and comfort. After weeks of hardening myself against homesickness and longing, the relief of standing in my parents’ presence again thawed my heart into a warm, gooey puddle.
“Y’all go get packed up.” I cleared my throat and swabbed the damp streaks on my face. I broke from the hug and motioned to the stairs leading up to their room. “None of us should rest easy until we get to New Breidablick.”
My mom’s brow wrinkled, and she glanced over at Baldur. “And exactly how are we going to get there? You said it’s near Lake Tahoe?”
I grinned like a used car salesman trying to sell a lemon car, not that I was trying to mislead my parents. Well, not completely, but I needed them to trust me. “There’s a jet on its way to get us right now.”
My mom didn’t buy it. She scowled. “I don’t like it, Solina.”
“You don’t have to like it. You just have to do it.”
“C’mon, Rachel.” Dad tugged her elbow. “Let’s not argue with the girl. Something strange is going on, and I’d like to get to the bottom of it.”
Mom let Dad lead her away. They trudged up the stairs, and Baldur and I stood in uncomfortable silence until my parents returned, toting their luggage.
“I only packed for a few days,” Mom said. “Unless you convince me otherwise, we can’t be away from the bakery for long. Not during the holidays.”
Maybe this whole thing would end soon. We’d find the wolf and kill him, and Mom and Dad could go home and pick up with their old routine without missing a beat. And maybe the NASA rover would find little green men on Mars. “Sure, Mom. I’m sure everything will work out.”
After a little more cajoling from me, Mom and Dad closed up the house and packed their luggage into their minivan. Dad climbed behind the wheel, and Mom slid into the passenger seat. Baldur eyed the van. He turned and arched an eyebrow at me. “My men will follow and see that they get there safely. You and I should go ahead to the airport and make sure everything is secure on that end.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You just don’t want to ride in the back of that minivan, do you?”
Baldur grinned. “I have my pride, Solina.”
“Of course you do. You’re Aesir.”
I ducked into the van to explain our plans to my parents. Then I scooted out, slammed the door, and stood at Baldur’s side. “See in you in a bit.”
Dad’s face looked pinched and pale, but he waved as he backed from the driveway. As he pulled away, two black SUVs fell in behind him. Baldur’s men, I presumed. “They’ve been fine all this time,” I said. “Why am I so nervous about letting them go now?”
“It’s because you’ve seen them again, touched and held them. They’re more real to you than they have been in a long time. You’ve had to put them out of your mind for the last few months, but now, they are present and tangible, and that is very hard to let go. I speak from experience.”
“I’ve already had to let too many people go today. I’m afraid I’ll never see them again. Any of them.” I turned around to face Baldur. “Skyla, Thorin, my parents… Mani. I’m more alone now than I’ve been in a long time.”
“Hey.” Baldur frowned. “You still have me.”
I slid my arms around his ribs and squeezed. “And you don’t know how grateful I am.”
Baldur chuckled and returned my hug, both for comfort and for the practical demands of teleportation. “Hold tight, Solina. Hopefully, this is the last of these kinds of trips you’ll have to make today. I know you don’t care for it.”
“I don’t know.” My ears crackled, and my vision blurred. “Maybe Thorin was right. Do it enough times, and I might get used to it.”
#
Baldur and I fell out of the æther near the entrance to the Wilson Private Air Center terminal, one of the small airstrips adjacent to the larger commercial airport serving Charlotte. I had once told Val I was a simple girl, and I hadn’t lied, but my one experience flying coach from North Carolina to Alaska had been enough to make me appreciate the ease and comfort of a personal jet.
Although Baldur moved through space and time in an instant, Thorin’s jet had to abide by the laws of earthly physics, which meant we still had most of an hour to wait before the plane arrived.
“Everything out here seems fine,” I said. “No golems. No wolves. No denizens of the underworld.” But it smelled plenty evil: jet fuel, asphalt, hot rubber. Blech.
Baldur screwed his lips sideways and snorted.
“I’m going to go in and ask if they have an ETA for the jet.” I set down my bag and turned on my heel, heading for the main entrance. Before I reached the doors, however, a pair of shadows fluttered from the sky and landed at my feet in the shape of two familiar black ravens. I stopped, shoved a hand on my hip, and rolled my eyes. “Not you two again.”
One bird shivered, shaking off feathers and gaining mass, weight, and height. I glanced around the parking lot as Hugh completed his transformation, but Baldur and I had the airstrip to ourselves except for a few mechanics in coveralls who hadn’t looked our way since we arrived.
“It’s a little chilly for running around in your birthday suit, isn’t it?” I asked.
Hugh shrugged. “What I have to say won’t take long.”
“That makes me think it must be bad news.”
“Is there any other kind when it comes to you?” Hugh asked. Munin pecked at something near Hugh’s feet, and Hugh brushed his brother aside with a gentle, bare-toed nudge. Baldur noticed our visitors’ arrival and crossed the distance between us in a blink. He loomed beside me, silent and imposing.
“Allfather.” Hugh sank into a deferential bow. Then he rose and stepped back several paces, presumably out of Baldur’s reach, and crossed his hands in front, covering his most vulnerable body parts.
Baldur arched an eyebrow and bobbed a subtle nod of acknowledgment.
“Why don’t I get straight to the point?” Hugh said. “Thorin’s in trouble.”
“Already?” I huffed. “That didn’t take long.”
His black brows drew together, forming a nearly uniform line. “I’m not joking.”
“No,” I said, my tone as flat as his. “Apparently not.”
He flapped his hands but remembered his modesty and covered himself again. “Technically, he’s not in trouble yet. There is still time, but you have to act now. The vision you had, the one where you saw the wolf being burned with acid, that was not Grim.”
My mouth went dry. “Wh-Who was it, then?”
“It was Thorin. Or it will be Thorin if Val’s plan works.”
“Bullshit.” I clenched my jaw. “As if Val could ever defeat Thorin. And if it was possible, how could Val turn Thorin into a wolf?”
A cold breeze blew past us, and Hugh’s purpling skin broke out in goose bumps, or raven bumps, more accurately. Either way, he looked like a plucked chicken.
“It’s already begun,” he said. “It was set into motion the day Val and Thorin fought in that field outside Portland. That fight was mostly a ruse, a chance for Val to brand Thorin with the necessary runes for the transformation. He didn’t complete them, though. That’s what the attack at the hotel was about. Val’s man, the one with the knife, he finished the inscription.”
“Then why isn’t Thorin already a wolf?” I asked. “Why didn’t he change while we were at the Bellestrella?”
“Because,” Baldur said, having reached the conclusion much faster than I, but he was the master of rune-craft, after all. “The rune must be spoken with the rune maker’s intent.”
Oh... he was right. Every time a rune had been used, for invisibility, for transportation, for truth seeking, the user had spoken the rune’s name. When Embla had ordered Amala to carve Ansuz into Nate’s chest, she hadn’t only spoken a simple word. Her intent had permeated her directive. I’d felt the power of her will, even if I hadn’t understood it in the moment.
