“How did you do that?” I asked, watching her load her duffle into the back of Thorin’s Range Rover.

“Marine, remember? I’m always prepared.”

“I thought that was a Boy Scout thing.”

Skyla’s lips twitched. “I was one of those, too.”

“A Girl Scout, you mean?”

“No, a Boy Scout. My mother was pack leader for my brother, and I threw a hissy fit when they tried to keep me out and make me wear those stupid green uniforms like the other girls. Mom gave in and let me do pack stuff with the boys, but it was mostly unofficial.”

I shook my head. “Why does that not surprise me?”

I dreaded the thought of riding crammed together all the way from Alaska to Nevada, but Thorin assured us we were only going as far as Anchorage. From there he had chartered a private flight. Private planes were not for people like me. They were for celebrities, politicians, and millionaires. And immortal gods, apparently.

“Val?” I said as he slid in beside me on the bench seat in the back of Thorin’s SUV. Skyla sat on my other side; I got the “hump” seat like a little kid. “Why do you live like a college rat with Hugh and Joe? Couldn’t you have a place of your own?”

Something serious and unpleasant darkened Val’s mood. “I’ve lived in palaces. It wasn’t all that great.”

I turned to Skyla to get her reaction. Her eyes were huge and her mouth had fallen slightly open, but she wouldn’t deign to have a civilized conversation with Val if she could help it.

Val’s voice dropped so only I could hear him. “And I’ve spent more years alone than I ever care to count.”

I cursed myself for being a sucker for emotional vulnerability, but Val probably knew that and had used it to his benefit more than once. But if he could exploit my weaknesses, then it was only fair for me to do the same to him in return. In the time I had known him, Val demonstrated only a few weaknesses, susceptibilities—the biggest one being his libido. I had almost no experience with seduction, but even my limited knowledge suggested it didn’t take much: a little persuasion and the right set of body parts.

I shook my head, tossing off Val’s spell and my own cynicism, and met Thorin’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They were browner today. The rage that had filled them the night before had receded, and he kept his feelings carefully masked. Thorin held my gaze until he had to look away to check his steering. A moment later the radio came on, tuned to a rock station that drowned out the road noise.

“What do you know of this Baldur guy?” I whispered to Skyla. “He shows up and we go running off on Mission Impossible to recover his wife. Are we nuts?”

“He’s one of the good guys,” Skyla said. “If such a thing exists in their world.”

“Where has he been all this time? Val said last night he’s been gone for eons.”

“How should I know? He lived in some godly realm in the old days, but I’m not sure that place exists anymore. Baldur was supposed to be the new Odin, the Allfather, but I think the independence and individuality of humanity and the advent of Christianity left the old gods pretty much obsolete. They’ve sort of faded into the background.”

“Except someone is trying to change that,” I said as the logic of Skyla’s theories sank in. “Someone doesn’t want to be so obsolete anymore.”

“Someone who does not want to quietly fade into obscurity,” Baldur said as he peered around the edge of his seat, a sad smile upon his exquisite face. My breath seized for a moment as I was overwhelmed by his extreme etherealness. By comparison, the patina of godhood had diminished on Thorin—and Val especially—maybe because they spent so much time immersed in the human world. “The ladies’ theories are sound,” Baldur said. “The world is forgetting us, our powers are mere whispers, but we do not die—we cannot.”

Val grumbled under his breath. “Some of us accept that more willingly than others.”

Baldur heard him anyway. “You speak truth, brother. I am afraid I have been far too willing to surrender to the inertia of a long-lived life.”

“But maybe Helen isn’t?” I asked.

“Helen doesn’t go gentle into anything,” Val said, sounding appreciative.

I curled my fingers into a fist but resisted the urge to punch him. “But if she killed my brother, and then me, will that necessarily bring around another apocalypse?”

“Assuming Helen is behind this,” Thorin said, “she can only plan based on what happened last time. If it worked before, it might work again.”

“But why? What does it gain her?”

“Think about it,” Skyla said. “No one worships Norse gods anymore.” She shrugged in apology for her apathy. “They’re hiding out in obscurity in a small town in Alaska. Or they’re trying to make a way for themselves in the corporate world built by humans. How much resentment must she harbor for having to abide by men’s rules when she used to be one of the world’s original architects? In fact, I suspect you are all harboring a bit of repressed hostility.”

Val grunted. “Not so repressed.”

Skyla nodded as if Val’s response validated her hypothesis. “What would a second apocalypse do? Wipe the slate clean. Let her start over. This time she could make the world any way she wanted.”

“If she survived,” Thorin said. “That’s questionable. Most did not survive the last time.”

“Something tells me it’s a chance she’s willing to take,” I said.

“We still don’t know for sure it’s her,” Thorin said.

“You got any other likely candidates?”

Skyla answered first. “Helen, or Hela, was the daughter of Loki. He didn’t make it to see the new world, but supposedly some of his other children did. If it was a case of black hats versus white hats in the last world-ending battle, then Loki definitely wore a black hat and so did his children.”

“I think Loki was misunderstood,” Val said.

“Loki was a murdering, conniving bastard,” Baldur said. “And his death was a cause for great rejoicing.”

“Hold a grudge much?” Skyla asked.

“Do you know how long I had to spend in the darkness and cold with Loki’s daughter, that hateful bitch?” Baldur said, his face going red. “I lost everything. I have a right to a grudge. I am justified for wanting revenge.”

I raised my hand like a kid in school. “Uh, what?”

“Loki was ultimately behind Baldur’s first death,” Skyla explained. “Baldur’s only weakness was mistletoe, like his kryptonite, but he didn’t know it until too late. Baldur’s mother had received a prophecy of Baldur’s death, so she went around extracting promises from everything ever made—mineral, plant, animal—that they would never kill Baldur.”

“She thought the mistletoe was so harmless that she didn’t demand a vow from it. Loki tricked this information out of Baldur’s mother, formed an arrow out of mistletoe, and fooled Baldur’s blind brother into aiming the arrow at Baldur. The moment the mistletoe struck him, Baldur died. It’s how Hela got her claws in Baldur in the first place.”

A tiny little nightlight of a light bulb flashed on over my head. “Skyla, you said that as a result of Ragnarok, Baldur was released from death, which was Hela’s domain, right?”

Skyla nodded. “Right.”

“So now Helen wants him back. She’s holding Nina hostage to lure Baldur.”

“I agree,” Thorin said. “It’s why we’re going to Vegas. It’s the headquarters of Helen’s Nastrond Corp. If she isn’t there, someone will know where to find her.”

“It’s a trap,” I said, sounding like Daphne or Velma in a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

“But we’re going into it knowingly,” Skyla said.

“And that makes a difference how?”

“We’ll be wary and prepared.”