“Did you not listen to me at all? Who says I want you to help me out?”

Skyla winked conspiratorially. “Just trust me.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Thorin, Baldur, and Val had reached out to all their connections in an attempt to find Helen. So far they had been unsuccessful.

“It might benefit you if you were on each other’s friends-and-family plan or something,” I said to Thorin when I returned from shopping. He sat at a desk in his room, focused on his laptop. “Don’t you have a private online chat group? Ragnarok Survivors Anonymous?”

Thorin said nothing but turned and scowled at me over his shoulder.

“Why don’t you have Helen’s direct number on your contact list?”

“Until our trip to Juneau,” Thorin said, “I hadn’t seen or spoken to Helen in over two hundred years. I would have been more than happy to go another two hundred years without seeing her or speaking to her.”

“So, we just sit around and wait?”

“Unless you have a better idea.”

“We could rent out one of those animated billboards. Send Helen a message that way.”

Thorin snorted and turned back to his laptop.

I shrugged with a smirk and turned on my heel, heading for my bedroom. “You’re the one who asked for ideas.”

I paced the length of my room, gnawing on my nails and wasting energy on useless fretting. Skyla had disappeared somewhere after helping me lug the bags from my shopping spree back to the room. She didn’t say where she was going, only that she would be back soon.

Her absence left me alone and irritable. I thought about going to the casino for the novelty of it, but I didn’t have the funds for gambling, and no way was I going to take any more money from Val and Thorin. My gaze fell onto the private courtyard beyond the glass French doors in my bedroom. It was an elegant oasis in the middle of the Vegas sprawl: trim lawn, potted palms, plush patio furniture, and sparkling pool and Jacuzzi tub. I slid open my door and stepped out onto the lawn. The late afternoon sun fell on me and warmed my face, like the touch of a loved one. And the moonlight, when it came out later on, would forever remind me of Mani. Pretty awesome memorial, if you asked me.

With nothing better to do, I went back inside, changed into a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top I had bought at the boutique, and grabbed the paperback I’d been reading before I fell asleep on the plane. I had every intention of spending the afternoon lolled on one of those patio recliners, trying to think about anything but Helen and the wolves, but before I stepped foot outside, my cell phone rang. The screen lit up and showed a picture of my dad’s smiling face.

My parents. Oh crap.

I hadn’t thought much about them in the last few days, and the guilt of my disloyalty settled over me like a heavy cloak. Mom and Dad were my weakness, leverage that Helen or anyone else could use to manipulate me. If I thought telling my parents the truth might motivate them to seek safety, I would, but it also depended on them believing the truth. I doubted I possessed the persuasive skills to convince them, and I wasn’t going all the way back home just to show them how I could toast my own marshmallows. The best solution was to end this whole mythological plot as soon as possible.

If only Helen would return our calls.

“Solina,” my dad said when I answered my cell. “We haven’t heard from you in days. We’ve been waiting for you to call and tell us when you were going to come home.”

Uhhh, about that… “I finished Mani’s apartment,” I said, forcing a smile into my voice, “and I thought I’d take a few more days to sightsee. What are the chances I’ll ever get to come to Alaska again? And with the holiday rush coming soon at the bakery, I won’t get a break again until after the New Year.”

“Sightseeing?” Dad said. “You?”

That’s how well my parents knew me. I wasn’t a sightseer. I was a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of girl. “Sure,” I said. “I went kayaking. Saw lots of wildlife.”

My dad chuckled, but it held a hint of disbelief. “Kayaking and wildlife. Huh. You’re not going to turn into your brother, are you? Chasing a life of adventure?”

I almost choked on the irony. “You know that’s not really me.” Although I’m trying very hard to change that. “I’ve got one more thing on my to-do list, and then I’ll be home.”

“I’ve been doing all I can to keep your mother calm, but I’m half afraid if you aren’t home in the next day or two, she’ll explode.”

“I don’t know about a day or two, Dad. I think it’s going to take a little longer than that.”

“What are you up to, really? It’s more than just a little sightseeing, isn’t it?”

“Uhhh,” I said, my brain spinning to come up with an answer. A lie. I wasn’t good at deceit and had never had a reason to develop the skill. For twenty-five years I had walked within the lines my parents drew for me, never questioning, never rebelling. That was a lot of psychological constraint to overcome in the length of one phone call.

Fortunately my dad supplied the answer for me. “It’s that friend of Mani’s, isn’t it?”

“What?” I said, mystified.

“Val is his name, right? I saw the sparks between the two of you when he was here before, and you’ve gotten closer over the past few months. It was him you spent all that time on the phone with, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, Val. Yes. Um…” Never had I had a stranger conversation with my father. And never had we discussed my love life. “That might have something to do with it.”

“Young love. I remember those days. Like a drug, muddles everything so you can’t think straight. But, Solina, he lives there and you live here. What do you think is going to come of it?”

Dad knew how to push my buttons. Both of my parents did. A little flame of anger rose up in me. I snuffed it out and forced the bright tone back into my voice. “Oh, I don’t think anything’s going to come of it, Dad. I just don’t get to see Val very often, and being with him helps me feel close to Mani again.”

My dad huffed, and it carried over the line. “Well, as long as you keep your head about it, I’m sure everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.” He paused, and an awkward silence filled the space between us. Maybe he’s realizing the futility of giving love advice to his grown daughter. “So, what should I tell your mother?”

“About what? Val and me?”

“No,” he said with a snort. “About when you’re coming home.”

“Tell her…” Tell her I’ve joined a carnival to make a living selling candy apples and fried dough, and I’m never coming back. “Tell her to give me another week.”

“A week?” my dad squeaked.

“Yes, a week,” I said. “I’ll work double overtime when I get back.”

Dad was still grumbling when I said my goodbyes and hung up. I tossed the phone onto the bed and exhaled a heavy sigh. “I’m definitely going to need a margarita after that.”

A few minutes later, I was sprawled on a patio recliner, sucking a Diet Coke through a skinny straw and trying to convince myself the caffeine was as good as a cocktail. In my current mood, it would have taken three or four margaritas to mellow me out. Or one of those huge fishbowl drinks. Prudence suggested now was a bad time to spiral into a drunken stupor, so I sipped on soda and basked in the sun in hopes of finding a more natural path to peace and serenity.

I had almost achieved a state of Zen when Thorin invaded my tranquil afternoon. He strolled around the side of a giant blooming bougainvillea and stopped at the foot of my chair. “Contrary to how it may appear,” he said, “we are not here on vacation.”

Thorin’s eyes were black again, but not from anger. A tingle wormed its way up from my toes until the sensation prickled pleasantly over my scalp. Thorin scraped his gaze up the length of me before meeting my eyes. I thought I saw interest in his expression, but the sentiment faded too fast to be sure. “You’ve made yourself comfortable, haven’t you?” he said.

“Would you prefer I curled up on the couch in my sweats, crying and hugging a pillow? Because I did that already. For months. And I do not want to be that girl anymore. It didn’t bring him back. It didn’t give me any answers.”

Thorin said nothing but shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and worried his bottom lip with his teeth.

“Did you come out here to give me grief, or did you have something to say?” I asked.

Thorin took a deep breath, and his shoulders slumped. He padded in bare feet to a chair near my lounger and sank onto the cushion. I pointed to his toes. “You look comfortable, too. I can’t say I’ve ever seen you relax.”

“Relaxation is expensive at a time like this.”