Shaking my head, I stepped away from the clouded mirror and hung up my towel. I shrugged on a loose T-shirt and slipped into a pair of raggedy old pajama bottoms. Faded yellow suns and moons dotted the worn blue flannel. My mother had given them to me for Christmas many years before. I doubted she knew the relevance, doubted she thought I’d be standing in California so many years later, laughing at the irony woven into a pair of drawstring pants.
I brushed my teeth, combed out my hair, and turned out the light. Streetlights bled through the window blinds, dimly lighting my way as I padded to the bed that shared the same space as my couch and most of my kitchen. Welcome to efficiency living. I eased onto my mattress, tucked my feet beneath me, and stretched out my hands, palms up. Closing my eyes, I sank inside myself. The font of my fire glowed steady and bright, a comforting thing, indeed. A little at a time, I let the flames loose, and hot flickering light filled my palms.
Ever since my transmutation, my control had improved, but I hadn’t tested it under emotional duress: wolf attacks, angry goddesses of the underworld, manipulative gods, the usual. When had those things become “the usual” in my life? If I was any good at lying low, I would never have to fight for my life again.
And Jesus and the devil might stroll arm in arm along a moonlit beach.
After my failure to find a lead on Skyla’s whereabouts at Oneida Lake, I had traveled to San Diego for several reasons. First, it was far away from home, and I had no connections to it. No one would have a reason to track me there. Additionally, I had found a hint in an older newspaper article from Skyla’s hometown in upstate New York. The article had briefly discussed her graduation from basic training. It had also mentioned her father, Sergeant Major Neron Ramirez, a retired Marine who had finished his career at Camp Pendleton. If Skyla were on the run, she might have come to San Diego looking for his help. So far, though, I had found no whisper of Skyla or Sergeant Major Ramirez.
Determined and unrelenting in my hunt, I had stayed in the city to recuperate and continue my search for Skyla in the safety of total anonymity. If and when I faced Helen and the gods again, I meant to do it as an equal, or as equal as possible, considering my mortality. I rolled my hand over, and the flames enveloped me from fingertips to elbows. No, I wouldn’t stay there forever. I missed having a place where I belonged, fit in, and had a purpose. This tatty little apartment, Stefanakis, Nina and Tre—they wouldn’t last. Superman had his Fortress of Solitude; Batman had his Batcave; Wonder Woman had Themyscira. Sure, they all had to leave their sanctuaries and go to the real world to fight the good fight. And so would I. But at the end of it all, if and when I succeeded against Helen and Skoll, I had no safe place to take off my mask and hang up my cape. Where would I park my invisible jet and hang my lasso of truth?
I meant to find that safe place, though. I meant to find a home in the new world and claim my right to it. And, if I was fortunate, I wouldn’t have to do it alone.
I released my fire and tucked it away, safe in its internal hidey-hole. My body whined, complaining about the rigors I had put it through. Shut up, I told it. You hate me now, but you’ll thank me later.
Snugged up under the covers, I reached over to my nightstand and flicked on my lamp. I tugged a dog-eared old spy thriller from beneath my pillow, where I had stashed it the night before. No romance novels for me.
I no longer had much sympathy for the damsel in distress.
All my recent turmoil had mixed my emotions into a toxic lather that seeped into my subconscious and distorted my dreams into strange and disturbing experiences. When I woke sometime before dawn, sweat had coated my sheets and pillows despite the cool nighttime temperatures.
The same dream had disturbed me for weeks: apples, a whole orchard—row upon row of shiny fruit, all golden, none red. In the dream, I picked a few and munched them as I strolled through rows of trees. The apple’s crisp flesh snapped and gave way under my teeth, and juices filled my mouth, sweeter and richer than any apple I had eaten before.
A flicker of movement glinted in the shadows between the trees. A distant light flashed—not a reflection, nothing manmade like a flashlight. The glow was warm and natural, the light of a fire. The tang of acrid smoke spoiled the air, and an intense heat baked away all moisture. Ash coated my skin and hair. Unable to resist the fire’s allure, I reached to touch the flames. Like a witch’s cat, fire was my familiar spirit. But in my dream, the blaze was not my ally. When I stroked them, the flames burned me. I drew back a hand, blackened to the bone.
I woke up gasping, strangling on a scream.
The vision probably meant something important, and my subconscious wanted me to pursue it. Without Skyla as my kickass Hermione, mythology research had fallen to me, and I had read everything I could get my hands on. I had developed a theory that my dream signified the legendary apples tended by the goddess Idun. In the legends, the Aesir gained all their eternal youth and longevity from Idun’s magical fruit. But my dream was too vague, or the legends were too limited—or some of both—to explain what portent these recent visions meant to convey. If fate wanted me to solve this latest puzzle, it would have to be a lot more direct.
Hot, annoyed, and frustrated, I gave up on going back to sleep. I slid out of bed, padded to the window, raised it, and crawled out onto my fire escape. The cool night air dried my sweat and erased lingering odors of smoke and fire.
I closed my eyes and leaned into the breeze, sending my stress out in a whoosh of breath, but the sharp caw of a protesting bird startled me from my moment of Zen. I yelped and recoiled from the railing where a huge black bird perched. It clacked its beak at me, and the streetlight reflected in its beady black eye.
“Shoo!” I threw my hands out, waving it away.
The bird cawed again, flapped its wings, and leapt from the railing. It rose toward the sky in a steep ascent before turning to plummet toward the ground. Instead of crashing in a feathery heap, the bird silently dissolved into the street’s shadows.
I backed against the brick wall behind me and pressed a hand over my racing heart. I inhaled several steady, deep breaths and waited for my composure to return.
“What the hell?” I asked, but no one answered.
Curiosity towed me back to the fire escape’s edge. I peered into the alley, looking for signs of the crow. For a moment, the whole world was still and silent. Then a man-shaped shadow separated from the darkness. The figure ambled to the end of the alleyway, turned onto the sidewalk, and passed out of view.
I raised my hand and formed a fireball in my palm. Its presence comforted me as I contemplated the shadowy figure. After four weeks in San Diego, a week of traveling on the road, and four weeks lost to transmutation, I should have been a ghost. I had been so careful.
How did they find me? And who are “they”? Friend or foe, enemy or ally?
I spun on my heel and ducked back inside my room. From my closet, I dug out my duffel bags and chucked in piles of clothes—clean, dirty, crusty, it didn’t matter. The fight-or-flight instinct was saying Go! Now! But a cooler, calmer voice cut through the panic: You just saw a blackbird that could change shape. How do you run from that? Slow down and think.
After sinking to the floor beside my bed, I hugged my knees, buried my face in my lap, and inhaled several deep breaths. Running was pointless when I had no idea what I was fleeing from or how best to get away from it.
I raised my head, rubbed my face, and crawled back to my window. When nothing ominous appeared, my shoulders slumped, and I heaved a sigh. Time to start forming an exit strategy. Until then, I would stand my ground and stay aware and on guard. And why is Thorin’s face the one I see whenever I think about where to run?
Chapter Four
The sun was halfway into its workday by the time I rolled out of bed. I had slept later than usual because my disturbing encounters had kept me up until the wee hours of dawn. I paced the living room throughout the night, waiting for someone to break in or for a wolf to show up on my fire escape. Was it coincidence that the crow had appeared a day after Nikka caught a stranger staring at me outside the diner? Perhaps he’d been checking me out simply because he had a thing for blondes. Exhaustion eventually sent me back to bed, and I squeezed in a few hours of restless, dreamless sleep.
I started a pot of coffee and stumbled into the bathroom to wash my face and brush out my bed-head hair. When Mr. Coffee chimed a few minutes later, I drooled like Pavlov’s dog. After adding a dab of sweetener and a touch of half-and-half to my cup, I sank into my bedraggled sofa cushions, clutching my mug, careful not to spill a drop. It was the kind of sofa that molded around me, sucked me in, and held me in its seductive embrace. The couch was ugly, but our love for each other transcended surface appearances.
Beyond my window, the San Diego traffic rushed by. Someone yelled. A car horn honked. The outside world fell away as I sipped my coffee. Amazing, how a simple cup of java could have that kind of power.
With my coffee pot emptied and caffeine buzz securely in place, I checked the time on my alarm clock—four hours until my shift started, plenty of time—and exchanged my PJs for jeans, a T-shirt, and a plain gray hoodie. I wound my hair into a tight knot, pulled up my hood, and slipped on a pair of sunglasses.
A few minutes later, I stood at the stop around the corner from my apartment, waiting for an MTS bus to pick me up and carry me across town to a random branch of the San Diego Public Library. In an effort to cover my trail, I picked a different branch every time. When the bus arrived, it lumbered up to the curb, its brakes hissed, and the doors opened. I climbed aboard behind a woman toting a collapsible shopping cart and a grumpy preschooler, and I paid my fare in cash. I paid for everything in cash. No one aboard the bus seemed to notice me. No one raised his or her head or looked me in the face. I settled into a seat near the front and slouched against the window for the entirety of the trip.
After a long ride extended by multiple stops, the bus wheezed to a halt outside the University Community Library, and I slipped out onto the sidewalk. As I scanned the parking lot, double-checking for signs of pursuit or surveillance, I pulled a prepaid burner phone from my pocket, reconnected the battery, and turned it on. I had bought and activated it when my cross-country bus had stopped in Iowa to refuel at a truck stop doubling as a shopping mall.
I had watched enough true-crime shows to know, at least in theory, about triangulating location based on cell-tower signals. I never turned on the phone near my apartment. Even with all my precautions, using it was still a risk but one I needed to take.
I punched in a memorized phone number and waited.
Two rings later, a familiar voice answered and said, “Thorin Adventure Outfitters, Hugh Rabe speaking.”
Hugh. Val Wotan’s roommate. Exactly the person I’d hoped to reach. If Val or Thorin had answered, I would have hung up. The thought of hearing either of their voices again, even after all we had been through… It pained me. In a way, I missed them—even Val. He was an oaf, overbearing and manipulative, but I refused to believe he was unredeemable. He was complicated and screwed up, but we all were. And Thorin… Gah! I couldn’t wrap my brain around him, much less my heart.
“Hi,” I said, trying to flatten my southern accent into something less distinguishable. “I was wondering if Skyla Ramirez was around. I did a kayaking trip with her a while ago, and I wanted to talk to her about planning a group outing for me and some friends in the spring.”
