“I’ll meet you at your place and get the brownies started,” Loki quipped, then snapped his fingers and vanished.

“I am really tired of people who can teleport,” Mike quipped.

“I just want to get him to teach me how to do it.”

He gave me a long look.

“What? Maybe I could teleport you too.” For right now, though? I called Kanesha again and told her what Loki was up to.

Then we headed out. The thugs had apparently taken my advice and gone somewhere else. If not home, then at least somewhere not here. That was all I really cared about. The street seemed cold.

Colder than normal, and I wondered if Skadi was around. Or if something else was going on. I felt the back of my neck prickle and moved closer to Mike.

“Thruor’s coming,” he said, putting his phone away.

I’d tuned out their entire conversation. “To my place?”

“No, she’s meeting us here and bringing my car.”

That made sense. I leaned against the wall. “Tired of demons. Can’t they go bug angels instead of us once in a while?”

“Angels probably aren’t as interesting to play with.”

Thinking of the ones I’d met, I decided Mike was probably right. Angels were kind of rules bound and boring. But they were the ones demons were supposed to annoy.

I was supposed to be annoyed by fire giants. And frost giants.

The cold felt like an absence of fire. It… “Mike, we can’t stay here.”

“What?”

“Something’s wrong.”

It was as if somebody or something was pulling the heat away. I felt it tug at me, and I was glad the fyrhund had vanished once he’d done his job.

“I think I feel it. Frost giants?”

I shook my head. “Frost giants add cold. This feels like taking away heat.”

Fire giants. Pulling heat out of the area, drawing it away. Using it as fuel. I realized I could do the same thing.

I grabbed at the heat and wrapped some of it around Mike. Cold wouldn’t bother me.

It would, most definitely, bother him.