“Jane!”
I turned at the name. It was Father Will. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”
“This is a mess,” he said as he approached me. “What really happened?”
“Fire giants,” I told him. “Surtur threatening to keep burning stuff until I go with him.”
Will rolled his eyes. “He’s a winner, isn’t he. Do you have a plan?”
“No,” I admitted. “I know what he wants. I know why he wants it. I have absolutely no clue what to do about it.”
Will nodded. “Okay, then…anything I can do to help?”
I shook my head at that. “Not that I can think of right now.” I wished I could. Will was the kind of guy you wanted on your side.
But I was pretty sure all I would get from asking him was more confusion. Sometimes you can have too many angles on a problem.
“I’ll talk to Sabriel.”
“That…that would be useful.” The angels could at least step in to protect people caught in the crossfire. They could at least do that.
What could I do?
Go to Muspelheim was one answer. Go with somebody who was not a toady of Surtur, so I would not only see what he wanted to show me.
See what I could work out about what was going on. Feel the energy for myself.
“Kanesha, I…”
“You’re probably going to have to take a trip without me.” She made a wry grin. “Don’t worry. I trust you.”
“To come back intact, you mean?”
She grinned. “Yeah. And to come back and not get tempted.”
“I could never live somewhere you could not be,” I promised her. “Although I’m fairly sure we could find a way for you to spend some time there.”
“Some kind of fire protection artifact,” she mused.
“Yeah.” But for right now, we didn’t have anything like that. And I didn’t have a suitable guide.
So I went back to helping with cleaning up the mess, but keeping my eyes open for fire giants. Good or bad.
One of the kids I’d met would be perfect…or would they? What would a teenager know of what was really going on?
And then there was the likely end. Civil war. Was that the best outcome I could hope for?
I was starting to hate the entire thing.