I didn’t really think Tyr read my mind. I think he was paying some attention, though. He stepped out from behind a tree in Rock Creek Park.

“This is yours.”

“Are you sure you don’t need it any more?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t used it in a while. I think I’m safe to give it back.”

“Or you’re getting better at not needing it.”

I mused on that. “Maybe. But I’m told I need a better weapon.”

Tyr nodded. “Ask your father on that. He’s the best at dealing with dwarves, for all else is said about him, and the best weapons will always come from their tunnels.”

I thought about that. “I’d already thought about that.” My lips quirk. “Even if you…”

“I don’t hate him,” Tyr said. “We both fulfill our purpose. Sometimes it forces us into opposition, but that doesn’t mean I hate him.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen between us.”

He laughed. “You, who enjoys a fight as much as the next giant.”

I laughed back. “I enjoy a fight. I prefer it not to be with people who aren’t actually causing trouble.”

“Still, you have that in you and always will.”

“I also have my mother in me.”

“Very much.” He studied me. “I think that will be enough.”

“Enough to keep us from fighting.”

“Unless, of course, you want to.” A bit of a grin.

“Are you offering to kick my butt?” I had no illusions there. I’d lose in a fight with Tyr, despite his handicap.

“If you’re ever interested.” He grinned more broadly this time. “I promise not to do you any permanent damage.”

“I’ll think about it.” I wasn’t entirely sure I trusted him in a spar. Then again, he probably didn’t want Loki any more pissed at him.

“And talk to your father. A sword, I’d say, for you.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” I let that tail off for a moment, let it hang there. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Being civilized.”

He grinned. “Well, law is needed for that, right?”

I had to agree. Then he wandered off into the trees, waving on his way out.

I felt a little bit of relief. We seemed, at least for now, to be “cool” as the people around me would say.

It didn’t quite make the front page, but the abduction of a terminal cancer patient wasn’t completely buried either.

Nobody had managed to get an accurate description of the perpetrators.

Which all meant that we’d got away with it. Except there were her parents. I wished I could tell them. Without lying through my teeth in ways that made even a trickster’s daughter uncomfortable. I wished I could say something that would help them understand.

But they thought we were demons. I certainly wasn’t going to seek them out.

I wasn’t the one who would kill Surtur. And I was supposed to remember that Ragnarok was no true ending. Maybe that part was just to make me feel better. It didn’t seem enough.

Enough in exchange for losing her. But then it wasn’t like that, and I wasn’t even sure she’d left.

Not completely.

I sat curled on my futon and stared into space. Too much to think about, stuff I wanted to try and get straight in my mind before I talked to anyone about it.

Especially ravens.

At least they hadn’t done anything disgusting like pluck her eyes out. I was sure they were responsible for the disappearing body, though.

I was grateful for that.

Find allies in Jotunheim. I was sure that meant Angrboda.
And better weapons. I knew who was always there when Aesir got better weapons, too. Yeah, that would be my dad. He was the best negotiator, the best haggler.

I needed to talk to him. I liked the sword I had, the one Thruor had found for me, but if a Norn said it wasn’t enough, then it wasn’t enough.

So, maybe I needed to talk to my dad. And maybe I needed to think about…no.

She hadn’t mentioned the horn. I hadn’t needed it in forever. I figured it was probably time to give it back to Tyr.

And maybe he too might have an idea for a better weapon. I knew I didn’t want an axe or a hammer, mind. I wanted a sword. More elegant. Lighter, too. I might have all the strength I needed, but I…wasn’t the clodhopping type.

No offense to Thor. Mjolnir simply wasn’t my style.

I stretched. If I was going to talk to Tyr…would he be mad with me? He was always mad with my father, but…

I was going to give him the horn back. I found where I’d put it, carefully wrapped, and set out into the evening. I didn’t need it any more. It had been useful, but I’d kept it way too long.

Way too long.

I thought, again, that she was gone, but no…just unconscious again. I looked at the ravens.

When they moved, I thought, that would be it. Was she aware of anything? Was she still in pain? I didn’t want to knew.

Everything seemed to stop for a moment. Especially Ragnarok. Was she telling me that even if I failed to prevent it, I hadn’t lost?

Prevent or start. Not allowed to tell me the actual words of the prophecy. Surtur thinking it was the best thing for his people.

No real bad guys. No real good guys. It spun in my head for a moment, then Hunin flew from his branch. He actually landed on Monica’s chest, tilting his head as if listening.

A smoky darkness started to form around her, something I suspected ordinary people could not see.

I glanced at Seb.

No, I was pretty sure he could not see it, hunter or no.

It had the pattern of raven’s wings. I thought then that I understood, her standing there now, cloaked in raven feathers and power.

“I understand now.”

She smiled, that form of her. “You do?” A bit of an emphasis on the first word.

I laughed. “I won’t ask why.”

“Because you needed a bit of guidance.” And then in a rainbow swirl, she was gone.

“What the heck?” Seb’s voice.

“The Norns.” I paused. “There are more than just three of them.”

And Hunin finished with, “And sometimes they come in different forms.” He was no longer perched on Monica’s body.

It was no longer there. Which, I thought, was rather tidy. “And sometimes human ones, for a while.”

The raven nodded. “And sometimes they were mortal women, before, like the disir.”

He wasn’t going to tell me which was the case here, I knew. But I could not grieve. She had only gone home.

I wished I could tell her parents that. I wished they would understand. Had she been chosen.

Had she always been this and simply not remembered any more than I had.

No.

I rather thought she had been chosen, for some quality within her, some strength…the same strength I had seen in her.

But it was over and there were those who would not understand and would, truly, grieve.

Her eyes opened. They focused on me. “They…can’t tell you what the prophecy really says. Or they won’t. I don’t know, but I know what I can tell you.”

It seemed to be a huge effort for her to talk, and the ravens were waiting. Watching.

“Just say what you need to say.” I felt tears start in my eyes.

“You are fire. You are more fire than any of them. Don’t forget that. And don’t forget that your love is as valid as any other.”

At that I smiled a little. But fire? I felt it respond to her words, felt it rise within me. Held it back so all it did was warm me. “How do I…Monica, how do I get him to leave me alone?”

“He never will while he lives.”

I was afraid of that answer. Afraid of it, but expecting it. “I…”

“You are not the one who will end his life.”

I felt relief at that. “Good.”

“But when the time comes you have to accept who you were meant to be.”

“I might find that easier if somebody would tell me who that was.”

“I…” She coughed. “Can’t. Yet. I’ll be there, though.”

I didn’t say that was impossible. Because the ravens were watching and Thruor was watching, and the suggestion of wings around the valkyrie were becoming stronger and stronger.

She was dropping her mask, and I made sure I had no vestige of glamor myself. Seb looked between us as if finally seeing our reality, but to his credit he didn’t run.

“Any hints? Any hints on how to keep everyone safe?”

“Find allies. You have them on Midgaard. Find them in Muspelheim and Jotunheim.”

I thought of Angrboda and nodded. Angrboda of the Iron Forest, when Jotunheim had few such. “And…”

“And a better weapon. You both need better weapons.”

“Both?”

A weak smile from her. “You and Kanesha.”

“I’ll work on that.”

Loki had, I recalled gotten the Aesir all of their good weapons. And I still had the horn of truth, at least, but I rather thought she meant weapon rather more literally.

“And when the time comes…you’ve learned to protect them. Learn to understand the cycles. Learn that there is…no true ending.”

“Even Ragnarok?”

She smiled at me. “Especially Ragnarok.” Then she fell back a little.

No true ending…and the ravens still watching.

It took everything I had to do so, or felt like it did. They were very loud. They were designed to wreck one’s sanity if one didn’t do something about them. Thruor maneuvered her onto the gurney.

She stirred, but did not awaken. Out. Out. We had to get out of here, and quickly. We’d planned the route, one which wouldn’t take us past any desks, any offices likely to be open. Out to the loading dock.

Where Seb was waiting with an unmarked van. Only once she was in the van did I take a breath, and I didn’t relax until we were well clear and out of there. Couldn’t relax.

Seb was heading right out of town, west into Virginia, driving just below the speed limit.
We couldn’t get stopped.

I wondered what the headlines would read, or whether this would be relegated to the police blotter, or somewhere in the background.

It was unusual enough somebody might run it.

We didn’t stop until we were in the mountains, past Sperryville, below Old Rag. Then, we realized our error.

The idea of hiding her in the park meant getting her past the ranger station. We…kept going, turned off the road just before Luray Caverns.

Finally, we found isolated woodland, a hiking trail. Thruor still carrying her, a princess carry now.

She opened her eyes. “Where am I?”

“You slept through all of that?”

“No. I didn’t want to wake up.”

It made sense. “We’re…I’m not sure. Somewhere in the Shenandoahs.”

“Somewhere beautiful.”

Thruor put her down in a clearing. There was nothing left of her but skin and bones and her bald head and the light shining through her.

Two ravens landed on a tree. I smiled at them.

“Thanks. I…” She coughed. “I…think you came just in time. Just don’t get arrested.”

“We don’t plan on it.”

I thought of Mike for a moment. Then I thought of what was happening here. She lay on the ground, still now. Her breathing ragged.

She almost seemed, now, to be a double image of herself.

“Good.” She closed her eyes and for a moment I thought she was gone already, but no.

“I have something…something I have to say to you.”

Thruor hissed, “Write it down. Whatever it is.”

This was supposed to happen, but why like this?

I glanced at the ravens. Waiting.

Watching.

Ravens feasted on the corpses of the dead.

This was going to screw the rescue. We’d have to try again. Maybe in the middle of the night. “I don’t know. Maybe she thought He abandoned her.” It was lame, it was all I could think of. But it might mean something, somehow, in some deep part of her.

“God doesn’t do that.”
Which was the truth. Or something very like it. “I wouldn’t know what God would do, and Monica never…talked to me about religion.”

My thoughts tried to drift off into philosophy at that point, but I corralled them. This wasn’t the time for it.

” My husband says she has to be punished, that she has to suffer until she comes back to Him.”

“And you call your God love?” I felt something then. It was anger, but it wasn’t the anger to fight.

“You aren’t Christian?”

“Are you going to try to convert me?” I sensed somebody behind me at that point. “You might want to talk to him.”

As I stepped to one side, Sarael moved past me. Hopefully I could let him take this over. Hopefully we could still get Monica out.

To die.

And now I understood her father’s mind, I hoped that he suffered. I hoped that he realized what he had done.

I knew what I really hoped – that the mouselike woman now talking to the angel would grow a spine and leave him. That he deserved.

Monica did not deserve what was happening to her, but Odin had never claimed to be love.

He claimed to be wisdom. I slipped past them now her focus was on him, catching a snatch of Christian theology.

Sarael was who she needed to talk to. When I got in the room, Monica was asleep or unconscious. The heart monitor showed a steady beat, though.

She was alive, for now. Not for much longer, and the alarms would go off when we disconnected her.

Well, except I thought I had a way around that. I glanced at Thruor.

“Is she…”

“Sarael’s distracting her.”

“I really wish the mortal followers of that religion would actually realize that acknowledging our existence is okay, it’s worshipping us that’s the problem.”

“Will does.”

“Will is a most unusual man.”

I agreed, but fell silent as she started to unhook Monica. My job?
To make sure nobody heard or rather noticed the alarms.

The plan counted on something I’d suspected. Thruor knew people in every hospital in town.

Well, no.
She knew people in every morgue in town. As morbid as that was. But it gave us a potential in. And an easy access to disguises. As good as glamor was, I didn’t want to rely on it. So, we put on uniforms and sneaked into the hospital dressed as orderlies.

I decided I didn’t like hospitals. It was the smell, mostly. The scent of death hidden just under antiseptic. Thruor seemed uncomfortable too.

“You don’t like it here any more than I do.”

“Mortals fighting against death is a good thing. Denying it is a bad one.”

I thought about that, thought about Monica and her parents, and figured I was starting to see where the line was between those two things. Of course, you wanted to stay alive. I certainly did.

But there came a point…and I knew that even the gods had souls. Or were…it was complicated, and there were the intersections of belief and myth, of different rules and modes of being. Of different types of soul, and mortals moving between them as…

And I understood why Thruor said it was too late for Monica to go back to her parents’ religion.

Odin had changed some part of her soul. Then killed her. Because he needed something in her mind, something in her spirit.

Thruor knew. She knew exactly what was going on and didn’t trust me not to tell Monica.

And I wondered now if that was all about spoiling the surprise.

Monica’s parents were in her room. There were raised voices.

“You’re upsetting her.”

“We’re trying to save her.”

A moment later, Monica’s mother fled the room. She was in tears. “She’ll never come back to us.”

I wanted to yell at her, wanted to hug her, wanted to tell her the brutal truth. She looked at the two of us, hesitated.

Could she see through glamor? Neither of us looked like tall, blonde vikings right now. We looked like, well.

Ordinary hospital orderlies. Nothing special here. Nothing to see here. But as our eyes met I fancied she saw through it.
And I certainly saw something in her. Something that had been sat on and squashed so much…

“Come back to you?” I found myself asking.

“My daughter’s going to Hell and I can’t do anything about it and I don’t want to love a God any more who’ll let that happen.”

No, she didn’t recognize me. It was the kind of hysterical blurting one only did to a perfect stranger one would never see again. Or a barkeep.

I stepped towards her. “I can’t help, but…I can listen?”

“She abandoned God. Why did she abandon Him?”

I wanted, so badly, to tell her the truth. That the last place Monica was going was Hell.

I felt a sense of raven’s wings in that moment. Odin was here. Not making himself visible, but very much present.
The All-Father. And she would think him a demon if she knew.

Those few hours were a luxury, though. She wanted me to break her out of the hospital.

She wanted me to kill her. I knew that was what it boiled down to. I had to get over myself and respect her wishes.

I thought of Mike.

I thought of the danger Charles Sarlac was in now he was mixed up with me. The danger Kanesha was in.

If too many more people died, I thought, I would start developing a complex. I wasn’t about to do the Harry and Ginny thing of pushing everyone away so they didn’t get hurt, though. That was, well. It was a bad idea period, and a worse idea for me. I had a feeling I could turn into a total bitch without support.

So, I had to let them risk themselves and make sure they knew how dangerous things could get. There was nothing else I could do at this point.

Nothing else I could ever do. Except trust that things would all work out. Trust Thruor, I supposed, to a point.

Thruor.

I was going to need her on this one. Even if valkyries didn’t collect the souls of people who died of cancer.

If it came to breaking somebody out of hospital, I would bet she’d done it before. And she was back in town, albeit not full time.

I called her apartment. “Hey. I need your help.”

“Was hoping for a social call.”

“Help me on this and I’m all yours for a day,” I promised.

I heard the grin in her voice. “What do you need?”

“Not over the phone.” I wasn’t that paranoid, but I knew better than to be absolutely sure nobody was listening. “My place or yours?”

“My place. I have some really good pasta left over that I wouldn’t mind sharing.”

I laughed, but headed towards her apartment, a little more cheerful. And not just at the thought of really good pasta.

Once there, she nuked the pasta and found a bottle of wine that I would never tell anyone she shared with me. Valkyries, I’d found, had a firm believe in “Old enough to fight, old enough to drink.”

“So, what’s up?”

“Monica’s in the hospital. She’s not coming back out. Her parents have forbidden me from being allowed near her. She wants hospice. They want to keep her alive as long as possible. I’m not sure how much of that is the hope they can convert her back to their brand of Christianity to save her soul.”

Thruor laughed. “Too late for that.”

“I know. But they don’t, and if they did they’d…I don’t want to think what her father would do. Her mother’s an abused mouse.”

Thruor winced. “So. What…oh…you’re going to break her out. You know what will probably happen.”

“More to the point, she does. And it’s still what she wants.”

“Which hospital is it?”

I told her. We spent the rest of the night coming up with a plan.

“You’re handing her off to me?”

I smiled. “You’re the only person in this room I honestly fully trust not to cop a feel.”

Sarlac laughed.

“And, besides, I think you and she might have some things to talk about.” And I left, Kanesha falling in next to me.

“That was mean.”

“She only scratched the guy because he was sexually harassing her, and that’s perfectly reasonable for anyone to do, werewolf or not.”

“I thought you didn’t sense anything.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t sense any threats. She’s just a wolf.” Not harmless, no, but certainly not evil.

No more inherently evil or good than any human being.

“Good point. Poor Sarlac, though. He’s going to regret inviting us.”

I realized I’d lost my drink at some point in all that, not to mention my plate of food, and went to replace both.

I tried to keep one eye on the guy who’d set off the werewolf, mind, in case he tried anything with me or Kanesha. I’d lost him in the crowd, though.

Not for long, as I heard another raised female voice go “Hands off.”

I glanced at Kanesha. “Hold my food. There have to be bouncers around here somewhere.”

She grinned. “Why not toss him yourself?”

“Because I don’t want to be bounced.”

They’d already “repaired” the table, or possibly very quietly replaced it. I found security near the door. “Hey, we got a problem.”

“Problem?”

“Guy with a case of Roman hands, probably had one too many.” I spotted him again, pointing him out.

“Oh, him again.” The security guy groaned. “I’ll deal with him. He needs to stop at two drinks.”

Bar-sexual, then, I thought with dark amusement. “If these were my parties I’d stop inviting him.”

“This is the second time. I doubt he’ll be back.”

So, he’d used up his chances. Satisfied the situation would be dealt with, I headed back to Kanesha’s side.

“So?”

“Security’s dealing with him, see.”

“Good. I hope he wouldn’t go for us, but…I don’t think I could resist putting him on the floor if he did.”

“I wouldn’t stop you,” I said, wryly. “He deserves it.”

“I can’t believe he tried it again after being scratched.”

“He’s drunk,” I noted. “Security implied he doesn’t know his limits.”

“Drunk man’s actions…”

“…sober man’s thoughts,” I finished for her. “But still. He should learn his limits. Thoughts don’t hurt anyone but the person having them.”

Kanesha seemed to consider that for a moment. “Unless there’s a telepath around.”

“I don’t know anyone with that particular talent, thankfully.” It certainly wasn’t one I’d want.

“Or unless you’re talking about Hunin,” she quipped. “He has talons.”

I laughed out loud at that. “Thanks, Kanesha.”

No ravens at the party, of course. Unless they were very well designed. Even with the incident, though, it had made me forget about Monica for a few hours.

The werewolf was in half-person, half-wolf form. I couldn’t tell gender easily, but whoever they were, they were growling, snarling and clearly angry.

I suspected angry for a reason.

“You were saying about werewolves,” Sarlac said, finally.

“Let me see if I can calm…her…down.” She still had a pearl necklace on. “I’m betting she’s mad for a reason. Maybe somebody copped a feel.”

He managed a laugh. “Kanesha, stay with the Senator?”

I started to walk towards the wolf. “Hey.”

“What do you want?”
“Mind getting off the table?”
The werewolf looked down. She growled. “Safer up here.”

“I won’t let anything happen.”

After a moment, she jumped down, but she still looked furiously angry.

“You’re giving werewolves a bad name to all the people who can see you.”

“He accused me of being an escort.”

I wasn’t far off, then. “Then pretend there’s nothing wrong with being one. Works for me.”

She studied me for a while. “You’re too young to be one.”

“Doesn’t mean I haven’t heard it.”

Slowly, she changed back. Thankfully, it was magic, and her clothes changed with her.

“So, who called you that anyway?”

She indicated an older man who was picking himself up from the floor, with scratches.

“He didn’t just…”

“I was guessing he copped a feel.” The scratches didn’t look worse than long nails could do, at least.

“Yeah, that too.”

“Come on. Let me introduce you to the host. Whom I promise won’t cop a feel or call you a hooker.”

It was probably unfair on Sarlac, but he was the one man in the room I knew wouldn’t do anything like that.

“Over there with the pretty black girl?”

I decided to save that up to tell Kanesha later.