“Who was that?” Kanesha asked.

“Ranking demon who apparently appreciates Tyz’vel being out of the way. I told him I’d ended my involvement in infernal politics.”

“Good.” She grinned. “You have enough to worry about with internal politics.”

I shuddered. “I do at that. But no more invading Hell. That’s not happening again.”

I had the disk in a pocket close enough to my skin to feel it if it went cold.

“Definitely not. Although if I ended up there…”

“They can’t touch you,” I reminded her.

“I know. But they did kidnap Loki, so…they can’t touch my soul, but what’s to say they can’t just grab me?”

I didn’t have a good answer for that. “Surtur’s more likely to do that.”

She nodded. “Well, Muspelheim isn’t Hell, at least.”

“No. It’s hotter.” I studied her. “Let’s worry about Anansi for right now.”

Because I couldn’t do anything about Surtur. I wasn’t sure I could do anything about Anansi.

“Maybe we can use the horn on him.”

I shook my head. “He isn’t going to fall for that. I’m going to talk to my dad. Would you research everything about Anansi and Brother Death you can find?”

“Already on it. But it’s pretty much a bunch of stories about Anansi tricking his way out of Death using his webs.”

Didn’t they know it was female spiders who wove webs? I thought irreverently, then recalled how genderless Anansi had looked. Almost as bad as Zaid. “Thanks. Anything that might help me steal the artifact from Anansi.”

“And then do what with it?”

“Have Thruor take it back to Asgard to put back in the vault.” That seemed the most reasonable thing to do. I certainly didn’t want it.

“No. That’s not what you should do with it. Or do you think it wouldn’t work on giants.”

I stared at her. “It…oh crap. It might.”

“Even if it doesn’t, if Surtur thinks it does…”

Sometimes she really was the smart one. No, make that most of the time. You would think I’d have the superior intellect, but clearly it didn’t work that way. Just the strength and agility and the other stuff.

“He might back off if he thinks I’ll shoot him with it. I don’t want it, but…I do want him to back off.”

She grinned. “See. This is why you keep me around, right?”

“I can think of a bunch of reasons why I keep you around. How about we go home and remind ourselves of a few of them?”

I offered her my arm and she took it, and we headed home.