Getting out of there turned out to be easier than we’d expected. With the artifact in our hands and Ereshkigal released, Odin reopened Bifrost.

We took a short cut. I kept the fake passport, mind. It would do until I could get a real one, and I was waiting on that until I was eighteen and could legally change my name.

Jane S. Rudi. Hopefully, not too many people would ask what the S stood for. The contrast between Africa and Asgard was, well, even more than I thought it should have been.

Cold. High mountains. Beautiful. And I knew I should feel it was home, but I wasn’t sure. I was not absolutely certain, and that thought bothered me. Was it my giant heritage making me feel a little uncomfortable?
Was it just the fact that I’d been sent to Earth for a reason?

Was it just the fact that Kanesha wasn’t there and I couldn’t even imagine her being there? Either way, I was glad to step out of an alleyway into a somewhat cool, wintry DC. Not that Washington was really home either, but it was where she was, where my friends were.

And it was some place I didn’t stand out like an alien. Of course, by the original sense of the term I had been, and by some senses of the term I definitely was one.

Still, here, I did not stand out, at least any more than any other attractive woman. We headed straight for Mike’s.

I wondered if Seb had made any progress on Clara. Kanesha’s response to my email hadn’t contained a status report, just an I love you, too.

She was there, though, and she pounced me when I appeared almost as much as Anansi had pounced Aso.

“We got it.”

“In?”

“My backpack.” Which I’d kept with me the entire time.

“What do we do with it now?”

“Well, supposedly, Loki knows how to destroy it, so we ask him. For right now, I’m certainly not tempted to use it.”

“Even on Surtur?” Thruor said, wryly.

“Okay. I’m tempted to use it on him.” Vacations. Responsibility. I shuddered inwardly. “But I won’t. I’ll find another way to deal with him.”

“Maybe we could not destroy it and keep it in reserve?” Kanesha suggested.

“I don’t think it’s safe anywhere or in any hands,” I said, grimly. “It almost broke the world. If it’s used again, it might do something that makes Ragnarok necessary. No. We destroy it.”

The look I got from Thruor was one of deep approval.