He gave me a whistle stop tour of Muspelheim, then put me right back where he found me.
Five minutes after the MARC train.
Which only ran every hour.
I could have killed him for that alone. Instead, I paced the platform. I should have known he’d change tactics.
Promising to protect all the individual people I cared about through Ragnarok. That was a clever one.
I paced the platform some more. At one end, a black woman huddled, exhausted, on a bench. Probably a long flight…no, she had no luggage. Long work day, then. Sure, I could protect the individual people I cared about.
I couldn’t protect the strangers I didn’t.
How much did that matter? I glanced up at a lamp post, but the black bird landing on it was only a mundane crow. It cawed at me loudly, making sure I paid attention.
“You guys are so arrogant.”
Caw.
I heard a voice from behind me. “The crow?”
“You mean you don’t get the impression they’re as smart as we are and pity us for not having wings?”
Whoever it was laughed. I glanced around.
Middle aged guy, grey hair, medium-brown skin. “Yeah.”
The crow cawed again.
“Or maybe they just like the sound of their own caws,” I mused.
Normality. Pretending to be normal for a bit was a good idea, I thought. And I couldn’t exactly go anywhere while waiting for the train.
Kanesha had all of my luggage, too. Not that I’d ever just walk away.
Surtur would find me.
Loki would find me.
I’d gain nothing.
“Maybe. They are still songbirds, believe it or not.”
I wracked my brain, not sure I ever knew that, but decided to believe it.
“Oh, I’m Mack.”
“Jane.”
“Thanks for not assuming I was about to hit on you.”
“I slapped the last guy who did.”
He grinned. “Good for you.”
He was probably assuming I got it all the time, it meaning being hit on.
He was, honestly, not all that wrong. “He was being creepy, anyway.” I shrugged.
“There’s non-creepy hitting on women?”
“There’s being nice and treating us like people.”
Except, I thought, he had been nice to me. Clearly he had intended to sow doubts.
Clearly? I needed to talk to my father.