Whatever it was seemed determined to hang on the cusp. And the next day I got a call.
Not from Sarlac. From his secretary. Which I didn’t like much until I realized it was a party invitation.
I wasn’t in the mood. But I figured I should go anyway. I didn’t have much to wear – the prom dress wasn’t quite right, but I found something for myself and Kanesha.
“I’m really not in the mood for this,” I grumbled as I applied my lipstick.
“Me neither, but you know what she would say.”
I smiled, then pursed my lips to check the look before responding. “She’d tell us to go knock them dead.”
“And always will.”
Mike. Monica. And I looked at Kanesha. Was she understanding things better than I did.
“Yeah, but she won’t be here, with us, to do it.”
Kanesha grinned. “How do we know?”
“We haven’t seen Mike.”
Yet, echoed in my mind. Maybe we would. How would I react if I did? I’d hug him, I reckoned. Possibly hard enough to cause injury.
“Maybe he’s having too much fun.”
I shook my head. “I’m the one who’s supposed to…”
She put her hand on mine. “I’m the one who has to go through it.”
And she was right. I was what I was and she was what she was. And one day… “Let’s change the subject.”
“See. It bothers you more than me.”
It did. Maybe I should talk to Thruor about it. She understood death in a way I didn’t.
I would never be her sister.
Maybe she just meant I wasn’t temperamentally suited to be a valkyrie. Thinking about it, I probably wasn’t. At least not yet.
But she said never. Of course, I strongly suspected she knew exactly what Odin had in mind for me.
Maybe some way to control Loki a little. Keep me in the fold and the trickster might be a little more careful with his pranks. It’s what I would do.
For right now, I asked Kanesha to help me with my bracelet. It had one of those clasps that Monica called a “boyfriend clasp” meaning you had to have one to wear it.
But it looked good. “Let’s go.”
I’d even splashed out to book us a cab. We were not going to arrive in style, but we weren’t going to look like charity cases either.