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.