Odin pointed at things along the kid’s neck. Gestured to something on his hands. Then again at his fingernails.
They spoke for a while before the boy was pushed back into the freezer and the door was closed.
I thought that it was over, but I was proved wrong when they moved to a second drawer and pulled that one open.
This was the other kid that’d died.
What was going on?
They spoke some more. Gestured some more. Examined some more.
Then they were tucking that boy away into the freezer as well.
Black moved to lean against the table as he went over some paperwork that was on the center island.
Odin joined him, pressing his hands on either side of the island and leaning in, exposing corded, muscular forearms.
“Coco.” I looked down at my daughter who showed me her work. “What do you think?”
My lips twitched when I saw the large blob on the page with arms and legs. The letters “ODIN” were above the large blob.
“That’s pretty great,” I said. “And you spelled his name right.”
“I asked my teacher about it yesterday. She told me how to spell it. I drew him with paint at school,” she explained.
My lips twitched. “Is that right?”
“Constance?”
I looked up to find Odin looking at me, Black right beside him but looking at the papers again.
I stood up and walked toward them, curious.
“Yes?”
Eleven
I never called you stupid. But when I asked you if you knew how to spell Mississippi, and you asked whether I was talking about the state or the river, it kind of threw me for a loop.
—Odin to Constance
Odin
It was weird having them in my space.
Normally, I would’ve been annoyed at having anyone here. Yet, having the two of them felt almost…okay.
Not great. I was still twitchy as hell with people I didn’t know well in my space.
But I didn’t feel wholly against it like I did when I first took Moses on as an assistant.
It’d taken me weeks to get used to having him around.
Prison hadn’t been kind to me and had actually made me even more paranoid than I already was.
My mind was always telling me that people had ulterior motives.
“Do you know what a rat bite looks like?”
