Page 34 of Heart of Mischief

Her eyes popped open.

“This is a waste of time,” she announced loudly, hoping her voice would drown out the thundering in her chest. “Meditating won’t magically make me telepathic.”

Henry squeaked once, placing his hands on his hips.

Narrowing her eyes, she said, “Don’t use that judgmental tone. This is a bunch of hogwash, and you know it.”

His shoulders slumped forward, the tip of his hat dipping along with them. His disappointment was obvious. He wanted to be able to communicate with her more, but Charlie just wasn’t willing to learn how if it was going to send her into a tailspin. She didn’t have time to come apart.

Coward, whispered a cruel voice at the back of her mind.

Cheeks burning, she spun around and bent over the side of her bed, grabbing the sticker-covered laptop on the floor. She opened and set it on the mattress. Behind her, she felt Henry waddle across the bed toward his favorite pillow. She kept her head angled away.

When the laptop screen came to life, it brought her right back to where she’d left it the night before: on a website titled Twelve Essential Tales from Norse Mythology. It was a lengthy, low-res HTML site through which she’d been slowly scrolling the last few weeks. When she first found it, the ugly pale-orange background and the text’s bizarre font were almost enough to send her away without reading a word. But as she’d squinted at the screen, she’d found that every sentence was carefully crafted and accompanied by proof of source; the bibliography cited texts likeThe Wanderer’s HávamálandThe Prose Edda, books first published in Old Icelandic just after the time of the Vikings. It was a hidden jackpot.

So, she’d dived right in.

The single-page website was divided by story, each long enough to fill an entire chapter of a novel. By now, Charlie had worked her way through nine of the twelve stories. The tenth was titled “The Death of Balder.”

A jolt of excitement shot through her. Hadn’t Sophie mentioned the name Balder earlier? She’d said that Balder’s murder was the reason Loki was banished to Helheim. At the time, Charlie had been too overwhelmed to really let the information in. Even if thiswas a version written by a human, likely filled with half-truths, there had to be something useful here.

She scrolled down and started to read.

Of all Odin’s children, the most beloved was Balder. He embodied everything virtuous in the world: his face was light itself, his smile joy and goodness. Balder was courageous, benevolent, skilled at healing, handsome beyond belief, and the favorite of gods and humans alike. He had no faults—save one.

Balder had terrible dreams. Nightmares. And in those nightmares, he saw his own demise. His body cold and rotting, the world weeping at his feet.

Distressed, the gods decided to go in search of an answer. After all, they couldn’t lose their favorite son! How dark the world would be without the sunshine of his presence. How bleak without the music of his laughter.

So his mother, Frigg, set off on a mission: she traveled the world, speaking to everything that could kill Balder and making them promise to cause him no harm. She spoke to fire. She spoke to water. She spoke to every type of rock, every type of tree. She spoke to metal and wind, to the lava flowing from volcanoes and the weeds on the bottom of the ocean. And in every conversation, the elements swore they would do no harm to the great and beautiful Balder.

Frigg was thorough. She skipped over no object, animal, or element—save for mistletoe, the small, creeping plant that wound around trees. Mistletoe was so weak and insignificant that it couldn’t possibly harm someone as powerful as Balder.

When Frigg returned from her journey, she informed the others of her resounding success. Nothing could harm Balder! Nothing! See for yourselves!

So they did. Thor threw an axe at Balder; it bounced away without touching him. Frey threw a long sword; it, too, did noteven reach his skin. The gods threw rocks and spears, arrows and shards of glass. Nothing could touch Balder.

Downstairs, the front door slammed, jolting Charlie out of the story.

“I’m home,” Mason yelled. She heard him drop his backpack and jog up the stairs. His footsteps were muffled on the carpet as he walked past her bedroom, headed for his.

Henry poked Charlie’s elbow. When she looked over, he gave her what she could only imagine was a pointed, expectant look.

“I know, I know,” she said, pushing herself off the bed. “I’m going.”

11

Two minutes later, Charlie hoveredin the hallway outside her brother’s bedroom door, trying to work up the confidence to knock. She stood on the fluffy hallway carpet, tapping one socked foot and making a list of things she would rather do instead.

Agree to pay for Lou’s lunches for the rest of the year.

Spend an entire weekend studying ACT vocabulary with Abigail.

Do four two-hour training sessions with Bjorn and Vidar. Back-to-back.

Fight a draugar—and lose.

Be forced to attend homecoming with Elias again.