Page 4 of Heart of Mischief

It might seem odd, thinking a pint-size gnome could keep a human safe. But it wasn’t. Not when Charlie knew what her tiny friend was capable of. Not when she’d witnessed him transform into something akin to a Tasmanian Devil and take down a draugar like it was nothing, like he faced gigantic undead monsters every day.

Plus, now that she and Henry were tethered together, her vätte partner would always know whenever she was in trouble—and vice versa. It was a comforting thought, when danger lurked around every tree trunk and street corner here in Silver Shores.

Three weeks had passed since homecoming. Three weeks since she barely escaped death. Since she and her friends faced down the Fenrir in the cave under the beach. Since Elias betrayed her.

Three weeks since she first saw her father.

Mason thought Charlie was a fool for even entertaining the idea that Loki might be their biological father. And maybe she was. It didsoundabsurd. The Hudson children, raised in a small town in Michigan… children of a god? Outrageous. Still, she couldn’t scrub away her memory of Loki’s face: handsome and overwhelmingly familiar, with crow’s feet, salt-and-pepper hair, and tannedskin that turned ghostly white the moment he saw Charlie and Mason.

But it was his eyes, more than anything. His eyes were an exact match for hers.

Hers and her sister’s, of course. The twin she had thought was dead until three weeks earlier.

The morning after homecoming, when Charlie had finally gathered her thoughts, she wrote Sophie a letter. It wasn’t much: a few quick scribbles containing the riddle that the Fenrir had given them in the cave—the riddle that, according to the wolf, would eventually lead them to the location of the Seal, the magical barrier between Earth and Asgard that Odin created to keep humanity safe—and the question she hoped Sophie would be able to answer:

Loki called us his children. Is it true?

When she was done writing, she slipped the paper into a plastic Ziploc and staked it to the roof outside her bedroom window using a hammer and nail stolen from the tool kit in the garage. She had no idea how to contact Sophie, but she knew that her twin came to check in on her every so often. She hoped, perhaps foolishly, that Sophie might visit one night and find the letter addressed to her. That she would bring it to Odin and come back with answers, maybe even the solution to the riddle. There’s no way the Allfather didn’t have a ton of brilliant minds serving in his court.

The next morning, the letter was still there.

And the next.

And the next.

It stayed there, blowing in the brisk fall breeze, and Charlie began to feel silly. What were the odds that her Valkyrie sister, busy fighting the monsters trying to sneak through the ever-multiplying cracks in the Seal, had time to drop by her mortal sister’s window? Not great.

On the fourth morning, she went to open the window and takeback the letter. But when she pushed aside the curtains and looked out… it was gone. Letter, Ziploc, nail and all.

Now, Charlie stayed low on the branch, holding her breath. She might have the high ground on the vittra, but if it realized she was there before she had a chance to shoot one of her arrows, her advantage was gone. Goblins were perfectly capable of climbing trees using their razor-sharp claws.

She’d learned that the hard way.

She lifted a hand to her chest, rolling the thin steel chain that hung there between her thumb and pointer finger. A gift from Elias. She would gladly be rid of it, but steel was the element that spirits of nature loathed most. Against an army of vittra, the necklace would be no good, but against only one, it should provide her with a modicum of safety. Hopefully. Theoretically. Unless the vittra in question was so pissed off that it was willing to brave the steel in the name of vengeance.

After homecoming, Charlie had gone online and ordered four more steel necklaces—one each for Lou, Abigail, Mason, and her mom. Trish had been touched by the present, albeit clearly confused. Charlie made up a story about a crafts class at school and told her mom that it would mean a lot if she wore the necklace every day. Seriously:Every. Single. Day.

She’d also duct-taped steel bars around the outside of their house’s windows. Her mom wasn’t one to go snooping around the house’s exterior for no reason, but Charlie knew she would discover them eventually. After that, she’d have to get more creative with her protective tactics—and her lies.

She let the necklace fall back to her chest. After counting to ten, she lifted her head and squinted through the bright foliage.

Thankfully, the goblin seemed to have written off the snapping twig as harmless forest noise and returned to gnawing on the two-headed rat. Charlie exhaled, her breath rustling the leaves, and reached behind herself to touch the lucky deck of cards always in her back pocket.

Lately, she’d had no time for magic. Not the false kind, anyway—the kind that uses sleight of hand. She was too busy with all therealmagic running around town. Ever since she had eaten the eyaerberry—the tiny fruit that revealed a new world hidden in plain sight—she saw magic everywhere. On the streets, on the sidewalks, in front yards, in the gutters.

Overall, however, things had been oddly quiet since homecoming. And byoddly quiet, Charlie meant that she’d only had to dive into a bush when she saw something black and spiderlike creep out of the gutter once, sprint into the lake to avoid being chased by a pack of vittra twice, and swerve to avoid hitting a variety of enormous golden reindeer with her car four or five times.

For Silver Shores, that was just another Monday.

The presence of magic was especially strong in the forest. Sheherselffelt stronger there. Everything was brighter, more beautiful, more ethereal. If she stayed away from it for too long, she started to feel weak, as if metal and machinery were vacuums that sucked the life clean out of her.

Still, even if the thrill of sleight of hand had become somewhat dimmed by the presence of real magic, she never forgot to slip those cards into her back pocket.

These days, Charlie needed all the luck she could get.

She shook her head, focusing on the task at hand. Now was her moment. She needed to shoot before the vittra finished its meal.

She lifted the bow, pulling an arrow from the quiver slung over her back. As silently as possible, she nocked the arrow and took aim. The vittra was partly obscured by foliage; she needed to scoot down the branch to get a good shot. Thanking Odin for her years of training on the tightrope, she slid silently down the wood, feeling the tree bend beneath her. Just a little more to the right, and she’d have a clear—