Page 45 of Heart of Mischief

Charlie sucked in a silent gasp of air. A zip of electricity shot up her spine, her heart kicking into a wild gallop. She was relieved Elias was unable to see the expression on her face.

He wasn’t trying to be romantic. Loki had ordered Elias to keep her safe; if he killed anyone, it would be out of duty to his boss, not affection for his subject. Still, she couldn’t stop the instinctual response her body had to his words. The racing pulse. The quickening breath. The rope knotting tighter and tighter in her stomach. She felt just like she did when the episode had crept up on her in the car. Only, in this case, it didn’t scare her because it felt bad.

It scared her because it felt very, very good.

“Can you try to calm down?” Elias asked. “The scent of your fear is distracting. And besides, you have nothing to worry about. Joturri are cranky, but they don’t usually eat the people who come to speak with them.”

Her fear had nothing to do with the approaching joturri, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that. Instead, she asked, “Usually?”

He shot a grin at her. Sunlight and shadow flickered over his face as he passed beneath the orange- and red-laden tree branches. “Always gotta leave room for the chance of fun, right?”

Abruptly, the trees ended, and Charlie, Henry, and Elias emerged to find themselves at the top of a dune covered in beach grass. The sand rose and fell in gentle waves. A path had been cleared in the grass that led to the shore below—a flat, sandy beach no more than twenty feet in width that ran south for over two miles.

Charlie paused at the top of the hill, looking up and down thecoast. It, too, was as she remembered: a skinny beach and rolling dunes and tall, daring trees with wind-weathered trunks that stood on the hilltops. Sentries watching over the water.

“Which way?” she asked.

“Left,” said Elias, and Henry took off straightaway, toddling down the sandy hill. “We’re nearly there.”

Halfway down the dune, Henry tripped and let out a loud squawk as his little body rolled the rest of the way down.

“Good,” Charlie said to Elias. “The sooner we find the joturri, the sooner this day will be over.”

Elias sighed, turning to face her. His arms crossed in front of his chest, exasperation flaring his nostrils. “Look,” he said. “You hate me. I get it. I betrayed you at the homecoming dance.”

“Andtried to kill me,” she added, stomping down the path to stand right in front of him. “Not to mention everyone else I care about.”

“I did what I did because I had to,” he said, taking a step closer. “I was doing my job: find the Fenrir, get the riddle out of him, get back to Helheim. You and your friends’ involvement was collateral damage.” Running a hand through his dark hair, he sighed. “And honestly, it’s a good thing I didn’t succeed in killing you or Mason. I’m pretty sure murdering your boss’s children is a fireable offense.”

“He’s not my father,” she said, “but I appreciate the touching sentiment.”

“That’s not my point,” he said impatiently. “My point is I betrayed you, yes. But you betrayed me, too. Don’t forget that. You used me. Pretended to have feelings for me to get the information you needed.”

Charlie inhaled sharply.

Pretended to have feelings.

She hadn’t been pretending. Not at first, anyway.

But that was something Elias could never know.

“What do you care?” she asked. They were standing so closenow. His emerald green eyes were mere inches away. Wind rolled in from off the lake, tossing his dark hair across his forehead. She had to hold her breath to keep from inhaling the scent of him. “It’s not like I hurt your feelings. You don’t have any feelings to begin with.”

“Idon’tcare,” he said automatically, though there was an odd uptilt to his words, as if he were asking a question instead of answering one. A muscle twitched in his jaw. He cleared his throat and went on, sounding far more certain this time. “I don’t. But Iamgrowing tired of all your loathing stares and nasty insults. You don’t need to like me, but if we’re going to work together on finding this leash, I’d prefer it if you could take your hate down a notch from outright hostility to at least a mild disdain.”

Her eyes narrowed. “There is absolutely nothing mild about my disdain for you.”

“Actually, I’m fairly certain there’s nothing mild about you, period,” he said, his eyes flashing with something between a threat and a dare. “It’s one of the things I like best about you. All fire and no bucket of water to put it out with.”

Her heart picked back up into that horrible gallop again.

“Eat sand,” she spat, unable to think of anything more clever.

Elias’s eyes searched hers. What they were looking for, she couldn’t possibly imagine, but she knew she couldn’t blink or look away. She refused to break first.

At last, one corner of his lips lifted. “Gods, I missed this.”

Then he turned and walked away.