Page 58 of Heart of Mischief

“The side that gets us answers as soon as possible.” Lou crossed her arms. “Come on. You can’t really be that stubborn, can you?”

It was scary how fast Abigail’s face went from furious disbelief to deadly calm. Perfect detachment. No emotion at all.

“Well, that’s just great,” she said, voice thick with sarcasm. “Looks like you guys have it all in hand. You stay over here in fantasyland and carry on with the idiotic decision to let Satan Junior in on our plans. I’ll be back at the check-in desk, dealing with the very real problem of running this car wash, without which OET could never even happen.”

With one final look of pure disdain, she turned on her heel and stormed back to the check-in desk.

“Gee,” said Elias, watching her go. “Who spit in Lady Mussolini’s coffee?”

“She’s scared,” Lou explained. “Control is how she copes. Whenever she gets upset, her first instinct is to try and take over a small to midsize European country.”

“And barring that,” Elias filled in, “the nearest school fundraiser?”

Lou winked. “You catch on fast.”

Turning away, Mason made a noise of disgust.

“Cool it, Hudson,” said Lou. “The mare is on our side. He was sent here to protect you and Charlie. He wants to stop Rattatosk as badly as we do.”

Mason shot Elias a nasty look. “So he says.”

“You’re welcome to continue hating me for as long as you want,” said Elias, shrugging. “I’m still going to protect you and Charlie. I’ll get fired if I don’t.”

“Speaking of which…” Lou held her phone back up. “What are we going to do? If there was any doubt about who Rattatosk is targeting before, it’s gone now. He’s after Charlie and Mason.”

“Clearly,” Elias agreed. “But there’s no need to fret, kiddos. This’s exactly why Loki sent me. No harm will come to the Hudson children as long as Daddy Mare is in town.”

Lou made a gagging sound. “Elias, you might be ridiculously handsome, but please, please,pleasedon’t refer to yourself as ‘Daddy’ ever again.”

“My apologies,” he said, eyes glinting. “I forgot: Mason is the only daddy when it comes to you.”

Mason lunged before Elias had even finished his sentence. His arm reared back, ready to slug Elias in the face again. Charlie dove forward without thinking, shoving Elias’s chest and pushing him out of Mason’s reach. Elias stumbled backward into the scaffolding, and Mason’s fist whizzed through open air, missing the mare’s jaw by an inch.

It was over as quickly as it started.

The four of them stood in a broken circle, chests heaving. Mason was hunched over, fist dangling beside his knee. Charlie stared down at her hands, horrified at what they had just done. When she glanced up at Elias, she saw that he was staring at her with wide, confused eyes, as if he couldn’t believe it, either.

Charlie hadn’t planned to protect Elias. It wasn’t a ploy to earn his trust. She wished it were. Instead, she’d acted on pure instinct, and instinct had told her to save Elias.

The whole thing had taken no more than two seconds. But Charlie had the inexplicable feeling that, in those two seconds, everything had changed.

“Great,” said Mason at last, his sarcasm splitting open the awkward silence as he drew back up to his full height. “Really nice, Charlie. Glad to see you’re hopping right back into bed with the enemy.”

Charlie flinched. “I amnot—”

“Save it,” he spat, before turning and storming away.

She opened her mouth to call after him, but Lou shook her head.

“He didn’t mean that,” she said, squeezing Charlie’s wrist.

Charlie stared at his retreating form. “I’m fairly certain he did.”

“I’ll talk to him.” Lou ducked under the scaffolding and started after Mason. “Don’t worry. We’ll smooth this over.”

And then there were two.

Fury was building within Charlie again. Frustrating, confusing, hand-quaking fury. She couldn’t do anything right in Mason’s eyes. She protected him from the secrets of Asgard; he got angry that she lied. She let him and everyone else in on it; he got angry that she put their lives at risk. She understood why he was mad about her keeping Sophie a secret, but this thing between them felt like it was about far more than one mistake. It felt as if a lifetime of grudges were bubbling to the surface. Ones she could never have guessed evenexistedinside her brother. Her laughing, joking, carefree, party-boy brother.