Page 69 of Heart of Mischief

With that, she let out a bloodcurdling scream, shutting her eyes tight as she started to fall. She braced herself for a hard landing, for unforgiving earth, for bruising or even broken bones. (With her luck, she would have inherited Loki’s ability to levitate but not his ability to heal quickly.) But none of it ever came.

Instead, she landed on a pair of strong, overly warm arms. Far too warm to be human.

She popped one eye open. Sure enough, she was cradled in Elias’s arms, which somehow managed to snag her out of the air before she hit the ground. She popped the other eye open and peered up—straight into Elias’s smoldering gaze.

Butterflies lifted off in her stomach, flying wildly about.

“Oh,” she whispered.

A strange expression crossed his face at the sound of her breathless voice. Maybe it was just being held in his too-warm arms, but her whole body suddenly felt overheated. She and Elias looked away at the exact same time, his eyes going up to the sky and hers darting down to the grass. After a few silent seconds spent in that awkward position, Elias seemed to finally remember himself and set her gently onto the ground.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat and swinging his arms back and forth. “I suppose that answers the question of who your father is.”

She kept her eyes on the grass. “I suppose it does.”

Another uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Charlie scanned her head for something to say. She had justlevitated, for Odin’s sake; she should have amillionthings to say! But she didn’t. All she could think about were the butterflies whose wings were still beating against her insides—wild and frantic, as if they were running from something.

When she finally opened her mouth—to say what, she wasn’t sure, but she was doing it anyway—two cheers erupted into the silence.

Charlie and Elias jumped and spun around. They found Bjorn and Vidar on their feet in front of the rocking chairs, yelling and clapping their massive hands over their heads. Bjorn lowered his hands to his mouth, sticking two fingers between his lips and whistling loudly.

“Welldone,” said Vidar, still pounding his hands together. “Well done, girl.”

JOB GOOD, said Henry in her head.

“Very well done,” agreed Bjorn when he finished whistling. He bent over and scooped his mug up from the porch, collapsing back into his rocking chair. “Now.” He raised his mead to the sky. “Let’s see what else you can do.”

23

They worked at it forthreestraight hours, stopping only for the occasional coffee or water break. Elias wanted to push her, which was fine, because Charlie wanted tobepushed—especially if it would strengthen her connection to the current that she had briefly harnessed within herself. The one that enabled her to fly.

No—levitate, not fly, as Elias kept reminding her.

After her first soaring success, however, Charlie’s progress stalled. Every time she closed her eyes and reached inside herself for that current—the pushing feeling that, according to Elias, represented the core of her magic—she felt as if she were fumbling about in the dark. Searching for something that didn’t even exist. By the second hour of no action, the Vikings grew bored, opting to head inside for their daily dose of reality television, Henry toddling after them. Since then, the highest she’d managed to lift herself off the ground was two feet, and even that had felt like a shot in the dark, like an action she couldn’t possibly replicate.

“Relax,” Elias said for the two hundredth time. Charlie was standing on her flat rock, eyes squeezed shut, hands at her sides with palms tilted outward. “You were able to find it so quickly that first time because you didn’t know what you were looking for. That mindset kept you open to whatever would come. It kept you relaxed.”

“Excellent,” Charlie said. “You’re telling me that I’ll only be able to access my magic if I’m not actually looking for it?”

“No.” Elias’s footsteps crunched on the dry grass as he paced. “I’m telling you that you need torelax. That’s all. Don’t go into this with any preconceived notions. Leave yourself open to whatever comes.”

Charlie sighed. How was she supposed to re-create something about which she had no preconceived notions? Grammatically, practically, and philosophically… it made no sense.

Just like everything else in her life.

I am the child of a god.

Every time she thought those words, it felt as if it were the first time. A few minutes would pass, she would focus all of her attention on trying to access her magic, and, as a result, she would forget why she was trying to do so in the first place. Then she would remember, and it was like getting hit in the head by a baseball bat all over again.

I am the child of a god.

It was the type of life-altering realization that consumed a person’s entire being, and it was probably a large part of why she was having so much difficulty re-accessing her magic.

“Can we break for lunch?” she asked, opening her eyes. “I’m sick of chasing a river that doesn’t want to be found.”

“Fine, fine.” Elias waved a hand as she hopped off the stone and headed toward her backpack on the porch. He followed close behind, jogging up the steps and plopping down at the top. “Refueling is a good idea. Then we can get back into it for another couple of hours.”

“I brought sandwiches.” She dug around in her backpack until she felt the familiar crinkle of a brown paper bag and lifted it up, waving it over her head.