Page 9 of Heart of Mischief

“No,” Charlie said into her backpack. “We arenotdoing chocolate chip cookies for lunch again. You’ll die of high cholesterol before you make it to thirty.”

“You know he’s probably, like, a thousand years old, right?” Lou asked. “Or more?”

“Still.” Charlie reached back into her lunch bag and pulled out the extra turkey sandwich she’d brought, pushing it over to Lou. “For you, my parsimonious princess.”

“I haven’t a clue what that means,” Lou said, clapping giddily and starting to remove the sandwich’s cling wrap, “so I’m just going to go ahead and assume you’re complimenting my uncanny ability to insert the most applicableSilence of the Lambsquote into any given situation.”

“Oh gods. No Hannibal Lecter at lunch, please.” Abigail pulled out a Tupperware filled with apple slices. “And it most certainly doesnotmean that.Parsimonious:unwilling to spend money; stingy or frugal.” She winked at Charlie. “A classic SAT word. Well done, Char.”

Charlie grinned back.

Abigail’s face became serious again. “Can we go back to the discussion at hand?” she asked. “Therealdiscussion? About”—she lowered her voice—“you know what.”

“I’m so glad we booked it after you called the police,” Lou said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one in the cafeteria was within hearing distance. “My mom still thinks that we were volunteering at the nursing home this morning. Not scoping out dead bodies in the woods.”

“We weren’tscopinganything out,” Abigail said. “We happened across a tragedy. It was only right that I make an anonymous call.”

“I can’t stop seeing them,” Lou went on. “The pale skin. The blue lips. And thosehands…” She shuddered. “Gods almighty.”

Charlie knew exactly what Lou meant. She hadn’t been able to wipe the image of the Morrises from her mind. They followed her everywhere she went, popping up whenever she shut her eyes or stared too long at a blank worksheet or zoned out on the toilet. Maddie’s dark hair splayed out on the leaves. Milo’s jaw hanging open. Their eyes blank, staring toward the sky. And their hands…

Lou was right. The hands were the worst part, because they weren’t really hands at all. They were just round stubs of flesh.

All their fingers had been sawed clean off.

Charlie’s stomach turned over. She hadn’t taken a single bite of her sandwich, and she didn’t know if she was going to be able to.

“My question is, who did it?” Lou asked for the fourth time since they sat down. “I mean, the Fenrir is the obvious first suspect, but he’s supposed to be locked up in the underworld, right? We saw him get taken there ourselves.”

“We don’t know that he’s still in Helheim,” Abigail said. “Or that he was ever locked up at all. Maybe Loki took him down there for show, just to set him free again.”

“But he’s missing half his teeth now,” Lou argued. “Unless Loki somehow grew them back. Which I guess is a possibility, since he’s a god and all, but—”

“It’s not the Fenrir,” Charlie interrupted.

The girls turned to look at her. Charlie was as surprised by herinterruption as they were; moments ago, she’d been dizzy, off-balance, virtually incapable of speech. But the more she’d thought about Maddie and Milo, the more certain she’d become that it wasn’t the wolf who killed them.

“It wasn’t the Fenrir,” she repeated, flicking the edge of her paper lunch bag. “It can’t be. It doesn’t fit his pattern.”

“What do you mean?” Lou asked.

“That type of murder—killing two bodies and leaving them on the forest floor—makes no sense when you think about what the Fenrir’s goal was. He wanted to send bodies to Surtur, right? To strengthen him?” She shrugged. “Do those bodies look like they made it anywhere near Muspelheim?”

“Odin’sunderpants,” Lou said, blinking. “You’re right.”

If the situation weren’t so dire, Charlie might have laughed; her best friend had taken to replacing curse words with various references to the Allfather’s undergarments, generally inserted at the most inappropriate times possible.

“So, what?” Abigail asked. “You think these were random murders? No connection to Asgard?”

“Oooh!” Lou’s eyes lit up. “A serial killer on the loose, perhaps?”

Abigail rolled her eyes. “Oh gods. Here we go.”

“What?” Lou asked, offended. “You know that serial killers are a passion of mine.”

“I’m not deigning that with a response,” Abigail said, turning back to Charlie. “It could just be a random, messed-up coincidence. But…”

“But,” Charlie supplied, “the odds of a non-Asgard-related event occurring in Silver Shores seem… unlikely, at best.”