Page 62 of Viking Vengeance Cruise

You can really learn a lot about a person from a buffet.

The room is bustling with bodies, each of them dressed in various stages of leather and lace and velvet that would make a Renaissance fair look understated. Moody music plays softly in the background, something heavy on the violins and dramatic percussion. If a cello could smolder, this one is doing it. Mimosas are flowing like the Nile during flood season, and the energy is electric.

Magnus is here, too, because heaven forbid I enjoy a single mimosa in peace. He drifts through the crowd, an incorporeal menace on the prowl, sniffing necks and whispering into ears and generally making a nuisance of himself among women with no idea they’re being haunted by a flirtatious Viking ghost.

He pauses behind a woman in a fur stole and growls something about her being “a prize worth three longships and a goat.”

Romance is not dead. It’s just deceased.

Not that I’m complaining too loudly. Irritating as that spectral Romeo is, he’s still my best lead with legs. Transparent legs, but legs.

The spirits are lively. Both the alcoholic kind and the supernatural kind.

The women are all happily chattering away as if one of their own hadn’t been taken out by an opioid overdose two nights ago. Specifically, oxycodone.

It turns out the coroner confirmed that Astrid had a weak heart, and the lethal combination of the drug and her preexisting condition triggered a heart attack that killed her after she passed out. The ice sculpture was dramatic punctuation on an already finished sentence.

Murder, but make it theatrical.

Let’s just say that after last night, Ransom was ready to share every detail he knew about everything he’d ever heard of. And I made sure to reward him with a repeat performance this morning. That man would give me the nuclear codes if he had them, and honestly? I’m not above exploiting that weakness.

Bess, Nettie, and I claim three pink velvet chairs near the windows with a perfect view of both the ocean and the book club chaos.

“So,” Nettie says, already eyeing the mimosas with predatory interest. “Which fictional Viking would you marry, murder, or make out with?”

“That’s not how the game works,” Bess points out. “You’re supposed to be given three names to sort.”

“My game, my rules.”

“You’re exhausting.”

“You’re jealous of my creativity.”

“I’m concerned by your creativity. There’s a difference, and it usually involves paperwork.”

Twenty minutes into a book club social and Bess is already threatening documentation. We’re ahead of schedule.

I sweep the room, cataloging faces. Poppy is here, looking effortlessly elegant in a baby-blue sweater with a giant white bow below her neck and tight gray jeans that have a silver sheen when the light hits them, her honey-blonde bob perfect as always.

Freya is near the windows in black leather and dramatic eye makeup, standing by herself and staring out at the ocean.

Sienna hovers near the front of the room with her clipboard, her wild red hair every bit as frazzled as its owner, nervous but determined.

“Okay, but seriously,” Nettie continues, undeterred by Bess’ lack of enthusiasm. “If you had to choose between a Viking who’s emotionally unavailable but has abs you could wash laundry on, or a Viking who writes poetry but cries during sunsets⁠—”

“Neither,” Bess says flatly.

“You have to choose!”

“I choose death.”

“That’s not an option!”

“It absolutely is.”

Considering our current body count, I’d argue it’s the only option with a proven track record on this ship.

I grin. “I choose the one who’s good with an axe and also does the dishes.”