Page 10 of The Last Viking

Jillian never phoned to chitchat. “What’s wrong, Jillie?”

“Does something have to be wrong for me to call you?” Her voice broke mid-sentence with a little catch.

“Oh, Jillie, what now?” Meredith sank down to the sofa, and then immediately stood up again when she realized she was sopping wet. She walked a few steps and leaned against the wall, raking her fingers through her hair distractedly, hooking the wet strands behind her ears. She heard the faint sounds of Jillie’s sobs. “Honey, what’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m in London, but I might have to be in Chicago tonight.”

“I thought you had to stay in London for another month, doing that museum exhibit on Jelling Age Jewelry.”

“I do. Mer, I need a favor of you. A big favor.”

Uh-oh! Jillie was thirty years old—five years younger than Meredith—and she was always looking for favors. Two failed marriages, a bankrupt boutique, a juvenile delinquent daughter, endless lovers. On and on Jillie’s troubles went. When would they ever end?

“George called me from Chicago,” Jillie explained. George Huntley was Jillie’s first estranged husband, a psychologist. They’d been married when they were both high school seniors, and Jillie was pregnant. “He said I have to come back immediately.”

“Why?” she asked, fearing the answer.

“Gourd was arrested for shoplifting, and the police are threatening to put her in a detention home.”

“Gourd?”

“That’s Thea’s name du jour. She’s going through a Mother Earth phase this week.”

Meredith giggled. How like her niece! Always trying to find herself. Hating her real name, Theodosia, almost from birth, she took on a different nom de plume every other week.

“It’s her third arrest in the past five months,” Jillie informed her in a rush.

“Oh, Jillie.” And poor Thea. The kid had been diagnosed with everything from ADD to hostile behavior syndrome in her twelve short years of living. Meredith would probably go off the deep end, too, if she had to live with her crazy sister. And it was no kind of life for a young girl to ping-pong back and forth between schizo parents who weren’t overjoyed to have her.

“George said he’s wiping his hands of the kid. Said I have to come back from London immediately and be a real mother to her. No more moving from city to city. I was wondering—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, you are not shoving your problems off on me again, Jillie. It’s about time you took responsibility for yourself.”

“But they’re going to take Thea away from me.” Jillie started to cry. Her racking sobs tore at Meredith’s heart. She pressed her forehead against the wall, knowing she was going to be a sucker…once again.

Geirolf was angry.

No woman teased him to the point of aching hardness, then stopped mid-coupling, without an explanation. Games like those belonged to immature youthlings, experimenting with first thrills. He had long passed his majority, and Merry-Death was certainly well beyond her first bloom.

He wanted answers, and he wanted them now.

After drying off briskly, he applied the ointment she’d supplied to his cuts, then shrugged into an old pair of her brother’s soft “sweating” braies she’d left for him, along with something called a “T-shert” with the words “JUST DO IT” emblazoned across the chest. He’d like to “do it” all right, and he would, too, once he’d wrung the wench’s feckless neck. In the end, he put the talisman belt on as well, since it seemed to help him understand Merry-Death’s peculiar language.

Finally, he stormed barefooted into the great room—something he would never do in his own keep where unmentionable items often hid in the rushes. Then, he stopped dead in his tracks. Merry-Death was talking into a little black box that she held up to her ear. A box? Well, why not? He’d heard of wizards who talked to trees, or animals, even the wind. Ah, hell, she really was a witch, then. Did he want to chance rutting with a witch?

Yea, he answered himself immediately, the evidence still lying like an anchor betwixt his thighs.

“Give me that,” he yelled and grabbed the box out of her hand, intending to throw it into the hearth. But it was making a peculiar noise, like a woman sobbing. Alarmed, he raised his eyes to Merry-Death, who was trying to retrieve the object. “What is that noise?” he demanded, holding the box above his head, out of her reach.

“My sister.”

“Your sister is a box?”

“No, my sister is not a box. Lord, maybe Jared really did find you in a jungle. That’s a telephone, and I was talking to my sister in London.”