Page 27

I left him there on the sidewalk with my heart pounding and my ears on fire. Don’t look back, I thought. Don’t look back.

That’s all it was. He was only worried, just being a caring colleague. Though I oddly didn’t feel the same sensation of dread out on my own, something I couldn’t say when Paralumen was still on the prowl. It was strange, knowing that Loki could probably obliterate me with a single thought, but also knowing that Morrow and I were fish that were far too small for him to fry.

Loki was much more concerned with doing — well, whatever it was that he had planned for the mundanes. Otherwise he would have disposed of us in the lounge right then and there. He froze time for his big dramatic reveal and to deliver his try-hard villainous monologue. The man was a menace.

I let my feet take me through the city, my mind on autopilot, only conscious enough to avoid passing Xavi’s newsstand on Luces and Fifth. I meant it when I said I needed to be alone. I wanted to think that I was exiting Nomicon Valley’s business district, except the city didn’t really have a centralized business district. The corpos were scattered throughout the city, no real pattern for their locations to those uninitiated in the ways of the arcane underground.

On the outskirts of the city, Necropolux HQ loomed with its gargoyles and parapets, like a gothic transplant from another time and place. Closer to the center, the SeraphiCorp building shone even at night in stark white and sparkling glass, the ivory tower from which the celestials gazed smugly down upon the city.

But there was a method to the madness. These locations had been carefully researched, of course, following the ley lines of the earth, built on viciously contested plots of land where the channels met, every HQ on another nexus.

All except one. Happy, Inc. sprouted out of the commercial district, surrounded by its many franchises, like a monument in the heart of its very own theme park.

“Fucking trickster gods,” I muttered. I stopped myself from following that statement with, “Fucking gods,” perhaps out of the ever-present risk of attracting yet another god’s attention.

Or maybe I stopped myself as a form of grudging respect. Why bother offending any gods — or goddesses — who happened to be within my periphery? Specifically those who weren’t out there charming and endangering the citizens of Nomicon Valley.

I exhaled in resignation, watching as my breath billowed into curls of mist. Maybe I was ready. Maybe I was curious. How bad could one little conversation be? I grudgingly shoved my hands in my pockets as I passed by a darkened store. Maybe they were selling books, maybe board games. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t really looking at the merchandise, only my own reflection.

I rolled my eyes, watching as my reflection copied my actions, shrugging his shoulders and stamping his feet to keep warm. Yikes. I really did look like an indignant little shit. I sighed. It was time for this indignant little shit to reach out to the one entity who sort of liked him and wasn’t likely to eviscerate him for saying the wrong thing.

“So. Um. Hi.”

My breath misted against the glass. Nothing. I felt like a complete idiot. If they had security cameras here, the staff would get a treat in the morning, more so if Freyja actually showed up and replied. Just me standing there talking to a dark window display.

“Why, hello, there,” Freyja said, her voice arriving before her image did, wavering in the window and replacing my reflection. “It looks like someone’s had a change of heart. And a noticeable change of attitude, too.”

“Okay, so I was being a dick. Morrow says so, too. You’re not trying to antagonize us or anything. I’m just — I don’t know. It feels rude to tell you that I have a hard time trusting entities, but that’s exactly how I feel.”

Gravity released its hold on the Freyja phantasm. She floated up in the glass, grinning as if to taunt me with her ability to fly.

“I can’t say I blame you,” she said. “The gods of the earth don’t exactly have a good track record about being forthright with humans. In fact, I’d say that many of us can be quite deceptive when it comes to getting what we want.”

I grimaced. “So you’ve heard. About the other god, I mean.”

Her face took on a more serious expression as her feet touched back down on solid ground. “Hmm? What other god? I was speaking in generalities.”

“He revealed himself to me and Morrow tonight. Loki. Does the name ring a bell?”

I pursed my lips, cringing at my sarcastic tone even as I said it. She frowned, pressing her face up against the glass like a fish in an aquarium.

“That scoundrel. Has he truly come to the city? And of course I know him! What kind of a question is that?”

I froze. How the hell had it not occurred to me that Loki and Freyja hailed from the same pantheon? I raked my fingers through my hair, stepping away from the glass, frazzled by the evening’s revelations all over again.

“Now you wait” — Freyja said, flitting to another window — “just a minute” — again, past another window — “young man.”

I’d opened myself up to this nonsense, and there was no way I was going to shake her now. Like a stray kitten nipping at my heels. Goddess distribution system, remember?

I startled when the next shop window I passed lit up with a blinding glare of light. Freyja’s face stared out at me from a bank of television screens, each of her images in a slightly different state of irritation.

“I know what you’re thinking, Jericho, and you can just stop. I am not working with that awful ruffian in any way. Why, the very thought of it sickens me. The man is a rogue. A jokester. A liability.”

“Okay. Sorry. I panicked. It’s been a long day. And you’re right. Charming others doesn’t seem like your style. That’s what he’s been doing to the people of the city. You’re more the type who just blasts your enemies into oblivion, like that wannabe goddess you destroyed.”

It was a test, and a silly one, at that, but I wanted to know what Freyja knew. Not much, as it turned out.

“Who?” she asked with an oblivious blink.