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“Well, you won’t have to be now,” I said, smacking on a new bandage. And this one, I decided grimly, wasn’t going anywhere.
Pritkin watched me work for a moment in silence. “That’s adhesive tape,” he finally said.
“Mm-hm.”
“That’s . . . rather a lot, wouldn’t you say?”
“Never hurts to be sure.”
“But it’s going to hurt like the devil when I have to take it off.”
“Is it?” I looked up innocently and slapped on another piece.
His eyes narrowed, but before he could say anything, Jonas poked his head out the door. “Are you two done, then?” he asked politely.
“Yes,” I told him, cleaning up the cleaning supplies. “Pritkin is about to tell us what happens when you follow a bunch of panicked Fey into an unknown forest all by yourself.”
“Oh yes?” Jonas said curiously.
Pritkin closed his eyes and leaned his head back, looking martyred. “I ended up swinging from a rope, upside down, while some of the village men poked at me with poisoned spears,” he said dully. “I managed to convince them that I was not one of their enemies, but not before—”
“They gutted you like a pig?” I asked brightly.
He flushed and cracked an eye at me, but whatever brilliant riposte he’d managed to come up with was ruined by Jonas. “Who were these enemies?”
“The Alorestri,” Pritkin said, sitting up and wincing.
“The Green Fey,” Jonas translated for me. “They share a border with the Dark and have had an on-again, offagain struggle over land, resources, hunting rights”—he shrugged—“what have you, for millennia.”
“And currently it appears to be on again,” Pritkin said. “According to the villagers, the Green Fey broke through the border defenses a few days ago and overwhelmed the local Dark Fey forces. They were fleeing ahead of a contingent of Green Fey said to be coming their way.”
“There was an invasion?” I asked, my stomach sinking. I had a friend at the Dark Fey court, and I liked the idea of him remaining in one piece.
Pritkin noticed my expression. “This sort of thing isn’t unusual,” he told me. “The Dark Fey army will regroup and likely battle them back within a few weeks. But in the meantime, there is no way to reach my contacts, or even to know for certain where they are. And without them, there is no way to know what attacked you.”
Frankly, I couldn’t have cared less. I was just grateful to have him back, beat up and bloody or not. “It may not even be Fey,” I reminded him. “Billy’s decided it’s Apollo’s ghost come back to haunt me!”
“Oh no,” Jonas said, apparently serious. “I shouldn’t think so.”
“Well, yeah. I wasn’t actually suggesting—”
“This world leeched the gods’ power; it did not feed them. That is why all the old legends speak of them visiting Earth but living elsewhere: Asgard, Vanaheim, Olympus. And if they could not feed while alive, they certainly could not do so dead.”
“Yeah, well. Like I said—”
“No, I believe the gods we are dealing with are still quite alive.”
“Jonas, please!” I looked at him impatiently. “This isn’t freaking Ragnarok, all right?”
“It would be nice to think so,” he said mildly, the same way someone might say that it would be nice if it wasn’t raining, while standing in the middle of a deluge.
I was about to reply, but the kettle started whistling its head off, so we trooped back into the kitchen. Jonas made tea, and I waited for some kind of an explanation. A coherent one, preferably, but I wasn’t hopeful. Which was why it was a shock when a suddenly brisk Jonas sat down at the table.
“Three children of Loki; three gods to be overcome,” he told us. “Apollo has already been dealt with, leaving two. The difficulty was in knowing which god would be opposing us next, but I believe your tarot may have shown us that, Cassie. It is an invaluable aid, but it leaves us with a daunting challenge.”
“Jonas—”
He patted my hand. “Almost done. Now, I believe that the second child of Loki, Hel, may be another name for the Greek goddess Artemis. Not only was she a virgin goddess with the moon as her symbol, but she was also associated with hunting. Not personally, in her case, but in the form of the Moon Dogs she loaned Odin fo
