For a few beats, the unexpected tension between us persisted, and then Lurine sighed. “No, I’m sorry. You touched on a sensitive subject.” She paused. “What, exactly, do you think you know about me?”
I exchanged a panicked glance with Mom, who murmured, “Lurine . . . don’t put her on the spot.”
“It’s all right, Marja,” Lurine said to her. “I’m just curious.”
Of course I’d looked into Lurine’s origin myth. Who wouldn’t? The thing is, there were several conflicting versions, the most common being that Lamia was a beautiful Libyan queen and a mistress of Zeus, caught out by a jealous Hera, who killed her children and transformed her into a grief-crazed monster that hunted and devoured the children of others . . . okay, I guess I was a little dense on that antipathy toward the Olympians. And then there was a whole other tradition regarding lamiae in the plural, casting them as seductive, bloodsucking succubi. Nothing I’d read seemed to depict an accurate portrait of the next-door neighbor and ex-babysitter I’d grown up with, so I’d quit wondering about it years ago.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I mean, I know what the books say, but Mom and I always figured if you wanted us to know the truth, you’d tell us.”
“Touché,” Lurine said in a wry tone. “Let’s just say history is written by the victors, and when the Olympians overthrew the Titans, a lot of their children got screwed in the bargain.”
“So you were never a Libyan queen?” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Lurine said. “But never a mortal one. And I certainly never devoured any children,” she added.
“I never thought you did,” my mom offered.
Lurine gave her an affectionate glance. “And I didn’t think you would have trusted me with Daisy if you had.”
“Okay, so about Hades,” I said. “I take it you’re not a fan?”
She shrugged. “As a matter of general principle, no, but I don’t bear him a particular grudge, either.”
“Can you think of any reason Hades would have his minions nosing around Pemkowet?” I asked.
“Honestly, no.” Lurine looked genuinely perplexed. “He’s got his own demesne in Montreal.”
“Montreal?” Mom echoed. “Why on earth?”
“Oh, it was part of that whole eldritch diaspora of the twentieth century.” Lurine waved a dismissive hand at the passage of time. “Hades probably foresaw the Greek economy tanking in this century. He’s the Greek god of wealth as well as god of the underworld, you know. He must have seen an opportunity there.”
“Yeah, he’s spent the last fifty or sixty years behind the scenes building one of the world’s biggest underground cities in Montreal.” Underworld deities tended to be reclusive and keep a low profile, but I knew about Montreal because that’s where Cody’s late ex-girlfriend—and current sister-in-law—were from. With a pang, I wondered if the Fairfax clan would be importing more Québécois werewolves for the upcoming mixer. “From what I understand, it’s the poshest underworld in existence.”
“Maybe he’s just looking for an investment opportunity,” my mom suggested. “Property values are on the rise.”
“It’s possible,” Lurine agreed. “I mean, no offense, but Hades is a lot more worldly than Hel. That’s what comes of being a god of wealth.”
I wasn’t convinced. “Maybe.”
“Do you want me to read the cards for you, honey?” Mom asked. “We can do it right now.”
I glanced out the window, where the murky gray light was dimming. “I’d better not take the time. I need to report to Hel. Can I take you up on it later?”
She smiled. “Anytime.”
At the door, I gave her an extra-long hug. My mom, the innocent. While Daniel Dufreyne’s mother had been enjoying her compensation, mine had been waiting tables and sewing tail-slits into my onesies. I wished I could go back in time and protect her, even if it meant negating my own existence.
“Be careful out there, honey,” Mom cautioned me. “Down there in Little Niflheim, too. Okay?”
“I will,” I promised.
Thirteen
By the time I sent my request for an audience with Hel, it was well after sunset.
The process was a simple one. An iron casket I’d stashed on the top shelf of my closet held a copper bowl, a box of wooden kitchen matches, and six massive scales of pine bark from Yggdrasil II that were densely etched with runic script.
There had been seven, but I’d used one a couple of months ago. Since then, I’d come to consider Lee Hastings a friend, but the initial price of his aid in developing a database for me was, as he put it, a single glimpse of Hel.
For this presumption, Hel offered Lee a terrifying demonstration of her ability to stop his heart with a thought; and when I took the blame for allowing him to accompany me, she generously included me in the demonstration.
Not that that was on my mind or anything as I took my gear out to the park next door.
Okay, it was totally on my mind, even though I felt a hundred percent confident in making this request. Having a goddess demonstrate her ability to stop your heart will do that to you.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t begrudge Hel the demonstration. I deserved the responsibility I took for Lee’s transgression, and you don’t say something like that to a deity without being prepared to accept the repercussions. You just don’t. A deity will take you at your word. Hel could be cruel and Hel could be compassionate, but she was always fair.
Anyway.
Sitting cross-legged, with my shoulders hunched against the cold November wind, I placed the copper bowl before me, struck a match, and set fire to one of the six remaining scales, dropping it into the bowl. The dry, brittle bark burned briskly, crackling and snapping, flames devouring the runes. A thin trickle of fragrant piney smoke vanished into the darkening sky overhead.
I watched it go. When the scale of bark had burned to ashes in the bottom of the bowl, I retreated to my apartment to wait.
It took about fifteen minutes before I heard the familiar chugging rumble of Mikill’s dune buggy pulling into the alley beside my apartment. To be honest, I’d been hoping Mikill drove something else in the off-season, maybe a nice warm SUV with all-wheel drive and power windows, but I guess that was a vain hope. If there’s one thing a frost giant doesn’t mind, it’s a blast of cold wind blowing through his beard.
So I bundled up in a down coat that made me look like a miniature version of the Michelin Man, wrapped a wool scarf around my neck, and yanked an old Pemkowet High School knit ski hat over my head, making sure my ears were covered.
“Greetings, Daisy Johanssen!” Towering beside the dune buggy, Mikill raised his left hand in salutation to display the spear-headed rune that indicated he was one of Hel’s guards. “Your request for an audience has been granted.”
“Thanks, Mikill.” I flashed my own palm in response before dragging on a pair of warm gloves. “Hey, you look good. This weather agrees with you.”
It was true. In warmer weather, Mikill looked like an enormous ice sculpture in the process of melting. With the temperature hovering under freezing, he looked like a pristine ice sculpture.
A modest smile curved his blue lips, the rime of frost on his paler blue skin crackling. “It is kind of you to notice.”
“How could I not?” I climbed into the passenger seat, fishing around at my feet for the loaf of bread that was the hellhound Garm’s tribute before buckling my seat belt. “Okay, ready when you are.”
Mikill gunned the engine in reply.
I hunkered low in my seat as we sped down the highway, tucking my chin into my scarf. Mikill’s frozen hair and beard crackled in the wind of our passage, but at least they weren’t shedding a hail of sleet like they did in the summer.
We turned off the highway and passed the darkened grounds of the Pemkowet Dune Rides, now closed for the season, which meant their trails weren’t being maintained on a regular basis.
No matter how many time
s I’d made this journey, it never failed to be simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. I’d learned to take Mikill’s driving on faith, but my stomach still dropped every time we departed from the trails to plunge over the undeveloped dunes, the buggy bouncing, beams of its headlights jouncing wildly, cutting two narrow tunnels of light in the darkness.
And then there was Garm.
Unnerving as it was, there was something plaintive about the hellhound’s howl as it echoed across the dunes on a cold November night. I’d imagine it probably was pretty lonely being Garm, whose sole purpose was to patrol Hel’s territory aboveground and guard Yggdrasil II.
How and why that came to be, I couldn’t say, any more than I could tell you why Garm can be pacified by a loaf of bread. When I asked the first time, Mikill’s response was simply that that was the way it was, which is an annoyingly common response among the immortal members of the eldritch community. After his one and only visit to Little Niflheim, Lee theorized that it had something to do with bread being an ancient and universal symbol for life, and that it represented a symbolic sacrifice in order to pass over the liminal threshold between the realm of the living and the dead.
After I had Lee define the word liminal, which he admitted was more or less a fancier word for threshold, I had to agree that his theory sounded pretty good.
None of which was the slightest bit reassuring when Garm bounded out of the darkness, the size of two Volkswagen Beetles stacked atop each other, his eyes like twin saucers of yellow flame, his plaintive howl turning into a slavering snarl.
And this time, he had been lying in wait for us. He launched his attack just as we were cresting the rise of the immense sand basin from which Yggdrasil II emerged. Mikill had to veer sharply to the left to evade the hellhound. I let out a yell as the dune buggy teetered on two wheels, grabbing the roll bar with one hand and clutching the loaf of bread to my chest with the other.
The dune buggy thumped back to earth as Mikill threw his weight toward me and wrenched the steering wheel. Behind us, Garm let out a full-throated howl and reversed course. Mikill gunned the engine and sand sprayed under our oversized tires, the buggy sinking.
Uh-oh.
“Mikill!” I shouted in a panic. “We’re stuck!”
“Yes.” The frost giant reached across me with one long arm to unbuckle my seat belt. “Throw the offering, Daisy Johanssen. As hard and far as you can. Then be prepared to take the wheel.”
“What?” I stared at him.
“Now, Daisy Johanssen!” he said impatiently. “The hound is upon us!”
Doing my best Major League pitcher impression, I stood up in my seat and hurled the bread as far as I could into the night. Garm checked himself in mid-attack, the claws of his massive paws plowing furrows in the sand.
For a moment his immense head hung over me, yellow eyes flaming, strands of drool hanging from his jaws, his panting breath hot on my face.
“Good boy,” I whispered, my heart in my throat. “Go get it!” Garm’s ears pricked up and he bounded away after the bread.
Mikill vaulted out of the dune buggy. “Drive, Daisy Johanssen! I will push.”
I scrambled into the driver’s seat. Son of a bitch, wouldn’t you know it was a stick shift? I worked the clutch and the gas pedal frantically, yanking at the gearshift while Mikill set his shoulder to the rear of the buggy and heaved with all his might.
Given the grinding, thunking noises I was eliciting from the dune buggy in my desperate attempts to find a gear, any gear, if Mikill hadn’t been a frost giant, we probably never would have gotten unstuck. Then again, if Mikill hadn’t been a frost giant, I wouldn’t have been there in the first place. With a groan of protest, the dune buggy lurched free. Out in the distance, Garm was making nummy noises.
Mikill yanked open the driver’s-side door. “Take your seat and be quick about it!”
I scooted back to the passenger seat. “Sorry! I never learned to drive stick.”
Mikill glanced at me. “So I noticed.” Clearing his throat, he put the dune buggy in gear and uttered his usual warning. “Be sure to keep your limbs inside the vehicle during the descent.”
We careened down the face of the sand basin, the buggy’s headlights illuminating only a fraction of the vast trunk of Yggdrasil II. I held my breath as we approached the crack in the trunk that led to the interior. Even though I knew from experience that it was more than large enough to admit the buggy, it was always hard to wrap my head around the sheer scale of the thing.
Inside, I let out a sigh of relief as we spiraled down a ramp hewn into the interior of the trunk, Mikill reducing his speed. The temperature dropped as we descended, though not as markedly as it had on previous visits. Icy mists rose from the deep well-spring far below, beneath the immense canopy of roots that the Norns tended with loving care. I gave them a wave as we reached the bottom and sped past them, but they were busy with their buckets.
Other than the Norns’ tireless activity, all was quiet in Little Niflheim as we drove down the dark, mist-shrouded street to the old sawmill where Hel reigned on her throne.
I snatched off my hat, shoving it into my coat pocket, as Mikill escorted me into the sawmill. I don’t know for sure if wearing a hat in the presence of a deity is a breach of protocol, but wearing a knit ski hat with PEMKOWET HIGH SCHOOL emblazoned on it didn’t exactly seem like a gesture of respect.
As always, Hel was seated on her throne, a massive affair that the duegar, the dwarves of Little Niflheim, had wrought from old saw-blades. And as always, the vastness of her presence struck me like a physical blow, even before my eyes adjusted to the darkness well enough to see her as more than a dim, imposing figure attended by the equally dim and almost as imposing figures of several frost giants.
I knelt, bowing my head.
“Daisy Johanssen.” Hel’s voice tolled out of the darkness above me. “Rise, my young liaison.”
I stood.
In the faint illumination emanating from patches of glowing lichen creeping along the walls of the abandoned sawmill, Hel’s image resolved itself, the fair-skinned right half of her face grave and beautiful, the black and withered left side of her face skeletal and terrible. Both of her eyes were open. The right eye, the eye on the side of life, shone with a deep, luminous compassion, as ageless as a mother’s love. On the side of death, her left eye in its charred, hollow socket glowed a baleful pits-of-Mordor red.
Needless to say, it takes a certain effort of will to look Hel in the eyes, but I’d had practice.
“So, young Daisy.” The shriveled claw of her left hand stirred on the arm of her throne. “What compels you to seek an audience?”
Confidence notwithstanding, my heart skipped a beat, remembering the sensation of that hand closing around it with an iron grip the last time I’d requested an audience. “I have some information regarding a matter you asked me to look into, my lady,” I said.
Hel inclined her head. “You may report.”
I told her what I’d learned, omitting no details. When I’d finished, Hel gazed into the distance for a small eternity, her bifurcated face expressionless. That had a tendency to happen down here in Little Niflheim, where I’m pretty sure they have an entirely different relationship with time than we mortals do. I waited patiently, shivering in my down coat as the cold sank into my bones. I was glad I’d left my gloves on.
By the time Hel’s gaze finally returned from the unknowable distance, I was beginning to rethink the hat. She closed her right eye and uttered a single word, her ember eye glaring. “Hades.”
Behind her, the frost giants murmured.
“So it’s definitely him?” I asked her.
That evoked another long, fathomless gaze, at the end of which Hel opened her luminous right eye. “I do not know.” Her brow—or at least the fair right side of her forehead—furrowed in perplexity. “All that you have told me, including the name Elysian Fields, suggests the possibility. And yet I cannot surmise to what purpose the Gree
k Hades would wish to acquire property in Pemkowet.”
I was a little confused by her reference to the Greek Hades. “Umm . . . is there another Hades?”
Hel made a slight, dismissive gesture with her fair right hand. “It is a manner of speech, young one.”
Ever get the urge to crack inappropriate jokes in a tense situation? I bit my tongue against a perverse desire to suggest that maybe he should be called the Canadian Hades now. “Maybe it’s just an investment. Like my mom said, property values are on the rise.”
“Perhaps.” Hel didn’t sound convinced.
“Do you think—” My mouth had gone dry. I licked my lips and swallowed. “My lady, do you think he’s moving in on your territory?”
“No.” Another dismissive gesture. “Despite his wealth, not even the Greek Hades can maintain two demesnes. It is an impossibility. And the gods of yore no longer make war on one another.” She closed her right eye, sounding almost wistful as her ember eye continued to smolder. “We are too few and too diminished. Only those of us with ties to the deep places beneath the earth endure. Our age has all but passed, and our days of battle have ended.”
“A pity,” Mikill said in a low rumble. “It would have been a great battle.”
Hel closed her left eye and opened her right to cast a sympathetic gaze on him. “Once, my friend. No longer. We are not what we were.”
Mikill bowed his head in acknowledgment. “No, my lady. We are not.”
Ohh-kay, call me a bleeding-heart pacifist, but I can’t say I was sorry to hear that there wasn’t going to be an epic Greco-Norse Supernatural Smackdown taking place in my hometown. “What would you have me do, my lady?”
Her gaze shifted to me. “Wait. Watch. Report aught of significance that you learn. Continue to uphold my order. I trust that all is well?”
“Um . . . mostly.” I told Hel about the Night Hag, which brought on the baleful gaze of her left eye.
“I did not grant license for such a creature to prey in my demesne,” she said. “Certainly not one so careless of the fragile mortal mind. You have my leave to banish her in my name, Daisy Johanssen.”