Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One)

  Chapter 11

  I ran home and, in a daze that threatened to overcome everything I thought I was, crumpled. I didn't bother performing any invocations to restore my power. The details wouldn't work anymore. I held no trust in myself and that meant no more faith.

  Was it this easy to overcome the divinity within?

  I picked my way over the broken remains of the door strewn over my carpet. Leaves and sticks from outside had blown their way in during the day-and-a-half my door had been wide open. These details alone caught my attention. But they weren't enough to offer any form of solace. They were only integrated into the nightmare of confusion playing out in my waking mind.

  I stumbled to my bed and fell on it, curling into a ball, lying there on top of the covers. For all I knew, Loki stood in the corner making a success-fist and jumping up and down from the excitement of having his target come to him. That was just the thing: I couldn't know. I could no longer be sure of what I knew and what I didn’t. For the evidence of my senses was too closed, too specified, too untrustworthy.

  I didn't sleep. I didn't have my consciousness shift pleasantly to another happy, tree-filled dimension of leaves and sunlight. Instead I lay there in a ball. It was a human thing to do, but without direct access to my own divinity within, what was I now?

  Time passed. In chunks, in days, in thousands of years. I lay there. With my eyes tightly closed, I blocked out the external world. All I could wonder at, all that seized my mind, was the palpable tornado of doubt shaking me from within. It felt as though my mind was being capsized or broken asunder by giant and never-ending earthquakes.

  The snippets started. Snippets of... details. Leaves, sunlight, temples, stones, lives, time, movements, change. At the edge of my consciousness, a swirl of different images and experiences – none of which were mine, but all of which was a part of me.

  I saw the oak tree again. I saw myself lying on my back and staring up at the leaves above me. A dove cooed from somewhere nearby. The pleasant scene was almost reassuring, but it wasn't enough to calm my twisting, writhing soul.

  Then a hand gently reached out and touched my shoulder. It anchored me. It brought me back to Earth.

  It was tender, it was warm, and it was the kind of reassuring that could only be linked to surfacing from drowning to suck in a life-saving breath of air.

  It was my husband.

  “Off—“ I heard at the edge of my hearing. The word didn't come from beside me, but from the leaves above.

  Confused, I stared up at them. They moved this way and that in the gentle, pleasant breeze.

  “Offic—“ the noise came again.

  The scene around me started to shake. The hand, the hand that anchored me to the spot, the hand that had saved me from drowning, it began to drift away.

  I struggled to stay where I was, but with nothing to hold on to and nothing to hold on to me, I couldn't.

  The oak above shook so violently I feared it would fall and crush me to death.

  I lay there shaking with it.

  “Officina.” The leaves melted into the unmistakable face of Thor.

  For the second time in several hours, Thor was shaking me awake from a leaf-filled hallucination.

  Except this time was different.

  I woke screaming. I couldn't help it. As the dream – if that was what it was – faded, so too did my grip on reality.

  “No!” I squeezed my eyes tightly closed and tried to remain inside the dream.

  I couldn't. The more the memory of it faded from my mind, the more the moment of reassurance faded with it.

  I couldn't trust my senses, I remembered with a terrible shudder. The face before me, why, it could be Thor or it could be Loki pretending to be him. Without the ability to concentrate on the right details, how was I to know, how was I to pick out the inconsistencies, how was I to trust myself?

  I tried to shrink away from Thor or whoever he was.

  I kept my eyes tightly closed.

  “Details,” he boomed, then cupped a hand to my chin, pulling my head gently this way and that as he peered across my face.

  I put my hands up and clamped them over my eyes.

  “What are you doing, Details?” he asked, except his voice had a foreign tone. It shook on the high notes and bottomed at the end as if he'd run out of breath.

  “Just go away, go away,” I mumbled into my hands.

  Who knew who I was talking to?! Thor? Loki?

  He sighed. He let me go. He got up – I felt his presence shift though I wasn't about to open my eyes.

  I heard him leave the room.

  I heard his heavy footsteps until they picked their way over the scattered wood of my door and out onto the porch.

  Under my hands, which were still pressing into my face in a last ditch attempt to keep the unstable reality around me outside, I blinked.

  “Is this far enough?” he called from outside, still presumably on my porch.

  I kept blinking.

  “I’m not Loki,” he said in a deep voice. “And you should not have left the Ambrosia.”

  I didn't remove my hands from my face. I couldn't trust my ears. The details of the words I was picking up... I could be mistaken.

  “You are also...” he trailed off.

  I was also what? I held onto his words as if they were an anchor somehow keeping me in place though a storm of uncertainty was threatening to sweep me off my feet.

  “Not normal,” he finished with a heavy sigh that shook my bedroom window.

  Not normal? Hardly an illuminating thing to say, a voice of reason said from somewhere inside the storm of my mind.

  “You are not...” he trailed off once more.

  I waited on his words.

  He didn't speak again.

  What was he trying to tell me? I was not what?

  I pulled my hands from my face.

  There was a room around me: my room. There were bullet holes in the far wall and plaster was strewn all over the carpet.

  “Details, we cannot do this all night,” Thor said from outside my bedroom window.

  Rubbing my eyes and still shaking like a leaf in a storm, I turned to the window behind my bed. It was a large window, and though the curtains were drawn, they were thin enough that I could see the giant shadow of Thor behind them, his form illuminated by the street lamp outside my house.

  I watched him.

  Would Loki bother going outside when I asked him to get out? Would he bother mooching around on my porch while I had a breakdown – respecting my need for space and yet not wanting to outright leave?

  Wouldn't Loki cackle, pull a gun, and take me off to strap me to a wall somewhere?

  The tiny voice of reason that had been small moments before began to grow. I pushed to the corner of the bed as I kept a wary eye on Thor.

  “I didn't expect this,” his voice lowered as if he were talking to himself.

  He didn't expect what?

  The questions pressed at my mind, and the more they gathered, the more they pushed the confusion out. A question indicated ignorance of the unknown, and it was the threat of the unknown that had pushed me into this frantic, self-doubting frenzy. Somehow the questions were like rungs on a ladder, while the confusion blew me off my feet and twisted me inside out.

  The only problem with ladders was enterprising sea monsters, but hopefully there weren't any hiding under my bed.

  I held onto the questions, cupping them in my hands (if you could imagine it) and keeping them safe from the doubt and confusion.

  I stood up.

  “I’m sorry,” Thor said quietly. His voice no longer shook the window, walls, or floor. I had to strain my hearing to pick it up. “I didn’t realize....”

  He didn't realize what? What was he trying not to say here? He didn't realize that going to the Ambrosia was a dumb plan? He didn't realize that his maybe-wife from another identity would be there to hunt me down and try to scratch my eyes out? He didn't realize that taking the time
to have a domestic was not something he should prioritize over taking the time to save the universe (and me)?

  I walked over to the window warily. I watched his shadow. I could see his shoulders heave up and down. He was breathing heavily (though gods don't breathe).

  “Details, there is much to find out, and you can't help me if you are lying on your bed,” his tone returned to normal.

  I stared at that shadow. It was the first time I’d looked not at Thor, but at the effect he cast on the objects around him. The shadow was solid, reassuring, real.

  I needed real right now.

  I pressed my teeth hard into my bottom lip. I felt... different. The hysteria was passing and the doubt was leaving with it.

  “Come on, Details, don't make me come in there and knock you out with Mjollnir,” he said through a gruff laugh.

  Thor. Yep, it was Thor.

  “You do that,” I said, voice still unsure but growing in power with every breath, “And I'll be sure they revoke your current visa.”

  “Details,” Thor boomed with a definite note of happiness that shook my window something chronic.

  I crossed my arms and stared at his silhouette. It disappeared.

  I heard his thundering steps as he rounded my porch, went through my broken door, and popped his golden-bearded face into my bedroom.

  I crossed my arms and took a shaky breath (though I hoped the fact I was still shaking was hidden by the half-dark of the room).

  “You should not have left the Ambrosia,” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes and glared at him. “You shouldn't have gone to the Ambrosia in the first place—“

  He put up a hand. “I was gathering information.”

  “You were gathering empty beer mugs,” I shot back.

  He took a sharp laugh, his mouth kinking up to the side in a familiar move. “You, of all people, must appreciate that the details of a situation are not always what they seem.”

  I clutched my hands tighter around my middle. The statement brought up the familiar lick of uncertainty I'd been grappling with over the last couple of hours.

  Thor watched me carefully. If I hadn’t known better, he'd said that on purpose to see how I would react. “Details,” he said after a deep breath, “I’m afraid this is more serious than I originally thought.”

  Despite everything, I gave an abrupt snicker. “Really? You mean you are going to take the fact I'm being hunted down by gods seriously now? How nice of you.”

  Thor's face didn't turn to stone at my snide comment, and he didn't reach behind him, rip off a chunk of wall, and throw it right at my head. No... he went silent. “Who are you, Details?”

  I let out a sharp, involuntary breath. What a stupid question, I thought bitterly. Yet the thought shook through me. I swallowed. “You know the answer, don't be stupid—“

  “I know more than you allow for,” his tone had a note of warning, but not a threatening one. This was his attempt to point out to me that, although he acted like a total and complete jerk/bully/nong most of the time, he was still privy to the kinds of divine secrets small-time goddesses would never learn. He'd done the same thing in God Hospital when he'd stopped time to stare at me.

  While academically I appreciated he must know – and I hated to admit it – more than me, it was a fact I was usually willing to bury.

  I sucked my lips in.

  He pointed right at me. “I do not know who you are,” he said.

  I locked my jaw together, not wanting and not capable of moving it.

  “There is much to this situation that is strange.” He grabbed a hand to his chin and appeared to think.

  My mind caught up to my body. “I'm Officina,” I said with a punctuated breath of air.

  He looked down at me immediately, eyes blazing. “Who is that? Where do you come from? What pantheon? When did you arise? What is your mythology?”

  I shook my head. No. I said to myself firmly. I didn't want to begin doubting myself again. The incident with the oak in the middle of the street... it had almost torn me in two. It had made me doubt the evidentiary base of everything I believed in –everything I was.

  No. No. No.

  “Officina, goddess of details, what is your legend?” Thor asked, a distinct note of authority in his voice. He was talking to me, not as a petulant-bully god, but as the combined champion of various divine pantheons across the globe.

  “Stop this, Thor,” I wanted to say with finality, except my voice shook so much it sounded far more like a plea. “You know who I am, so stop this. I'm a goddess of details, I work at the Integration Office, I live in a cottage.” I shrugged my shoulders tightly, trying to indicate the godly shrine around me.

  “But what is your legend?” He kept staring down at me, and the more he stared, the more he looked statuesque. The less and less he looked like the golden-bearded, hammer-carrying nong who would smash a sea monster only to let one of its wily tentacles kidnap a goddess by his feet. The less he looked like the kind of god who would leave you in your sitting room while his once-best-fried blew up your front door. Or the kind of god who would ignore a plea from his father to save the universe and instead indulge in some ale-sloshing party times.

  The less and less he looked like the Thor I thought I knew, the more he looked like the Thor of legend – the Champion of the Nordic Gods.

  I immediately dropped my gaze. It was a defense mechanism, I realized. If I wasn't looking at him, I wouldn't be able to pick up the change in his visage – the way his stature and stare became innately powerful. Seeing that change made me doubt – and it was a terrible, gut-wrenching doubt. It made me suspect that Thor had always been that way, but I’d chosen to see him as the godly equivalent of a teenage boy, supporting my conclusion by concentrating on all the wrong details.

  I backed off.

  “I will not harm you, Details, but tell me who you are,” his voice had a growing force.

  I glanced at him then jerked my gaze away. In that quick move, I saw the same look I’d seen in the Ambrosia when he’d shaken me from my first leaf-filled hallucination. It was a look of searching. It was a look of loss. It also had a pressed, determined, frightening edge to it.

  It was as though Thor was looking for something – something important enough to make the usually-contained god show a tender, uncontrolled emotion at odds with his boisterous and macho personality. As though he thought that whatever he looked for had something to do with me.

  He must believe I stood between him and his goal.

  Instinctively, I shifted to the side.

  It didn't change the way he stared at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders again, but it was a tight move. “I don't have a legend like you,” I pointed out in a single breath. “I'm not a big-time god, Thor,” I tried to reason with him.

  He stood there, glaring down at me.

  “Look,” I said desperately, “I don't know what you want me to tell you! I'm the goddess of details. I've always been the goddess of details—“

  “Always?” he cut in sharply. “Always?”

  That question sent a shiver down my spine – a cold and quick move that felt like a blizzard slicing down my back.

  I shrugged again.

  It was the best answer I could give.

  Unfortunately it wasn't good enough for Thor.

  “When did you arise?” he snapped. That look in his eye was only growing.

  I unwrapped my arms and put my hands out in a peaceful move. “Look, I have a file, or a legend, if you want to put it like that.” I swallowed. “It's... it's not detailed,” I said the word, and as I said it, it gave me a terribly odd feeling. It was true. My origin story paradoxically wasn't that fact-filled. For the goddess of details, I had a murky past.

  I... just arose one day. For centuries I wandered around in a haze. It wasn't until mankind learned to appreciate the necessity of details in reasoning that I began to form the personality (and control) I had now.

  Thor was hardly goi
ng to like that peculiar origin story in his current mood.

  He pointed a finger right at me. “Tell me.”

  “I don't,” I sniffed, “I don't have a story like you. I'm a small-time goddess. I just appeared... or something.”

  “You appeared,” he repeated my exact tone with an incredulous look crumpling his brow. “Goddesses do not simply appear.”

  “Look,” I batted a hand at him and backed off again, “I did. I appeared. I can't remember where I came from. For centuries, for eons, I wandered around... looking at stuff. Okay? I was an airhead. I didn't do anything. I wasn't involved in any heroic battles. I didn't go on any legend-worthy adventures. I... I don't know, I just lay on a hill and smelt daisies and watched the clouds or something.” I spread my fingers wide and stiff and hoped like hell Thor wasn't going to respond to my story by bringing down the house with a lightning bolt.

  He looked furious. Then his expression softened a tad. He raised an eyebrow. “That is not an origin story, Details. Gods do not appear and wander around aimlessly for years. They are born in battles, out of stars, in the fiery pits of mans’ imagination. A god must unfurl from a moment of concentrated, powerful belief. The belief must be enough to sustain, personify, and embody them. What you have described couldn’t sustain a divinity.”

  Great. Just great. I didn't only have reason to doubt my senses and my sanity, but also my past, too.

  I clamped a hand on my stomach as a whirlpool of bitterness took hold. I looked up at him. “Why are you doing this?” I gave a sharp breath. “Why are you coming in here acting like this?” I flapped my arms around, frustrated but unable to find the exact words to express myself. I couldn't put into a sentence how much I hated Thor right now. He’d come to anchor me, to save me, only to push me right back to the ledge I'd been standing on, then to push me off altogether. He'd given me hope, only to take it away. He'd unloaded my burden only to hurl more onto my shoulders. “Why are you doing this?” I asked far more sharply and bitterly.

  Thor closed the gap between us in an instant. A snap didn't do justice to it – he came upon me faster than lightning.

  His face was right next to mine.

  He didn't say anything, just stared down at me with his eyes narrowed.

  I hit him. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I balled up a hand and struck him right on the chest. It was a pathetic move, and it wasn't one that was going to achieve anything. The tiny fist of a tiny goddess against the full-body armor of a mythic god.

  But sometimes the smallest of moves have the largest of effects.

  Thor softened his expression. “I’m not doing this, Details – you are.”

  I balled up a hand and hit him on the chest again.

  How could I be doing this? How could this be my fault? Thor was... ahhh!

  I hit him again.

  He was useless. He was a nightmare. He was insufferable.

  “You are the goddess of facts, and yet you do not know the facts of your own beginning. How can this be?” he asked, voice close enough to boom right through me like a clap of thunder.

  “I don't know all facts,” I said through clenched teeth. “I don't know every detail – it doesn't work like that.”

  “Then how does it work?”

  I had no idea, so I hit him again. With every pathetic, desperate lashing-out, my determination was cut in half. It withered up and curled in on itself until my hand limply hung there, resting against the armor I couldn't hope to dent let alone break.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I'm Officina, goddess of details and facts,” I said weakly.

  The truth was, with every passing second, I knew less and less about who I was.

  Thor grabbed a hand around my limply balled-up fist as it rested on his armor.

  “There are more details in this universe than you can imagine, and yet you must rule them all. How?”

  What? The frustration surged in me again. The question hung in the air. I was the goddess of details – all of them – and yet I had the apparent power of the God of Knit Wear. I could see where Thor was going here, but I didn't like it.

  “Everything, all – there are details to be had in each and every thing. There are facts innumerable and infinite that can be drawn from every single process. You embody them, and yet you hardly have the power to dent my armor. How?” his voice hit that shaky note again.

  The note was unsettling, unsettling in that way that shook parts of me I hardly knew existed.

  He was still holding onto my hand, and though I didn’t want to accept the feeling, it held me in place.

  “I don't know,” I admitted. “It doesn't work like that,” I tried to protest once more. It was a last ditch effort to hold onto the me I had always thought I was.

  “I'm afraid it does,” he replied.

  Oh god, I thought appropriately. It was the most fitting, logical, rational, wisest thought I’d entertained all day. I didn’t know what god I was. All I could do was generalize to whatever divinity would hear me.

  My shoulders deflated, and in a snap, I lost all my fight.

  Thor didn't let go of my hand, demand to know who I was, and smash some of my stuff to give me an incentive to tell him.

  He didn't let go of my hand at all. As he held it, he took a heavy and noticeable sigh. As his chest moved up and down, so too did the hand that held mine. I was pulled along by every detail of the move.

  “Right,” he said, letting go of me and taking an almighty and rattling sniff. “We need to get to work. No more wasting my time, Details.”

  Snap: he was back to being the Thor I knew and mostly hated.

  He looked over at me and he looked me up and down. “You are filthy.” He reached a hand forward and grabbed a tendril of my sand-caked hair.

  I shuddered at the unexpected move.

  Thor chuckled. “You look like a swine that has been rolling in mud. You are not the goddess of muck, Details.” He let the tendril of hair go. “Not that we know of.” He shrugged his shoulders and enjoyed another laugh.

  Snap: he could change personalities just like that. One minute he stared me down, questioning the life out of me as he searched for something dear to his soul. The next, he was cracking unfunny jokes only he could laugh at.

  If Thor wasn't a god who – for divine cross-pantheon purposes – had a legitimately split identity, I would start to suspect the guy had a personality disorder.

  I shook my head and tried to ignore the bare warmth that remained on my skin from where Thor's fingers had brushed across my cheek.

  He pointed right at me. “Are you going to bathe? Are you going to change out of your ridiculous,” he snorted as he looked at my outfit, “Inappropriate clothes? I cannot promise you will not get dirty again – you most certainly will. But please have the dignity to do it in a toga.” He clamped his hands on his hips and posed heroically, though his last statement had been a pitch for a dress that both men and women could enjoy – not something that required the spruiking of a Nordic god in body armor.

  I ran a hand through my hair (or tried to) and shook my head.

  “We must investigate this, Details,” Thor said with his hands still on his hips, then he pointed my way. “We must investigate you.” There was a wicked flicker in his eyes as he finished his words.

  I ignored it and tried to look dignified while standing around in my smashed-up bedroom in a dirty trench coat and dirtier PJ’s. “What's the big plan, then?” I flicked my hair over my shoulder. “Going back to the Ambrosia so you can have at least a hundred beers between each thought?” I crossed my arms, not wanting to let him dominate this conversation through his ability to switch between caring and being a complete nong. “You know, just so you don't tax yourself.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You attempt sarcasm, Details. Where are your priorities? I would have thought that you – of all people – would enjoy the prospect of getting clean.”

  I snorted, not wanting to admit how tantalizing that p
rospect was.

  “The plan, Details – which I will continue to call you until we can replace it with a more appropriate name like Paperwork, or Goddess of Getting Kidnapped by Sea Monsters while Climbing Ladders.” His eyes sparkled.

  I looked at him with my lip twitching.

  “The plan, Details, is to head to the Immigration Office. There, you will open up a file on yourself.” He kept posing, trying to underline with his tight posture how tight he thought the plan was.

  “Right.... I don't see how that will help. I have seen my own file, and I remember all the details—“

  “I have access that you do not. Also, in your current state,” he nodded towards me, “I do not trust you to be able to pick out the important facts.”

  What a jerk. What a total jerk. He'd gone from holding my hand to happily shrugging and admitting I was mad and untrustworthy.

  “Plus,” he let his voice echo and a mischievous grin spread across his face, “While you are in your office, Details. You can do us both a favor.”

  I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. A favor for Thor? What would that entail?

  “Because of the seriousness of this situation, it is clear to me that I cannot allow myself to be hindered.” He took another rattling manly sniff.

  Hindered? What? He wanted me to lock myself in a cupboard so I wasn't a liability to him while he ran around Earth smashing up the goons and bad guys? “What do you want, Thor?” I asked when I realized he was too busy enjoying the moment to fill me in on the plan.

  “You are going to grant full working visas to every single one of my divine identities,” he said with finality, and boy did he mean it.

  My mouth froze in place, then I shook my head firmly. “Not on your life, sunshine,” I snapped. Grant full working visas to every single one of Thor's identities, all at the same time? Dear lord (literally), that would be a nightmare. That would mean Thor would have access to every single power, visage, personality-trait, and belonging of Zeus and Jupiter at the same time. It would be a total, and destructive, nightmare.

  Thor ignored me. “While you are there, you can remove all restrictions on Jupiter and Zeus. I will need the ability to travel freely everywhere.”

  I snorted. This god was a fool.

  A part of me realized that while I ran through the reasons why I wasn't going to grant Thor what he wanted, I was more of myself than I’d been in days. The prospect of getting back to work was reminding me of who I was.

  “Also,” he brought up a hand and appeared to tick off his wish list on his massive fingers, “I would like to ensure that no retaliatory actions can be taken against me for...” he stuck out his bottom lip, “Any indiscretions that might occur on my behalf.”

  I snorted again. The prospect of denying Thor's idiotic application was bringing me back to myself in such a comforting, reassuring way. Clearly all I needed was a great big pile of ridiculous visa applications and a rejection stamp. I lifted a hand to push up the glasses I wasn't wearing. “There is no way—“

  “There is every way,” he let his voice bottom out in that same tone he always used to threaten me when it came around to his visa assessments. “You will make it happen.”

  “Let me get this right,” I crossed my arms and stared up at him, “You think I’m not only going to give you three visas, but I’m going to ensure you don't get in any trouble if you break any rules. Wow.” I made the word pop with my lips. “How about no.”

  “Tie my hands, Details, and you might as well offer yourself up to your kidnappers. I’m doing this to protect you.” He kept his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised.

  Sure, he was doing it for me. If doing it for me meant he was doing it for the prospect of having as many drunken brawls as he could with impunity.

  “If you want to find out what is happening to you, how to stop it, and who you are,” he added the last one in a quieter, more thoughtful tone, “You will need my help. If you handicap me,” he shrugged his shoulders and trailed off.

  He was, presumably, attempting to tell me that if I handicapped him by refusing to wave the rules, he'd be as useless as a soggy old rag when it came to battling gods. Which was a total lie. Up until now, he'd been fine at saving me – if a little slow. Being Thor, and having Mjollnir or course, was enough. He didn't need the ability to wear yacht pants, carry around gold-plated guns, and be generally and hairily above the law too.

  “You'll do fine as you are,” I clicked my tongue. “Plus—“ I began.

  He put up a hand and shook his head. “Please don't pretend to think in your current state, Details. I saw you when I came in – you are breaking apart,” he said the words without a hint of sympathy. “You are beginning to doubt who you are. You are having visions. Flashes of things you do not understand.” He still had an eyebrow raised as he stared down at me. “In your current state,” he thumped a hand on his breast plate, “Let me make the decisions. Your last decision saw you curling up on your bed like a...” he paused to search for a word.

  What was he going to say? Like a girl? Like a frightened child? Like something abjectly foolish and pathetic?

  “Like someone who,” he clicked his fingers, “Cannot win.”

  “You mean a loser,” I supplied with a stony look.

  “Yes.” He clicked his fingers again, excited that I knew what he was talking about. “Somebody who cannot know victory through their own general weakness and inability to try.”

  My nostrils flared. He was such a bloody, freaking, god-sized turd.

  “Details, we will go to the Integration Office, and you will grant me all that I ask. In exchange, I commit to keeping you safe,” he gave a bow, “And finding out who you are.” He flicked his gaze up at me.

  I gave a small shudder but tried to ignore it immediately.

  “For now you will bathe.” He flopped a hand at me. “You smell of an unsavory mix of sand, seawater, and general filth. You offend my nostrils. You also look unappealing.” He noted with a genuine nod of his head.

  Words couldn't express how much I hated this guy.

  “Go, bathe. You will be safe in your own temple,” he said the last word with a look that suggested he'd swallowed something nasty. “As long as I’m here, no vagabonds, gods, or evil creatures will assail your walls.”

  I glanced over at my bullet-hole-covered walls. They were already assailed.

  But I realized that a bath was what I could use right now. A quick one – enough to get this awful gritty sand from my hair. Thor, though I hated to admit it, was right: I would be safe as long as he sat on my porch with Mjollnir, sneering at potential attackers/ women walking their dogs late at night.

  I still wasn't going to grant his visa applications, though.

  “Go bathe.” He flopped a hand at me again, shooing me out of the room. “Unless you need a hand, that is?” he asked with a curled-lip smile.

  I sneered at him and walked from the room. “You want to do something handy, Thor? Fix my bloody door.”

  I went to have a bath.