“Who pulled the trigger, Morrigan?” I asked, watching the two Norse gods and keeping my back to the wall.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I foresaw the attempt on your life, but the assassin is shielded from my sight. Tracking him or her down should provide us some after-dinner entertainment and will aid digestion.” She calmly rose from the table and tossed her napkin down. “Shall we begin?”
“No, wait,” I said. “How do we know they didn’t order it?” I gestured at Odin and Frigg. Odin was looking up at the ceiling rather than at me or anything else. It was an odd moment for art appreciation. Frigg spoke instead.
“Of course we didn’t order it. Odin is sending the ravens now to follow the shooter.”
“Well, then, Odin’s using magic, isn’t he? I’d like to use some to heal this poor guy, if it’s all right with you.” Our waiter and the maître d’ had crouched down next to the sommelier, who was telling his colleagues that, if he died, he wanted all his worldly goods to be given to his hamster. I didn’t think it would hold up; he wasn’t of sound body and might not be of sound mind anymore.
“No, let me do it,” Frigg said, coming around to help the sommelier. Her necklace flashed in the light of the chandelier. “He’s one of ours. You three go find the assassin.”
“Go find someone who wants to kill me accompanied by a god who wants to kill me?” I said.
Odin tore his gaze from the ceiling and spoke. “I don’t want to kill you; I want you to die horribly in Ragnarok. But not until you tip the scales in our favor.”
“He will,” the Morrigan said, but it was unclear whether she was speaking of tipping the scales or dying horribly. Or both.
Frigg knelt down next to the sommelier and laid a hand on his forehead. His eyes rolled up, locked on her face, and he quieted. The maître d’ rose to attend to other matters; there were customers to calm and emergency services to greet. Our waiter remained next to the sommelier.
Even if Frigg and Odin weren’t directly behind taking a shot at me, it had to be someone they knew. I sincerely doubted Odin had been careless enough to reveal this meeting in someone’s hearing, but if it hadn’t been a careless word, then the security leak had to have come from some other source. Before the Morrigan could stop me, I triggered the charm on my necklace that would cast magical sight. Through that filter, I saw the white nimbus of magic around Odin’s gray head. Two strong ropes of it wound away and through the ceiling, which I assumed were his connections to Hugin and Munin. The rest of his body looked completely human; he was doing nothing but communicating with his ravens.
Frigg was another matter. Her entire body was suffused with a soft white glow, though at the moment it was concentrated in two places: her right hand, placed on the sommelier’s forehead, and around the necklace she wore. Her hand was clearly serving as a chill pill for the panicked shooting victim, but what was that necklace doing?
I moved away from my position on the wall, figuring it was safe now and the Morrigan would slap me out of the way of any further shots. As I crouched down next to Frigg and the sommelier, a hint of annoyance crept into her tone.
“I told you I would take care of him,” she said.
“You’re taking excellent care of him,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t dream of attempting to do any better. I’m curious about your necklace.”
Her left hand drifted up to touch it. “My necklace?”
“Yes. What purpose does it serve?”
Exasperated now, she ground out, “It is personal adornment. Is this some sort of trick or an attempt to make me feel stupid?”
“Forgive me, I meant to ask what magical purpose it serves.”
“None. My magic comes from within.”
“Then why is it awash in magical energy?”
“What?”
“Confirm it for yourself. Morrigan, Odin, please look at Frigg’s necklace. It is not merely jewelry, is it?”
The Morrigan’s head tilted slightly to one side and Odin focused his gaze on the necklace. The Morrigan spoke first.
“It is enchanted with something, but it is not a binding of the Tuatha Dé Danann or the Fae.”
“No, it is not,” Odin said. “It is Norse magic.” This horrified Frigg so much that she took her hand off the sommelier, who abruptly remembered that he hadn’t finished panicking properly.
“Wauuggh!” he cried, and Frigg returned her hand to his forehead to shut him up.
“Odin, get it off me,” she said, using her left hand to sweep her hair away from the back of her neck and reveal the clasp of the necklace. “I want to take a good look.”
Sirens began to wail in the distance; police and ambulances were on their way.
Odin came around the table and unclasped the necklace. As soon as he did, the magic glow extinguished.
“That’s interesting. The magic is gone,” I said. “Odin, would you mind clasping the necklace together again for a moment?”
He did so and the magic glow returned. The Morrigan said, “Interesting indeed.”
Odin unclasped it, the glow faded, and Odin placed it on the table.
“Does the magic return every time it’s clasped?” I wondered aloud. Odin connected the two ends together once more, but nothing happened.
“No. Only when it’s worn,” he said. “Clever work.”
“Do you know what the spell does?” I asked.
“It is a tracking spell. A locator.”
“And who would want to know Frigg’s location badly enough to enchant her jewelry?”
“I do not know,” he replied. “But I dearly wish to find out.”
The waiter, who’d been focusing on his friend and keeping silent, and thus had been ignored until this time, made an unwise decision to speak up. “You people keep talking about magic and calling one another by the names of gods. Are you mental?”
“Frigg, if you please?” Odin said. His wife sighed and placed her left hand briefly on the waiter’s forehead. He collapsed next to his friend. Frigg’s eyes flicked up to mine.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s merely in oblivion. An effective talent for healing but surprisingly useful for occasions like this as well.”
The sirens outside grew loud and car doors slammed. Lots of people got shouty.
“We should make our exit now,” I said.
“Allow me to camouflage us,” the Morrigan said.
“Not me,” Odin said. “I’ll use my own methods.”
I still felt sorry for the aging sommelier who had an inordinate fondness for his hamster. Why had Frigg not sent him to oblivion? She somehow inferred what I was thinking and said, “Go. He will be fine.”
“Meet you outside,” the Morrigan said.
The slight tingle of camouflage settled over my skin, and I began to thread my way past customers and staff and then police and paramedics until I was in a bit of free space on Kirkegata. The Morrigan’s sandpapery voice entered my head.
Across the street, Siodhachan, she said.
Turning my head, I saw that the Morrigan and Odin had dropped their concealment and were staring at me from the other side of the street. The sensation of camouflage left me and I became visible as well. After waiting for another couple of cars to pass on the street, I jogged across to them.
“The assassin is athletically gifted,” Odin informed us. “He’s leaping from roof to roof, which is quite an accomplishment when one considers that they are sometimes of differing heights. And my ravens have just witnessed him leaping across an entire street.”
“So not human, then.”
Odin shrugged. “He is not a dark elf. I have seen such feats from berserkers, however. Some of the Einherjar can perform like that. This one may have been granted some strength—but by whom? We need to catch up quickly before he goes someplace my ravens cannot follow.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’ll go to the roof of this building,” Odin replied, as if that made everything clear. The Morrigan and
I followed him inside a four-story brick building, and we climbed until we reached the blessedly flat rooftop. “He went that way,” Odin said, pointing to Kirkegata. There were very few flat roofs ahead, and even if I could bridge the distance between them and leap over streets, the steep shingled surfaces on some of them didn’t look as if they’d offer a safe landing.
“Unzip me, Siodhachan,” the Morrigan said. “I’ll go as a crow and join Odin’s ravens.” I want to see what’s going on for myself, she added telepathically as I moved to unzip the back of her dress. I dislike being dependent on others for my intelligence.
When she shifted to her crow form and launched herself into the night, I was left alone with Odin, who took the opportunity, out of sight and hearing of Frigg and the Morrigan, to tell me how he really felt.
“I like looking at you about as much as a jötunn’s yawning asshole,” he began.
“Right,” I said.
“I’d rather spit you like a hog, roast you with thyme, and feed you to my wolves than track down this assassin. But I can’t have the Morrigan thinking I don’t keep my word. I promised a peaceful meeting and now it’s been ruined.”
“I understand that completely.”
“I also don’t like the fact that someone used Frigg to track us. That question needs answering. So we’re going to pull a Johnny Cash. Have you heard of him? American singer?”
“Yeah, I know him. The Man in Black.”
“Good.” He turned to the north, put two fingers between his teeth, and whistled a rather haunting series of notes. The night sky answered with the neighing of horses.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“What’s the matter, Druid, afraid of horses?”
“Well, these are fairly special ones, aren’t they? So special that they have no physical presence?”
“That’s entirely in their favor. Smoother ride.” Odin’s tuxedo morphed before my eyes. The jacket lengthened to a long trench coat and turned skull gray. His shirt turned to a tunic, his pants became breeches, and his shoes grew up his calves and hugged them as leather boots—all of it gray. His face weathered and shrank in a bit, turning gaunt and tough. The architecture of his beard unraveled and became an untamed mane. His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Haven’t done this in a long time. Should be fun, even with a pile of weasel shit like you.”
“Kind of you to say.”
Blue-green lights approached from the northern sky; in a matter of seconds they resolved into the outlines of spectral horses and hounds, and they came to a halt more or less on the roof.
“Up you go, then,” Odin said, leaping onto the back of a horse. Even though only the outline was there and I could see through the damn thing—I saw Odin’s leg dangling down the other side—the Norse god appeared to be sitting on something very solid.
I approached one of the horses and mounted it against all visual evidence that it would be possible. I was simultaneously relieved and skeeved that something extremely horsey supported my weight.
“The Wild Hunt rides!” Odin said, his face alight with savage joy. He kicked at his phantom stallion and the whole pack of us leapt forward, floating just above the rooftops. His mouth rounded and he bellowed out the old Johnny Cash chorus about ghost riders as we sort of slid across the skyline of Oslo. A few of the extra horses neighed along, and some of the hounds bayed at the stars.
Riding a spectral steed was much like hopping on one of those moving walkways in the airport; it was as smooth a ride as Odin promised. But I confess it freaked me out a little bit. I was quite used to flying as an owl, but it felt completely alien to be floating above the world in human form. Having additional horses and a pack of blue-green ghost hounds keeping pace with me only highlighted the fact that our party should be coursing on the ground rather than in the air.
We quickly gained on the two ravens and one crow, who were following the shooter. The Morrigan’s voice slipped into my head. I see him. He is dressed like a modern mercenary. Black body armor and boots. He left the rifle back on the roof across from the restaurant.
I didn’t answer. I looked at Odin’s face to see if he had any reaction to receiving the same news from his ravens. His expression, formerly excited, had turned into a sour frown.
“What’s the matter, Odin?”
He scowled at me. “I’m missing my spear, damn you to Hel,” he said.
“That brings up an excellent point,” I replied. “What are we supposed to do when we catch up with this guy if we don’t have any weapons?”
“The hounds will bring him down,” Odin assured me.
Beware, the Morrigan said. The shooter hasn’t seen me or the ravens yet, but he heard the hunt and knows you’re behind him.
I was unsure what she thought I should do with this information. There were no reins on my unreal horsie. I couldn’t turn or slow down or speed up. For all practical purposes, I was on an amusement park ride called the Wild Hunt and locked into my seat. Sort of.
The assassin came into view, head and shoulders highlighted by moonlight but otherwise as difficult to see as the Wild Hunt. He landed on a flat roof ahead of us and turned, a handgun in his right supported by his left. He methodically squeezed off a few rounds in our direction, and the third one shot Odin out of his seat. With a whuff, he toppled backward and I followed his trajectory, seeing him land awkwardly on a rooftop below. The Wild Hunt continued on and I swiveled to see his arms scrabble for purchase, so I knew he wasn’t dead. And then I got punched backward too, understanding that I’d also been shot down only when I was already falling toward a street, not a nice comfy roof.
It was in situations like this that I truly appreciated my charms, which I could activate with a mental command rather than speaking the bindings aloud. I triggered the charm that would allow me to shape-shift into an otter, then oriented myself legs down, falling inside my abruptly overlarge tuxedo. It acted as a bit of a parachute so that the impact, when it came, was merely painful rather than fatal. The squealing tires I heard approaching would have been fatal if they had run over me, but, thank goodness, modern Norwegians are reluctant to run over formal wear that rains down from the sky. While I gave out soft little otter moans and tried to assess how badly off I was, I heard a car door open and close and some hurried footsteps approaching to see if there was a dude inside the tuxedo. I struggled toward the collar and managed to poke my head through it, though I didn’t feel like moving at all. I’d been shot between my ninth and tenth ribs on the left side, which meant he’d pretty much destroyed my spleen. I triggered my healing charm and projected mentally to the Morrigan, hoping she would hear me. That fucker shot me. Odin too.
I told you to beware, came the reply. Now you know why we had to fix your tattoo. Coming around. I heard a quick sequence of gunshots from above. The woman—for it was a woman—who had nearly run over me startled and made a wee squeaky noise and looked up. Then she looked behind her as cars began to honk. She had yet to see me.
What about the assassin? I asked the Morrigan.
The hounds of the Wild Hunt are tearing him apart. He just discovered through experiment that bullets do not affect the incorporeal.
But now we won’t know who’s behind him, I said.
I think the answer is coming.
The nice lady who didn’t run me over finally looked down and spotted me. She was wearing a large yellow name tag on her sweater, presumably from work, that read Linda. She squinted through a pair of large spectacles and bent forward a bit to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.
“Oh! It’s an otter! A cute little otter! What are you doing here? Wait. What am I doing here? Ahhh! Stop honking! Go on, little otter. Move. Out of the street now.” She made shooing motions, as if human hand signals were universally understood by animals. I rolled over onto my back and tried to look pathetic, which didn’t tax my thespian talents in the least. Linda shrewdly noticed I was not well. “Hey. Are you all right? You don’t look so good. Poor thing.”
I gave a mournful little otter cry to push her sympathy button. Magic or no, getting shot takes something out of you; I wanted a ride out of there, and it worked.
“Oh! You must be ill. I’ll take you to the vet if you promise not to bite me.”
I didn’t know what kind of promise she expected me to make as an otter. I was beginning to suspect Linda might have some issues. Still, she was a kind soul and more likely to help me than the average person. I repeated the wee moan and closed my eyes. That did it. She picked me up, keeping me wrapped in the shirt, and took me to her car; it was one of those tiny European jobs that look like a doorstop with wheels. The coat and pants she left in the street. She nearly dropped me when she realized I was bleeding.
“Oh! Oh, my goodness! Please don’t die!”
She completely ignored the honking cars behind her now; they didn’t bother her anymore. She had a mission. She opened the passenger door and gently laid me down in the seat before running around to the driver’s side. Safely ensconced with my line of sight obstructed by the dashboard, I never saw the attack coming. Linda didn’t see it coming either, because she was looking at me when it hit.
A figure in black dropped out of the sky and rammed its fist down onto the hood of Linda’s car just as she hit the accelerator. The front end stayed put and the rear leapt up, tumbling me painfully from the seat into the tiny area where people were supposed to stretch out their legs. This did nothing to improve the condition of my spleen.
Linda screamed as she was thrown forward and the driver’s side air bag deployed. The honking behind us ceased, the drivers realizing that something serious was happening ahead and the stoppage of traffic wasn’t due to one person’s whimsy.
“Out of the car!” an angry voice bellowed. It may have been a woman’s voice; it was speaking modern Norwegian. Linda was either too disoriented or too wise to comply.
Under attack, I sent to the Morrigan.
I saw. If I forget to tell you later, thank you for a lovely evening of mayhem.