The Undoing

“Yeah, but—”

  “Books aren’t safe until they’re in the library,” he quickly reminded the obsessive Bear.

  Immediately forgetting the Crows, Bear dashed out the door, shoving Gundo aside and disappearing into the dark.

  Ski faced the women again and tipped a nonexistent hat. “Ladies, as always . . . it’s been an amazing pleasure.”

  “You made me wait.” She stood in front of Hel’s table in her hall, Éljúðnir. “Weeks.”

  “So?” Hel asked, not even glancing up from her plate filled with food but still called “Hunger.” The knife in her hand was called “Famine.” Her luxurious bed with all the furs and silk sheets was called “Sickbed.”

  “I make everyone wait. Do you know why?”

  The goddess tossed her blond hair off her face with a flick of her head. “Because you ca—”

  “Because I can. Exactly.” Hel leaned back in her throne, arms spread wide.

  She wore black armor that covered her from neck to torso, but left her head, arms, and legs bare. Those were the parts of her body that appeared normal. What was under that armor? Rot.

  A rotting body that would rot for eternity. Or until Ragnarok came.

  “So what do you want, Vanir?” Hel asked, making sure to make lines clear. The Aesir gods ruled this world. The Vanir gods did not. “What do you come to me for?”

  “You know why.”

  “Because you’re still pissed at that sister of yours?” Hel smirked. “I see you wear her necklace.”

  “On occasion. When it goes with the outfit. But it’s mine now. It’ll all be mine.”

  “But you need my help. Yes?”

  “Don’t you want them to suffer? They’ve condemned you to remain here. They’ve—”

  “Shuh-shuh-shuh-shuh,” Hel said, waving her knife. “Please don’t bore me with tales of what my Aesir kin have done to me. I don’t care. This is my domain, and I like it here. So find another direction if you want to interest me.”

  “You’re the daughter of Loki. Think of it as just one more way to fuck with everyone since that seems to be your family’s thing.”

  “We do get bored. Must be our vast intelligence.”

  “Will you help me or not?”

  “I don’t like you. But I don’t loathe you, either. For me, that almost makes us friends.” Hel grinned at the blond goddess in the Hervé Leger dress, gold and diamonds on her neck, wrists, waist, and dangling from her ears. “And I always try to help friends.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ski was sound asleep. Comfortable. Happy. But that wasn’t to last. He heard his cat, Salka, hiss seconds before a hand tapped his shoulder.

  “What?” he asked without lifting his head from the pillow or opening his eyes. His shoulder still hurt from the gunshot wound he’d received the night before. But the bullet had been removed, and he’d be completely healed in another day or two. One of the many benefits of being blessed by the gods. But as the Holde’s Maid who’d treated him—Ormi’s unpleasant but surprisingly lovable wife—had told him, “Get as much sleep as you can. If these big idiots will let you.”

  Sadly, though, the big idiots didn’t let him.

  “We have an issue,” Bear told him.

  “What issue?”

  “It’s the books we got last night.”

  Sighing, realizing Bear wasn’t going to go away any time soon, Ski turned his head to look at the man but ended up laughing.

  “You don’t have to let her do that, you know.”

  Bear sighed, as always tolerating that Ski’s easily annoyed cat had attached her claws to his jaw and hung from him like a scratching post.

  Salka didn’t like anyone interrupting her sleep.

  “At least this time she didn’t go for my eyes. I’ve learned to appreciate the little things.”

  Sitting up, Ski unhooked his feral cat from Bear’s face, wincing when he saw the blood.

  “Sorry.” He carefully placed Salka in her space on the pillow beside him. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “The books.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re in Russian.”

  “Seriously? This is considered an issue worth waking me up over?” An issue worth risking the wrath of Salka?

  “Well . . . none of us speaks or reads Russian. And we don’t know anyone in the other Clans who can either. And since we don’t know what the books are about, none of us feels comfortable handing the translation off to an outsider.”

  “Okay, then what about an online translation—”

  Bear gasped before Ski could even finish his suggestion. Ski’s brothers only used modern technology when necessary. But they were like medieval monks when it came to books.

  Books were to be treasured. Loved. Adored. Like a good woman. And no matter what happened in this technologically advanced society they lived in, that belief would never change.

  “All right. Understood. But what about the Crows? That Clan has Russian speakers.”

  “We checked . . . just her.”

  “Just her? You mean Jacinda Berisha?” Bear nodded. “So? From what we saw last night, she understands Russian and English. Which sounds perfect. Why would we not use her?”

  “Because she’s insane and no one wants her around the books. What if she flips out and rips them all apart? Can you live with that?”

  “You’d be amazed what I can live with.”

  “That only saddens me. These are books we’re talking about, Ski. Books.”

  Ski took a moment. Just breathed in. Breathed out. He would not allow himself to get . . . terse. His brothers didn’t like it when he became terse.

  “May I suggest,” he finally said, “that we offer the opportunity, and I’ll keep a close watch on her. I’m sure it’ll just be for a week. Two at the most.” Bear frowned at the suggestion. “Just to get an idea of what we’re dealing with and whether it would be safe to go to an outside vendor. She’ll look at titles and things. One of us will always be by her side,” he added.

  “If you’re sure . . .”

  “I’m sure. It’ll be fine.”

  Ski waited until Bear walked out, closing the door behind him, before he fell back on the bed. Salka placed her tiny paw against Ski’s head and snuggled her nose against his jaw. They’d both just started to doze off again when Bear knocked on the door—it was more of a banging, actually—and asked through the door, “You’re not falling asleep, are you?”

  Salka scrambled up and darted out the window Ski left open for her so she could come and go as she liked. The tree outside his window made it easier for her. Then, about a minute later, he heard Bear howl in pain. “Get off me, Salka! Off! Off!”

  Ski grinned. He loved that intolerant cat.

  Jace woke up with very little memory of what had happened the night before and feeling great!

  Which meant only one thing . . . she’d “flipped the switch” again.

  That’s what Erin had always called it. “Jace flippin’ the switch.”

  Oh well. It wasn’t her fault. The Russian had brought it on himself.

  Jace touched her face. She still had a welt on her forehead and her nose was unbelievably sore, but it was all healing well and by tomorrow at this time, she’d be right as rain.

  Stretching and yawning, Jace began to smile when a big furry head brushed up against her leg. She looked down at the puppy she was supposed to be fostering but that everyone in the house knew was now her puppy. Lev. Short for Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, one of her favorite authors. She’d had him only a few weeks, but already he’d grown. Substantially.

  No one seemed to mind Lev. He was still a baby. But she saw Chloe, the leader of the Los Angeles Crows, watching him. She hadn’t been happy when Kera brought in her one-hundred-pound pit bull, Brodie Hawaii, and something told Jace that she wouldn’t like a full-grown Lev much more. At least not in the main Bird House. “Our insurance doesn’t cover vicious breeds, ya know,” she’d remind them. But Lev was not vic
ious. As Jace liked to say, “He’s a lover, not a fighter.” And he was. Nothing he liked better than lying in bed with Jace and letting her scratch his ever-growing barrel chest.

  Big, lazy, and not the brightest, he just wanted to be happy.

  Jace adored him like the moon.

  After spending about fifteen minutes playing with Lev on the bed, Jace grabbed clean clothes and walked to her bedroom door. She eased it open and looked down the hallway to make sure no one was around.

  Together, they snuck down to the closest bathroom. It wasn’t that Jace didn’t want to see any of her sister-Crows, she just didn’t want to talk to any of them.

  Jace was not a naturally chatty girl. She liked silence. She liked to hear the birds tweeting and the wind blowing and pretty much anything but the drone of human voices.

  Not that she didn’t love people. Jace was a people lover. She just didn’t feel the need to actually be around people.

  She took a quick shower, brushed her teeth, and dealt with her curls. A small chore in and of itself. Then she brushed Lev’s teeth. He pulled his lips over his gums so that she could easily get to them.

  She loved her dog.

  After his teeth, she gave his coat a good brushing, picked up all the hairs that fell on the floor, put her clothes on, and together, the pair snuck back down the hallway. They were almost at the stairs when she heard several of her fellow sister-Crows coming toward her.

  Jace dove into a nearby closet, Lev right behind her. She thought the voices had passed and was about to crack the door when it was snatched open from the other side.

  “Oh. Hi, Jace,” one of her sisters greeted before grabbing a few boxes of tissues beside a crouching Jace. “See ya,” she said and closed the door.

  Jace let out a relieved breath and waited a few minutes longer until she was sure the coast was clear.

  She eased the door open and darted into the hall, down the stairs, started to go for the kitchen, heard voices coming from the other side and spun around, accidentally ran into the wall, cursed in Albanian like her grandmother used to do, and limped in the other direction, rushing into the game room and out the glass doors that led into the yard. She closed the door and limped around the corner, freezing in her tracks when she came face-to-face with Kera, Erin, and their Raven buddies, Vig, Stieg, and Siggy sitting at a glass table, enjoying breakfast.

  Erin grinned. “Trying to make a break for it?”

  “No.”

  “Liar.”

  Although Erin seemed the most antisocial of the group, she wasn’t. She loved being around people . . . just so she could fuck with them. It brought her joy the way silence and a good book filled with others’ misery brought joy to Jace.

  “Eat something,” Ludvig Rundstrom said, pulling out a seat. She knew it was meant as a kind invitation, but Vig had a way of making everything sound more like an angry order. Poor guy was so painfully shy, he barely looked Jace in the eyes. He’d sort of come out of his shell, though, now that he was spending time around Kera.

  After years in the Marine Corps, Kera could get along with pretty much anyone. She knew how to talk to people. Knew how to interpret body language. Knew when people were comfortable and when they needed a hasty exit. Jace wondered to herself whether Kera would one day lead the Crows after Chloe retired or, you know, died in battle. The decision was always Skuld’s choice, who among her brethren ran her Crows. Just because Tessa was second in command did not mean she would one day be their leader. It always came down to what was happening at the moment.

  Hell, a few weeks ago, an ancient goddess was nearly unleashed into the world, and if that had happened . . . they would have needed a battle chief, not a politician, which Tessa sort of was. But they’d thankfully stopped that from happening and then they’d gone back to their lives.

  Except for one thing. Poor Betty Lieberman. An older Crow, she’d been badly hurt going headfirst out the window of her office in Culver City. At first, when officials assumed it was a suicide attempt, she’d been taken to a an emergency mental facility, but when she didn’t wake from her coma, the Crows had arranged to have her come back to the Bird House, where they could take care of her.

  It was strange, because not a lot of Crows fell into long-term comas. Usually, they either died from trauma so bad they couldn’t recover, or they were up and around by day three or four. But it had been three weeks and Betty was still unconscious.

  The good news, though, was that there was definitely brain activity. The bad news, there was no ETA as to when she would snap out of it. And they always needed Betty. Not simply because she was a powerful seer for the Crows who could divine things that others couldn’t, warning them of danger when necessary. But, more importantly for many of Jace’s sister-Crows, she was also one of the biggest entertainment agents in all of Hollywood.

  Without Betty, they all felt a little blind these days. They needed her back or someone who could take her place, but that would be up to Skuld, and she hadn’t said anything to Chloe one way or another.

  Before sitting down, Jace looked around for Lev. He was fine, though. Currently circling a big landlocked group of birds in the middle of the back lawn. Crows—the birds, not the women—loved hanging around the Bird House. Although they were usually in the trees, not in a large flock on the lawn. It was weird, but not weird enough to cause her to go over there and investigate.

  As Jace took a seat and reached for the fresh croissants in the basket in the middle of the table, she called out to Lev, “Don’t mess with those birds, Lev. They’ll kick your ass.”

  But Lev wasn’t looking for a fight. Instead he barked, jumped back, lost his footing, fell over, flipped onto his feet, and started again.

  “So we’re invited, right?” Siggy asked Kera.

  “Of cour—”

  “No,” Erin quickly cut in. “You’re not invited. This is a Crow-only party to celebrate the arrival of our newest sister, Kera. What we don’t need are some Ravens there to ruin it.”

  “Vig gets to come,” Siggy complained.

  “He’s fucking Kera. So we’re allowing him to come.”

  “Since it’s my party,” Kera asked, “shouldn’t I have a say in who gets to come?”

  “It’s a party in your honor. No one said it’s your party.”

  Kera looked at Jace, and she gave a little head shake to let her friend know that, “Nope. That made no sense at all.”

  Kera opened her mouth to argue the point with Erin, but the redhead cut her off with, “Just leave the planning to me. That’s what I do.”

  “Do you want to borrow my clipboard?”

  “So I can beat you to death with it?”

  “You shouldn’t fear the clipboard,” Kera solemnly intoned. “For the clipboard knows all. For the clipboard shall rule all, reigning supreme among—”

  “Shut up.”

  Jace was so proud of how far Kera had come in her new life. At first, Jace had been really concerned. The former Marine was used to things being done in a certain way, and it seemed like Kera would never fit in with the others. The Crows were not known for good organizational skills or following anyone’s regulations but their own.

  Plus, Kera seemed really uncomfortable with the idea of killing what she liked to call “random people on the street.” It had to be explained to her, more than once, that if the Crows came calling at your house looking for blood, it was because you’d done something shitty enough to earn their attention.

  But with time and the help of Vig, Kera had found her way. True, she still questioned whether certain people had to die, but Jace didn’t have a problem with that. The Crows needed a good moral center. It kept them from ending up on the wrong side of the other gods.

  And, in the end, Kera’s sound logic had kept the Crows from getting into a war with Thor’s Giant Killers and had prevented Gullveig from entering this world.

  One of the Vanir, Gullveig was only mentioned once in the stanzas of The Poetic Edda. She came to meet
with the Aesir—Odin and his brethren—and by the time she was done, they’d tried three different times to burn and stab her in the heart with spears. So not only did the other gods hate her, but she’d been impossible to kill.

  Using their combined powers, the gods had tossed Gullveig’s battered essence into another realm, but she’d never stopped trying to find her way back. And considering it was said she was “ever the delight of an evil woman,” it was probably a very good thing she never made it through.

  “Are you sure we should have a party with Betty upstairs?” Kera asked. “You know . . . in a coma.”

  “If it were anyone else but Betty, I’d say no.” Erin shrugged. “Maybe a good party will wake her up.”

  “I heard her wimpy assistant has taken over since Betty’s been gone. She’s been firing people left and right. Kicking out clients. Stealing big clients from other agents. It’s been a bloodbath.”

  Erin gazed at Siggy. “How do you know that?”

  “I read Variety. And people talk to me. I’m very charismatic.”

  Erin began to argue that point, but Jace shoved a muffin in her mouth before she could say the words. The redhead had a lethal tongue. As vicious as the powerful flames Skuld had given her as an extra gift. Jace had seen her decimate people without raising a finger. Or a talon.

  Siggy was just too easy a target.

  Using a napkin, Erin coughed and spit out the muffin she didn’t want, but she wasn’t angry at Jace. Instead she laughed and asked, “I didn’t even say anything yet!”

  The sliding glass door behind Jace opened and a shadow fell over her. She’d just bitten down on a piece of bacon, but the way the Ravens tensed, eyes glaring, bodies ready to fight, as they stared at something behind her, she nearly spit it out. The Ravens could be moody, just like the god they represented on earth, Odin. But this change was so fast, she immediately turned to see what was behind her.

  Danski Eriksen stood there in all his chiseled perfection. He wasn’t nearly as big as the Ravens sitting with her. He was leaner. But every muscle on him was cut. Light brown hair hung in his bright green eyes but the back was a little shorter, more . . . clean cut. The Protectors weren’t as uptight as the Silent, a Clan that managed to look down on pretty much the entire human race while still talking about protecting it. But the Protectors didn’t talk about protecting the human race—they just did. Every day, in big and small ways.