She hesitated. “You swear this isn’t a trick? You won’t, like, try to deprogram me or send me to rehab? You’ll let me go anytime I want?”
“Yes!” both of us said in unison. I was pretty sure both of us were lying through our teeth. I knew I fully intended to research breaking a blood-bond at the first opportunity, and I wouldn’t put it past Jen to lock her sister in the basement. But we’d deal with that when the time came.
“Okay.” Bethany came to a decision. “But only for a few days. And I have to tell Geoffrey. I can’t just leave.”
Great, back into Twilight Manor. “I’ll go with you.” I didn’t trust her not to change her mind.
“So will I,” Jen said with determination.
The blond vampire looked irritated to see all three of us back on the doorstep, and all the more irritated when Bethany announced her intention in a tremulous voice, but he went to fetch her boyfriend into the foyer.
Geoffrey Chancellor had the whole Edwardian-rake look going: fancy suit, waistcoat with a chain and watch fob, immaculate ascot, and slicked-back hair. He was very good-looking in a totally supercilious way. I’d met him before and I didn’t care for him. From what I could tell, the feeling was mutual.
When Bethany told him she planned on visiting home, he scowled at her. “It is foolish and unnecessary. Everything you need is here.”
“It’s just for a few days,” she pleaded.
“It is contrary to my wishes.” From the way he said it, I was pretty sure that if we weren’t there to witness it, he would have forbidden her outright.
Bethany wilted anyway. “All right. It was just a thought.”
Geoffrey smiled with satisfaction. “Good—”
“No,” I interrupted him, laying my hand on dauda-dagr’s hilt. “Not all right. She expressed a clear desire to leave.”
He looked down his nose at me. “She changed her mind.”
“I changed my mind,” she agreed weakly.
“You changed her mind,” I said to him, ignoring Bethany. “Do you want me to inform Hel that the House of Shadows is now detaining mortals against their will?”
Geoffrey fixed his gaze on me, and I felt the tug of vampiric hypnosis coming into play. He wasn’t as powerful as the mistress of the house, but it still made the blood sing in my veins, and I was glad I already had my hand on the reassuring chill of dauda-dagr’s hilt. “After Lady Eris’s display with you upstairs, I confess, I’m not terribly impressed with your authority, Hel’s liaison.” He curled his lip, baring his fangs in a manner that was both a threat and a promise. “You heard her. She changed her mind. Now either go away, or stay and play.”
Oh, crap. That was what I got for being diplomatic: a supercilious pretty-boy vampire calling my bluff.
Jen gave me an uncertain look. “Daise?”
“I’m thinking.” If I drew dauda-dagr and backed him down, Bethany might change her mind. Or she might not, in which case everyone lost face. Damn! This was way too complicated.
While I was still in the throes of indecision, there was a knock at the front door—not just any knock, but a slow, ponderous knock heavy enough to make the old windowpanes tremble in their lead molding.
Looking annoyed and vaguely alarmed, the blond vampire opened the door.
Mikill the frost giant stood on the doorstep, his icicle-laden beard dripping, wisps of frost rising from his bluish skin. Ducking his head, he entered the House of Shadows without waiting for an invitation, his slush-colored gaze seeking mine.
“Daisy Johanssen,” he said in his booming voice. “I am bidden to summon you to an audience with Hel.”
I suppressed a grin, silently blessing him for his excellent timing. “Of course, Mikill. Just as soon as we’ve finished our business here.”
Looming over mortals and vampires alike, Mikill swung his massive head around to take in the scene. His hair and beard continued to drip onto the marble floor of the foyer, a puddle forming beneath him. “What is at issue?”
“No issue,” I assured him. “Geoffrey here was just saying good-bye to his blood-bonded girlfriend for a few days.” I smiled sweetly at him. “Isn’t that right?”
He gave me a poisonous glare, but he wasn’t stupid enough to challenge my authority in the presence of an actual inhabitant of Little Niflheim, especially not one who stood eight feet tall. “Be good,” he said to Bethany, trailing one finger down her throat. “And come back soon. I’ll miss you, poppet.”
“I hope you do.” She sniffed. “I hope you miss me a lot. Maybe it will make you remember your promise.”
Mikill’s gaze returned to me. “Is your business now concluded, Daisy Johanssen?”
“Yep.”
He inclined his head. “That is well.”
I thought so, too.
Back outside in the warm summer night, I said good-bye to Jen. Bethany sat in the passenger seat of the LeBaron, staring straight ahead, while Mikill waited patiently beside his dune buggy and dripped onto the driveway.
“Are you going to be okay?” Jen asked me.
“I’ll be fine. Mikill will drive me home.” I made a shooing gesture at her. “Go on; get Bethany out of here before she changes her mind again.”
Jen wasn’t entirely satisfied. “What did Geoffrey the prat mean about Lady Eris’s display with you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “She tried to put the bloodsucker whammy on me. I let them think it worked.”
She looked suspiciously at me. “Did it?”
“No!”
Jen grabbed my chin and lifted it to inspect my throat.
I batted her hand away. “Okay, it worked a little! But I was able to break it. Now get out of here, will you?”
“All right, all right. Call me.”
“I will.”
I waited until the LeBaron’s taillights turned out of the driveway before getting in Mikill’s dune buggy. The frost giant solicitously handed me a fur coat.
“Thanks.” I squirmed into it, pushing back the overly long sleeves. “Where’s Garm’s doggy treat?”
“It is at your feet, Daisy Johanssen.”
Oh, so that was what I was stepping on. I reached down and fished up a crusty loaf of bread, hoping the hellhound wouldn’t mind that it was slightly flattened. “Good timing,” I said as Mikill put the buggy in gear. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I am able to sense dauda-dagr’s presence. The timing was incidental.”
I rubbed the side of my neck again. “Well, it was good anyway.”
“That is well.”
A frost giant of few words, Mikill drove without speaking to the Pemkowet Dune Rides, breaking his silence only to utter his customary warning to hold fast as we departed from the graded trails to jounce over the untamed dunes, Garm’s full-throated howl arising in the darkness before us.
At least this time I was ready for him. “Here, boy!” I shouted as the slavering figure came into view, yellow eyes aflame. Winding up like a pitcher, I threw the bread loaf as far as I could, watching the hellhound bound after it. “Go get it!”
And then we were spiraling down the massive trunk of Yggdrasil II, past the rushing wall of heartwood, past the Norns doing their Nornish thing, drawing water from the well and tending to the roots of the giant pine. I gave them a wishful glance as we passed, wondering whether they would speak to me this time, maybe utter a little sooth.
“No,” Mikill said in answer to my unvoiced question. “They have no counsel for you yet, Daisy Johanssen.”
“Will they ever?” I asked him.
He turned his patient, slush-colored gaze on me. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I do not know.”
I sighed.
I know, I know. But I couldn’t help it.
This time, there were duegars lining the streets of Little Niflheim, dwarves with forms as hard and knotty as tree roots. They gazed at the dune buggy with expressions that contained equal parts hope and despair.
“Mikill?” My voice sounded faint. “Why are they staring at us? They never stared at us before.”
The frost giant pulled up before the abandoned sawmill. “It is the first time you have come carrying Hel’s gift of death upon your hip, Daisy Johanssen,” he said somberly. “In the coming battle, you will serve as Niflheim’s champion.”
Now my voice rose with alarm. “Coming battle? What coming battle?”
Mikill ushered me into the sawmill. “Whatever battle is coming.”
Gah! If I could have reached his neck, I would have throttled him.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the bioluminescent lichen on the walls, the sight of Hel on her throne banished whatever petty mortal exasperation I was feeling. “Welcome, my young liaison.” Her voice echoed in the rafters, where a handful of roosting blue jays squawked and ruffled their feathers. “I would hear what news you bear. My harbingers tell me that matters are coming to a head.”
I went to one knee, bowing my head. “Harbingers, my lady?”
Hel raised her fair and shapely right hand, the hand of life, indicating the roosting jays. “My eyes and ears in the mortal world.”
“Blue jays?” I felt foolish saying it aloud.
The right side of Hel’s mouth curved in a gentle smile. On the left side of her face, her blackened lips remained set in a grim line. “They are kin to ravens, the favored harbingers of my kinsman Odin.”
“Oh.”
Hel waited.
Okay, so apparently I was supposed to make a report. I collected my thoughts, wiping my damp palms surreptitiously on the fur coat. “You’re right, my lady. Matters are coming to a head. It appears that a mortal man, with the assistance of a pair of ghouls, has been holding a mermaid captive and selling access to her.”
“Access?” Her voice dropped to a note so deep it made the old timbers shudder in protest.
I nodded. “We believe the Vanderhei boy drowned in an . . . an act of sexual congress with the unwilling victim.”