“You’re darned tooting we are. He’s taken my mother, and no one—
The sound of murmuring answered that, followed immediately by ear-piercing Viking battle cries. “Command us, virgin goddess!” Eirik declared happily.
“I don’t have enough money to get you guys tickets, so you’ll have to use your weasel money to buy them.” I gave him information on the flight I had booked myself. “Oh, man, passports—”
“We have them. The goddess Freya had them made up, and gave them to us with the weasel gold.”
“Excellent. I hope you boys are all geared up and ready to kick some serious booty!”
“Our enemies will fall!” I heard Finnvid yelling in the background. “We will not fail you, virgin goddess Fran!”
“We will cleave his head from his shoulders!” Isleif growled.
“Normally I’d say I’m not up to cleaving anything, but at this moment . . .” My eyes narrowed as I thought of all the things I wanted to do to Loki. “At this moment, I might just take a swing at him myself.”
The Vikings cheered, and promised to meet me at the airport in time for the flight to Germany.
Geoff came back just as I was stuffing clothing into my suitcase. “What’s going on? I thought you said you were staying for a couple more weeks?”
“That was before my mom was kidnapped.” I smiled grimly at her look of stupefaction. “If he’s so much as touched her, I’m going to open the biggest can of Vikingahärta whoop-ass Loki’s ever seen!”
Chapter 4
“To yo ta ho,” a man told us as we stepped off the train at the tiny little town of Brustwarze. He was dressed in a horned helmet, metal breastplate, leather pleated skirt, and had two long blond braids. He also held a trident.
“What in the name of a three-legged toad is going on?” I asked as I stared in confusion at the mass of people streaming onto the train. Over half of them were dressed in bizarre costumes, everything ranging from mermaids to guys wearing big shields and long, dramatic capes.
Finnvid, who had been studying a sign on the wall of the train station, said, “It says there is a competition being held for the next week to decide which town will become the new home to Wagner’s operas. The mayor has directed everyone in the town to participate, showing the town’s worthiness.”
“What is opera?” Isleif asked, dodging a woman in a long marigold medieval gown who almost poked out his eye with her gigantic spiky headdress, complete with glittery veil, as she wheeled twins in a baby stroller. Both babies wore tiny little winged helmets. One had on a pair of Groucho glasses, as well.
“You remember—we saw it on Odin’s television. Opera is women singing high enough to suck up your stones right into your body.”
“That’s not opera,” Eirik said with a dismissive gesture. “That’s
“Er . . . okay. Town competition or not, we have to get to where the GothFaire is parked. Finnvid, you seem to speak German—can you ask where they are?”
Twenty minutes later we managed to pull Finnvid away from two young women evidently dressed as medieval dairy maids, both of whom seemed to be encouraging him to do wholly inappropriate things in public.
“They told me I could pretend they were cows and moisturize their udders,” Finnvid protested as I dragged him by the ear over to where Eirik and Isleif stood. His hands were covered in honeysuckle-scented body lotion.
“No woman in her right mind would ever refer to her breasts as udders,” I grumbled, releasing his ear as I stopped in front of the taxi Eirik had snagged. “Rub that lotion into your arms or something so you don’t get it everywhere.”
“Well, that is what I thought the word meant,” he said somewhat ruefully as he complied with my demand.
“I just bet. Did you find out where the GothFaire is?”
“Aye, virgin goddess. It’s about twenty minutes to the north of town.” He held out a piece of paper. “They wrote it down for me.”
“That looks like a phone number,” I pointed out.
He grinned and turned the paper over. On it were two words. “They also gave me their phone number.”
“Do they have friends?” Eirik asked as I hustled them to the taxi.
“You guys can pick up dates later. Right now I need you to focus on finding my mother.” I leaned forward to show the address to the driver, who was dressed in a pretty gauzy gold gown, with matching blond braids, and a flowery wreath on her head. The face that turned to squint at the address had a goatee and mustache.
“Er . . .” I blinked at him a couple of times. He nodded and said something that I assumed meant he knew where that was. At least I hoped that’s what he said.
Half an hour later I paid off the Wagnerian cross-dressing driver and stood looking at the large open field before us. It must have been a grazing pasture, because it was perfectly flat, surrounded by low stone fences on three sides and a modern wooden fence that ran parallel to the road. The big double gates were open, and tire marks on one side of the field indicated that it was used for parking. But it was the colorful flutter of bright cloth that caught and held my eye.
“GothFaire,” I said, drinking in the sight. Somewhere in that collection of trailers and tents, Ben was sleeping. He usually stayed with Imogen unless she had a boyfriend with her, which it sounded like she did, and that meant he could be anywhere, most likely holed up with one of his friends at the Faire.
“Eirik, I will need to use your iPhone later, to call Sabeine and Siglinde,” Finnvid said, examining the paper that he’d retrieved from me. “They said the day’s competition would be over by sundown.”
“Quiet. The virgin goddess is having a moment,” Eirik said in a hushed voice, nodding toward me before suddenly looking thoughtful. “Did they say I could moisturize their udders as well?”
“Aye, there’s plenty there for both of us,” Finnvid answered with a knowing leer.
I gazed at the Faire, unable to keep from remembering the year and a half I’d spent there, remembering the good times with Ben . . .
“Good. I like a woman with large—” He made squeezy motions at his chest.
. . . Remembering Ben’s kisses, and the way his eye color changed, and how he seemed to like me in the gypsyesque outfit that I wore when reading palms, the one he said made him want to kiss me senseless.
“You can have Siglinde, then. She was bigger than her sister.”
I smoothed down my blouse and wondered if Ben thought I was large in the breast department, then told myself it didn’t matter what he thought, and that I really needed to stop thinking about him and focus on what was important.
“You examined them?” Eirik asked, looking somewhat put out.
My skin began to tingle, all of me, as if just being in the same town as Ben had electrified the air, especially my breasts, which badly wanted his attention. I stopped that thought dead in its tracks, glaring at the Vikings. Damn their talk of breasts.
“Of course. That’s the first thing I do with a woman I’m considering for bed sport. What sort of moment is the goddess having?”
“One that has been invaded by the mental image of you two oiling up those buxom ladies,” I said with a little glare at the two of them. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to indulge in soul-searching insight with people yammering away about breasts?”
Isleif looked righteous. “I did not yammer, virgin goddess.”
“Oooh, oil.” Finnvid’s eyes went a bit glazed.
“Stop that. We have things to do,” I said, frowning at his twitching fingers.
“But oiled breasts . . .”
“No breasts for you!” I ordered, feeling a bit like the Breast Nazi. “Can we move past that subject?”
“Aye, we can. Our apologies, virgin goddess.” Eirik narrowed his eyes on me. “Are you finished having your
