Mist

“How much did you know of the background he created for himself? Were there any locations he frequented, places he preferred to all others?”

As much as she hated being reminded of her own gullibility, Mist recognized what Dainn was getting at. “He needs more than just Jotunar to help him conquer Midgard,” she said. “So he’ll have been looking for mortal allies wherever he can find them.” She dragged her hand across her face, which felt about as rough as corrugated cardboard. “He could have been building a whole underground empire, and I wouldn’t have known it.”

“As I said before, he will not have wished to disrupt mortal society in any way that would alert Freya to his presence here. But he almost certainly has been laying the groundwork, and he will no longer have any reason to delay finding such allies.”

Mist flipped her braid behind her shoulders again, searching her mind for anything that would help them. “Loki had a computer at the loft, but even if he’d kept his contacts on it he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave the information for me to find.”

“There is another possible source of information in this city which you yourself mentioned,” Dainn said.

Mist snapped her fingers. “Vidarr and Vali,” she said. An ugly thought settled in the pit of her belly. What if Odin’s sons had known all along that the Aesir were still alive? What if they’d known about Loki, and hadn’t warned her?

The idea was flatly ridiculous, as ridiculous as the idea that Odin had known there would be no Ragnarok. Vidarr and Vali would never go over to the enemy.

“Loki can’t have gone anywhere near them before,” she said aloud, “or they would have recognized him. They’ll probably be just as shocked by all this as I was.”

And Vidarr wouldn’t like it. Not one bit. Though he’d said he didn’t remember how he and Vali had come to Midgard, Mist had always had her doubts. He had certainly rejected most of his divine heritage years before Mist had made the decision to leave the past behind. Knowing he’d have to become involved all over again . . .

No, it wasn’t going to be easy to tell him. Vidarr hadn’t been able to accept that Mist had radically changed from the willing servant she’d been in Asgard, even if he was different himself. He’d resented that mere Valkyrie had been entrusted with the Treasures.

But there was no question that he’d take a stand against Loki once he understood what was going on, even if didn’t want any part of this new Ragnarok. This was his city.

“We’ll go to Asbrew,” Mist said.

Dainn shot her an inquiring look. “The Rainbow Bridge? I told you it had been destroyed along with Asgard.”

It was a natural mistake on his part, since Asbru was another name for Bifrost. “As-b-r-e- w,” she spelled out. “God’s brew. It’s a pun. I don’t suppose you know what that means.”

“I am aware of puns,” he said. “I have been on this world a very long time.” He arched a dark brow. “I believe the English writer Samuel Johnson referred to them as the lowest form of humor.”

Dainn’s reference to Johnson made her wonder what he’d been doing in Midgard over the centuries. She knew that he, like she, would have had to keep moving or change his identity every few decades to avoid calling attention to his extremely slow aging.

Even the Aesir eventually aged without the divine Apples of Idunn, and that had been one of the Treasures Odin had sent to Midgard. But Dainn had indicated that the gods weren’t aging in Ginnungagap, and Mist had changed hardly at all since the Last Battle.

As much as she wanted to hear about Dainn’s past, she knew her curiosity would have to wait a little longer. Assuming she and Dainn were still alive when she had the chance to ask.

Without another word between them, she and Dainn ran back to the Volvo, which looked to Mist as it were on the verge of literal collapse.

“Hang in there, girl,” she whispered, patting the dashboard. Dainn stared resolutely out the window as they set off again.

Vidarr’s bar was in the Tenderloin, once known as the “soft underbelly” of San Francisco for its history of crime and vice, a tradition that hadn’t completely been eradicated by the gradual gentrification of the area. Tucked between the wealth of Nob Hill and the busy downtown of Civic Center, the district was a seedy patch in an otherwise respectable neighborhood.

In spite of the dubious location, Asbrew was pop u lar with artists, musicians, and the more affluent youth from the best addresses in the city. Mist hadn’t been inside for a de cade, but she assumed that things hadn’t changed much since Pink and Avril Lavigne were basking in the Top Ten.

The Volvo, having been pressed far beyond its capacity, decided to give up the ghost at the corner of Van Ness, a little over a mile short of their goal. Mist eased the failing vehicle to the curb and set it in park.

“We’ll have to hoof it,” she said.

Dainn was out of the car a second after she was. She set off north on busy Van Ness, fiercely grateful for the chance to move her body again. She might not trust her own feeble magic, but legs and arms, muscle and bone were tools she had honed to obey her will without thought or hesitation. Dainn kept pace, lithe as a cheetah in spite of his rags, his long legs covering the ground with ease.

At McAllister Mist turned east, leading Dainn past City Hall, and then jogged north on Hyde to Eddy. Suddenly they were in the midst of Southeast Asian restaurants, fleabag hotels, and boardedup mom-and-pop markets, running past indigents with overflowing shopping carts and more than one dealer on the prowl for addicts looking to score. Panhandlers and drunks stared after her and Dainn with dull astonishment, but they were only a blur in Mist’s eyes.

Though it was barely seven o’clock in the morning, Mist knew that Asbrew would already be jumping. It never actually stopped. No cops would come knocking for the simple reason that Vidarr had set Rune-wards to repel them; she could feel their potency as she reached the scarred and graffitied doorway squashed between a rundown residential hotel and a pawn shop. Vidarr might have rejected his heritage, but he could still call upon it when it suited him.

Mist opened the door and walked in. Vidarr employed a doorman to keep out any “undesirables” who might slip past the wards, but she didn’t recognize the bruiser with the underbite standing just inside. He did a double take when Dainn came up behind her.

“Where’s Vid?” Mist asked the doorman.

He folded his massive arms across his chest. “He ain’t available.”

“My name is Mist Bjorgsen. He’ll see me.”

“We don’t allow no bums in here,” the man said, jerking his thumb at Dainn. “And he stinks.”

Dainn showed no reaction to the insult. He began to hum under his breath. The doorman was oblivious, but Mist felt the stirring of magic—simple magic, to be sure, but potent enough to repel a mortal, no matter how big and menacing he was.

The last thing Mist could afford was to provoke Vidarr by causing a disturbance. She took Dainn’s arm, shoved the doorman out of the way and started toward the back of the bar.

“Hey, bitch!” The doorman clamped one beefy hand over her shoulder. “You ain’t—”

Mist spun around and punched him in the stomach. He let her go with a woof of astonished pain. She nodded to Dainn, who offered no comment, and they continued into the dark, smoky pit of the bar. There were three rooms stretching along Asbrew’s narrow length, one after another like those of a railroad flat. It was the third one she wanted.

A dozen sets of eyes assessed them from the shadows as they passed through the public room. The radio blasted Norwegian death metal from huge speakers hung on the walls. Sullen kids with multiple piercings huddled over tables strung against the wall opposite the bar, and aging hipsters, ignoring the citywide smoking ban, argued over espresso and cigarettes.

They were of no interest to Mist. She didn’t bother to ask the bartender where she could find Vidarr but kept moving through a tightly packed crowd of sleepy- eyed slackers and entered the door behind them.

The clientele in the second room was of a caliber far different from the kids in the public area. The dozen men and women were all mature, attractive, and reeking of wealth . . . the kind who dined every other night at French Laundry, had their clothes tailor-made in Paris, and lived in apartments and penthouses worth more than all Freya’s gold.

But there was something off about them, a strangeness that went beyond the fact that they didn’t belong in