“I could’ve sworn we taught you manners,” Patrick said, keeping his head propped up with one hand.
Wade stared at him and took another overly large bite of his breakfast and chewed loudly.
“He’s a growing dragon. Let him eat,” Frigg said, giving Wade a motherly smile.
Wade smirked at Patrick and started picking out the next pieces of meat to go on another slice of bread. Patrick resigned himself to needing to pay a cleaning cost on the SUV when he returned it to the motor pool.
“It’s good of you to care for him, though I hope you’ll be able to tend to his needs,” Thor said.
Patrick shrugged with one shoulder. “A friend of ours is a billionaire who owns a tech company. His pack tithes ours. We’ll be able to keep Wade fed.”
“You hope,” Wade muttered around his food.
“Let’s not make it a contest, yeah?” Jono said mildly. “Chew with your gob shut.”
“Any news on Odin?” Patrick asked, leaving Wade to his food.
Frigg’s expression never changed, though Thor looked as if he wouldn’t mind murdering someone.
“The valkyries are still searching. Muninn and Huginn haven’t heard the Allfather’s thoughts since he was taken,” Thor said.
“That does not mean he is gone. We would know if he was.” Frigg arched an eyebrow at Patrick. “They said Chicago had visitors last night.”
“Persephone and Demeter say hello, and that you should maybe jail Freyr since he apparently performed a fertility rite on my sister.”
Thor grimaced, setting down his coffee mug. “Freyr would not abandon his convictions for the Dominion Sect.”
“The Norns weren’t worried about him. Maybe they should’ve been.”
Patrick eyed the whiskey bottle on the table, then his coffee mug, and wondered if hair of the dog might cure him or kill him that morning. He reached for the bottle of Jameson, managed to get his fingers around the neck of it, before Jono grabbed his wrist.
“You have work today, and you’re already hungover,” Jono said.
“I’m late already. What’s another shot?” Patrick protested.
“Going in with whiskey on your breath isn’t the excuse you want.”
Jono had a point; Patrick just hated it. Sighing, he let the bottle of whiskey go and accepted the top-up of his mug from the coffee pot on the table. “Westberg was brought in yesterday for questioning with his lawyer. The guy apparently owns three houses in Chicago just for him and his wife. They’ve been staying at their Gold Coast one for months due to his mayoral campaign. He swears he can account for every second of the last two weeks, but he missed an event one of the days. They’re blaming whatever happened at the one in Lincoln Park on disgruntled activists who are against him. Without evidence, of course.”
Jono snorted. “Convenient.”
“That’s politics for you. They’re more pissed about not being able to go home to a place they stay at for a quarter of the year and hadn’t been to since last September than they are about whatever happened there.”
“Were they arrested?” Frigg asked.
“No.”
She hummed thoughtfully, staring beyond where Patrick sat. “His fundraiser dinner is still set to happen tonight at Au Hall.”
“Seriously? In this weather?”
“The election is soon. Perhaps he believes he doesn’t have the votes.”
“He’s leading in the polls,” Thor said.
Patrick gently rubbed at his temples, wishing he didn’t feel like shit, knowing he only had himself to blame. “If the SOA waits any longer to charge him, he might get elected, and then removing him from office is going to be a pain in the fucking ass. Can’t you, I don’t know, cancel it because of the weather?”
“This is Chicago. A blizzard won’t stop its citizens from going out.”
“It should.”
“There are tithes he owes us. Thor will accept them in Odin’s place,” Frigg said.
Patrick bit back the argument about accepting souls in lieu of prayers as tithes because it wouldn’t get him anywhere except maybe thrown out on his ass. “Maybe I’ll send some agents in to keep an eye on Westberg.”
“Why not go yourself?” Thor asked.
“Because I have a dead body I need raised, and my necromancer is late flying in due to the weather.”
Thor took a baguette and broke it in half with his big hands. “I have done what I can to mitigate the effects, though it has taken great effort to do so. If I undo it completely, the effects of the reactionary storm will grow elsewhere, and be worse.”
Patrick was aware of that, but it still didn’t make doing his job any easier. The general rule with a reactionary storm was to let it run its course where it was if at all possible. Choking it off just made the magic and weather worse when it came back.
“Why has it been hard? I thought you were the god of thunder? That counts as a weather god, doesn’t it?”
Thor kept making his sandwich but didn’t bother to hide his grimace as he spoke. “In a way, yes, but rain obeys Freyr more than it ever will me.”
“No wonder the weather is shit,” Jono said drolly.
Frigg’s mouth thinned into a hard line. “I will speak to him.”
Patrick snorted, then regretted the way it made his face hurt. “Good luck with that.”
The door to Eiketre was pushed open, letting in a blast of cold air. Brynhildr and Eir walked inside, both brushing snow off their shoulders. Brynhildr carried her motorcycle helmet in one hand, which she placed on one of the brand-new bar tables. The scorch marks from hellfire had been cleansed, and while the foundation and walls of the place still stood, the furnishings had all needed replacing. Patrick was a little impressed at how quickly the place had been fixed up.
Wade perked up at their arrival. “Can I go say hi to Dynfari?”
“She’s outside with the others,” Brynhildr said.
Wade nearly tipped out of his seat in his hurry, snatching up another handful of meat and bread to carry with him outside.
“We’re going
