“We’re here, Mrs. Geroux.” Akeyla set Sal on the ground next to Axlam and expanded the bubble to include all of us.
“Where have you kids been?” I asked. “Akeyla, stay back. Axlam is changing, honey.”
Akeyla pinched her lips together. “Jax says I can help.” She put her hands on Axlam’s cheeks. “There’s something here. It feels sticky.” She lifted her hands away from Axlam’s skin.
My niece blinked. She looked up at Jax, then nodded. “Okay.”
She cupped Axlam’s cheeks again.
Sophia took my hand. “It’s okay, Mr. Frank. We know what to do.”
I looked down at the little girl who carried herself so much like her father. “How?” I asked.
She watched Akeyla work. “The lady Akeyla can’t see told us there was bad magic. She told me to tell Akeyla to give Ms. Geroux her light. She said if it was bright enough, it could get through the bad magic. Sal helps. The lady said she’d realized what the bad magic was and came back to tell you but she needed to hide us from the monster first.” She tugged on my fingers. “She was really scared, Mr. Frank. She said none of us would remember her when she vanished. Akeyla couldn’t see her anyway, and I know Jax doesn’t remember, but I do.”
A magical woman—a seer—protected the kids?
Sophia squeezed my hand. “Her name was Ellie. She said she was your friend.”
Ellie. Ellie Jones. “Yes, she’s my friend,” I said. I’d forgotten about her. Again.
Sophia pointed at Akeyla and Sal. “She told us to use Sal to call for help after she vanished, so we did.”
Axlam calmed some, under Akeyla’s fingers.
Part of me wanted to scoop them all up and get them away from the changing werewolf. But another, stronger part understood that right now, my nine-year-old niece and her friends were keeping Axlam sane.
“When your friend disappeared,” Sophia pointed over her shoulder, “he showed up.”
I sensed him first, as if his magic tapped me on the shoulder then ran away like a kid playing ding-dong-ditch-it.
I instinctively moved Sophia behind me as I turned around.
The elf standing close enough to touch extended his hand. He was as big as Arne, and carried his shoulders the same way. He wore elven hunting leathers as black as Lennart’s, as if he, too, had gone out on the run with the wolves. Elven tattoos shimmered around the naked part of his scalp, over his face, and down his neck. His ungloved hands were also covered in elven tattoos, as if someone had put wards on his skin to throw off some evil’s scent.
But he was unlike any other elf I had ever met.
Never in my two hundred years had I come across an elf with gray hair and black eyes, nor had I met one who grinned like Loki himself.
“Hrokr Arnesson,” he said. “I am so pleased to finally meet you, Frank Victorsson. We’re neighbors!” He winked. “Though my father doesn’t approve of the town bothering me.”
He pulled back his hand when I didn’t shake. “It is Samhain.” He shrugged, then leaned close as if to tell me his deepest secret. “Concealment enchantments thin this time of year, my dear.”
This elf lived behind concealment enchantments? “Who are you?” I asked.
He held up his hand. “One second,” he said, then cocked his head as if listening.
Axlam’s back arched again.
“Mr. Hrokr!” Akeyla said. “We need to call Mommy and Grandpa!”
A burst of warmth rolled by. Not Akeyla’s warmth, or anything that felt particularly elven, but it did feel alive. And deep down I knew what that meant.
The shell had burst.
The elf nodded approvingly. “It is done.”
Dagrun must have figured out how to break St Martin’s magic.
“Jaxson, my boy,” the elf said, “it’s now safe to release your best howl! Your father is close. Let him know where you are.”
Jaxson obliged.
“And you, my sweet girl, call in the cavalry.”
Akeyla touched my axe. “Now, Sal!” she said.
A new burst of magic rolled off Sal and into the storm.
Out in the snow, several close-by wolves howled their responses. Yells followed. And out in the gray between the snowflakes, magic lit the way.
Hrokr leaned close again. “My father thinks I’m a bit… odd.” He shrugged. “We are all different aspects of our magic, yes?” He pointed at the children. “When Salvation called out, I answered. It is my sacred duty to protect the children and the disadvantaged, including the other fae-born of our town.”
He twisted slightly as if looking at rips and tears in my jacket, then nodded as if satisfied for some unseen reason. “I helped the kids listen, and I made sure they didn’t get lost in the storm. We didn’t need frozen kiddos tonight, now did we?”
“The pack’s coming,” Akeyla said to Axlam. “They’re almost here.” She touched Jaxson’s snout. “Your daddy’s coming.”
“And then there’s you.” Hrokr gripped my arms and a purplish-red magic washed from his hands to my body. “Funny how you have already died and come back to us here in Midgard. So presumptuous. I like it!”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “Who are you?” I asked again.
He poked my chest. “Hrokr, silly. I’m a jotunn, just like you.” He waved his hand and a streak of reddish magic erupted in front of us like a waterfall of fireworks.
I was a reconstituted man. He was an elf, even with the strange hair and eyes. Neither of us were real jotunn.
Akeyla looked up. “Where’s Uncle Frank?” she said.
The red magic must have hidden me.
Sophia squeezed my hand again, though, and looked up at Hrokr, who touched his finger to his lips.
“If I don’t hide him, he’ll lose his only chance to find his friend,” Hrokr said.
Sophia nodded knowingly. “Then you should go, Mr. Frank. Ellie must be worried. Please tell her we