“My mom was here?” She looked around. “Did she do something terrible again?” A sniff followed. “I smell sheep.”
I laughed. “Let’s go in.” It’d give me a chance to warm up. “I’ll tell you everything over coffee.”
“Hmmm…” She pouted. “But the hay smells so nice.”
Ellie snuck her dusty fingers under my shirt and tickled my abs.
We had a lot to talk about, and a lot to figure out. Sal and the cottage both still slept. I needed to check in with the elves. We didn’t know if her concealments had changed, or if Arne had found Hrokr, or…
Ellie pushed her hands down into the waist of my pants.
The overthinking stopped. I smiled.
We had a few hours. The world could wait.
Epilogue
I.
The shore of Frank’s lake, Alfheim, Minnesota….
Hrokr Arnesson sat on a cold boulder on the edge of the lake’s sloshing water. He clutched his book friend, the one with “Rygnyrök” scrolled across its leather cover in classic jotunn script, close to his chest.
The horrid Queen of the Fae stole his sheep friends, and her equally horrid daughter turned his not-a-jotunn friend away from him. His book friend wouldn’t be going home to the fae-witch’s library. Not now. Not ever. Not after Victorsson unceremoniously dumped him off the side of Blodughofi like a sack of whale bones. (Hrokr had tried. He’d tried so hard. One tiny little miniscule joke to relieve the tension and bam! That was it for poor Hrokr.)
Not to mention Arne’s—Hrokr refused to call him “father” anymore—ice-cold stare and twitching lip when he’d kicked his son out of the veil and back into his “no bother” zone.
He’d been as angry about Hrokr not coming to him about the dryads as he was about Hrokr’s “interference” with “his” seer, as if the witch’s photographs were more important than his own son.
Arne Odinsson and Magnus Freyrsson had supplemented Hrokr’s concealments right then and there because, like Victorsson, they had the most fragile of feelings.
He had options, though. Options that would not meet Arne Odinsson’s and his oh-so-pretty Freyr elf sidekick’s approval.
Hrokr rubbed at his nose and watched the woods. Lots was going on over at the cottage. Fae magic rolled through the trees like the fog from that horror story he’d read a couple of years ago—the one his vampire friend Tony Biterson had given him. Tony sure did know his pop culture.
“The Mist.” That’s what it was called. Some mundane with a royal name wrote it decades ago. There’d been nasty stuff in that haze, too.
Branches crashed. Saplings snapped. Titania’s kelpie ran out of the trees spewing at least three languages’ worth of swear words. He stopped at the shore, turned his back to the lake, and lifted his kilt in a grand show of Scottish crassness.
“Kelpie!” Hrokr shouted.
The kelpie dropped his kilt and sniffed at the air.
Arne’s supplemental enchantments were more annoying than Victorsson’s antics. But kelpies could smell a good yearning ten miles away, and Hrokr was only thirty feet down the shore, so there was hope.
Hrokr gazed longingly at the kelpie’s perfectly proportioned—if bleeding—bicep. His low body fat percentage was the stuff of legends. Hrokr fanned himself and thought about how lovely it would be to run his fingers through the kelpie’s lush ebony locks.
The kelpie sniffed again. His eyes narrowed and he turned in Hrokr’s direction.
“Yesssss,” Hrokr said. “Come to me, my gor-gee-ousss murder pony.”
The kelpie sauntered along the shoreline, sniffing the air and careful of the bigger washed up logs, until he stood directly in front of Hrokr’s boulder. “I smell an elf,” he said, even as he didn’t bother to look at the obvious in front of him.
Hrokr stood. He dusted his knees, tucked the book under his jacket, and extended his hand. “Prince Hrokr Lokisson of the Alfheim elves. And you are?”
The kelpie blinked. He looked around, then finally noticed Hrokr standing close enough to kiss. “Aye, lad, ye’ve got some strong concealments there, dinnae ye?” He sniffed again, and glanced away, as if he couldn’t be bothered to continue their conversation.
“Hey! Wayne! Pay attention!” Hrokr snapped his fingers in front of the kelpie’s face.
“I thought ye left,” the kelpie said. “Mah name’s not Wayne.”
Ah, but the annoyance kept his attention. “Zander, then?”
The kelpie frowned. “Like I’d tell a Loki elf mah real name.”
Kelpies did have their rules. Hrokr shrugged. “Well then, Travis, that’s just too bad, now isn’t it?”
The kelpie’s eyes wandered out over the lake. “There be lasses here.” He growled. “The Queen’s pup is makin’ mah life hard. Can’t harm bitches.” He took a step toward the water. “Must go home. Been commanded so.”
So Hrokr had been correct; Ellie Jones had stolen the kelpie’s bridle. Jones must have slapped some sort of “no murdering” order on him, which made sense. Hrokr would have done the same. The fewer lasses he tortured, the less likely it was that Alfheim’s parental sheriff would make a ruckus by putting a silver bullet in his handsome skull. “Sucks to be you, Mason.”
Though Hrokr would rather he stayed in Alfheim.
The kelpie snarled. “Mah name’s not Mason.”
“Sure thing, Kyle.”
“What d’ye want, elf?” The kelpie gave Hrokr a little shove.
He did not move backward, or twist, or shift his center of gravity. He was an elf and this beautiful murdering fae was not worth the faintest twitch.
The kelpie frowned again.
A wave of magic burst through the trees and out over the water. The kelpie breathed it in, as did Hrokr, and they stood there for a long moment bathed in the fire of an overheating witch.
“Serves her right.” The kelpie spat on the rocks. “Sad little custard.”
Hrokr sighed. Kelpies were a chore. Their attitudes were as predictable as they were grating and this one was no different than the rest of his kind. Next he’d be spewing some dumb conspiracy theory about how red lipstick was invented specifically to harass his personal senses, or some nonsense about tidiness and crustacean gods.
Right now, Hrokr needed him to focus. “Frank Victorsson’s mean, isn’t he, Tyler?” So
