Foresworn

Foresworn Rinda Elliott It is written that three Sisters of Fate have the power to change the world's destiny.But only if they survive…Kat Lockwood grew up listening to her unhinged mother's stories about the Norse goddess souls she and her triplet sisters carry, about fiery deaths and a prophecy foretelling the world's end. Now, to save that world, Kat must find a guy who hosts the soul of a Norse god–a warrior with the lightest blond hair and the darkest brown eyes.But at a truck stop on her road trip, Kat freezes time while she writes out a cryptic message in runes. The only other person able to see this happen? A gorgeous guy with the lightest blond hair and the darkest brown eyes.Kat's not convinced peaceful Arun is the future warrior who will turn the tide in the final battle. Yet, Arun turns out to be a lot tougher than he seems. As soul-carrying teens and underworld creatures gather over the world’s deadliest volcano, Kat finds that no one, including her sisters and mother, is exactly who she thought they were…Sisters of FateThe prophecy doesn't lie: one is doomed to die. ItiswrittenthatthreeSistersofFatehavethepowertochangetheworld’sdestiny. Butonlyiftheysurvive... Kat Lockwood grew up listening to her unhinged mother’s stories about the Norse goddess souls she and her triplet sisters carry, about fiery deaths and a prophecy foretelling the world’s end. Now, to save that world, Kat must find a guy who hosts the soul of a Norse god—a warrior with the lightest blond hair and the darkest brown eyes. But at a truck stop on her road trip, Kat freezes time while she writes out a cryptic message in runes. The only other person able to see this happen? A gorgeous guy with the lightest blond hair and the darkest brown eyes. Kat’s not convinced peaceful Arun is the future warrior who will turn the tide in the final battle. Yet Arun turns out to be a lot tougher than he seems. As soul-carrying teens and underworld creatures gather over the world’s deadliest volcano, Kat finds that no one, including her sisters and mother, is exactly who she thought they were... Sisters of Fate The prophecy doesn’t lie:one is doomed to die. Praise for Rinda Elliott (#ulink_ec80f3e0-ca6c-55c2-95a3-a13cb6190dd7) “Vivid characters and an action-packed apocalyptic adventure!” —New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent on Foretold “Thrilling, high octane, action-packed and danger-filled...it is an utterly riveting story that is unputdownable.” —Fiktshun.com on Foretold “With a fresh and original take on Norse mythology, Foretold is a breathtaking tale that will leave you crying out for more!” —Jenna Black, author of Glimmerglass “I was riveted. There were tons of thrills and one hell of a surprise to keep you on the edge of your seat. I really enjoyed the story and the ending has me excited for book two.” —Imagine a World on Foretold “Forecast is an excellent continuation of the series and I am counting down the days until the third and final book comes out.” —Yummy Men and Kickass Chicks “Forecast is the best kind of second installment...as action-packed as its predecessor.” —Supernatural Snark “Full of imaginative, engaging elements; Elliott delivers a novel full of humor and heart...there is no question that Elliott’s resourceful imagination will keep readers turning pages and leave them hungry for more.” —RT Book Reviews on Dweller on the Threshold Foresworn Rinda Elliott www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk) The Norns Thence come the maidens Mighty in wisdom, Three from the dwelling Down ’neath the tree; Urd is one named, Verthandi the next, On the wood they scored, And Skuld the third. Laws they made there, And life allotted To the sons of men, And set their fates. —The Norse Poetic Edda The Prophecy It is written that the kynkv?sl, Norse descendants, will one day house the souls of the gods. True heroes who know their sad fate in the coming battles but fight nonetheless. Their time begins with the portents of Ragnarok. Three years of winter, roaring seas that lash the land and an all-consuming fire. The destruction of the world. There is another prophecy, one never written and held secretly by the giants of Niflheim, the lowest region of the Norse underworld. The sisters of fate have the power to change the heroes’ destinies. Change the world’s destiny. But only if they survive to their nineteenth birthday. The odds aren’t good, according to this unwritten prophecy: Born of two magical clans that share life’s spiral. Light of head, dark of eyes, the young warrior will herald the beginning of Ragnarok. His hand to the death of a norn. Dedication (#ulink_184fe4c5-47d9-5ed7-98dc-faed81db4fcc) This one is for my critique partner, Rachel Vincent. She took one look at the crazy-tight timeline I’d set up in the first two books, sat us down in her living room and worked with me until I got it right. It took some time. You’re right, Rachel, we do have a great partnership, and it is about more than hummus and caffeine! Acknowledgments (#ulink_3e151b1b-fb8e-5c93-bce7-b2925db4e30c) First, I’d like to thank my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for her patience with me and this particular deadline. And for all the end brainstorming! But mostly for taking a chance on this trilogy. I’d also like to thank my agent, Miriam Kriss, for the last-minute-scramble help at times. As always, so, so much thanks to my husband and children, who have developed more patience than most need while dealing with my deadlines over the past couple of years. To my mother and my sisters for LOTS of phone support. And again, to the Deadline Dames. Who knew we’d still be going strong in constant support and friendship all these years later? Devon Monk, Karen Mahoney, Jenna Black, Rachel Vincent, Jackie Kessler, Toni Andrews, Lilith Saintcrow and Keri Arthur. You guys are the best! Contents Cover (#u8d446482-cbd2-50bb-8ba4-f1ae68ef6296) Back Cover Text (#u90e3b3fb-afca-5d94-8153-32d39d1e730e) Praise (#ulink_05277ebd-ab44-5129-8f9f-aa7c50214f43) Title Page (#uc90baf60-1d79-5538-8234-aeaba2bfd805) The Norns (#u92f14d23-0cf0-53e3-823f-82d08864c070) Dedication (#ulink_05539b89-fafc-578b-bc65-6400a0e72294) Acknowledgments (#ulink_aed3f0ee-14b0-5787-bdef-9a3808f47c1c) Chapter One (#ulink_4926cb56-0c39-57d3-a4fb-cf523dd78315) Chapter Two (#ulink_691bffd2-79c9-57fe-b9ef-021ed55dfc07) Chapter Three (#ulink_d70cc4cc-5fdd-569f-add4-9846342c3f70) Chapter Four (#ulink_6308d2dc-3e98-5b7d-a3ff-191ae7d76cb9) Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo) Extract (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter One (#ulink_bc6d099a-d058-5924-90fc-92132ec5255d) “One of these things is not like the others,” I sang under my breath, as I white-knuckled my Jeep between a couple of eighteen-wheelers. I’d been sandwiched between monster vehicles for so many miles, I could no longer feel the tips of my fingers. Maybe I shouldn’t have started my trip in the middle of the night, after all. Not that I’d had a choice. I hadn’t been able to find a hotel with an available room the night before and after four hours of sleeping in my car, I’d decided driving had to be a better option than freezing to death. What had I been thinking? Oh yeah. That somehow it was my responsibility to find a teenage warrior who was going to save the world. If, that is, he didn’t kill me because of some weird prophecy. Now minutes before sunrise, I was doing everything I could to stay out of blind spots while the trucks kicked up snow all over my smaller vehicle. Between that and what was coming from the sky, I felt like I was caught in some surreal dream sequence in a bad eighties horror movie—as if any second, the trucks around me would converge, develop abominable snowman faces and we’d end up battling it out at a sleazy truck stop. My phone rang, the screen lighting up the dark momentarily. It wasn’t one of my sisters’ distinctive tones, so I didn’t take the time to look to see who was calling. With the way one of the trucks kept swerving, someone else shouldn’t have been driving in the middle of the night, either. “Soooo not answering while I’m playing caravan with big rigs,” I muttered between clenched teeth. But the ringing didn’t stop, which meant it still could be one of my sisters. I had two—we were triplets. Growling, I snatched up the phone, glanced at the screen and, though I didn’t recognize the number, I answered. “Yeah?” The silence lasted long enough for me to roll my eyes. “Hello! If you don’t answer, I’m hanging up. Who the hell is this?” “Raven.” My sister’s tone in just the one word made me instantly start looking for a place to get off the road. The shoulder was too iffy because of the slick snow and the water on either sides of the highway. “Gods, Raven! You’re lucky I answered. It’s freaking noisy here, and I didn’t recognize the number. Where are you?” “Oklahoma.” Her voice sounded hushed, and I had to strain to hear her. “I found him. Found Vanir McConnell.” Three days before, my sisters and I had discovered our egg donor—as if I’d call her Mom anymore—had been spending years researching kids on the internet—kids who could possibly be carrying god souls like us. What she planned to do with that knowledge was anyone’s guess. But with the way she’d been acting, it couldn’t be good. So each of us had picked a warrior to track down. We’d split up for the first time in our lives. Raven was talking about the guy she’d chosen. The one who apparently carried the soul of the Norse god Odin. We were pretty sure the wolves in the article our mother had saved were the big clue on which god. Mine had something to do with crops, according to the tabloid story I’d picked—or my norn had picked. She’d squirmed like I’d set her on fire the instant my hand had touched that printed paper I’d found in our mother’s room. Crops could mean Freyr, and that particular god could possibly be the most important of them all. He wasn’t supposed to survive Ragnarok—like most of the important gods—but he played a huge part of the end of it, and if he did survive, he could have something to do with healing the earth after three years of winter had damaged it. My entire life had been about crazy stuff—goddesses and Norse prophecies—and I’d never truly swallowed the Ragnarok part of it all. I mean, come on! Three years of snow, angry waves swallowing the earth, gods battling giants, elves and whatever. Oh, then there was the fire. Always the damned fire. My stomach churned. “I know. Coral told me,” I finally answered as I made it past the lake—on the right side at least. I started to pull over but saw the place was a campground. Oh no, we aren’t going to risk that kind of bad mojo. I took the next opening instead into a fast-food parking lot and nearly slid into a parked pickup. My cell hit the floor. “I dropped the stupid phone!” I yelled. “Just hold on while I find a parking space away from these loud trucks!” I could have gone into the campground, but I’d vowed never to step foot in one again. I’d had enough of those places growing up. Our mother had dragged us from one to another, always moving when her freaky, paranoid internal clock said boo. I’d developed what I thought of as a healthy disgust with all things tent related. And I planned to honor that disgust. Forever. I parked far enough away from the restaurant to have privacy but still catch a little of the light coming through the windows. A guy in a fast-food uniform scurried past a window, carrying a tray. It looked like they were about to open. I leaned over to feel around the floorboard for my phone and snatched it up. “I’m back. Where have you been? I called you, like, five times last night and Coral is totally freaked.” Okay, maybe Coral wasn’t totally freaked, but she’d been worried. Unfortunately, I’d had to cut the call short. I looked around. The parking lot was mostly deserted. “You’d better call her right away if you haven’t already.” Frigid air snaked through every opening in the Jeep it could find. Felt like it was trying to burrow permanently into my bones. “I will. I don’t have my phone. Might have lost it.” “You’d better find it, or pick up another somewhere because we have to stay in touch.” I grabbed a blanket from the pile in the passenger seat and wrapped it around me. With the car running, the heat blasting through the vents, and the snow pattering on the roof, it could have been cozy. If the heat had actually been winning the battle against the cold. “I’m in Wyoming already, and holy goddess crap it’s cold up here.” “I expected it to take you longer. It took me forever to get here, and Oklahoma is closer.” “Me? You’ve already found your warrior. Coral told me.” I snorted. “How?” “I crashed into a river. He helped me out.” My heart did this weird sort of extra thump, thump, thump and I held my breath, staring at the sunrise that seemed to be battling the clouds for sky space. It looked like splotches of spilled tangerine paint on a dark gray canvas. Not for the first time I thought about how we should have stayed together. How nothing would mean anything if I lost one of my sisters. “I’m okay,” she said quickly. “The car is in a river and will have to be towed, fixed—hopefully. I don’t even want to think about how much of my savings that will suck up. But I came out with only a lump on my head. Vanir’s aunt is a doctor, and she stuck around to make sure I was fine. And get this, Kat, she has seidr. Big-time. And her name is Sarah Eir.” “No shit.” A dump truck pulled into the parking lot and drove so slowly past me, I tightened my jaw until it hurt. My exhaustion from my sleepless night was starting to settle in me like a heavy weight, and I blinked at the red-and-orange-streaked sky. Felt like someone had poured grit into my eyes. When the loud motor finally quit, I frowned. “Wait, you met a doctor with seidr magic and her name is Eir? Like the healing goddess? That’s whacked.” I don’t know why I was surprised Raven had met someone with seidr magic. It wasn’t like I didn’t believe in it. How could I not when my own version had ruined my life? The thump in my chest grew worse, and I realized it wasn’t my heart making a racket—it was my norn. The Norse goddess who had turned me into a host and liked to take over my body occasionally. The She Leech who had ruined my life. Who had burned my fingerprints off when I couldn’t find a pen and paper. Who had told some kind of potential future that made no sense. Skuld. Even her name sounded like some cartoon movie villainess. As if someone had played a word game using similar negative words like skull, scald, or scold. I ignored her. It was what I did best. “It’s not only her,” Raven continued. “Vanir has brothers, all with Norse names, and they look like their Choctaw-Irish father. And everyone here knows what’s going on. I just know it. This whole situation is too surreal, Kat. We’ve spent all our lives hiding our magic, knowing others don’t even know about it, and I walk into a family who knows things. Even the sheriff, I think. It’s like I marched right into a book.” Closing my eyes tight, I gripped the phone until my fingers went numb. “Sounds like it’s all coming together.” I could barely get my voice past the sudden dryness of my throat. “Ragnarok. Just like the stories.” I tried to swallow. Bit my tongue to try to flood my mouth with moisture, but it didn’t work. Clenching my free hand into a fist, it took everything I had to push back the torturous images from the last time I’d slept. And the time before...and pretty much all the times I tried to sleep over the past couple of months. Running for my life and jumping off a cliff into a chasm of fire. Trapped in a burning house. And the worst? Tangled in rope in the middle of a raging forest fire. My nightly movie reel. All fire, all the time! My norn wanted to make sure I understood I’d be the sister dying and that no matter what fate had in store for me, it involved burning to death. “I still can’t believe this is happening.” I rubbed fingers and thumb over my eyes, groaning. “Kat, I’m really nervous about the aunt. She’s going to know what’s going on.” I let Raven’s words sink in as I looked back at the sunrise, noticing more clouds had rolled in, piling over each other until their thick black bodies swallowed the light. I wanted that light today. Needed it. The world was only days into the freak summer snowstorm of the century and already I was sick of it. Shivering, I pulled the blanket higher and blew hot air underneath it, thought about what Raven had just said. “What do you mean? That our possibly crazy mother might be there? That she might scare your Vanir? Probably not a good idea to share. Just stay low. See if you can find Dru. But first, let’s back up a sec.” There’d been something new in her voice for a moment. Something that put a little more interesting twist on the hell going on around us. “You said Vanir’s name with a lot of familiarity for just having met him last night.” She was silent for a moment. “No, I didn’t. I said his name in a normal voice.” I could hear the lie spilling nervously all over those consonants and vowels, so I grinned. Good for Raven—she’d hardly ever even looked at boys before. “Gods, Kat. That’s not important right now. You wouldn’t believe what...” I waited as I eyed the thicker snowflakes hitting the hood of my car with audible thumps. When she didn’t go on, I sighed. “I wouldn’t believe...” I repeated. “It’s bad, Kat. Mom’s here.” I sat up straighter. “Coral didn’t tell me that. How do you know?” Shock made me clutch the phone hard when I heard a sob. Raven crying was something I didn’t handle well. “Raven?” “Hold on,” she whispered. There was a clatter as she obviously set the phone down. I waited, chewed on my fingernail, then grimaced when I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I washed my hands. Tapping my finger on the steering wheel instead, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly because the panic filling my chest made my lungs feel full. A loud clatter on the other end made me wince. When my sister didn’t immediately speak, I wanted to climb through the phone and strangle her. “Raven! What is it? Hey, talk to me!” “I think she killed a boy, Kat. I drove into a river—Vanir fished me out.” It was her turn to take a loud breath before more words spilled out of her. Fast. “He has wolves—can you believe it? But he had to leave me with them to find his friend, and when I caught up to him, it was only to find that his friend had been killed. Killed, Kat. Vanir brought me to his house and their sheriff questioned me. I didn’t know anything for sure, of course, but I think it could have been Mom.” “I can’t believe that.” Again, the words had to be forced out. I didn’t trust our mother—hell, I didn’t even like Dru very much—but this was beyond my comprehension. Murder. I’d expected her to try some stupid spell that hurt them or made it impossible for them to get where they were supposed to be during the end of the world. Not that I entirely wanted to accept that was what was happening. “I don’t know for sure,” Raven answered. “But there wasn’t a mark on him, and it looked like he was killed with magic. Plus, I smelled the lavender.” A diesel pickup pulled into the next space, and the driver leaned over to look at me through his passenger window. I frowned and turned away from him, still clutching the phone as if I was afraid I’d drop it again. “Kat?” It took several tries for me to get enough air to speak. “You know I’ve stayed mad at her, that I’ve always thought she was kind of loopy, but this? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand.” I didn’t want to be this far from Coral when she found out. Our middle sister was still too attached to our progenitor. “Oh gods, Coral! This will kill Coral.” “She won’t believe it.” Raven lowered her voice. “I have to find Mom, Kat.” I made a strangled sound. “No. You don’t. If she’s already crossed the line, you have to tell them! Why do you feel this need to protect her? I don’t get it! Look at how we grew up! All I ever wanted was a normal life and she made sure that didn’t happen. You should have just told them the truth last night. She’s killed someone, Raven.” “We don’t know that for sure. And I have to be absolutely sure. Have to give her that. Anyway, have you been paying attention on your trip? On mine, nuts were coming out of the woodwork. It’s snowing at the equator, Kat! People are scared! We don’t know the situation here. What if this was something else?” Of course she backtracked. Like I would have to. Literally. I’d have to turn around and drive to Oklahoma now. There was no choice. I loved my sister—both my sisters—fiercely, but I didn’t trust them at all when it came to Dru. “You sounded pretty certain a minute ago, Raven.” She didn’t say anything for a long, long moment. “My rune tempus hit last night and the runes said ‘in violence conceived.’ What do you think that means?” Stunned, I sat still and silent, gripping the phone as more trucks came into the restaurant parking lot. I glanced over, and the guy in the diesel truck was still in there, still watching me. Instead of thinking about the ramifications of what Raven had just said, I dug in my bag for my can of pepper spray. I really, really needed to not think about what she said. Not too deeply. “I think my norn is trying to tell me something about our birth,” Raven said. “No.” I clutched the can to my chest, stared straight out the windshield at the clumps of snow building on the hood. Then at the span of new dark clouds that looked like they had sprung from the mountain in the distance. “No. Dru doesn’t hold back. Innocent childhood isn’t a sacred thing in her world. It’s not her style. Gory bedtime stories are my first memories.” And they were. Stories of gods fighting, gods smearing herbs on talking severed heads...gods giving birth out of their freaking armpits. Nothing had been taboo for Dru. “She would have told us.” “Maybe not.” “What if it isn’t?” I groaned again, knowing it sounded more like a growl. “What if it’s something stupid from the past that has absolutely nothing to do with this? You could get in big trouble, Raven.” And I couldn’t handle that. Couldn’t handle anything happening to either of my sisters. “I know.” “Sounds like you’ve found the right guy. I’m calling Coral, and we’re coming to help. In the meantime, you know where to look.” I turned off my Jeep—thinking I’d grab breakfast in the restaurant. “Not really. Campgrounds are out in this weather. She has to be in a hotel, but I can’t figure out how. She didn’t have much cash.” She paused. “How long do you think it’ll take you to get here? I have no car and I can’t waste the money to rent one. I still have to find a hotel, and I’m worried about the cost on that. Have you had trouble finding rooms? I did every single night. Spent a fortune to get here.” “Yeah, I’ve had trouble, but it got easier up here. People are used to driving in snow, so they didn’t all stop immediately.” Okay, I lied. But just a little. She had enough to worry about. “Since Coral’s guy lived closer, she’s been driving around, trying to find him, but she told me last night every hotel in the area is packed. Our neighbors are taking people in.” “Coral’s not, right?” “Don’t think so.” I smirked because I knew exactly what she was thinking. That Coral trusted too easily and could let someone even worse than Dru into the house. Well, Raven probably wouldn’t use Dru as the comparison. It pissed me off that neither of my sisters could grasp how off our mother really was. And it pissed me off more that even I was surprised by the thought of her killing someone. I thought I’d given up on her years ago. My stomach growled. “Kat? I can’t let Mom hurt Vanir. He’s...well, he’s really cool.” I liked this subject better. I shook my head. “I thought I detected heat. So, I guess you won’t end up in Gefjon’s hall, after all?” I’d always teased my sisters that they’d end up there because they’d die still virgins. Dru had kept a pretty close eye on us, so there hadn’t been any serious relationships yet, even though we were eighteen. Who was I kidding? Serious relationships. Ha! We hadn’t even experienced casual ones. “Probably not.” “Really?” I dropped the pepper spray. “Holy crap! I’m coming down there now. Get off this phone, call Coral and tell her you’re okay.” “Bossy much?” “I told you. She’s freaking.” Man, at this rate, my nose was going to start growing like Pinocchio’s. I stared at the light filling the sky, at the snow that was falling everywhere—not just here. When I’d left Florida, it had covered the ground there, too. The scariest part was it was still summer. Even this far north, I doubted they dealt with this much snow in August. A plume of smoke rose into the sky from somewhere not that far away. It writhed and spread into the already dark clouds. Fear made my heart pick up. Stupid fire. “Raven?” I whispered. “What?” “Do you have the feeling one of us isn’t making it through this? All the other stuff Dru told us is coming true.” “We are. All three of us are going to make it. We’re going to fight. And think about it. Mom changed things so maybe she’s altered all of it and fate is now in our hands.” “I’m not sure that makes me feel better.” Though it kind of did. Any change from the scary prophecy of our death was welcome. But then it occurred to me that whatever Dru changed could actually be playing into fate’s hands. That thought made me break out into a cold sweat. “Yeah, nothing like a little pressure. But I’m determined to keep Mom from hurting Vanir and I plan to do it without dying. Stubborn as you are, it shouldn’t be hard for you, either.” I should have told them about the dreams of fire before because doing so now would just worry Raven and probably make Coral do the freak thing I’d made up earlier. For real. “But Coral...Coral’s—” “Coral is a lot stronger than we think. She’s going to be fine.” I smirked. “You know you’re channeling that parent vibe again, right? You’re, like, minutes older than me.” “Sometimes, every minute counts. I gotta go. Promise to call you again later.” She hung up, and I sat in the near silence of my car, the only sound the engines outside and the steady thump of snow pattering the Jeep. What if everything Dru changed wasn’t really a change? Just trying to wrap my head around that crazy woo-woo stuff made it hurt. Someone banged on my driver’s window and I jumped. “You okay in there?” A bearded face appeared. It was the man from the diesel truck. His breath fogged the frozen window. “You really shouldn’t be sleeping in your car in this cold.” He knocked again. “Do you need help?” He actually tried to open the car door. My eyes flew open wide. “No!” I yelled and held up my cell phone to show him I could call for help—whether it had to do with the car or him. “Was just taking a break!” He frowned a moment longer, eyeing the huge mound of blankets packed into the front seat of my Jeep with me, then looking in the back. I knew exactly when he spotted the suitcase because his eyes turned into slits. His face was so close to the glass, I could see up his nose. Gross. “Seriously, I’m fine,” I yelled at the window. “I’ll leave now, okay? As soon as my car warms back up!” Ever heard of nose clippers? I continued silently. He nodded and moved away. Just not far enough. So much for breakfast here. Groaning, I started the Jeep again and hoped the heat would kick on fast. It usually did. Unlike my sister Coral, I’d picked a car that had an actual working heater. Though I wished I’d thought of how cold it could get with the partially removable top. Of course, I lived in Florida and planning for subzero temperatures hadn’t been on my agenda. College had been my first goal. The second—keeping my sisters safe. I didn’t even know what I planned to study yet. Raven wanted some kind of history or anthropology—something or another. Coral was interested in plants, so she’d know everything about them for spells. Me? I planned to take the basics wherever my sisters ended up. What I wanted to do would eventually come to me. I hoped. I peeked out the window only to see that scary nose-hair man was still watching me. He had the same shaggy brown do as the guy in that movie The Stepfather. Right before he killed the family and shaved his beard. That’s it, Kat.No more freaking scary movies! My skin started to crawl. I picked up the pepper spray because I knew better than to ignore that feeling. I had once, and that once had been enough to make me overvigilant when it came to me and my sisters from then on. Insidious black fear began to creep into my bones. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Calm down, Kat.You’re in control here.You’re eighteen.Not thirteen and stuck in the woods with an older boy you shouldn’t have trusted.You.Are.In.Control. And I was. My car was locked and I had a weapon. But I couldn’t shake the discomfort and realized it was probably coming from my norn. She’d been shoving her own feelings into me more often lately. The emotion could be coming from my sisters. We had a weird connection as triplets and it was probably one hundred times stronger because we also all carried the souls of the norn sisters—the three goddesses who had lived beneath the world tree called Yggdrasil. Those shared feelings had helped us out more times than I could count. And my sisters had no idea I’d sort of made it my life’s work to watch out for them. Raven was always too busy working and trying to keep things together. Coral spent her time studying and fretting. It was an old-fashioned word, but the first time I’d read it, I’d stuck it to Coral because it fit. She was the softest one of us. The quickest to tears. When we were little, sometimes all I had to do was look at her a certain way and her eyes would fill up. Eyeing my phone, I thought about calling her. Checking in. She’d sounded funny during our last call, and I’d had the distinct feeling she’d been keeping something from me. The three of us had split up for the first time in our lives, each going after a boy who could possibly carry the soul of a Norse god. A future warrior who needed to make it to the final battles—one who didn’t deserve problems from Dru. Nose-hair man started toward my car again, and my unease kicked into high gear. I held up my pepper spray, watched with real satisfaction as his eyes grew wide; then I jammed my Jeep into Reverse and peeled out so fast, he had to jump away from my car. He could have been harmless, but it was better not to take that chance. Me and cynicism.BFFs. As I drove back to the truck stop I’d passed on my way into this town, something Raven had said on the phone kept replaying my mind—kind of like one of those earworms that crawls deep into the brain to eat all the good songs. “Mom changed things, so maybe she’s altered all of it and fate is now in our hands.” Ha! Our fate had never been in our hands. We’d all grown up in fear, moving from one place to another, watching the woman who called herself our mother slowly coast along the edges of the Loony Bin Highway. Then, after years of manic ups and downs, Dru had finally steered herself directly onto it. Full speed ahead. She was out there somewhere, terrorizing someone who might or might not carry a Norse god’s soul. Like me. But after this morning’s phone call with Raven, I now knew she was in Oklahoma. Driving all the way to Oklahoma after coming straight here from Florida was probably a dumb-ass move, but I wasn’t leaving Raven alone to deal with Dru. Lately, she’d been so weird, who knew? It was possible she’d moved into murderer territory. Recently, my norn had given me a message that said “mother berserker.” I’d shown it to my sisters. But I hadn’t told them about the time I’d seen her standing in the backyard, a swarm of snakes writhing around her ankles, with this creepy, creepy smile that had made her mouth seem out of proportion. She’d looked at those snakes like they were her children. Though the first spine-chilling word that had whispered through my mind had been something entirely different. Minions. Chapter Two (#ulink_3fe281e4-4546-52b4-a416-d9dcdb8785b3) I got in the small line for food at the truck stop, barely looking at my surroundings. I’d stopped in a bunch of places like this on the way here from Florida. The trip had taken me days because of the weather. But like everywhere else, the fear coming off the people made me slightly nauseas. I’d expected it to be easier up here. People this far north were used to early snowstorms, but even they knew this was too early and not exactly natural. Not when it was snowing everywhere in the world. I caught snatches of quiet conversations coming from those in line and in the small booths. “Old Mrs.Northrup’s heat went out last night in one of the power outages.Her daughter found her this morning.Froze in her own bed...” “Did you hear that they ran out of gas already at the Exxon station over on...” “One of the park rangers told my husband he saw one of those aurora borealis things twice in the past week.Right over the lake.They’ve only happened a few times before and never when it’s this overcast.My husband got so scared, he went up and bought all the beans at the grocery store.Can you believe it?Beans!If it’s end times, the last thing I want is to be holed up in my home with a man on a steady diet of musical fruit.Might as well shoot me now before the misery starts” I had to turn away because I choked on a laugh. Death and farting—true end of the world conversation. It wasn’t the first strange topic I’d heard in these sorts of places. I decided to go ahead and get what road food I could instead of eating here, so I stepped out of line. As I walked down the few aisles, I was surprised to see anything left on the ratty shelves. With the snow getting worse, the shelves would empty fast, and who knew what I’d find on the drive to Oklahoma. After grabbing crackers, canned chicken and iffy-dated peanut butter, I got into the checkout line. My vision blurred from exhaustion. I should be finding a motel, but I didn’t trust Dru. And unfortunately I didn’t trust either of my sisters to send her butt to jail, either. They always gave our mother the benefit of the doubt. Not me. Not since I’d watched her sit and pee herself as she surrendered to the lure of her inner catatonic world when she had three small children living in a freaking tent. That was around the time Coral had started having nightmares about a silver-haired man crouching over us at night. I’d never seen him, but I’d barely slept for weeks after that, keeping watch. Something in her expression—her absolute certainty—had scared the crap out of me. “Hey, you’re next.” I blinked my gritty eyes and looked down at the person sitting in the booth next to the checkout line. “Huh?” “The line moved without you.” She pointed. Right then it felt like someone stabbed a hot poker through my chest. “Oh no, not now,” I whispered through gritted teeth. But as usual, the She Leech did whatever she wanted. I frantically looked around for a place to hide and realized sitting in an empty booth would draw less attention. I set my items on the table, then looked up at the wall menu like I planned to buy a meal. The red letters smeared hard to the left, and I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to not look as the world went into chaos around me. It wasn’t so hard lately because the pain that came with my rune tempus sort of obliterated everything else, anyway. Everything around me—the diner, the people, the shelves—would be in a spin. When I was younger, this was the only part of the process I liked because it felt like jumping into a kaleidoscope and watching the colors swirl around me. Or like being on my favorite ride at the fair. The one with the huge steering wheel in the middle so people could get a good spin in the hooded seats big enough for me and both sisters. But the next part of my rune tempus ripped my soul out. Being a host. Being forced to write messages against my will. Being at someone else’s mercy. It was like each and every time took away a little more of me. Broke down what made me feel like me. And what made me feel like me was being in control of my own damned life. I peeked to see if the world had shuddered to a halt and found what I expected. The people in the booth next to me had been frozen midbite. The lady held a pickle over her mouth like she was dangling spaghetti into it. The man across from her had his nose wrinkled in distaste as he picked something off an onion ring. I squinted. Oh gods, was that a hair? Something moved, and my heart stuttered to a stop. I slowly looked around, eyeing the people in front and behind the counter, but everyone was frozen like a statue. If I were to go outside, even the wind wouldn’t be moving. I’d always wondered why I just didn’t walk into it. I mean, wind is a thing, right? So why only feel it when it moves? Shaking my head at my own silliness, I told myself to stop channeling Coral. That was just the sort of thing she would think. My heart tightened. I missed her. Missed her and Raven both. My hand started to tingle, and I reached into my pocket for the small notebook I kept in it. It wasn’t there. Panicked, I stood to scan the shelves for a notebook and a pen, but before I could move, my norn forced my hand. I grabbed the ketchup bottle and began to squirt it onto the table in thin, long lines. Music on the lake. This is what our norns did—the Norse goddesses my sisters and I carried inside us. They gave us stupid cryptic messages in ways that disrupted our lives, caused our mother to pull us from school and made keeping a job ridiculously hard. Though Raven managed to keep two most of the time. I’d actually been fired from my last one. I hadn’t told my family. Hadn’t told them that my boss had been totally freaked over talking to me one moment and seeing me trying to wipe permanent marker off a nice new white refrigerator the next. My table didn’t have napkins and neither did the next few. I finally went into the bathroom in the back, realized I was glad I’d decided not to eat here when I saw the condition of the sink and grabbed a handful of paper towels. I was back in my seat, ready to clean up the ketchup runes, when the norn spun the world again. Gods! She usually gave me a bit more breathing room. Groaning, I held on to the edge of the table with one hand and tried to wipe at the runes with the other. But the spin always threw me off if I kept my eyes open and all I got were the last two runes before everything stopped spinning. To everyone else in the truck stop, nothing had happened. They all continued their movements, their conversations. The man in the next booth held up the hair he’d pulled from the onion rings. I hurriedly swiped the ketchup runes into a smeared mess and flinched when someone cleared his throat next to me. I looked up into the most fascinating face on a boy I’d ever seen. He had a charcoal-colored beanie pulled so far down his head, I couldn’t tell his hair color, but his narrow features looked like they belonged on a magazine. Sleepy, slightly slanted eyes that were a dark, dark brown stared down at my table in amusement. They were like the seal brown on a color wheel—that last shade before black. With eyes that dark, he should have had black hair under that hat, but his eyebrows were blond. He had thin, elegant, wide lips over a square jaw and sharp cheekbones. All that too-pretty sat atop broad shoulders and a long, rangy body. I guessed him to be about six feet tall. “Hi.” His voice surprised me. It was deep and warm when I’d been expecting something higher, with clipped accents. I’d been expecting British...in Wyoming. Okay, I really, really needed some sleep. “Hi,” I replied, drawing the word out because he just stood there, staring down at me. My norn sort of moved. She didn’t have a physical body—gods, I was pretty hopeful on that one because I had no desire to physically experience a reenactment of Alien—but her essence could sometimes feel physical. This boy agitated her. Not in a bad way, either. Not like the guy in the parking lot earlier. No, this was warmer...like interest. Sheesh, does she think he’s hot or something? I studied him, thinking maybe he was the boy I’d come here to find, but wouldn’t that be a coincidence? And he looked nothing like the goofy one in the tabloid picture I had. His gaze flicked back to the runes. “Saw you sitting by yourself and wondered if you wanted company for lunch. Looks like you already started.” He picked up the bottle. “I usually prefer mustard on my table. The occasional zip of extra Italian dressing can help even out the Formica flavor, too.” “Funny.” “Not going to eat?” He held out the ketchup bottle. I took it as I shook my head. Not after seeing that bathroom. “Do you work here or something? Are you really here to take my order?” He chuckled. “No. I stopped in for a pop, saw you and thought you might like some company. Though, I was going to try to talk you into eating somewhere else. Now that I’m closer, I can tell you’re probably too tired to go anywhere else.” “Thanks,” I snapped, then swallowed a groan. “I didn’t mean you looked bad.” “Being told you look tired is the same as being told you look like crap.” I swiped at the ketchup again, frowning over the mess I was making. “It’s a fact.” “Well, I don’t know about that. You certainly don’t look like crap—just like you’ve come a long way. You don’t live here.” “How do you know?” “Because I would have noticed you before.” Something in his tone made my stomach feel kind of weird and fluttery. I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling, so I frowned at him. He lifted a blond eyebrow. “Are you some kind of artist?” “No,” I drawled out this word, too, completely startled by his rapid change of subject. “Why would you ask that?” He pointed to the smears of ketchup. My face heated. “Really? You’d call that art?” I noticed one of the runes was still intact and hurriedly wiped it. “Looks like something a toddler would do.” “True. I’ve only seen babies do this sort of art before. Doesn’t mean they weren’t proud of it. Could mean you’re trying for that whole abstract genius sort of vibe.” Weirdo. Too bad. He was ridiculously pretty, but I didn’t do weirdo. Not that I did anyone. Trust issues tend to slow down even the hint of a possible connection. Trust issues and a bloodsucker of a Norse goddess who could turn a kiss into someone else’s bad dream. I sat straighter, cleared my throat. “Look, your invitation was nice and all that, but I’m getting ready to leave town in a couple of minutes. I’m not worth your time.” “I very much doubt that,” he said, half under his breath, before giving me a brilliantly white smile. “Take care then.” Surprised he’d given up so easily, I watched him walk off—couldn’t help it. He moved in long bold strides, wearing his confidence like an invisible cloak. He looked at me once, over his shoulder, as he was leaving. That irritating fluttery sensation in my stomach stuck around after he left. “Wonder what music on the lake means,” I said out loud as I cleaned up the ketchup. The woman in the booth next to mine turned around in her seat. “Sorry. I couldn’t help but hear. Haven’t you heard of the music on Yellowstone Lake?” She pointed to the man who’d found the hair in his food. “We were camping just before this weird snow started. We camp up there a lot, but something was different this time. It was loud enough to wake us up from a sound sleep, and I swear I heard harps or something.” “They weren’t harps,” the man interrupted. “They were like wood flutes or something. And voices. Lots of voices.” He shuddered. “Creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.” “Well, it’s not as creepy as this snow,” the woman snapped. “I mean, I know it can snow early here but not this early.” “Dear, it’s snowing everywhere. It’s snowing in Mexico.” “I’m sorry.” This time I interrupted. “Did you say that you heard music at Yellowstone Lake?” She nodded. “It’s famous for the ghost music on the lake.” I shivered and hoped she attributed it to the cold and not the stomping my future grave just took. “Okay, thanks.” I stood, picked up the stuff I still needed to buy and made my way to the cashier. I’d driven from Florida to Wyoming, come all this way to find a boy who carried a god’s soul. A possible future warrior who would be a part of the battles of Ragnarok—when I’d never entirely believed in Ragnarok. But between this snow and the message my norn had just given me, it seemed that maybe I was here for something else. So one quick stop before the drive to help my sister Raven. * * * “Can’t miss the greenhouses was right,” I muttered as they came into sight. The cashier had known exactly what I was asking about the second I’d pulled the article out. “Another one, eh?Wish you people would leave that poor kid alone.He’s not some kind of Harry Potter wizard, you know.” If I’d actually cared what the gum-popping woman thought, I would have been embarrassed about asking about a kid from one of those crazy supermarket tabloid articles. Especially one that said he could make crops appear like magic. But I didn’t. Care what she thought, that was. She’d still told me where to find the “compound,” as she called it. Seemed a lot of people in town bought vegetables there year—round, so the place was popular. It was between Cody and the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park, off a long bumpy private road. I nearly ran off the path twice. Ice was building on the off roads. The place was something like twenty plastic-covered domed greenhouses next to a massive old barn and a small cabin. I hated the term compound because it made me think of a cult or a group of scary militia types—not that I’d ever been in a place like that. But then I eyed the row of off-road vehicles, the long trailers that held camouflaged black-and-white snowmobiles, and actually worried a little. Did I just want to walk up, knock on the door and say, “Hey, my mom might want to hurt you” when there could be gun-toting crazy end-timers gathered here? And with snow happening all over the world, they were probably a little extra trigger-happy right now. There could have been more greenhouses because I couldn’t see them all from the road. I drove around the back and parked behind the barn. The urge to hurry, scout this guy out and get on the road made me slam my scarf in the door when I got out of my car. Of course, the blast of frigid wind that hit me didn’t help. It caught both my scarf and the door, and I nearly lost fingers trying to stop it. Glancing around as I freed the material, I waited for a troop of militia types to come running around the barn. It had sounded like the door slam echoed through the valley here. Had probably bounced off the plastic covers on all the greenhouses. When nobody showed, I crept around the corner and saw that the back door was ajar on the closest one. At least I thought it was a back door. With one on each end, either one could be, right? That was such a Coral thought. We called them random thought farts whenever she blurted things out. Sleep.Need it.Badly. Biting back a sigh, I sneaked into the fragile-looking building, crouched down behind a row of plants and listened. The slam of heat and humidity made me hold my breath. I immediately unwrapped my scarf because the material scratched when I started to sweat. The leaves next to me were bigger than my head. I moved one aside to peek through the vines but didn’t see any movement. Except for bees. There were a lot of bees. Which was weird because I’m pretty sure they don’t do well in cold. Not that it was cold in here. Gods, it was a freaking sauna! Grimacing, I kept an eye on the small buzzing creatures as I walked down an aisle, moving aside heavy dangling leaves, recognizing cucumbers. Halfway down the row, my hands started itching, and I realized the vines had these tiny prickly things on them that aggravated my skin. Sweat ran down my spine. I thought about taking off my coat, but I reached the other end of the greenhouse and heard voices. “I spotted powdery mildew on some cucumber plants this morning, so I’m going to prune them. Can you grab that portable television and bring it to me? I want to keep up with what’s happening south.” “Sure thing, Arun.” Both voices were male, both sounded young. And Arun was the right name. But he sounded like the guy I’d met in the diner. I peeked through the door, spotted two guys standing between the rows of greenhouses. I couldn’t see one of them. The one I could see was freaking huge, with broad shoulders, tight jeans that showed the thickest muscled thighs I’d ever seen and a cowboy hat on his head. Acowboy hat. I stretched my neck to see if he wore boots, too. He did! Black steel-toed cowboy boots. He lifted his right hand to adjust his hat, and it looked like he had black gloves to match. Something glinted off that hand. I squinted because who wears jewelry on the outside of their gloves? He moved again so I could see his hand clearly, and I sucked in a breath. It wasn’t jewelry—it was some kind of metal. And it wasn’t a black glove. He had a prosthetic hand. “Did you find Gullin and Freya?” His voice boomed as big as his body. I lifted my eyebrows at the mention of Freya. And Gullin. It was so not random; I was in the right place for sure. “Yeah, they wandered outside and got lost in the snow. It’s over their heads now, so we’ll have to try to keep a better eye on them. Silly things.” “I’ve got to check some of the heat mats in the last seed greenhouse—then I’ll grab your TV. And maybe some lunch, too.” The big kid in the cowboy hat moved out of the way. Those amused seal-brown eyes locked on me. “Bring a couple of extra sandwiches. I got distracted by something pretty when I was out and never got around to eating.” “Gotcha.” Panic kept me from moving right away. My first thought was to hide. Maybe I was imagining him being able to see me crouched behind the leaves. But the smirk on those poet lips let me know he had spotted me. He walked toward the greenhouse with the same confident strides he’d used in the truck stop earlier. He made me feel strange. He was unnaturally beautiful—godlike unnaturally beautiful. I’d never liked pretty guys. Had always preferred the rougher, craggier faces—but it was kind of hard to look away from this one. I thought of Freyr, reputed to be the most stunning of the Vanir, the sworn enemies of the Aesir. The freaking fertility god. Suddenly, the heat in the greenhouse grew unbearable. I bit my tongue to try to moisten my bone-dry mouth. “The extra sandwich request was for you.” Arun stepped inside, and the space felt instantly smaller. Too tight. “I thought you might be coming here to find me,” he murmured as he pulled off his gray coat and draped it over a wooden chair beside the door. “It’s nice to see you again. I’m Arun Dahl.” Now normally, I’m not slow, but I stared at him with my mouth open. Open too wide like I was mimicking a starving baby chick. Finally, I found my tongue, remembered how it worked. “Why would you think I would come looking for you? Kind of arrogant, aren’t you?” “Arrogant? Me?” He laughed. “No, not really. And of course I knew you were coming here. You’re all coming here. You and the others—all those like us.” I narrowed my eyes. Great. That sounded very cultlike. “What do you mean like us?” He sighed, leaned against the table behind him. “So you’re one of those who has no idea what’s going on then? I’m curious. What made you come north? Did you hear the music?” At that moment, I was more confused than I’d ever been in my entire life. He seemed to know it, too, because his smile became kind. “You carry a soul just as I do. Just as the other kids who’ve been showing up do. What do you think we’re doing here? With the monster barn? The greenhouses?” “Growing food? What’s so different about having greenhouses?” I tugged on the neck of my sweater, grimaced at the sweat on my skin. “Look, I came all the way here from Florida to find you.” “And yet you said I was arrogant for thinking that.” He pulled the beanie off, revealing the lightest blond curls I’d ever seen. And his hair didn’t look bleached. In fact, those curls looked so soft, I had to fight the urge to touch them to see if they felt like baby hair. Funny, I would have thought soft curls and a pretty face on a boy would have made him seem kind of feminine. Not on this guy. “I’m flattered,” he said. The confusion he made me feel did what confusion always did to me. Made me mad. I hated not knowing what was going on at all times, hated the blurred edges that showed up too often in life. “Don’t be flattered. I came because I thought my mother might try to hurt you, but I found out this morning that she went to Oklahoma, so I don’t have to stay.” It was his turn to look confused. “So you think your mother left Florida to come all the way here to hurt me, but now she’s in Oklahoma. That’s kind of crazy.” He grinned. “It’s also kind of cool to have a girl riding to my rescue. Who’s your mom?” “That’s not important now that I don’t have to stay.” “But you do have a god or goddess’s soul, don’t you?” I squeezed my eyes shut, took a long deep breath, then looked at him again. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that question. You don’t think that’s a strange thing to ask someone?” Right then, I flashed back to my conversation with Raven that morning. “Vanir has brothers, all with Norse names, and they look like their Choctaw-Irish father.And everyone here knows what’s going on.Ijust know it.This whole situation is too surreal, Kat.We’ve spent all our lives hiding our magic, knowing others don’t even know about it, and I walk into a family who knows things.Even the sheriff, Ithink.It’s like I marched right into a book.” “Sounds like it’s all coming together.Ragnarok.Just like the stories.” Arun moved away from the table, surprising me once he was standing next to me. I had to look up more than I’d expected. I’d been wrong at the truck stop—he was probably a couple of inches over six feet. “It is a strange thing to ask someone, but I sort of have this sixth sense where people like us are concerned. It’s like a kind of electricity that makes my skin prickle. See?” He slid the sleeve of his blue sweater up, and I could actually see the blond hair on his arms standing at attention. “Does it stay like that?” “Nah. It’s only for a little while. It’s like my body has to get used to being around someone like us. It won’t happen again after a few days. Should have seen the hair on my head the day Tyrone showed up here from Kansas. Couldn’t tame the spiky Mohawk no matter how much gel I used.” He nodded toward the door. “Tyrone is that big guy you saw outside.” “He’s one of us?” And like that, I jumped on his crazy train. Years of keeping quiet, of never talking about the magical part of my life just flew out of the window. “There are more here?” He nodded as the sound of snow on the plastic roof and walls grew louder. Wincing, he looked up. “It’s getting worse. And so many have been coming lately. We worry that some will get lost in the woods.” “Who’s we?” “My family. My mother, her brother and his wife. They started these greenhouses when I was a baby—when my mother first realized what was going on. She was raised on the stories of Ragnarok. When she realized I carried Freyr’s soul, she and my uncle Axel got the first greenhouse going.” He just threw out the name Freyr. The word Ragnarok. So matter-of-fact. Like they were normal words—words that were a part of anyone’s usual daily conversations. I’d known who he carried the second I’d seen the tabloid article, and my suspicion had been confirmed when I had seen how absurdly good-looking he was. But suddenly I wanted to know so, so much. “I’ve never met anyone other than my sisters who carries someone’s soul. Does he squirm around in your chest? Make you feel crazy emotions? Cause pain?” I stopped, chewed on my lip. “Does he make your life a living hell?” He frowned. “You can feel yours moving? Nobody has said they can feel theirs.” He shuddered, horror darkening his expression. “No wonder you’re so prickly.” Prickly? Prickly? I glared. “I have two sisters, and they both feel theirs, too. If you can’t feel yours, how do you know he’s there? How did your mother know?” I pulled the tabloid article from my pocket and smoothed it out because I’d stuffed it in there when the cashier at the truck stop had made me angry. “So this stuff is true? You make crops magically appear?” He took the paper, stared at it, then shook his head. “This is what brought you here? Imagine that. Finally something cool from this stupid article. And no, it’s not true. This thing caused us so much trouble. For a year after it came out, we were dealing with the craziest people showing up here at all hours. We got hundreds of Bibles in the mail. Hundreds.” He held up the paper. “I can’t believe this is why you came here.” “So if it’s not true, how did your mother know?” Of course, I didn’t know how my mother knew about the one prophecy she’d drummed into my sisters’ and my heads our entire lives. The one about the future warrior with dark eyes and light hair who would kill us. Arun stared at me for a few moments, then pointed to a leaf next to my head. It was partially brown and shriveled. He slowly reached out and stroked his finger over the leaf, caressing it like one would a small pet. And as I watched, the brown part of the leaf fell off while the rest perked up. The attached vine lifted, thickened, as a healthier green color spread rapidly to the center of the plant. Dark, dark eyes stared hard at me as my mouth fell open. “Wow,” I breathed. “I tracked down Swamp Thing.” Chapter Three (#ulink_14646d02-7991-5368-af3c-ba1c057b74d9) “Which one?” I stared at the now perfectly healthy plant. It wasn’t like magic was new to me. I had it with my rune tempus. My mother had it. Even Coral had a little extra something. But his was just so...so...cool. “Which one?” he repeated. “Huh?” I blinked up at him. He chuckled. “Which Swamp Thing? There was more than one. The first couldn’t even talk.” I narrowed my eyes. “Does it matter?” He leaned against a support beam and crossed his arms. Intriguing muscles popped along his upper arms. “Swamp Thing is my favorite superhero.” “Felt a kinship with him, did you?” I touched the healthy plant. Swamp Thing was one of my favorites, too. Well, until recently when I spent too much time gagging at some of the new graphic images. I didn’t share that, though, as I tried not to be obvious about checking out his biceps. And I was leaning toward the version who had more muscles. I bit back a grin. “So your mother saw you do that...that thing to a plant?” “When I was a baby, my mother was carrying a sick potted flower in one arm when she came to check on me. I grabbed it and gave it health.” “Touch something else.” He blinked at me as one corner of his mouth turned up. “What would you like me to touch first?” His voice dropped a whole octave with the question. He could not have meant that the way it sounded. I stared, trying to read his expression and failing. When he started to laugh, I narrowed my eyes, then pointed to a dead plant. Arun shook his head. “I can’t bring it back to life. Once the energy is gone, there isn’t anything for me to boost. That’s all I do. Give already existing energy a spring in its step.” “Can you heal people?” “I wish. No, it only works on plants.” He picked up garden shears and snipped off a few leaves. “You must be really popular around here, then.” I watched him run the pad of his thumb over one of the smaller leaves, erasing the white spots. He clipped the next one off. “If you can heal the plants, why are you cutting parts off?” “It’s better to cut back some of the leaves so more of the plant’s energy goes to the fruit.” He worked quietly for a few moments. “So what exactly was that magic you did in the truck stop?” “What?” I grabbed his arm. “You know I did something there?” He nodded, set the clippers down and patted my hand. “Don’t get upset.” “Dude, don’t pat me, and don’t patronize me. I may look twelve, but I’m eighteen and don’t have a lot of patience.” I saw movement outside the greenhouse but ignored it. “Which part of my magic did you see?” “All of it. You sent the world into a spin, stopped time and wrote a message in runes with ketchup. I watched you do it all. I even sneaked a peek when you went into the bathroom. Music on the lake is about this place. Means you’re supposed to be here, not running back to...Where was it? Oklahoma?” I shook my head. “You don’t understand. It’s a family thing, and nothing is more important to me than my family.” Arun stared at me, his arms crossed, his expression like the school counselor’s I’d had in the last year I’d been allowed to go to school. The one determined to find the reason why I’d defaced the cafeteria wall with maple syrup. Apparently, I had a thing for condiments. Wait, is syrup a condiment? Because he continued to stare and because it made me feel like I’d just jumped on a roller coaster, I redirected his attention. “That guy you were with—that big guy—who is he carrying?” I knew. Of course I knew when I saw his missing hand, but I wanted it confirmed. He flashed a white-toothed grin. “The guy in the cowboy hat is carrying a soul. He didn’t know which one until he met a Valkyrie who told him his is Tyr—the war god.” “The one who lost his right hand to the wolf, Fenris,” I muttered. “I knew it.” A drop of sweat slid down my temple. “You should take your coat off before you overheat. We’re keeping the houses extra warm lately to make up for the upcoming long winter.” “So you know what’s going on? You believe this is Fimbulwinter?” I was talking about the three years of harsh winter we were supposed to suffer during Ragnarok. Some writings referenced one summer happening during the long frozen stretch and others said none. Whichever one—it was supposed to suck. “Don’t you?” He held out his hand for my coat and draped it over his on the chair after I gave it to him. “You have incredible magic. I’ve never seen anything like that.” I shrugged. “A lady in the restaurant told me that she’s heard music on Yellowstone Lake, so it could be something about that.” Frowning, I scratched the back of my hand, which was splotchy from the prickly stems. “Though, my norn usually gives me future messages.” He nodded. “That’s what’s been bringing the others here. Some hear it. Some don’t. The ones who can’t are being brought in by Valkyries.” “Valkyries,” I said, grinning. That was a bit much. I was leaning back toward the weirdo thing again. His gaze flicked down to my mouth and his own twisted in response. “Tell you what. Grab your coat and I’ll take you on a tour. Introduce you to my two best friends and maybe a Valkyrie.” The cold hit hard and fast, but I waited until we’d walked a ways before I put the coat back on. The snow had picked up. Luckily, the greenhouses blocked the wind, which made howling noises as it swept down into the valley. He’d talked about introducing me to people, yet I didn’t see any. The place was eerily quiet other than the weather. He opened doors to the greenhouses, pointed out the vegetable and fruit plants. They even had fruit trees in two of them. My stomach growled when I saw the luscious red apples. Arun grinned at me. “Heard that. Tyrone will be back with the sandwiches soon, but here.” He walked inside, grabbed an apple and washed it in a sink before handing it to me. “We don’t use chemicals, so you can eat them right off the trees, but sometimes there’s dust.” I bit into the apple and managed to not moan. Perfectly crisp and juicy, it immediately settled my stomach. A girl with bright red hair walked past us, a taut scowl on her face, her arms full of heavy bags of fertilizer. I lifted my eyebrows. Three heavy bags of fertilizer. I couldn’t carry all those at once. “Is she one?” I asked after the girl disappeared inside one of the greenhouses. He was frowning pretty hard. “She’s upset about something. Again.” He looked down at me, chuckled. “You’ll have a lot in common with her. She’s prickly, too. When she showed up, she had no idea what was going on, just that she can tell the future and her future was in these greenhouses. Her parents kicked her out when she was sixteen, so she came here. To the place she kept seeing in her visions. We think she’s carrying the soul of Gullveig.” I tried to remember what I’d learned about that goddess, but all that came to me was prophecy and fire. I wanted nothing to do with someone associated with that particular element. “She was kicked out at sixteen?” Harsh. Yeah, my sisters and I had to pretty much raise ourselves, but Dru had never kicked us out, had never left us physically. Well, not until recently. “She won’t say why they kicked her out, but we think it had something to do with the visions. Tip. She hates the word witch. It sets her temper off.” He chuckled. “And trust me, she got the fiery personality to go with that hair. You’ll get along.” I ignored the dig, thinking about the fertilizer bags. “She’s strong, too, isn’t she?” “We’re noticing that a lot of us are stronger than usual. But not everyone with a god soul is. You?” “No.” And that was so not fair. “Well, I saw you stop time. Actual time. You might have more power than any of us.” “I wouldn’t say that,” I muttered. Not if I wasn’t in control of it. I waved my hand at the spread of greenhouses. “This is impressive. So, you sell the vegetables?” “We do. But we’ve also been preparing for the three-year winter. We’ve canned enough food to feed a lot of people for a long time.” “Aren’t you worried some will try to take this place? By force?” “Got a pretty negative view of people, don’t you?” “You grow up in campgrounds and see how you feel. Yeah, there are some hippy-dippy granola types, but a lot of those survivalists...Well, I live in the real world—I see real people in it.” “Yet you carry the soul of a goddess inside you. Must be awfully confusing in your real world then.” He had a point. I hated that he had a point, so I glared at him. “Look,” he said. “I could tell you think all that stuff I said about Valkyries is bull. You said you have two sisters. I’m guessing triplets. Triplets who can stop time and write messages in a very old language. You have a norn. Do you have any idea how important that is?” “I don’t have her willingly.” I managed not to wince when she twisted in my chest, but I put my hand there out of reflex. His eyes narrowed and he straightened. “You really can feel her,” he murmured. “You can actually feel her inside you? That has to be awful. No wonder you’re so grumpy.” “I’m not grumpy.” He merely lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not. This is my normal personality.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “So what makes you smile?” “Really? You really want to have this sort of conversation right now?” I felt like pulling my hair out, but instead I gave him my best “get to the point” glare. “So, if you saw that I wrote runes earlier, what do you think?” “I think you needed more words. But then you would have needed more ketchup.” Wow. I kind of wanted to hit him. Hit him and see if the muscles bulging in his upper arms really were as strong as they’d looked when he’d had his coat off. Gods, he had me all jacked up. “I don’t hear any music, so I have no idea what that message meant, but she does that—gives me obscure messages. I think she likes to mess with me.” “Do your sisters get the same thing?” I nodded, thinking of the one Raven had told me about that morning. In violence conceived. I’d actually been thinking about it often. The possibility, the horror, of what it could mean popped up in my head like a jack-in-the-box on speed. I wanted that message to be about someone else—not me and not my sisters. So I kept pushing that stupid little doll back into his box. Maybe duct tape would help. I’d done that to a broken one we’d had as kids. That thing never sprang out at the right moment, and I hated surprises. Raven’s message was a surprise because it meant that maybe, just maybe, Dru had a reason to be crazy. Not an excuse—there would never be excuses enough for the way she raised us—but maybe she had a reason. “Hey,” Arun said softly. He took a step closer to me. “Where did you go?” I cleared my throat, schooled my expression. “Nowhere.” “Nowhere looked very sad. Here.” He pulled me into the closest greenhouse, took my hands, faced them palm up together, then put a small fragile plant on them. “This will make you feel better.” Gods, he was strange. “Uh, I don’t have your affinity for plants.” Yet I stared at the slivers of baby leaves, the delicate stems. Tiny roots peeked from the clump of dirt at the base. The proof of life in the palms of my hands. “I’m afraid I’ll break it.” “It’s stronger than it looks, which I’m starting to guess is a good description for you, as well.” “Never underestimate a small package.” I handed the plant back to him, then watched as he buried its root ball in dirt. “My sister Coral should have picked you. She likes plants, too. You would have really hit it off.” “Because she likes plants? Takes more than that for two people to hit it off. Common ground is always good.” He reached for a rag and wiped his hands as he turned to face me again. “So is chemistry.” Flustered, I had to look away from him. For a teenager, he had the stare of a man with more experience than years. I didn’t really know how to take him, where to compartmentalize him. I didn’t know that many teenage boys, but none of the ones I met were anything like him. Of course, none of them had the soul of a Norse god and could stroke health back into a plant with his fingers. My gaze dropped to his fingers, and I had this sudden image of him sliding them along my neck as he bent to kiss me. Startled, I cleared my throat and closed my eyes, pretty sure I did not like the twisted and weird feelings he raised in me. “Hey, Kat, don’t go back to Nowhere, okay?” My eyes flew back open at his soft tone. “What’s Kat short for?” he asked, watching me as he continued to rub his hands with the small towel. “Kathy? Katherine?” I shook my head. “Katriel.” “Pretty. My mom chose the Hindi spelling of my name so it would mean sun—or the colors of it.” The corner of his mouth went up again. “She did that even before she knew about Freyr. What does yours mean?” I sighed because lately the meaning of my name had meant something terrifying with all the nightmares my norn had been giving me. Dreams of my head being on fire. “It’s stupid. It means crown of god.” He startled me when he reached out and pulled off my hat. My hair spilled all around my face. “The name fits. I had a feeling your hair was going to be something. It’s really long.” He picked up a strand and rubbed it between his fingers. “Soft.” The heat crawling through my body had nothing to do with the greenhouse temperature. I stepped back. He dropped my hair. “Sorry.” Arun didn’t look sorry. He looked curious more than anything, and the way he looked at me made me feel so strange and fluttery, I was pretty close to taking off. He must have sensed it because his next smile was gentle, calming. Kind of like the one my fourth first grade teacher had given me when I’d shown up terrified with only one month of school left in the year and a reading problem not even my sisters had known about. My stomach abruptly growled again. Loudly. Guess the apple hadn’t been enough. That smile of his transformed when real amusement was behind it. I sucked in a breath and eyed the door again. He sighed. “Flight instinct is pretty strong in you, isn’t it?” He turned back to the plants. “Tyrone will be looking for us any minute with the sandwiches. He makes them great, too. Lots of cheese and crunchy lettuce. You like lettuce?” “You don’t have to coddle me. I’m fine.” “I’m not coddling, I’m curious. There’s a difference. Just like there’s a difference in the types of lettuce that work on sandwiches. Most people like iceberg. I’m not a fan. Tyrone likes a mix of green leaf and romaine—which I very much like. My favorite is arugula because it gives food a bite. Most don’t like it, though.” He was talking about lettuce of all things. And he was doing it to calm me down. How he’d grasped me as a panicky flight risk so fast bugged the crap out of me, but his lettuce speech was cute. Really, really cute. I actually felt some of the stiffness leach from my spine. “I like all lettuce. I like most foods in general.” “I need to get all these babies into pots, so why don’t you tell me about your sisters and keep me company.” “Not much to tell. We’re triplets, we’re ruled by these crazy halts to time and we get cryptic messages. Raven went to find Odin and Coral to find Thor. At least, according to our guesses. There was a freaking hammer mentioned in the article about the guy Coral went to find. Life has ceased to make any sort of logical sense at this point.” “I wouldn’t say that.” “Oh, and technically, I’m the youngest, though I think that’s a load of bunk. What do a few minutes mean?” “What does the rank of birth mean at all?” I crossed my arms. “If you’re gonna interrupt...” He chuckled, tucked dirt gently around the tiny plant. “I’ll shut up. Go on. Tell me about the one who likes plants.” A small spark of jealousy flared deep in my chest, and I poured water on it fast because it was the most ridiculous thing ever. “Coral is like a baby witch, though that term would piss her off.” I remembered what he’d said about the redheaded girl and glanced around. Didn’t see her thankfully. “Our mother has Earth magic and can do spells. Coral can, too, though most of her skill is knowing what plants to use or mix together to make a spell. I don’t think she incorporates a lot of natural magic into her spells, but I think it’s there. She does have the same magic I do. It’s a form of seidr. Hers is pretty terrible—it can come with visions of the present. She’s kind of a softy, so it sucks that she has to see bad things sometimes. While they’re happening, so she can’t do anything to help.” “And the urge to help is her first response?” I looked at him in surprise. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” That intense stare of his hit me again as he smiled. “Not everyone is wired the way you are. And the other sister?” I shrugged. “Raven is Raven. Kind of bossy, overly responsible—thinks she’s supposed to take care of everything because she shot out of the chute first. Yet she’s stuck with messages about the past.” He glanced over his shoulder, piercing me with those dark eyes. “You feel protective towards Coral and resentful towards Raven. Yet, your love for them is huge.” Uncomfortable that he’d read me so easily, I looked away. “Tell me the truth. This greenhouse stuff is just a front for your real job as a psychologist or, better yet, a fortune-teller, right?” White teeth flashed in a grin. “You’re kind of fun.” “Yeah, well don’t get too attached. I’m only here long enough to figure out this music on the lake thing. My mother is in Oklahoma, terrorizing people, and my sister needs my help.” “Something tells me I should keep you around as long as possible. At least until you stop scoffing over Valkyries.” “Who scoffs at us?” The girl who said that stormed into the greenhouse in a flurry of color. Bright yellow coat, matching snow boots and the wildest mane of curly red hair I’d ever seen. Curls caught on the long plant stems as she made her way toward us. She glared at me as she stopped momentarily to free her hair. “Don’t believe in Valkyries? Would a flying horse help?” Her eyes flared wide for a second before she looked at Arun, then back to me. She crossed her arms. Her stare made me feel kind of squirmy. “Would have helped me,” Tyrone muttered as he came in behind her. “But, nah, I get a pretty girl whose clothes make me have to wear my shades inside the house.” She plopped her hands on her hips and turned slowly toward him. “You really think you have room to talk when you have that huge thing on your head?” “She hates the cowboy hat,” Arun said in a loud whisper. “She’s no buckle bunny.” I had no idea what that even meant. Arun obviously saw my confusion. He laughed. “Wyoming, cowboys and buckle bunnies sort of go together. Guess you gotta live here to get it.” Tyrone set down the small television he’d been carrying. On top were six thick wrapped sandwiches. And, yeah, there was a ton of lettuce poking out the sides. My mouth twisted as I worked to hold back a laugh. “Go ahead and tell Arun what you just told me,” he said to the redheaded girl as he handed one of the sandwiches to Arun and another to me. He smiled, tipped his hat at me afterward. She turned back to Arun, and her expression made me clutch the sandwich to my chest. If she was truly a Valkyrie, then whatever caused her fear was probably going to cause it in me, too. “We have a problem. The music just got louder.” Chapter Four (#ulink_43664519-5c6d-5328-b83e-ba671e134927) “Then it’s close to time, isn’t it?” Arun set his sandwich down, his face paling. The Valkyrie nodded, worry bringing her red eyebrows closer together. “But all the warriors aren’t here.” My heart thumped hard. She used the term warriors like it was a part of her everyday vocabulary. My sisters and I had always kind of giggled whenever we’d said it. “Someone important must have arrived.” Arun looked at me. “This is Kat, by the way.” “Oh yes,” the girl agreed. “She’s important. You two don’t even see it, do you?” “See what?” I asked because she looked at me like she was seeing something the others couldn’t—something even I couldn’t see. “Even you don’t know,” she murmured. “This changes everything.” She turned to Arun. “She’s the reason the music is louder. It’s starting.” I shook my head. “No really, I’m not anyone important. I’m just here to keep my mother away from Arun. It’s a long, stupid story I won’t go into, but that’s it. She’s not even here, so I’m here for nothing.” And could I put the word here into my speech any more times?Here be a smart girl.Der. “When did the music get louder?” Arun asked the girl, but he watched me like he could read my mind. “Earlier. When you ran to the store and most of the people here watched the world around us spin around, then stop. Gillian threw up in front of Tyrone, and she’s really embarrassed about it, so if you see her, stay clear.” The Valkyrie shook her head. “She has the temper of a Viking returning from months at sea to find his woman has moved on.” He looked back at me but didn’t say anything. That was when I’d stopped time. When the two of us had been in that truck stop. When he said he’d watched everything. My hands started to tremble, so I closed them into fists. Everyone here had watched it stop. Something big had changed. But why? “Tell me something, Kat,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you believe in Valkyries when your magic is so potent, it’s singeing the hair on my arms?” “I didn’t say I didn’t believe in them—just that it’s hard to believe you’re actually here.” She pointed toward the open door; the rate of snow falling had obviously picked up. “So Ragnarok has begun, you have powerful magic, you know warriors are gathering who carry the old ones’ souls and yet you still question things.” She blew a red curl out of her eyes. “You must be carrying one of the dumber under-creatures.” “Kara.” Arun’s tone was sharp as he stood up straight and frowned at her. “Kat is the one who stopped the world earlier. Maybe you don’t want to piss her off.” I had to bite back a yeah. Didn’t want to sound like a petulant child or anything. A shrewd expression narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips. “You stopped time.” “You did that?” Tyrone asked before taking a bite of his sandwich. His bite was half a sandwich. “What else can you do?” “Nothing.” I didn’t like the way the Valkyrie kept looking at me. “That’s it, and I don’t do it—my norn does. Oh and she tells the future.” “Norn?” Kara shook her head. “I don’t remember them ever sending the world into a spin and freezing people. But looking at you tells me you are more than just a carrier for a norn.” “What do you mean?” Her colorful clothes made me think of Coral. Then I felt a pang. And another. Realized quickly that I’d thought of my middle sister for a reason. I tuned the others out as this horrific feeling swamped me, made me squeeze my eyes shut, hold my breath. Dread. There was nothing quite like that feeling—like being suffocated under a heavy black tarp. Like being caught and knowing there was nothing you could do to stop whatever bad thing was going to happen. Coral had it bad. Right at that moment. “Sorry, you guys will have to give me a minute.” I dug out my phone and called Coral. It rang over and over, and with each sound, I grew that much closer to panic. I dialed again, watched as Tyrone finished his sandwich and then carried the small television to an extension cord. “Hey, Arun,” he said. “I caught the news, and it seems there’s a storm coming in here on top of the snow. I don’t think the power is gonna last long, so you better catch up with what’s happening down south fast.” “South as in Florida?” My hands shook as I punched in Coral’s number again and held the phone to my ear. “I just came here from there. Is that where you’re talking about? What’s going on in Florida?” I asked Tyrone, my voice going higher in panic as I listened to the ringing. Arun’s expression went tight with concern as he squeezed past Tyrone and stopped in front of me. “You have a sister still there?” I nodded, having to stretch my neck back to look up at him. The knot of fear and anxiety from Coral was spreading like wildfire in my chest. “She’s not answering her phone.” I hung up and tried again, my hands shaking so hard I had to click on the dial icon three times. While it rang, I stared up at Arun, hating the worry that had bled into his concerned face. “What is it?” I whispered. “You don’t realize that Ragnarok is escalating at a crazy rate?” “What are you talking about?” I clicked off the call, muttering under my breath. Coral’s fear had turned into outright terror. I gasped, grabbed at my chest, shut my eyes. “Storms hit most of the lower East Coast. It’s bad, Kat. What part of Florida is your sister in?” “The panhandle.” The tightness around his mouth and eyes eased. “Then she should be okay. Let’s turn on the news to make sure.” The storm systems that showed up the second we turned on the television made me cover my mouth with my hand. Everything in my body became tight and painful as I watched the frantic newswoman, who looked like she’d been crying and didn’t care who knew it. She talked of evacuations and how the storms sped up and so many hadn’t gotten out. She showed a picture of Cuba—or what was left of it. “No one could have survived that.” Tyrone set down the second sandwich he’d been eating, his tanned skin going pale. “It looks like some of Florida is gone, too.” I tried Coral again. Every nerve in my body fired as agitation fueled my anger when this call didn’t even go through. I buried my face in my hands, knocking my phone on my nose as I tried to reach out mentally, to feel that she was fine, but that dread and terror of hers had faded out. The reason that could have happened had me tearing up, shaking like crazy. Arun came to me, put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed gently until I looked up at him. “I’m sure she’s okay. You said she was looking for the one with Thor’s soul. If anyone could handle storms, it would be the god of thunder.” “That’s not the point. I just need to know she’s okay.” “You guys have a strong connection?” I nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I’m freaking out. I can feel her fear and it’s awful. Or I could. I’m getting nothing now, and I can’t even call Raven because she lost her cell phone.” My shoulders slumped; then my own dread shot to the surface when the television and the lights suddenly went out. He squeezed my arm. “Don’t worry. This happens a lot up here. We have backup generators that should kick on pretty soon.” I hadn’t realized how much noise had been in the greenhouse until it all stopped. The watering hose, the television. Now the storm outside really made itself known with hard pattering snow and wind. A bee buzzed my head and I jerked back. “Natural pollinators,” Arun said. “Kind of a necessary nuisance but we’ve found that—” He broke off when screams sounded outside. Loud screams that were easily heard over the snow. Arun, Kara and Tyrone ran toward the sounds. “Oh no!” Kara cried as she bolted out the door. My nose twitched as a scent came in through the opened doors. Smoke. “Gods, I think there’s a fire.” There were very few things I was truly scared of. I was overly cautious and didn’t trust easily, yeah, but outright fear? I’d dealt with a lot of things that would scare a normal person. I’d driven all the way here by myself and only got creeped out once when I’d stopped for a drink at some trashy convenience store. The guy in the restaurant parking lot this morning had made me kind of nervous, too, but not afraid. Sometimes I was scared that Coral would trust the wrong person. She’d come close to it in the past—closer than she even knew. Always willing to embrace Dru’s new boyfriends because she’d hoped for a father figure, she hadn’t realized one of them was a complete perv. I had. When I’d told Dru, she’d pulled her head out of her butt for once and done something about it. I always wondered how long that itching spell lasted. But there was one thing that sent me into panic faster than anything. Fire. Years of nightmares of burning to death probably had a lot to do with that. And in the past few months, the dreams had been nonstop. Tyrone and Arun had followed Kara from the greenhouse. Toward the fire. I knew they needed help, so I squared my shoulders and started to follow. My coat caught on a long splinter from one of the planters. I reached to get it loose just as this horrific roar sounded overhead. It was like a whoosh of furious wind, and as I looked up at the plastic covering the greenhouse, I saw the first spark hit. Then another and another. They came like fiery drops of rain and before I could blink, the plastic shriveled, then burst into flames. The fire licked right and left, rolling down the walls until everything around me had caught. I stood in the center, surrounded by the cracking and popping, the hiss of steam as a stream of water arced into the opening of the roof. Snow pelted hard and fast into the opening. “Kat!” Arun’s yell snapped me out of shock. I hadn’t realized that thick black smoke had filled the room. Suddenly I was on my knees coughing, eyes watering. “Come on,” he urged as he knelt beside me and grabbed my arm. “What are you waiting for?” A burning piece of wood dropped onto the arm of my coat and instantly melted through the top layer of material. The grip of panic had me so tight in its hold; I didn’t think about running. I just started tugging off my coat. Familiar pain spiked through my chest and I gasped, forgetting about my coat. I bent over, crying out. It was hot, searing and overwhelming to the point I saw nothing but stars. “What? Shit, are you burned?” Arun tried to lift me, but I fought him off because I knew what was coming and didn’t want to be stuck up high in his arms. “Gods!” I yelled as the wooden boxes next to me caught fire. The heat blazed, sweat poured down my body, dripping into my already irritated eyes. And as I blinked, the fire smeared fast to the left as everything around me moved into the spin. Red, green, black and what was left of the brown boxes swirled into the whirl of the world around us. “Not again,” Arun groaned as he crouched over me. He flinched, then yelled, and I knew it was a cry of pain. I scrambled out from under him, trying hard to keep my balance as my equilibrium took a ride with the spinning world. A burning plant had fallen on him, the vines wrapping his body as if they were trying to stay alive by touching him. I pulled at one and my eyes flared wide as the burning parts of it fell to our feet and the rest sprang fully green and healthy again. But mostly I stared at Arun. He was fully aware of what was going on around us, and he stared into the swirling mass in shock. He’d said he’d been aware when this had happened to me earlier, but I hadn’t truly believed him because nobody had ever come into my rune tempus with me. Ever. Not even my sisters. When everything came to a halt, even I stood in awe as I took in the absolute wonder of seeing fire frozen in place. The crackling, the roaring, the popping...all of it had stopped. Even the wind outside had. It was as if someone had taken an image of the flames—like we were looking at a photograph. The glow of red, orange and white had paused in wild curved shapes that reached toward the sky. Smoke hung around us, like suspended granules of ash. I covered my mouth; sure it would be like inhaling rocks. The smoke around the plastic sheeting that had covered the greenhouse was thicker and nearly solid black, making it look like phantoms had been circling us. Arun straightened, his mouth hanging open as he turned a slow circle. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I mean, how is this even possible? Fire is a chemical reaction—what sort of strength do you have to just stop it in place like this?” “I don’t know,” I whispered. Then my shoulders snapped straight. “We have time to save things! I don’t always have to write right away.” I turned frantically, trying to decide what to grab first. Arun had flown into motion. He pulled out a small rolling flatbed, and together we piled as many plants as we could on it. He hefted bags of fertilizer, plant food. We focused on the plants that hadn’t gone into the long wooden planters at first; then Arun started plunging his hands into the dirt and pulling the plants out. I couldn’t quite manage that one—didn’t have his strength and was afraid I’d kill them all. So I started to run out the door and stopped, my chest heaving. A wall of unmoving flames blocked our way out. “What if we throw water on it?” Arun asked as he came up behind me. “Water goes solid when I do this, see? At least at first. Whatever this is doesn’t hold them for long.” I picked up a handful of pebble-like objects from the sink by the door. “These were water drops.” As I held them, they started to melt. “Water is strong,” Arun murmured. “Maybe your hold on it is only temporary.” Fear bled into my veins as I returned my gaze to the statue-like flames above us. “Fire is just as strong.” “Hold on—I have an idea.” Arun picked up the television and threw it at the wall of fire in front of the door. It sailed through—shattering the fire into pieces. Before they hit the ground, I noticed some had started to move. The snow put them out. “We have to hurry.” Arun picked up the chair and used the legs to swipe away the rest of the fire in the doorway. He gestured at me to run through as he grabbed the handle on the flatbed. He rolled it outside behind me. “Look at this,” I hissed, pointing at the bits of fire we’d sent to the ground. They were still trying to spark to life, but the snow was putting them out fast. “We should try and get more plants out.” Arun shook his head, then waved his hand around. “It’s too widespread. We can’t risk going inside them.” My stomach dropped to my feet as I took in how many greenhouses had caught fire. I counted six that had already been engulfed, and sparks were arcing in the air over several more. “Gods. I’m so sorry.” The sadness, the complete devastation in his expression ripped through me, and I put my hand on his arm, squeezed. Then my fingers started to tingle. I panicked a second before I realized I’d put my notebook with attached pen in the back pocket of my jeans when I’d climbed back in my Jeep after the truck stop. I pulled the paper out and held still as my hand went stiff. The message must have been important because as my pen drew the runes, my norn kept pressing harder and harder until the pen actually went through paper a couple of times. “She’s agitated,” I said under my breath. “This message is really important, I think.” Arun watched over my shoulder, then read the runes aloud when I was done. “Dark blood without rival.” “I have no idea what that means. First she says music on the lake, then dark blood without rival.” I chewed on my lip, staring at the runes, wishing I knew as much as Coral did about our mythology. I was so gonna start studying more. That is, if I got through this. The fire had me concerned—I could admit it. “I think it means dark creatures. They’re supposed to fight in the battles, right?” Arun looked around as if he expected to see them coming at us through the fire. “I’ve read ancient texts that referred to underworld creatures as dark blood.” “‘Without rival’ is the part that’s making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.” “Me, too,” he murmured. “I think it’s a warning. The dark’s rival would be us—the kids carrying the gods’ souls. If we’re not there to fight...” He trailed off. “Then someone is going to try and take us out.” This time I looked at the frozen flames and noticed that some had started to writhe despite the rune tempus. It was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen—those slow-moving tentacles of fire that fought so hard for freedom. “I know the plastic is flammable, but didn’t this fire seem to spread too fast and hard? And how with all the snow still falling?” “Magic. Which means it was deliberately set.” Arun sucked in a breath. “There were a bunch of kids in the barn!” He bolted. I followed, his panic bleeding back into me so hard it stole my breath. “If someone set this fire to kill us, it would have started in the old barn we turned into a main warehouse and place for everyone to sleep. It’s where a lot of the kids hang out.” As we turned the corner on the last greenhouse, Arun skidded to a stop and I ran into him. I had to grab his coat to keep from falling on the icy path. Several kids stood there, and all but one turned to look at us. “Watch out,” Kara warned. “We were hosing everything down and when this happened, it all froze to sheets of ice on the ground.” Arun made a sound that stabbed into my heart, and I followed his gaze to the cabin. Stiff flames spilled from the entire building—the walls, windows and roof. Only one flame off the porch had started that slow dance. Arun jumped into a sprint toward the cabin. Tyrone, Kara, me and the other girl with red hair followed Arun. “Wait,” I yelled at his back. “I don’t know how long this is going to last. You could run in there and then the fire could start back up.” “His mother is in there,” Tyrone said as he ran alongside me before he sped up and ran side by side with Arun. I picked up the pace, as well. Arun slammed into the front door, splintering it into pieces. “Mom!” he yelled as he disappeared inside. “Please,” I breathed softly to my norn. “Please keep it like this a little longer.” I actually felt her surprise but didn’t have time to ask again as the rest of us hit the door. I didn’t hesitate, running inside with Kara right behind me. Flames had engulfed everything in their living room, reducing what looked like a red couch and hand-carved furniture to piles. The smoke was thick in here—not as thick as the stuff coming off that plastic covering the greenhouses—but it still felt like inhaling rocks as we pushed through into the kitchen. The heat was like nothing I’d ever felt—as if I’d stepped inside a crematory oven—and the blast of it burned the exposed skin of my face. Arun was carefully trying to lift his mother, a slim blonde who wasn’t much bigger than me. “I can’t tell if she’s alive,” he said, his dark eyes glittering with tears that could have come from smoke or worry. “And I’m afraid to bend her like this.” “Here, I’ll take her feet and you hold her shoulders.” Tyrone helped Arun lift his mother. “Kara, can you get the back door?” She’d already anticipated the question and had the back door open fast. I looked around, not sure what I should try to save. I turned to go back toward the hallway I’d spotted to at least grab clothes for them, but dizziness swamped me. The girl who carried Gullveig’s soul suddenly reached out and hauled me right off my feet before tossing me over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Hey!” I yelled. “No time left,” she shouted as the world jumped into the rune tempus spin. I screamed as she bent and all the blood rushed to my head. She swiped a blanket off the floor and I had no idea how she was moving with everything spinning as it was. But she threw the blanket over me and ran. Then she screamed as she jumped through a window. I could see nothing, could only feel us sailing through the air and over the front porch. She landed with a grunt and a cry, dropping me. “How did you even know that was...What if the window hadn’t been that dir...you’re crazy! The world was spinning!” I scrambled out of the blanket and realized the lunatic who’d picked me up had caught fire. This time, I jumped her. I had the blanket wrapped around her before anyone else could reach us. Then I rolled us together in the snow until she started struggling. “I’m okay,” she yelled, her voice muffled by the blanket. “You can stop beating me now.” I realized I’d been smacking at the blanket, and I stopped and yanked it off her. Holding my breath, I expected to see scorched skin and charred, broken hair and instead she just lay there, grinning at me. “How are you not burned?” I asked as I pulled the now sopping and freezing blanket all the way off her. She shrugged as she sat up. “I have no idea. I’m Gillian. Nice to meet you. And I can sort of walk through fire. It’s why we think I have Gullveig’s soul.” I nodded, excitement sending me to my feet. “I do know that story. The Vanir goddess who kept getting burned by the Aesir.” Another girl with short black hair dropped to her knees beside Gillian. Tears and black marks streaked her high cheekbones. “Gullin and Freya were in that first greenhouse.” She sniffed, offered me a wobbly smile. “I’m Sky. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but nothing is nice right now.” She started sobbing. “Poor little guys.” Gillian jumped up and ran down the hill. She didn’t stop—she ran right inside that first greenhouse. “Is Alva okay?” Sky asked. “Alva?” I looked around. “Arun’s mom.” She wrapped her arms tight around her waist. “Did he get her out?” “Yeah.” I walked around back to find Arun frantically hugging the woman, who sat bent over on a big tree stump. Harsh, racking coughs shook her thin frame. He looked up, saw me, then bounded over the snowy hill between us to grab me and squeeze the breath out of me. “What you did,” he said in my hair. “What you did saved her. She’d passed out from the smoke, and she would be dead if it weren’t for you.” He hugged me tighter. Gods, he was strong. I winced. “Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat and letting me go. He stepped back, stared down at me. “Thank you so much, Kat.” “It wasn’t me—it was my norn. But I’m glad.” That hug had been nice. I looked up to find him staring at me with a surprised look that held something else. Real interest. I took a deep breath to say something, anything, and a hard cough took me over. Arun rested his hand on my shoulder. “Got ‘em!” Gillian’s yell made us all turn. I worked to get the harsh tickling out of my throat, watched her walk unscathed from a wall of fire. Her sweater was moving funny. She ran up the hill, laughing and gasping as she pulled a small creature from under her sweater. She handed one to Arun. He laughed, held it up and kissed its grunting little face. “It’s a pig,” I said stupidly, then cleared my throat as the coughing finally eased off. “They’re tiny pigs.” “Babies,” Arun said. “They’ll get bigger. These are the best friends I wanted to introduce you to. This one is Gullin.” He held up the small black-and-white pig, and I had to actually curl my hands into fists to keep from grabbing it because it was freaking adorable. Gullin grunted and rooted around Arun’s neck like he was trying to wiggle as close as possible. Arun laughed and patted him. He looked at Gillian. “Freya’s okay?” She pulled out another wiggling creature—also black and white—and grimaced. “I think she tried to bite me. Here.” She handed Freya to me. It was my turn to grunt in surprise because she weighed more than I expected. “Are these teacup pigs?” “Nah,” Arun answered. “They’ll grow to be a lot bigger than this. I’m not sure teacup pigs are even real. Think they all get big. But these cuties are potbelly pigs, so they probably won’t get as big as some of the monsters I’ve seen.” He held up the squirming Gullin. “You’d better not.” His smile faded as he looked out over the burning greenhouses. The sound of sirens filled the air. “Took them long enough,” Gillian said. “Actually, it didn’t. Kat here stopped time, so it seems longer for us.” “The greenhouses went up so fast,” Gillian said. She shivered, then began to lope down the hill again. “I’m going to save what I can out of the others.” “Good idea. Wish I could walk through fire.” Arun turned and walked back to the stump where his mom sat wrapped in a blanket someone had found. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/rinda-elliott/foresworn-39788161/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.