Despite the cold, a trickle of sweat ran down my back beneath the old down coat I’d donned for the occasion. “He promised to give me everything I want for one glimpse of you.”
The shadowy frost giant attendants behind Hel’s throne murmured at the audacity of Lee’s request. The goddess turned her head this way and that, revealing one perfect and one devastated profile in turn as she silenced them with a look. “I will consider it, Daisy Johanssen. Tell me, what else passes above?”
A blue jay roosting in the rafters gave a rather self-satisfied squawk, leading me to suspect it had observed me stumbling along the streets of Pemkowet the other day, half-blind, pain-dazed, and clinging to Jen’s arm. I shot it a covert glare as I reported on events of the past month, including Emmeline’s attempt to hex me and her threat to return.
But I managed to keep it on a professional level and Hel heard me out impassively. She was a goddess; she didn’t care about petty issues—she cared about results. “Well enough, my young liaison,” she said when I finished. “See that you continue to uphold my order.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Hel glanced upward. A pair of jays fluttered down to perch on the back of her throne, peering at me with bright, beady eyes. “There have been reports of a . . . person of interest . . . inquiring about purchasing large tracts of land in Pemkowet.”
“A person of . . . oh.” The sweat trickling down my back turned icy and my tail twitched uneasily. I remembered the lawyer I’d seen leaving the PVB. Hel was being polite. “You mean a hell-spawn like me.”
“No.” Closing her ember eye, her fair right side regarded me with gentle compassion. “Quite unlike you, Daisy Johanssen.”
My throat tightened with an unexpected surge of gratitude. “Thank you, my lady,” I murmured. “Have your, um, harbingers told you more? Is there something you’d like me to do about this?”
“No. I do not know.” Hel was silent for a long moment, her expression undecipherable. “It troubles me. Learn what you may.”
I inclined my head. “Of course.”
“Now!” Her voice rose, making the rafters tremble. Her ember eye sprang open, blazing in the ruined left side of her face. “Send in this mortal who thinks to bargain for the sight of me!”
Twenty-three
I have to admit, I took pleasure in witnessing Lee’s initial encounter with the Norse goddess of the dead.
Maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t been such a jerk to me, but he had. And yeah, I felt bad about the rough time he’d had in high school, and the fact that his mom was sick, but . . .
What can I say? It was satisfying. Right up to the point where it turned scary.
Mikill escorted him into the sawmill. Hel sat silent on her throne, the right side of her face stern, the left side terrifying.
Swathed in his voluminous leather duster, Lee looked like a gaunt scarecrow with a penchant for goth attire and baseball caps. His knees began to tremble so hard I could almost hear his bones knocking together; at least until he dropped to said knees on the floor of the old sawmill, bowing his head in Hel’s presence.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to give offense.”
Hel drummed the fingers of her left hand, black and withered as charred bones, on the arm of her throne. “Rise.”
He stood unsteadily.
“You thought to barter for entrance to my demesne,” the goddess said. “Now you are here.” She raised her left hand, clawlike fingers cupping the empty air. “I could stop your heart. I could kill you with a thought, mortal.”
Her left hand, the hand of death—the hand with which she’d given me dauda-dagr—squeezed.
Lee gasped and staggered, clutching his chest.
And okay, yes, at that point I started to worry. “My lady!” I said in alarm. “I brought him here. If there was offense given, it was mine.”
It was true, but probably not the smartest thing I could have said. The baleful red gaze of Hel’s ember eye shifted onto me, her clawed left hand twisting slightly. “And will you answer for his trespass as well, my young liaison?”
It felt like those withered fingers grasped the heart within my chest, squeezing, squeezing. I drew a choking breath, my heart struggling to beat within the confines of that iron grip.
I had no one but myself to blame, and it made me angry. I should have known better than to bring Lee here without asking permission. But at least now there was something I could do with my anger. I couldn’t kindle a shield between us, not with the might of Hel’s blazing left eye on me. Instead, I kindled one inside me, envisioning it shielding my vulnerable heart from her immortal grasp, giving it a scant space in which to beat. “Forgive me for my transgression, my lady,” I wheezed. “I beg you to show us mercy.”
Hel considered her response for what felt like an eternity. I held my inward shield in place to the best of my ability, my heart thudding painfully against it. I didn’t think I could keep it up for much longer. Lee’s face was dangerously pale and it looked like his eyes were beginning to bulge in their deep sockets.
At last Hel opened the hand of death, releasing us both. “Tell me, mortal,” she said to Lee. “Was it worth it?”
“Yes,” Lee breathed, lifting his head. The blood returned to his face. He gazed at Hel with awe. “If I die now, it was worth it.”
I coughed, took a deep breath, and let the remnants of my inward shield go. Unless I was imagining it, Hel’s gaze flicked toward me, and there was something in it that resembled amusement, insofar as a vast and ageless deity with disturbingly bifurcated features was capable of looking amused.
It was pretty quick. I probably imagined it. Then again, receiving a rapturous tribute from a mortal whose heart you’d very nearly stopped seemed like the sort of thing that might appeal to your sense of humor if you were a goddess of the dead.
“That is well.” She lowered her left hand. “Now go forth and fulfill your bargain. Daisy Johanssen, I accept your apology. You have my leave to take the mortal and depart.”
I bowed in acknowledgment and gratitude. “Thank you, my lady.”
Doing his best impression of a newborn colt, Lee exited the sawmill on wobbly legs, his face flushed with ecstasy. “I didn’t expect it to be so . . . so, so, so . . .” At a loss for words, he folded his lanky frame into the dune buggy’s passenger seat. “So . . .”
Cramming myself into the storage space, I reached over to pat his shoulder. “Yeah. I know.”
He laid one hand over mine. “Thanks. Sorry I doubted you.”
Mikill drove us back to my apartment without comment, dropping us off in the alley. I thanked him for the ride. In response, he gave me a grave look. “Do not think to strike such a bargain again, Daisy Johanssen. Hel extended great tolerance to you on this occasion. She will not do so a second time.”
“Duly noted,” I said, chastised. If that was great tolerance, I definitely didn’t want to find out what Hel’s intolerance felt like.
Mikill nodded and drove away, his dripping beard wagging in the wind.
“I’m really sorry.” Lee grimaced. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
I shrugged. “You didn’t know. I should have.” I rubbed my chest, which felt sort of bruised inside. “Look, I’m just asking because I know how intense that was. Do you want to come up for a drink before you go?”
“Oh, my God.” He let out a sigh of gratitude. “More than words can say.”
Upstairs in my apartment, I poured Lee a scotch and let him talk and talk and talk, rehashing and reliving the experience, examining it from every angle. As it turned out, words could say a lot. It was okay, though. I understood.
Eventually the conversation came around to mundane territory. I asked Lee about his experience in Seattle. Apparently, he’d been headhunted while he was still in high school and was considered a total wunderkind and a rock star in the gaming industry. And I asked him about his widowed mother, who was suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis.
“I remember her,” I said. “She used to chaperone field trips when we were in grade school.”
“Uh-huh.” Lee contemplated his glass. “She was the chaperone no one wanted to get stuck with.”
I hadn’t planned on mentioning that part, since I’d never actually gotten stuck with her. “Oh?”
He glanced at me. “Maybe you never had the pleasure. Mom never wanted the devil child in her group.”
Well, that explained that particular streak of luck. “I see.”
“Look, I love my mother, but she’s not a particularly nice person. Do you really have a tail, Daisy?” Lee asked me, apropos of nothing other than whatever unfathomable chain of association was playing out in his thoughts.
I set down my drink. “I’ll tell if you will. Which one’s ironic, Lee? The leather duster or the baseball cap?”
“The baseball cap,” he said. “Obviously.”
I shook my head. “Wrong.”
Lee laughed. It was a good sound, free and unfettered. “Are you calling me a poseur?”
I smiled at him. “Hey, if the duster fits . . .”
“I get it.” He finished his drink and levered himself out of the chair. “Daisy . . . thanks. I promise, I’ll build you a kickass database.”
I stood, too. “Good. Because I basically told Hel you were the only guy for the job.”
He looked a bit pale, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed. “Right. Let me give you my phone number. I’ll call you in a few days when I’ve got something for you to look at.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Are you sure about that? Trusting me with your actual phone number?”
“Yeah.” He gave me a sheepish look. “I’m sure.”
Once Lee had gone, I curled up on the futon, Mogwai purring in my lap. All in all, I thought that could have gone worse. Hel wasn’t thrilled by the prospect, but she’d granted her permission. Okay, she’d given a very convincing demonstration of her ability to kill with a thought, but ultimately, she’d forgiven me for bringing an uninvited mortal to Little Niflheim. If Lee came through, and I was pretty sure he would, it could make doing my job a lot easier. The idea that there was an official ledger in which favors and transgressions would be recorded seemed to carry weight in the eldritch community, sort of like the way administrators used the idea of a permanent record in high school to keep us in line.
