Elements of Magic (Rune Witch Book 2) Read online

  “Maggie! Heimdall!” Frigga screeched, then fell silent. With a dark frown, she closed her flip-phone and rested it on a marble side-table.

  “What’s wrong?” Sally asked, just as Freyr announced his presence in the Lodge’s foyer. “What’s a Valthrudnir?”

  Frigga motioned for Sally to be silent and waited for her adopted nephew to round the corner into the den.

  “Freyr, I need you to escort the Rune Witch and her cat to her home in Portland. Then pick up Freya.”

  Sally’s face burned red as soon as Freyr stepped into the room. She tried to look nonchalant, even in her confusion about what was happening, but Freyr didn’t even glance her way.

  “Should I bring Freya back here to the Lodge?” Freyr asked.

  Frigga shook her head. “Straight to the airport.” Frigga gripped her phone and dialed. “Blast!”

  Sally jumped. Frigga never cursed, at least not in Sally’s presence.

  “My phone won’t call out. I’ll keep trying to reach Thor, and I’ll send Rod to the forest to collect Odin.”

  “But you didn’t see what just happened!” Sally pointed at the hearth and opened her journal. “See, I wrote it all down. If something’s wrong, I think I can help.”

  “No. Sally, dear.” Frigga rose to her feet and looked down at Sally. “I’m afraid there’s been a rather dramatic change of plans.”

  3

  Sally made herself as small as possible in the tight coach seat. They were just forty-three minutes out of Portland International Airport on the way to New York's JFK—on a flight that Sally was supposed to have missed.

  Sally had been looking forward to her trip to Norway for weeks, but that strange phone call from Maggie followed by Frigga’s whispered conference with Freyr left Sally with a quiet car ride home instead. It didn’t help that Frigga and Freyr both said it was for her own good.

  Whatever was going on, it was evident Frigga wanted to keep Sally out of it. Sally tried pressing Freyr for information as he drove her home. She even batted her eyelashes—at least, that’s what she hoped she was doing. She’d never tried that before. But Freyr wouldn’t budge. He just dropped her off at home.

  So, naturally, Sally deposited Baron the cat inside the house and waited for Freyr’s car to pull away. Then she hurried to the nearest transit station and hopped the MAX train to the airport. If they'd really wanted her to stay home, she rationalized, they would have taken away her ticket.

  By stupid luck, the airline’s computer assigned her a seat directly behind Saga and Thor. Sally was supposed to have made this trip by herself. For these two to be onboard, something big—and probably very bad—was happening in Norway.

  Of course, if they spotted her before the connecting flight to Oslo, odds were good she’d be sent home. The odds were also good that Saga and Thor would be on the same NYC-Oslo connection. So Sally rummaged through her backpack for a wadded up sunhat and pulled the brim low over her face. At least she had the row to herself and didn’t have to pretend to tolerate the small-talk of seatmates. She pretended to stare out the window at the cloudy mid-day sky as the plane climbed to its cruising altitude, but she had her ears trained on the conversation in the forward row.

  “Let me get this straight,” Saga said in a voice barely audible over the engine noise. “Someone attacked Maggie and Heimdall, and made threats against Frigga over the phone?”

  “For the love of Asgard!” Thor spat at the seat belt buckle in his meaty hands. He’d adjusted and re-adjusted the belt as long as it would go but still couldn’t fasten it around his girth. He growled at the pieces of uncooperative metal. “Nnnnngggrrr!”

  “I told you not to unbuckle your seat belt.” Saga leaned close to him. “But if you break it, maybe they’ll move you up to First Class.”

  Thor stilled and looked at her. Saga pulled a magazine from the seat pocket in front of her.

  “More likely,” she said, flipping through pages of celebrity photos and perfume advertisements, “they’d just throw you off the plane. Probably over Kansas.”

  Sally started to laugh and quickly pressed her fist against her mouth. She leaned back in her seat and pulled her hat lower over her face.

  A plastic-smiling flight attendant named Brindy appeared at Thor’s side. She leaned down uncomfortably close and spoke directly into his face.

  “Excuse me, sir. Could you please keep your voice down and your temper in check? You’re disturbing the other passengers.” Brindy’s laminated smile didn’t so much as flicker.

  Thor’s fingers curled into a fist—no doubt to punch one or two of Brindy’s pearly caps right out of her grin—but Saga rested a calming hand on his wrist. Even Sally could feel the burly, red-faced immortal begin to relax.

  “Of course,” Thor said through a clenched smile at the skinny brunette in the tight-fitting polyester uniform.

  Brindy stood up and rested slender fingers on Thor’s massive shoulder. “Now, is there something I can help you with?” She glanced down at the unfastened belt, then frowned as though she were preparing to chastise a particularly adorable three-year-old.

  “Now, sir, the Fasten Seat Belts sign is still illuminated.” She gestured toward the display over his head in a manner that suggested she’d recently graduated from hand modeling school.

  “Uh, yeah about that . . .” Thor replied.

  Brindy’s dark blue skirt rode up her pantyhose as she bent down and snatched both ends of the belt out of Thor’s hands.

  Jaw clenched, the god of thunder leaned toward Saga and whispered, “This one has more audacity than a three-penny battle camp harlot.”

  Saga laughed. Brindy yanked hard on his seat belt, to no avail. She smirked and wrinkled her nose at Thor, dropping the loose belt in his lap as she rose to her feet.

  “Let me just get you a seat belt extender.” She rested her hands on her protruding hip bones and looked him up and down. “I’ll be right back.”

  Saga’s grin widened. “Seat belt extender.”

  Thor wagged a thick finger in her face. “Don’t you start. I’m just . . . robust.” He sighed loudly. “That’s what Frigga says.”

  “That because she’s your mother, meatball.” Saga stuffed the magazine back into the seat pocket and pulled out a SkyMall catalog. “You may be an impressively built warrior by ancient standards, but today you’re just another American pudgesicle.”

  Brindy reappeared, swinging a seat belt extender. Sally had to duck to keep from getting hit in the face.

  “Here we go,” Brindy announced in a saccharine sing-song as she reached Thor’s seat. “Let’s get you settled in, all right?”

  She knelt beside Thor, revealing both of her bony knees. She expertly snapped the extender into place, secured the buckle, and cinched the belt tight across Thor’s waist like a medieval torture device. The warrior god actually yelped.

  Brindy’s smile never wavered. “There. All better.”

  Sally wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw the flight attendant pat Thor on the stomach. Then Brindy turned sharply on her black pumps and strode back up the aisle.

  Thor struggled to loosen the belt, just so he could breathe, but it wouldn’t budge. “Do you think they have to get special surgery so they can smile like that?”

  Saga shrugged. “I still want to know what’s going on. You spent the entire boarding time yelling at Freyr on your phone, when you weren’t grousing over the TSA confiscating your hammer.”

  Sally pressed her fist to her lips to keep from laughing. As his fellow passengers loaded their luggage into the overhead compartments and got settled in around him, Thor had cursed a blue streak about the tired-looking TSA official in his ill-fitting uniform and how the Norse god of thunder was expected to function without his hammer in the old country where one of his kin had come under attack.

  At least Saga had arranged for Frigga’s handyman, Rod, to swing back by the airport to pick it up.

  “So?” Saga asked. “Care to spend some time enligh
tening me?”

  Sally leaned forward and hoped they wouldn’t glance back.

  “Hmm?” The sound strangled in Thor’s throat as he wedged his thumb between his belly and the safety belt and tried to yank some slack into it.

  Saga leaned over and angled the buckle. She pulled gently on the belt, and suddenly Thor could breathe again.

  “Holy marauding pygmies.” Thor shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the armrests riding on his girth. “I didn’t know we’d booked tickets on Uptight Airlines.”

  Saga stared at him. Thor stared back. Finally, his eyes grew wide and he threw his hands up in the air. “What?”

  “The telephone call?” Saga prompted him in exasperation. “Maggie and Heimdall in Norway? Something going wrong? The whole reason we’re on this stupid airplane with only two-minutes’ notice to begin with?”

  Thor frowned. “Frigga didn’t tell you?”

  Saga rolled the SkyMall catalog into a tube and threatened to smack her brother with it. “This is what I’ve been saying. I got yanked off my shift at the bookstore and was promptly delivered to the airport by Rod—who, by the way, was particularly ignorant of the current crisis. I saw Freya and Freyr going through security behind us, but I had to run to catch this plane.”

  Sally’s heart began to pound. She glanced around the other rows, looking for Freyr, but there was no sign of him.

  “Didn’t even get to pack my own bag.” Saga uncurled the catalog and crossed her arms.

  “Was Bonnie very upset?” Thor tried to adjust his position to face Saga. His knee rammed into the coach seat in front of him.

  “Hey!” shouted a squeaky little girl traveling with her granny. “Quit it!”

  Thor squirmed in another direction, and the armrest dug into his hip. “Does this airborne torture chamber have no mercy?”

  Saga eased forward in her seat and turned toward him instead. “What?”

  Thor gestured toward the seat belt. “I am in considerable discomfort.”

  “No, I mean, why did you ask about Bonnie?”

  Thor seemed to choke, then he started coughing. Saga pounded him on the back and pulled a water bottle out of her carry-on. He took a sip and cleared his throat. “That’s the name of your manager at Powells, yes? I just wanted to make sure your job wasn’t in jeopardy. Because you had to leave so suddenly.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. Family emergency, right?” Saga said. “Well?”

  Thor handed back the water bottle. “My guess? It’s been a long time since we set foot in the Old World. We might yet have enemies there. Maybe one of them took an interest in our brother and his lady.”

  “But who?”

  “Like I said, a guess.”

  More enemies? Sally frowned. There was plenty of Norse history she didn’t know, but she couldn’t imagine anyone being foolish enough to go up against Odin and his family.

  Except that Managarm had done precisely that, and he’d had a full Berserker army, too—thanks to Sally. She pushed back in her seat and breathed deeply to soothe the raging knot in her stomach.

  “This isn’t someone playing a really, really bad joke?” Saga asked.

  Thor shook his head. “Seems unlikely.”

  “And the apples?”

  Thor lifted his hands. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  Sally’s shoulders sank. The battle against Managarm had taken so much out Odin and the others, and Sally was still secretly doing penance for her role in that catastrophe. The Old Ones had already been weakened, and then they’d had to go to war. Otherwise innocent mortals had been maimed and wounded, or worse. Bragi died.

  “We need those apples!” Saga clenched her brother’s wrist. “I mean, obviously I’m concerned about Heimdall. And Maggie. But.”

  Sally’s heart started pounding again. From what she understood, without Iduna’s apples whatever divine strength Thor and the others had left—what life they had left—could be lost. Forever.

  Thor leaned back, and the tray table mounted on the back of his seat pressed close against Sally’s face. “So, little sister, now do you understand getting hurried to the airport without warning? I suspect there’s quite a bit more to it. Frigga was near to hysterics by the time she got through to me. Then her phone died.”

  Sally bit her bottom lip. Frigga had always been calm in the face of chaos, even when Managarm attacked the Yggdrasil, right up until Bragi was struck. Sally felt a deep chill. If Frigga really was losing it, like Thor said . . .

  “But can’t we call the new VOIP number?” Saga asked. “Surely she’s been in touch with Norns and has more information by this point.”

  “Sunset Satellite isn’t due out at the Lodge for another couple of days,” Thor said. “So until Frigga and Odin make the long drive into the city to get their phones replaced, no calls in or out. Not even Skype. Now you know as much as I do.”

  “And we can’t call Heimdall?”

  Thor sighed, and the airline seat creaked beneath him. Sally scooted back a few inches, in case the plastic tray table decided to pop open.

  “They only took one phone with them,” Thor replied, his tone surprisingly even. “Maggie’s. Because of international cell phone rates. We’ll keep trying when we’re on the ground, but I kept getting some ‘out of service’ message in garbled Norwegian.”

  The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign blinked off with a loud tone. The captain’s voice filled the cabin:

  “Ladies and gentleman, we have reached our cruising altitude of 32,000 feet. We’re starting a stretch over the beautiful state of Montana, if you’d care to glance out your windows—if you can catch an open spot in this cloud cover. We’re running just about on-time, with an estimated arrival of 7:21 Eastern.”

  Thor glowered at the now dark sign overhead. “If that bloody thing blinks on again . . .”

  “What are you going to do?” Saga snorted. “Demand another seat belt extender?”

  Thor shot his sister a hard look and released his seat belt buckle with exaggerated care. Prying himself out of his coach-class seat, Thor pulled down hard on the seat in front of him and nearly launched the little squeaky girl into the First Class cabin.

  “Sorry.” Thor peered over the seats at the child’s blue-haired grandmother. “It’s a tight squeeze in the cheap seats.”

  The old woman scowled and went back to the crossword puzzle on her iPad. The little girl stuck out her tongue at him, then hid her face under a green rain jacket decorated with cartoon frogs.

  Thor kicked both his feet, trying to extricate his legs from the narrow space between seats. Not having much luck, he bent over and tried pushing his body backward into the aisle. One flailing arm struck Brindy on the shoulder as she made her way down the aisle with a tray of apple juice in plastic cups. She kept her grip on the tray, but the cups went flying. Juice rained down on passengers in rows 27 through 32.

  His body suddenly free from the airline seat, Thor lost his balance. He stumbled backward and caught himself on the other side of the aisle—narrowly avoiding landing in the lap of a middle-aged man in a business suit.

  Steadying himself on the backs of other passengers’ seats, Thor glanced down at the graying man. “Sorry about that.”

  The man frowned, planted both his palms on Thor’s wide lower back, and shoved the Norse god out of his face. Thor stumbled back across the aisle and nearly landed on top of Saga.

  Sally quickly turned toward the window. Thor had nearly spotted her.

  “What are you trying to do?” Saga clucked. “Audition for the circus?”

  Thor grabbed the cushioned back of his own seat and pushed himself up to standing. “How can anyone be expected to sit comfortably, crammed into this bear trap of a seating arrangement?”

  “You can’t be blustering about the cabin,” Saga said. “The last thing we need is for you to accidentally put your fist through the wall of the airplane.”

  Thor made an attempt at smoothing out his button-down shirt and khaki trous
ers. He caught Brindy’s narrowed eyes and down-turned mouth as she mopped apple juice off the low-pile carpet. Her glare was more frightening than her smile, and Sally didn’t blame him when he turned and headed in the other direction.

  Sally watched Thor lumber down the aisle, and she exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. That was close. She pulled her Book of Shadows out of her backpack and started rummaging through her notes, correspondences, and spells, looking for anything that might tell her more about any ancient enemies of the Norse that might still be running about. She re-read her scribblings about the visions she’d seen in the flames of Frigga’s hearth just hours before. Sally knew she was supposed to be on this plane. She was supposed to help.

  Then her fingers stilled on the pages, and she listened.

  Saga was crying.

  Sally glanced between the seats and saw Saga punch a long string of numbers into her phone.

  “Come on, Maggie. Pick up, pick up,” Saga mumbled as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Before Sally knew what she was doing, she left her own seat and sat down beside Saga.

  “It’s going to be okay.” Sally rested a hand on Saga’s wrist and tried to smile. “But you’re not supposed to use your phone in-flight. It might crash the plane, or something.”

  Saga’s eyes widened. “Sally?!” She hung up and slipped the phone back into her bag. “What in the blazes of Muspellheim are you doing on this airplane?”

  “Don’t make me go back. Okay?” Sally began nervously. “It’s just that, I was there when Frigga got the phone call, and then I had this vision in the fire. I think maybe I can help.”

  Saga grabbed Sally’s hands and squeezed them hard. “You heard the call? What happened? What did they say?”

  “They?” Sally squirmed under Saga’s grip and the goddess let go.

  With a quick glance toward the surrounding seats, Saga leaned closer and whispered. “If someone went after Heimdall, it’s not going to be any run-of-the-mill mortal.”