"God damn it, Jack, you stupid little brat!" Anna exploded out of the bathroom in her bra and panties, brandishing a brush like a weapon. "You took my straightener!" She whirled on Loki, shoving the brush into his face. "Go get my damn straightener back from him!"
"Language," he told her.
"You're not my goddamn dad!" she hollered back, slamming the bathroom door in his face.
It was their third day without Mary and Bob, and everything had fallen apart. He wasn't sure precisely when the children had started to ignore him, but he suspected it was a conspiracy, and they had somehow convened in the middle of the night and decided to do whatever they pleased.
Jack was in the master bedroom, under the bed, with Anna's straightener. Anna herself had, on at least five separate occasions, yelled at him until her face turned red. She didn't want to go to school – neither did Joe – and he couldn't make her because he wasn't her father. Joe began parroting her almost immediately, and was currently locked in his bedroom, shouting "No school" and "You can't make me go!"
Lyn, naked, was running about the downstairs, chasing the dog and screaming. Her fever had, thankfully, broken late the previous night. So she, too, would be going to school. If he could convince her to get dressed. Mike was conspicuously absent, but he, at least, seemed more than willing to leave home for school.
Loki pressed his thumbs against his closed eyes until light exploded against his eyelids. His patience was not limitless. It was quickly reaching its end, but what of it? He hadn't the slightest idea how to control five rowdy, rambunctious children who were dead set on making his life impossible.
He felt a whole new respect for Mary, who handled them without difficulties.
The bathroom door swung open. Anna snarled at him with all the ferocity of a Valkyrie. "Well?" she demanded.
Fury choked him; a good thing, since he was tempted to gut her with a few well-chosen words. His body reverberating with tension, he grabbed her arm. She shrieked and lifted her hand to strike him. Dodging her was simple; she telegraphed every move she wanted to make. Tossing her over his shoulder, he stormed toward the master bedroom, ignoring her pathetic attempts to hit him.
"Jack," he said, his voice frosty like the cold reaches of Jotunheim. Anna stopped pummeling him. She went incredibly still against his back, her entire body stiffening with tension. "Get out from under the bed immediately." The sentence was primed for an or else. He felt no need to say the words. The threat was obvious.
Tentatively, Jack shimmed from under the bed and peered up at him. "Hi," he said, slowly offering the straightener to Loki.
In an easy move, Loki dipped his shoulder and set Anna on the ground. He took the straightener from Jack and dropped it into her hand before spinning her toward the door. "Finish getting dressed," he commanded, and his tone brooked no argument. "Be downstairs in thirty minutes."
She stared at him for a heartbeat, stunned into silence, and then hurried toward the bathroom. The door closed quietly behind her.
Loki swung his gaze to Jack. "Breakfast. Now."
"Yessir," Jack said quickly, scrambling from under the bed. He vanished down the stairs.
When Loki turned, he saw Joe standing on the bridge between the master bedroom and the others, and he didn't bother to lunge at the child. He crossed his arms and gave him a long, level look. "Can you manage to get dressed on your own, or do you need help?" Loki asked, pitching his voice in such a way that his meaning was perfectly clear: Joe was old enough to dress himself.
Joe responded just as he should. "I can get dressed myself. I don't need anyone's help."
"Prove it."
Joe sputtered and stomped into his room.
Mike crested the stairs a moment later, holding a wriggling Lyn. "She was trying to ride the dog," he said, sounding baffled.
"Of course she was," Loki drawled, taking the girl from Mike's hands. "Are you ready to go?"
"Ethan'll be here in five."
"And you'll be home when?"
Mike's eyes widened just a bit, and then he grinned. "Seven o'clock sharp. Can I make a suggestion?" Loki inclined his head. "Make pizza or something simple." With a jaunty wave, he took the stairs to the first floor two at a time.
Loki turned his attention to Lyn. She gave him a huge smile. "Hi."
"Hello. Are you ready to get dressed?"
"Fine," she said, heaving a heavy sigh. "If I have to."
He loaded Joe and Jack onto their buses fifteen minutes later, saw Anna off with Ben another ten minutes after that, and then settled Lyn in the car. He had a goal for the day, one he would not be kept from, and he was relieved to be done with the children as soon as he dropped Lyn at her preschool.
He left Mary's minivan five minutes up the road from the high school and began a leisurely stroll down the sidewalk, his hands tucked into his pockets. His eyes turned toward the school, and though he could not see it for the other buildings in the way, he could see its glow. Glittering gold, it pulsed and seethed through the air, a boiling cauldron of power that reached into the sky.
Now that he knew what to look for, it was impossible to miss. And it was so very strange.
There was no security at the base of the drive leading up to the school, but it wouldn't have mattered. He was invisible to human sight, and immortal sight, his magic choosing to respond to his need for stealth.
That disturbed him, for his magic tended only to work as long as it benefitted his mortal family. It was a strange binding, but he had grown used to it. That it now responded suggested there was something dangerous to them in that school.
He stopped at the bottom corner of the sprawling building. It looked unnecessarily large for a school, but Mary had told him there were easily five thousand students who attended it. He stepped from the sidewalk to the grass, from clear air into air thick with magic, and strode up to the wall. He removed one of his gloves with his teeth, pressing the tips of his fingers to the frigid bricks.
The day was not particularly frigid, not to him, and the bricks were far colder than they should have been given the temperature.
With a frown, he withdrew his hand and turned to make his way up the sidewalk. He stopped at a strange seam, where the bricks changed approximate size and color. An addition, then. No wonder the building was so oddly shaped.
He touched the seam for but a second, and was shocked by the fire and pain that lurched up his arm. It hit his chest hard, making his heart stutter and break rhythm, and he choked on a gasp of air. His knees hit the ground, but the pain was nothing compared to what charged through his heart. Brilliant, brightly burning fire consumed him, ate up the entirety of his perception. There was nothing but the pain, nothing but the burning, and he closed his eyes against it.
It clawed through him, tore through him, and in the haze of agony he realized it had a purpose. Drawing in a shaking breathe, he reached for that part of him that was other, that was Jotun. He needed the ice and the cold and the chill of winter to smother the fire.
When he opened his eyes – when had he closed them? – there was a blanket of snow on the ground around him. Ice coated the walls of the building. He rose, brushing dirt from the knees of his pants, and caught sight of his blue skin.
Bile rose in his throat, and he jerked his gaze away. A second later, he glanced back, and his skin was pink once more.
Despite wanting to leave, he still had not accomplished his goal. There was more information to be collected, and Loki refused to be anything other than thorough. He sought to touch no more seams, though there were many places where two different kinds of brick met, investigating only smooth expanses of sameness.
Each part of the building felt different. One, the oldest, was cold and frozen, another pleasantly warm, and yet another burning hot, though with less angry intensity than that seam. Another wall whispered with water, the sounds of ocean waves breaking gently on a shore washing over him, and yet another promised the comfort of woodlands and a temperate climate.
The magic pulsed and throbbed around him, but it, unlike the building, was constant. It was unchanging. It was impossibly strong.
He could not touch it or manipulate it, and in some ways, the shimmering bubbles and threads of it reminded him of his own power.
Idly drifting away from the newest addition to the school, he made his way to a field. The field was populated by students, dressed in either blue or white shirts, chasing a white and black ball.
Soccer.
Gym.
Their teacher stood to the side, supposedly watching, but Loki suspected he was paying on the barest of attention. The suspicion was confirmed when one of the children lunged for the ball, slid across the ground, and toppled into a nearby gully.
"Idiots," he muttered to himself, wondering why the mortals hadn't built a fence of some sort.
And then he froze.
The magic around him coalesced into something remarkable. It hummed and thrummed, and then it sang. The sheer volume of power threatened to smother him, but he found he didn't need to breathe. Magic surrounded and suffused him, slipping under his skin until everything he was sang, too, and it seemed so bizarre to him that the humans couldn't feel it, couldn't hear it.
Silvery strands of light peeled away from the golden cauldron, cutting through the air with ease, twisting and turning about each other. They dipped into the gully, the pure, high sound of their music reaching back to Loki despite the distance. The mortal child pulled himself over the edge of the gully a moment later, laughing, and took another child's hand. He came up whole and sound, even though the fall should have slit his leg from ankle to thigh and mangled it beyond repair.
Loki tilted back his head, peering upward. "What are you?" he asked the power buzzing around him.
It paid him as much mind as Thor paid books: none at all.
