Author's Note: Sorry this took so long. Hopefully a nice, long chapter makes up for the delay. Special thanks to Lara, I'm so glad you enjoy it! Thank you for your kind words. And for reminding me to post this chapter when I saw your review yesterday.
May Contain: Uhh. Valheim. Red Dawn. Elf. Die Hard. The Thing. References my story, Cold Outside. Contains some slightly more familiar faces. Some holiday cheesiness, I couldn't resist.
Definitely Contains: mentions of suicide
III. Jól
Eg samli meg saman petti fyri petti
Til einkin er eftir brotið
"You are uncharacteristically late."
Val waited for me at the top of the trail. She sat cross-legged on one of the fallen stone slabs of our hilltop meeting place, a deep red parka over her outdoorsy clothing. The silvery sky behind her cleared in places to sunset over the fjord.
I gestured silently at the snow, deeper than my knees, then at the clumsy footsteps leading back down the hillside to the village.
"Ah. Of course." She picked up an old green Thermos from the stone and loosened the lid. "Come, warm yourself."
"I'm not cold," I said. Or at least I didn't feel as cold as I should have. The last time I had trekked to a fight through hip-deep snow, I ended up with frostbite. Of course, I'd been alive for that one and wearing chainmail, which wasn't exactly warm. Today, I covered the distance in hiking boots, jeans and a sweatshirt and felt just as comfortable as I had in front of the fire in my room. My breath didn't turn to fog on the breeze, neither did hers, but the contents of the Thermos steamed as she opened it.
Val tipped a measure into each one of the plastic lid mugs. "Not for that kind of cold."
"No thanks," I said. "I'm good."
"So distrustful," she teased, dusting the snow from the stone. She motioned for me to sit, collecting one of the mugs for herself. "You were taught well, but I am not one of the Sídhe—"
"Maybe not, but—"
"Absolutely not, and I would prefer not to be compared to those charlatans." Her expression darkened and she muttered in Old Norse, something about the frosty bitches in charge.
Ask anybody — the most important part of learning a language is the swears.
"Hey, the newest one is a friend of mine, so ease off—"
"I have yet to meet the young Winter Lady, so I have yet to form an opinion of her." Val glanced at me, brows climbing in surprise at the steel in my voice. "But the rest of them—"
"Are on thin ice?" I leaned on my notch-carved bo staff. "Not a fan of Mab? What, did she steal your boyfriend or something?"
"Or something." The woman smirked humorlessly as she drank. "But it feels good to know I am not alone in that regard."
"Ouch. Didn't know we had so much in common. This is fun." I sat next to her, propping the staff between my knees. "We should do girl-talk more often. You're not very good at it, but neither am I."
"Practice makes perfect, but the real question is whether it would make you trust me more, or make you want to kill me more?"
"Probably the second one," I admitted. She laughed loud and heartily, snorting behind her mug. I had to remind myself that this was the same woman who, the night before, had picked me up by the throat with one hand and crushed my windpipe like a cardboard wrapping paper tube.
The worst part was I had seen it coming. The little glimpses of death that had started on Halloween came more and more frequently, and our nightly fights only seemed to get longer, more intense. But that didn't mean I was anywhere close to winning.
"Trust me or do not, but know that all I do is done of duty. It is my job to care for the true and troubled souls here. I swore a sacred oath. And even if you cannot trust that, I imagine you could at least drink to it."
I accepted the mug she put in my hands; Val wasn't the type to use poison if there was an available rock or big stick nearby. She raised her own in a toast. "To the burden of servitude and responsibility. Skál."
"Skál," I agreed, and took a hesitant sip. Whatever it was, it was delicious; spicy-sweet and smoky, like Christmas in a bottle. Not just warm, it was warmth. A soul-deep feeling, a wash of emotion from pleasant memories — the joy of the first baseball game I saw with my father, sitting in my grandmother's garden, listening to her tell stories. The giddy delight of being stuck in crosstown traffic in a shitty Volkswagen, laughing myself to tears as my best friend sang along to Hotel California in a Kermit the Frog voice.
All of the nostalgia with none of the heartache.
"Cyser. Mead made from Idunn's own apples." Val splashed a bit more into my cup, her voice muffled and far away. "Half a year you have been here, and this is the first time I have seen you smile without a weapon in your hand."
Another drink and the faces blurred like smoke, names and dates slipped my mind for a second. I knew the more I drank, the less real it would become, until all those moments and places and people I loved were only the memory of a feeling, distant and faded, made perfect in retrospect.
… How I imagined it was supposed to feel all the time, being here. The sensation didn't last. As soon as I took a deep breath of wintry air, the hollow feeling behind my ribs set in again. I found her watching me intently, waiting to see what I would do next.
She held out the Thermos for a third refill. I put a hand over the top of the mug and shook my head.
Val nodded with something that might have been approval. "You know, I think you would prefer this place as I first knew it." She took the mug and set it aside. "Wild and desolate."
"It wasn't always so—"
"Comfortable? No. But like the old saying goes, it is better—"
"To be a warrior in a garden rather than a gardener in a war," I finished for her, for once. "How's that working out for you?"
She laughed, and maybe I was projecting but it seemed a little bitter. Her eyes followed the path of a raven as she drank, watching as it fluttered down toward the village, inky black against the snow. What memories was she trying to drown? All those gods and faeries had been mortal once, or at least that's what I'd heard.
"Do you know the true reward for faith and loyalty?" she asked, turning to me. "And not the rhetoric about good deeds being their own reward, please."
"In my experience," I answered carefully, "the reward for a job well done has always been more work."
"You figured it out faster than I did." She toasted me with her mug again, then gestured around vaguely. "I was given stewardship of this realm as a payment for my service to Asgard."
"I thought — in the stories, you were a political hostage."
"Yes, yes." Val rolled her eyes. "In the stories, which are all true and accurate. Tragedy makes for a more entertaining telling, while dismissing the agency and choices of the woman in the tale. Entirely Laufeyson's doing. The little shit." She made a sour face. "I turned him down one time and he has slandered me ever since."
I tried not to smile. "If it's printed, it's libel and you can sue."
"Or," she said reasonably, "I could turn him into a toad and set my cats after him."
"Either way," I agreed. "So you weren't a prisoner."
"Not in the traditional sense." She continued her story and I listened, watching the snow gather on the standing stones. "My people were fishermen and farmers. Few could fight, though some were gifted with magic. When war came to us, we had to pay for protection, or learn how to protect ourselves. I made a name for myself on the field, though I had a different name then, and fought in many battles before I fell." Val turned toward me, pulling aside her coat collar and thick sweater to show me a scar below her left collarbone.
"A spear," I guessed. She nodded.
"One moment my lungs were filling with blood, the next I was here in this strange place—"
"You ended up here?"
"Only for a moment, and then I woke as my body was being tossed onto a pyre. I was brought before the enemy's council, naked and singed. Unarmed, or so they thought." She held out a hand, palm up. Golden light solidified into a sharp diamond shape an inch above her fingers, throwing our shadows against the standing stones. Snowflakes hissed and evaporated around the conjured fire. "Some wanted to kill me outright, as a witch. The clever wished to use me as a weapon, and I was more than willing to demonstrate."
"Like my father always said, 'fuck around and find out,'" I quoted, and she laughed.
"The wisest among them offered me a place on his council. I taught seiðr to Odin before he bore that title, before the Aos Sí braved the world outside their faerie mounds, in the days when people still made sacrifices to the sun." She closed her hand and the crystal of fire extinguished. The sky had darkened, stars peeked out from between the low clouds. Over the water the last cold glimmer of sunset lingered and lights glowed in the windows of the village and the stave church. "In return, I was given charge of those slain on the battlefield."
"I thought it was just half."
"Only half remain here, true, but I have first choice among the fallen, and so the decision of who goes where ultimately rests with me."
"He must trust you a great deal. You could have raised an army of unstoppable berserkers." I watched a few people troop out of a house into the fresh snow, laughing loud enough that their voices carried all the way to our hilltop. "Instead you run a group home for the recently-deceased."
Either she didn't get the Beetlejuice reference or she didn't think it was funny.
"Contrary to your personal feelings, dear girl, not all who perish in battle are immediately ready to do so again and repeatedly. There is no weakness in taking a moment to tend your wounds, to let your heart heal a bit." She had abandoned the mug and was drinking straight from the Thermos. "Though I imagine it must seem impossible to do such a thing in a place you hate—"
"I don't hate it—"
"You resent being here. You pace around like an animal in an exhibit." She turned to me, flawless features softened by dusk, gleaming green-gold eyes weighing me. "Tell me honestly, do you feel here the same way you felt in that unfortunate hospital your mother sent you to as a child? When you were mute for months and those so-called holy sisters tried to bully and starve you into speaking—"
"I try not to think about it."
"Maybe you should."
The silence between us was lengthy but not tense. I had done this dance before, but there was no comfy couch here, no "how does that make you feel?" She was as lethal with her words as with a sword, every jab forced me to acknowledge the old wounds she reopened, bones broken to be reset.
"I know she was only trying to help," I said, barely loud enough to be heard. "And I know I make it hard for people to help me, because they can't let me down if I don't let them try."
"Is that why you refuse my help? Afraid I might let you down?"
"I don't know you."
"You do." She smiled, twisting the lid onto the empty Thermos. "Better than you think. Thank you for sharing a drink with me, skjaldmær." She took my staff and held it out before her, parallel to the ground. "Out of respect to your faith and mine, I will not fight you during Yuletide. Much as I would like to watch you try to manage it in this snow." When she returned it, three Fehu runes were burned into the wood where my own marks stopped. "But I will not count these days against your year."
"There go my weekend plans," I said, watching the group of friends throw snowballs at each other.
"I am certain you will find some way to pass the time."
—
Ice crunched beneath my boots as I stacked another pile of ammo into a neat pyramid against the fortress wall.
"Check it out. Those bastards built a trebuchet," said the young man to my left. He turned the brim of his baseball cap backwards and peered over the wall through binoculars for a moment before handing them to me. "Take a look."
The encampment across the valley was only a few hundred yards away, surrounding a miniature medieval castle made entirely of ice — bright and glittering in the late-afternoon sun, much friendlier than the last frozen castle I had toured. The troops gathered around the trebuchet, loading it with a lifesize snowman; carrot nose and twiggy arms, everything.
"Well that's just… really cool," I said.
"Right?"
One of the soldiers waved cheerfully at us before motioning to another to loose the missile.
"Trailman, will you handle that?" I asked as we watched the inbound improvised missile grow larger by the second.
"On it, Bosslady."
"Don't call me that."
"Sure thing, Bosslady." The young man put out a hand and the snowman abruptly stopped face-first, compressed into a cartoonish flattened disc as it hit an invisible half-dome of force a few yards above us. The shield flickered on contact with familiar concentric patterns of bright blue light. The snowman slid to the ground, landing in a heap that wore a charcoal grin.
"Nicely done," I said, offering a fist bump.
"Incoming!"
We both ducked behind the wall of our fort as another weaponized snowman whistled over our heads and smashed against the hillside.
"Return fire!" the young man roared. A barrage of icy, softball-sized projectiles soared through the air, launched from a giant slingshot built from an old parachute. Soft thumps of impact sounded from across the valley, cut through with laughter.
It wasn't a snowball fight so much as an all-out war. Several dozen armies fought a pitched battle with multiple fronts, between other impressive fortresses built by hand or with magic. The fields were dotted with military earthworks, though they were all constructed of snow. There were trenches, braziers and bonfires, officers' tents and cavalry, and an unsurprising amount of friendly fire. Our little army had taken a tiny ring fort on a hill nearest the cliffs; a low stone wall encircling an old barrow with tunnels beneath. We had dubbed it Echo Base, naturally.
"A rider!" a soldier yelled. "Hold your fire!"
I poked my head over the wall and waved at the knight on a shaggy black horse. "Parlay!" she shouted as she took off her helmet and hung it from the saddle. She shook out her dark hair and clucked sadly at the flattened heap of snowman in front of the wall. "You flew far, Armand, but not far enough."
"... Armand?"
"I know the names of all my soldiers," she grinned.
"So are you surrendering?" I leaned against the low wall around our base. "Is that what this is? Your people didn't start doing that until World War Two, it's an unfair stereotype."
The Maid of Orleans rolled her eyes at me. She reined in her horse, cleared her throat and continued formally; "I bring an offer of armistice until after the feast."
I glanced around at our army, who were all nodding in anticipation of fire and food and celebration. "The Wolverines accept," I replied.
"Wolverines!" howled the wizard kid.
"Huzzah." The commander of the opposing army produced a snowball from a saddlebag and hit me directly in the face with it. The force of it knocked me on my ass, and I could hear her cackling as she galloped away.
"Medic," I croaked, stuck down in the bottom of a drift. Someone grabbed my hands and pulled and I found myself eye-to-eye with Trailman's twin sister, Tina.
It happened before I understood what was happening. Though I could see her clearly in front of me, an image flickered behind her like a photo double-exposure; an abandoned mine, out in the desert. A ghoul. The familiar face of help who arrived too late, a scream of rage. No question as to why she was here. In the vision, the hands that now grasped mine were bloody and broken, her body ripped apart next to her brother. They had gone down swinging.
I tore my eyes away, blinking hard. I had just watched her die. I had seen my own death like that, dozens of times, but never someone else's and it hurt — the first physical pain I had felt since arriving in the afterlife, cold and blunt and heavy as lead.
"Are you alright?" the young woman asked, her brow furrowed in kind concern. No one here was ever not alright, and whatever it was that let magic users catch a glimpse of a soul, it didn't work here. All she saw was me.
"Say what you want about the French. She's got an arm." I plastered on a smile and ushered the kids toward the gate. "You guys go ahead, I'll catch up."
I sat on the icy wall and waited to follow until my hands stopped shaking, until the sun dipped toward the horizon and I could close my eyes without seeing it.
By the time I made it to the hall, the party was in full swing. Half the crowd was still dressed for battle, the rest wore their holiday best. Tables lined the walls, buffet-style, stacked high with treats from every winter holiday the world over. A Yule log burned in the fire pit in the center of the room, so massive that it had to be carried in by a dozen burly Einherjar.
In the midst of it all, our hostess was doing her Mrs. Claus impression. She wore a dark wool skirt, white blouse and red bodice covered in intricate embroidery — one of those traditional Norwegian dresses. She held a basket on one arm, by no means big enough for the amount of gifts she had handed out so far. Books were exchanged on Christmas Eve. It wasn't an ancient tradition, but it was a pleasant one. It definitely beat out my own family's tradition of perpetuating stereotypes; every holiday eventually devolved into a shouting match. It felt weird, not having argued with anyone yet.
I kind of missed it.
Val caught the sleeve of my sweater as I tried to slip by unnoticed. "That is lovely—" she complimented before I turned toward her and she saw the front, her lips pressed into a thin line of restrained amusement.
Molly Carpenter had given me a sweater just like it for Christmas a while back; fuzzy white and decorated with a red Santa hat, a crossed pair of Heckler and Koch MP5's and the quote, Now I Have a Machine Gun, Ho Ho Ho on the front in red. I found it in my closet that morning, only because I had been thinking about it. This happened occasionally; I'd remember something specific and then I'd find it on a random shelf. My favorite pair of Nikes from high school. The pocket watch I'd started carrying after Dresden fried my wristwatch.
None of it was real, though. Just copies. Things to make me feel more at home, like I was being bribed into happiness, a parent trying to win over a stubborn child.
"God Jul." Val took a slim, gold-wrapped parcel out of her basket and held it out to me, insistent. I unwrapped it to find a vintage Choose Your Own Adventure paperback; a plain white cover with an illustration of a dragon boat, a Viking longship with a striped sail. I had probably read it as a kid. The books had been popular and I had burned through the whole series, reading and rereading until I got the endings I wanted. "And Merry Christmas."
"Heh," I smiled tightly. "Cute. I didn't get you anything."
"Your presence is my present," she said, graciously teasing. She put an arm around my shoulders, guiding me through the crowded hall, the overflowing tables. "Sit by the fire, read a bit. I know how difficult it is for you, but try to relax and enjoy yourself."
She walked us to my favorite chair, close to a massive fireplace. I sank into the well-worn leather and she left me there, with a reassuring squeeze of my shoulder and a curious look.
Relaxation wasn't an option. I tried to read, but every few lines, someone would stop by for a hug or to drop off a gift. Soon I had a stack of them; biographies of Bessie Stringfield and Annie Oakley, a blank journal and a calligraphy set, chocolates and candy.
... And a red velvet gift bow, unceremoniously smacked down on top of my head.
"Merry Christmaaas," sang the girl who clambered over the back of the chair to sit next to me. One more person would have fit with room to spare.
"Hey," I said, untangling the bow from my hair. "Was the snow assassination earlier really necessary?"
"Very much so." Sviða still wore the gray gambeson, black leggings and boots from her armor. She balanced a plate of food on top of a flat parcel in one hand. "Someone has to keep you on your toes, since you aren't dueling to the death tonight." She grinned at me and I looked away, avoiding her eyes but accepting the gift she held out to me. I unwrapped brown paper and twine to find a dogeared copy of Anne of Green Gables.
"One of my favorites." I hugged her, then reached under the chair for the small square parcel I had wrapped earlier that day. "Merry Christmas."
"Ooh." She opened it, clutching the package of assorted neon and glitter gel pens to her chest. "These stories are not finished, though." She flipped through the pages of the paperback book, perplexed. "Half the words are missing."
"It's called MadLibs," I explained. "It's a game. You fill in the blanks. It's fun, I'll show you. We'll need a few more people, though—"
"Your wayward wizard children," she suggested excitedly, like she wasn't technically a teenager, as well.
"They would like this, no?"
"Good idea. You get more snacks," I said. "I'll round up the crew."
It didn't take long to track down enough players, less than that to find drinks, and in no time at all we had a riotous game going. For a moment, it almost felt like home.
Almost.
It was then that the double doors to the hall flew open with a bang and a whirl of snow. Through the open doors strode a big man dressed in reddish furs and mail, a sword on his hip. He had a mane of silvery hair to his shoulders, a beard frosted with ice crystals. He carried a large leather bag over one shoulder. When he dropped it on the floor, the wooden boards trembled, every dish on the table and shield on the wall rattled as he called:
"Someone bring me a drink!"
The room burst into raucous cheers. Freyja herself brought him an overflowing mug.
"It's Santa," I said as I stared over the back of my chair. "I know him."
Tina laughed and Tracy snorted, but they were the only ones who got the joke. The man himself was still drinking from what must have been a bottomless tankard, and our hostess was all affectionate smiles as she brushed the snow from his shoulders and straightened his coat collar.
"Oh," I whispered. I had been joking when I asked if Mab had stolen her boyfriend. "Duh."
I slid down into my chair again, snickering. The rest of the hall had gone back to their merrymaking, like it was no big deal that Santa had showed up. My friends were called away to other activities or wandered off in search of more food. Every time I glanced up, Kringle was talking to someone different, handing out gifts from the leather bag he carried.
I was left alone to read until a deep, rumbling voice startled me out of turn-of-the-century Nova Scotia and back into my chair by the fire. I looked up to find a warm smile and eyes as dark and cool as the first night in November.
Only one glinted. "God Jul, little sister."
"Nollaig shona dhuit," I replied, ducking my head to hide a grin.
"And just what is so amusing?"
"It's just—" I stuck a scrap of wrapping paper into my book to mark my spot— "I was right, you do kind of look like Kurt Russell, up close."
"The North Pole version, I hope." He sat on the wide arm of the chair, laughing. "Not the South Pole version?"
"Depends on whether or not you brought me that flamethrower on my Christmas list."
Kringle laughed and I couldn't help but laugh with him. "Vetrarbana," he addressed me with both the affection of a nickname and the weight and respect of a title. A reminder. "How are you faring in the Hall of Many Seats?"
"Well," I hedged, not sure what to say. The last time I talked to Santa Claus, I was eight years old, in a shopping mall food court, not the dining hall of the honored dead. And even then I had been fairly certain that he wasn't the real deal, since I never did get that pony I'd asked for. "Everybody knows my name, and they all seem glad I came—"
"So much impertinence in such a small package. This place suits you." Kringle shook his head. "I have an easier question to answer. What would you like for Christmas?"
"Oh, you've already given me the greatest gift of all."
"And what was that?" he paused, merry and curious as he opened the bag.
… So maybe I'd had a little too much to drink, or maybe I was just itching to pick a fight, in accordance with Murphy Family Christmas Tradition, and here he was, the embodiment of the holiday itself. The words were out before I could stop myself:
"Getting to watch the Winter Knight kick your holly jolly ass down the street during the Wild Hunt—"
The hall went nearly silent, as if every single soul in the room had somehow heard me say it. I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted blood.
A strangled sound from the red-haired man at the nearest trestle table broke the incredibly awkward beat of silence. He dropped a turkey leg on his plate and beat a fist against his chest, coughing to hide a snort. Murmured whispers filtered from the far corners of the hall, some muffled giggling from the Trailman twins nearby. Far across the room, I saw our hostess in her chair raise her book a bit higher to cover her face.
Kringle glanced at her, then at me, then burst into a belly laugh, a contagious sound — in seconds the whole room was laughing with him. "It was a good fight. If that's what you want, we can go outside," he offered, to more uproarious laughter from the party-goers. "Unless you still want that pony."
"Tempting."
I wanted more than anything to feel real again. To feel my knees ache in the morning when I get out of bed. I wanted cheap coffee and heartburn, cold pizza for breakfast, one person who made it all worth it. To feel anything but this useless perfection, this restless, unspent potential. I didn't say a word of it out loud, but I didn't have to.
"That is not a gift that can be given," he said softly. "Not even by me."
"Not tonight?" I asked, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
"Nor any other night." Kringle shook his head somberly. "Ask for anything else, and if it is within my power—"
"I have everything I need," I interrupted, taking up my book again. "You should do something extra nice for someone else, instead."
"Did you have anyone particular in mind?"
I nodded without looking up. The words on the page swam in my vision.
"Aye," he said as he stood. "I can do that." He hesitated for a moment, like he meant to say something else, then gathered up the leather bag of gifts and moved on to the next name on his list. I pretended to read until I felt someone standing over me again.
He cleared his throat. "Sergeant Murphy—"
"For the hundredth time, Hendricks. We're dead. It's just Murphy." I sat up and motioned for him to take the vacant chair across from mine. "And it wasn't Sergeant for a good while before that."
"Old habits." The big bodyguard said with a questioning nod in Kringle's direction. "You know who that is."
"A little too tall to be my old man in a rented suit. Of course I know who he is. I've read a book."
The sound he made wasn't quite laughter, but it wasn't not a laugh. Hendricks had arrived here not long after me, having Shuffled Off a little later in the same fight. He spent his time reading or fishing, almost always alone, wholly dethroning Dresden as reigning King of the Introverts.
"Speaking of which." He pushed a heavy book at me, unwrapped. Several ragged ribbons marked the thin, yellowed pages. Celtic knotwork adorned the green leather cover, most of the gold leaf had peeled off long ago. The contents were an English translation of the Eddas; a collection of poems and stories of the Norse deities and famous mortal heroes.
Neat, copious notes had been made in the margins in faded fountain pen; updates and corrections to the legends, filled in by someone with firsthand knowledge. His partner's book, I found her name on the flyleaf — tall, blonde, beautiful Sigrùn, who Harry had always claimed was an actual Valkyrie and not only in looks. He had been right about that.
He had been right about all of it.
There was a letter penned inside the front cover, more recent, addressed to Nate. One of those "if you're reading this," letters. I didn't mean to pry, but by the time I realized what it was I had read the whole thing to the quote at the end; love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.
I tried to give it back. "I can't take this."
"Borrow it." He met my eyes, serious as ever. Before I could look away, it was forming like a half-remembered dream, sharpening to horrible clarity. He had chosen death without hesitation. No regret, only action; he dove in front of her, taking the killing strike meant for her, his expression grim with purpose. Hendricks pushed the book into my hands. "Sigrún—" he smiled when he said her name, briefly turning into someone else entirely— "she would want you to."
"Thank you." I took it carefully, knowing it had to be the only piece of her he had that wasn't a memory. "I'll bring it back when I'm done."
Hendricks nodded, frowning as he glanced over his shoulder. "Carolers," he warned as a group of loud, tipsy musicians approached. "They like to make newcomers sing."
"Like hell they do," I said. "It's time to play Hide and Go Drink."
"You got a present after all." Hendricks nodded at a small black velvet box resting on the arm of my chair, where Kringle sat. He took his leave, weaving through the crowd of carolers with surprising grace for a guy his size. I took the box and the book and headed in the opposite direction, swiping a stub of a candle in an iron holder as I left the hall. I navigated the dim, empty corridors of the too-big stave church until I found the sliding door of one of the darkened training rooms.
I left the book and candle on a bench by the wall and opened the little box, knowing what it was before it rolled out into my palm. It felt heavier than it had before, warm like it had been in a pocket; the guardian bell from my motorcycle, the one Harry had given me years ago. Not one like it. Not a too-perfect replica. This was the real thing, down to the runes and the scratches from the road.
It slipped from my fingers, landed on the polished hardwood floor with a cheery chime and rolled away. I dropped to my knees in chase and froze when I realized I wasn't in the dojo after all. There were no tatami mats on the floor, no rows of weapons beneath the windows. There were no windows, just floor-to-ceiling mirrors and hip-high wooden bars running the length of the room. Storage cubbies and benches lined the opposite wall, a short piano. The boom box on top of it played a theme from Swan Lake, soft and hissing like a worn-out cassette tape.
For a moment, the reflection I saw in the mirror was of a little girl, ten or so. She reached for a pair of pink ballet slippers, pale hair drawn back in a severe updo, her expression resigned and distasteful. The reflection flickered with the candle, now a woman in white, reaching for a sword, but only for a split-second before I was looking at myself again, ugly Christmas sweater and everything. There wasn't time to worry about it — motion caught my eye outside the plate-glass entrance to the dance studio.
What I saw was impossible: a dark, snowy Chicago street, an old Mustang parked beneath a lamp post, half hidden in a billow of exhaust. The passenger door opened. A man in a wool coat and a newsboy cap stepped out. He leaned down and spoke to the driver before jogging to the studio entrance, where he shook the snow from his coat and stomped on the doormat. He let himself in. The man crossed the room with purpose, walking toward me as if he had expected me.
The little bell hit the toe of his boot and stopped with a soft chime as Tchaikovsky's oboe and harps shifted to strident violins and brass. He knelt to pick it up, a different kind of mirror across from me. Taller, fair-haired beneath his hat, with a stubborn jaw and eyes that were blue and kind and just a little bit sad. I stared at him, stunned to silence as he took me by my shoulders and set me on my feet. I let him walk me to the long bench on the opposite side of the room.
"I remember this place. You hated those dance lessons, but your mother insisted." He took off his hat and brushed a hand over his hair as he looked around, eyebrows climbing as we sat. "You would scowl from the time she dropped you off until I would pick you up, and—"
"And you always said to buck up, buttercup," I whispered. "Or your face will get stuck like that."
"Glad to see it didn't," he said, smiling at me until I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him so hard that he huffed a soft oof.
"Dad." He didn't look a minute older than the last time I had seen him alive. Even his winter coat smelled the same. I buried my face in the collar, breathing in aftershave and gun oil, a faint whiff of cigar smoke. As real as anything. More real than most things, lately.
"It's been so long." He hugged me back just as hard. "I wasn't sure you'd remember me."
"What the— what are you doing here?"
"Just visiting." He drew a badge on a lanyard from his coat pocket, a sleek black metal card with a silver logo on it — the bisected circle of Monoc Securities. There were runes beneath the logo, Collin Murphy, though everyone but Mom called him Jack. Beneath the runes a timer counted down. He tucked it back into a pocket. "Called in a favor. Meant to come by as soon as I heard you—" he cleared his throat and took my hand in his, squeezing. "When I heard you were in the neighborhood."
"Some neighborhood."
"You should see mine."
"Where—" I began, though I had no idea how to ask that question. I knew what the priest had said, remembered the whispers of adults and the cruel words from other children. To take your own life is a mortal sin, according to the church, one worthy of damnation. "Not—"
"No, I don't think you can get out of there with a day pass." My father shook his head, took off his hat and tossed it on the bench. "Mine, well. It's kind of an in-between place. That friend of yours had a funny name for it—" he paused, thinking. "Chicagotory?"
I had only ever heard one person use that name before. "You met…"
"The tall fellow, that investigator," he continued. "Black coat, bad attitude and a matching haircut—"
"Harry fucking Dresden," I growled through my teeth, hoping that wherever he was, he heard it.
"That's the one."
"He didn't tell me." I stood, heading for the door. "That son of a bitch didn't tell me—"
"Where are you going?"
"To file the necessary paperwork so I can go back and haunt his ass—"
"Don't hold it against him, Karrie." He pulled me back to the bench by my sleeve. "It's bad enough finding out you're dead without the embarrassment of your girlfriend's father having to explain it to you—"
I sat, blinking. Dresden never talked much about what happened to him between that night I was supposed to pick him up from Thomas's boat, and the day he had showed up again, live and in-person. I never pressed him about it, either. It was enough to have him back, it didn't matter how or why, and I didn't want to make him relive it.
"Oh, we weren't—" I bit my lip. There was no good way to put it. We had been so many things, but only briefly that. "Well… not then."
"No? Seemed like a decent kid." The corner of his mouth twitched — he was messing with me. "A little weird," he shrugged. "Still like him miles better than those other two—"
"Dad."
"Just saying."
"Doesn't matter," I mumbled, looking away so he wouldn't see me blinking back tears.
"None of that, now." My father wrapped an arm around me and pulled me into another hug. "If anybody's haunting anyone's ass, it's me. He said he tried to keep you out of trouble."
"And you believed that?"
"I'll give him credit for trying. God knows it was a full-time job long before you were old enough for a handgun license," he said sternly, though I could hear the smile in his voice as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I always knew you'd make it to the big leagues. I'm just sorry I wasn't there to see it."
I leaned my head against his shoulder. "Me too."
The silence between us hung heavy; the weight of all the conversations we'd never had, one in particular. The silver guardian bell chimed softly as he turned it over and over in his fingers, silent for a long time before he spoke. "Karrie—"
"You don't have to apologize for anything." I said before he could start, pulling away to look up at him. "But I used to wonder if… for a long time, I thought maybe it was something I did, and that was why you—"
"No," he interrupted. "Please don't ever think—"
"I was ten. I didn't know what to think." The words were going to hurt both of us no matter how gently I said it. "I was the one who found you, did you know that?"
He closed his eyes and nodded, pained, but didn't insult me by trying to apologize. Nothing could undo it, and there was really nothing to apologize for.
"I understand," I said. He looked more wounded by that, somehow. "I get it. Sometimes people need more help than they know how to ask for, more help than they think they deserve, and there were times when I thought — I thought about it. When things were really bad, when I didn't think I could keep going, I knew I could always just…"
Even now, I couldn't make myself say it aloud, that which I had never admitted out of an irrational fear that acknowledging it would give it more power over me. I didn't even have the excuse of some fallen angel whispering in my ear in a vulnerable moment. That voice that had always been there, a bleak inheritance.
"But you didn't," said my father, more proud of me for this than for anything else. "You didn't."
"No? I knew that last fight was a one-way trip, I just didn't expect my ticket to get punched like that." My fingers found the scar beneath my ear of their own accord. "Now there's somebody who could use a nice, thorough haunting."
"I'll see what I can do." He smiled, a rare and mischievous grin — though that was the way I remembered him best, sneaking cookies out of the jar for me at Grandma's, letting me stay up late to watch movies. "You know, if you want, you could come work with me."
"Work? What kind of work?"
"Helping lost souls find their way to where they're supposed to be, sorting out the discrepancies in their deaths," he explained. "Like what happened to your friend. Though I guess he didn't tell you anything about that?"
"Not a damn thing," I grumbled, though without ire.
"There's a place for you, if you want it." Jack took my hand, studying the faint mark on the back, the interlocking triangles of the valknut. "But I'm thinking you probably have a plan."
If I left with him, I would have a purpose, there would be a meaning to the afterlife. I could do the kind of work I did best, with the man I had modeled my entire life after. And maybe— eventually— that awful, hollow feeling would fade. But if I left with him, I would be forfeiting my one chance to go home, slim as it was.
I made the choice, and it was every bit as agonizing as dying had been. When I looked into his eyes, nothing happened.
I had already seen it.
"I have to finish what I started. I have to do this myself."
"A hard choice." He put the little silver guardian bell in my palm and closed my fingers around it. "No matter what you choose, I'm so proud of you."
"How much time do you have left on the clock?" I asked, instead of crying like a baby.
"'Til midnight." My father made a face. "You know how much those magic types love their clichés."
"Do I ever?" I sighed. "Let's go get a beer."
"Lead the way," he said with a smile, following me to the door of the training hall.
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