A/N: My apologies to any real bands called "Hello Night". No resemblance is intended.

Two days later I've replenished enough magic to open another world-gate, to Midgard. Although cocktail napkins aren't meant for fine illustration, after some frustrating few minutes I've got the Nine Realms spread out across three tiny white napkins on a table in the back of a Los Angeles nightclub. Asgard and Alfheim are mushed around a wet ring from the waitress's mishandling my Scotch on the rocks, with Midgard crammed under the nightclub's name on napkin number two, and Muspelheim sulking in a corner at napkin number three's most extreme end.

There is no place in any branch on the World Tree where the Chitauri won't go. With the Tesseract in their slimy hands, the cosmos opens to them as a veritable playground. Even Svartalfheim harbors raw minerals, and raw materials are very attractive to a cybernetic race. No matter how long I spend staring at my map I can't find a single realm inhospitable enough to give me shelter. There is no location—at any world—on any branch—where I am not going to be dead inside three months.

Through a window Midgard's single moon is a dirty pink thorn. Remote light fights to be seen through the haze. Los Angeles's valley at night looks like Nithavellir: dark alien vegetation pierced by glowing orange windows and doors.

The waitress sets another Scotch on the rocks at my elbow, and when I give her an inquisitive scowl merely smirks in the opposite direction. A youngish man with greased platinum hair six tables to my left winks at me.

"Oh!" The waitress peers over my shoulder at the napkins, uninvited. She smells of raspberry gum, chemical perfume, and tobacco smoke, and these scents combine with old cleaning products and ale into a mindless haze. "Do you do concept work? My brother-in-law works for Bad Robot. They need more women in the industry, am I right?"

Er.

She puts a hand on my bare shoulder in what I have to assume is her attempt at solidarity and brushes past to complete her rounds. The raspberry cloud follows.

People seem to think they don't need permission to touch me when I am female-shaped.

I finish my first drink as music picks up again, leaving the second for later. The band embarrassing itself in the corner is called Hello Night and its lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass are attempting to find a melody by birthing as many unrecognizable chords as possible all at once all at the same volume. Other than that awful racket, the nightclub is dull for an important city and smells new despite the scratched tile floor and ground-in stink. The new-ness might be a trick of my imagination; some time during the last forty years humanity stopped blowing tobacco smoke everywhere and, as this is the smell I have always most associated with humanity, what remains is . . . faded. Stripped to the bone.

Is it too much to hope for that Midgard's rapid mutation slow down every once in a century? As soon as one finds an agreeable pocket to call home, a return visit ruins all sentimental happy memories. Everything one loved is gone, erased, forgotten, never to be seen again. Forty years or forty thousand years—it's all the same on Midgard. Go on. Never bother falling in love. Never bother getting used to anything. Forget it all. It's lost. Don't feel.

What the hell happened to rock and roll?

On my right, the nightclub waitress makes a round refilling water glasses and a shiny-faced, smug asshole in a three-piece suit almost backhands her while pontificating to his grinning colleague. I enchant his nearby glass to look empty.

My second Scotch goes to uneasy stillness. War is coming. The Other was right. There is a hole in the cosmos, a soul-less drain through which I can feel mortality calling.

I can survive for a while in the Fringe, on the outskirts of space. Derelict colonies or worlds that aren't part of Yggdrasil, like the ones I haunted in my later hundreds, thrive for staying out of sight. Many such places will remember me for my guises: Vyir,Vauleinn, Aedoa, Jithra, Jithral, Gmaeldjyn, and Hallgrimr, which is not an Aesir name.

Many places will want revenge.

I will need greater caution there than in the Nine Realms. The wealthy mage who came nosing for greater magics—or confiscating, pillaging, and stomping out rivals at the head of the Black Tower Guard—can never be connected with me.

I will need greater caution everywhere. Asgard may believe me dead, but once Thanos crushes Asgard they will be the very least of my problems.

My investigators have told Asgard that they were captured by 'Prince Loki's army' and held imprisoned until an Elf-thrall and Hruothban freed them. Tyr shared Hruothban's small-minded suspicions that 'Loki's army' is naturally following Asgardian honor rules and so out to avenge its follow leader by stealing the Tesseract as a trophy. Asgard, being Asgard, has no idea why Od and Ilofn are helping 'Prince Loki's army' unless they are and have always been monstrous traitors worthy of disdain. Asgard is preparing to march against a species who will not follow rules in war.

Someone tricked us. Someone staged an elaborate production to make us think we'd fought our way out of the dungeon on Vorsgard. Someone warned Od to demonstrate a hatred for the Chitauri so we would smuggle him and Ilofn back to Asgard without being suspicious. Someone is being very, very clever.

Asgard doesn't know how to fight against clever.

Worse, Asgard has no idea how Od and Ilofn got into the weapons vault, nor how they slipped the Tesseract from the city and this, more than every mistake Asgard's going to make engaging the Chitauri, will seal the city's fate. From the moment Tyr, Lord Aumdyn, and I found the four vault guards dead in the heart of an otherwise untouched compound, I knew how it happened. I recognized the scene. Vault guards dead inside an unbesieged compound? People appearing from thin air where they shouldn't be? Od and Illofn were not acting alone. The Chitauri have an Asgardian sorceress on their side.

A sour taste fills my mouth. Illness sinks through my chest, rotting my stomach, hollowing my legs. I set down my drink and try to push the illness away. The flashing neon nightclub feels like a sham: surreal. A foolish mistake. A lie.

Smug Asshole lets out a yell. The waitress gushes apologies. The glass still looks empty, so, after cursing her and mopping his suit, he tries to fill it up himself.

The second wave of yelling begins.

"I'm sure you hear this a lot," says a man's voice on my left, "but you have an amazing smile."

Scotch-giver of the platinum hair has appeared by my table, almost silhouetted by the neon lights. I didn't hear him approach over the yells and the catastrophe pretending to be music. He is in his fourth decade—well into adulthood by mortal standards—with striped black and white trousers, a metal barb in his nose, and a pirate smile.

"Deranged," I say. "Nobody uses the word 'amazing'."

"I like deranged. Mind if I sit?" Pirate hooks a finger at the empty chair across from me. He waves at my napkins. "Tell me that's not a love letter to your boyfriend?"

Somewhere, the Other is preparing a gate to transport the Tesseract to the Void between realms.

He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.

If I go crawling back . . . if I beg forgiveness . . .

"What would you do," I say, "if you knew the Universe was coming to an end?"

Pirate's cocky smirk dissolves as if I've put a knife in his ribs.

That's new. "What? I am not threatening to—"

"You don't joke like that anymore." He stuffs a hand in his pocket, looking around as if we're going to be overheard by someone terrible. "You know? I guess you don't do it. Not after New York. You might be one of SHIELD—ex-SHIELD now, I guess. Hell. I dunno. You might be fucking serious." He lurches a grin.

Ah. "I'm not with SHIELD. Don't worry."

He looks down at my map. "What's this?"

"I do concept work," I regurgitate. "For the bad robot."

And now he's wide-eyed with delight, showing off straight white teeth, almost laughing. "Are you serious? You must have won the lottery to get in there. I've heard that after he earned all those Oscars turning Star Trek into a way to fight back against alien invasion you have to save somebody's kid to get your resume considered. Are you—are you serious?"

"Yes I am. Very serious."

He's irritating, like a needy pet, but he's a needy pet with an infectious laugh. He's not bad looking, either. He's got a well-shaped, lanky body. Broad-shouldered. Big, calloused hands. He looks strong enough to be interesting. For a few hours.

He thrusts out a palm. "I'm Jamie. Let me guess: your name is going to be something surprising . . . a little exotic . . . maybe a bit sexy." He taps his forehead as if he's trying to summon my name from the Well of Wisdom.

If he does, I'll have to kill him.

"Hmm . . ." Jamie the Pirate does a good job looking strained. The dimple on the right side of his mouth gives him away. "Rachel?"

"No." Never agree to the first guess.

"No," he repeats. "Of course not. It'll be . . . Ariana?"

"Nope."

Smug Asshole and his colleague have the brilliant idea to stick a hand in the empty-looking glass, to make sure there's nothing blocking the top. While they're making geysers, I cast a silencing hex on Hello Night's mutilated speakers. There. Fixed it for them.

"Daphne?"

"Nuh-uh."

We settle on Madeline. Madeline is my name.

Afterwards, we settle for a wall inside the men's room.

Much later that evening, once I've bought a hotel room from an attendant who let me pay cash, I dispel the illusion that makes my dress look like West Midgardian women's attire. The sickened pressure in my chest hasn't gone away.

Frigga is still on Asgard. Frigga will stay on Asgard until the end days come.

Frigga will think me a coward.

What does it matter?

Asgard will fight. That is what Asgard does. Vanaheim will fight, because Vanaheim is Asgard's bedfellow. Alfheim may fight. But of the others . . . Muspelheim and Jotunheim, Niflheim, and Nithavellir, may well see the tide turning and abandon ship for the winning team. They will take my place as lieutenant, damn them.

It took all nine realms working together last time to trap Thanos in the Void. This time, we're starting the board with one fewer players. This time, half the pieces want to see Asgard dead and could accept Thanos as High King in exchange for a little revenge. Asgard will face a war on two fronts: Thanos, the Other and his Chitauri; Jotunheim, Muspelheim, Niflheim, Nithavellir—and possibly Alfheim, if Alfheim smells death on the wind and turns tail. As for Midgard—heh. Midgard hardly counts. They'll wish they had my protection when I was Thanos's left hand. They'll regret putting up a fight. I would have been a benevolent god. The Chitauri, Jotnar, and Eldjotnar will bear no such good will.

That's a shame. I've always had a soft spot for Midgard.

It would take the master of all negotiations to wrangle a treaty between Yggdrasil's branches now, and unfortunately what we've got is Military Adviser Tyr helming a race of Thors.

Balmy night air sweeps across my skin, but even naked I can't tear off the crawling vileness that covers me head to foot. I am fetid inside in a way I can't scour clean. Somewhere between my innards and my false Aesir skin is an unworthy layer: slime from Vorsgard's orange mud, the sapping mildew of the Void, the unforgivable disease of being alive.

Frigga held my hands because I'd asked her to.

Frigga deserves to be alive far more than I do.

Asgard will fall soon after Thanos rises, and the woman who let me call her mother will die.

We need Nine Realms. What we've got are two, possibly three. We need a master negotiator, on par with the damn myths of old.

What we've got is a liar.

A liar, who knows how the enemy works.