Chapter Eighteen

“Breathe,” Pritkin told me, and I tried. But suddenly, that seemed a lot harder than normal.

“It’s merely a theory,” Jonas said, fussing about the kitchen. We’d moved after that little revelation, because he’d declared that we needed tea. Personally, I didn’t think tea was going to fix this.

“Even if we accept the identification of Thor with Apollo,” Pritkin said, “which many scholars do not—”

“They don’t, you know,” Jonas assured me. “Really they don’t.”

“—there remains the fact that the creature in question is dead. Whatever his name, he is no longer an issue.”

“That’s very true.” Jonas and his hair nodded emphatically.

“Then why did you bring it up?” I asked harshly.

“Why, because of the others, of course.”

Pritkin and I looked at each other, while Jonas kept opening cabinets. He paused slightly when he came to one that had a fork sticking out of it, half-buried in the wood, but he didn’t comment. “You haven’t any tea?” he finally asked me, looking as if he knew that couldn’t be right.

“No.”

He blinked. “None whatsoever?”

“In there,” Pritkin said. He nodded at one of the lower cabinets.

“Oh, good.” Jonas looked vastly relieved, as if a major crisis had been averted.

I started to wonder if I was insane.

After a moment, I cleared my throat. “What others?” I asked, as Jonas began examining Pritkin’s little boxes and tins.

“Hm? Oh, the other two gods, of course,” he said absently. “Ah, Nuwara Eliya. Yes, very nice.”

“Nuwara Eliya is a god?” I asked, confused.

He regarded me strangely. “No. It’s a town in Sri Lanka.”

I looked at him.

“Where they grow tea. Very good tea, too.”

Pritkin put a heavy hand on my shoulder, which was just as well. It probably wouldn’t have looked good to choke the head of the Silver Circle to death right before the coronation. Then again, my reputation was shot to hell anyway....

“What other two gods?” Pritkin asked quickly.

“Oh, didn’t I say? Ah, well that’s where it really becomes interesting. According to the sagas, Ragnarok involves the deaths of three main gods: Thor, Tyr and Odin. The legends state that the war will end only when all three are dead, and that the three children of Loki are the ones fated to kill them.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Jonas started filling up the kettle. “I’m not sure. But I did locate some clues that might be useful. The first child of Loki was Jörmungandr, which we now know stood for the ouroboros spell. The snake was opposed by Thor, or Apollo if you prefer. He defeated the spell, but died soon afterward. This, of course, has already happened.”

“Of course,” I said faintly.

“Now, the second child of Loki was Hel,” Jonas said. He reached across the counter to draw what looked like a crooked smile or possibly a banana on his blackboard, which he’d set up just outside. “She was thrown into the underworld by Odin and became the goddess of death.”

“Hell?” I repeated. “You mean, like the place?”

“Yes, in a sense. Our modern word derives from her name. She was said to have power over the nine hell regions—”

“Nine?’

“Yes, the same number that Dante would later record in his Inferno. Fascinating how the myths intersect on so many—”

“Jonas.” That was Pritkin.

“Yes, well. In any case, she was said to have control over the hells, as well as the pathways between worlds. Quite a powerful figure.”

“Like the Greek goddess Persephone,” Pritkin said.

Jonas wrinkled his nose. “No, not exactly. Persephone was queen of the underworld, yes, but only because of her marriage to Hades, who already ruled it. Hel was queen in her own right. She was one of those powerful virgin goddesses you find sprinkled throughout the pages of mythology who lived independently of the authority of any man. Which is why I don’t think Persephone quite fits the bill. And, of course, the moon wasn’t her symbol—”

“Hel’s symbol was the moon?” I asked, finally figuring out what the banana was supposed to be.

“Yes, the dark side, at least. She was—”

“The dark side?”

I guess my voice must have changed, because Jonas looked up sharply. “Yes, why?”

“It’s probably nothing,” I said, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of explaining my little toy to Jonas. But he was standing there, looking at me intently, and I didn’t really have a choice now. “It’s just . . . I have this tarot deck and—”

“You saw something?”

“Well, no. I mean, I didn’t have a vision or anything, you know, magic—”

“Forgive me, my dear, but the tarot in the hands of the Pythia is magic. Yes, indeed. What did you see?”

“Well, it’s not a normal deck,” I explained awkwardly. “So I didn’t have a spread to go on, just the one card—”

“The Moon, I take it?”

“The Moon reversed.”

“Ahhh.” Jonas slowly sat down.

“Like I said, it probably doesn’t mean anything—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he said mildly, staring off into space. “No, no. I shouldn’t at all, really.”

I just sat and looked at him for a while, but he didn’t say anything else. Pritkin tried to ask something, but Jonas just waved a hand. “Talk amongst yourselves,” he said vaguely.

I looked at Pritkin helplessly. Most of the time I thought Jonas was a sharp old bastard who was playing some kind of weird mind game with everyone for his own amusement. But there were days when I honestly wondered if the magical world was being led by a complete nut.

“It isn’t even a real deck,” I told him, trying again.

Nothing.

“It’s a toy I was given as a child.”

Nada.

“I don’t even choose the card. It chooses for me!”

May as well have been talking to the wall.

“I’ll be right back,” Pritkin said, apparently giving up. He headed out of the kitchen and I went along because, frankly, it was getting kind of creepy in there.

“I’m just going back to my room for a moment,” he told me, when he realized I was following him. Which would have been fine, if he hadn’t turned around and tripped on the stairs leading from the living room to the foyer.

He caught himself before he face-planted, and for anybody else, it would have been no big deal. I tripped over that same step an average of once a day. But Pritkin wasn’t me and he didn’t regularly fall over his own two feet.

I grabbed him before he could escape, and I didn’t need to ask what the problem was. Blood was seeping through the lower part of his shirt, staining the soft gray cotton. Of course it was, I thought furiously. Of course it bloody well was.

“Damn it, Pritkin!”

“I’m fine,” he told me, which was less than comforting, considering he’d probably say the same thing after losing a limb. I crouched down and pushed up his T-shirt.

“Fine?” I said, staring up at him angrily. The blood was leaking out of a bandage that covered half his stomach.

“Well enough,” he said, trying to push his shirt back down. I slapped his hands and started to pry up the edge of the soaked bandage with a fingernail. It had already come loose and would have to be replaced, and I needed to see—

A steel-like grip caught my wrist. “I’m fine,” Pritkin repeated. “It will be healed by tonight, by the morning at the latest—”

“And what kind of a wound takes you that long to heal?” I demanded. I’d seen him shrug off a knife to the chest in a matter of minutes.

“A Fey one,” he admitted.

I said a bad word and started to pull off the bandage with my other hand, but he caught that wrist, too. And then he tugged me to my feet. “You said you were going to see friends!” I accused.

“Acquaintances.”

“Do your acquaintances usually want to kill you?”

“It’s not completely unknown,” he said wryly. And then he saw my face.

“Let me go,” I told him dangerously.

“So you can slap me?”

“So I can get you a new bandage!” I’d slap him later.

Pritkin let go and I stalked off. We didn’t have a medicine cabinet in the suite; we had a medicine closet. I didn’t know what the guys were preparing for, but they could have stocked a small clinic out of there. Usually, I thought it was a big waste, since I was the only person around here who could benefit from that stuff, and if I needed that much I was a goner, anyway. Today, I was grateful for it.

I grabbed what I needed and went back to the living room, but it was empty. I found Pritkin in the lounge, seated at the card table. I guess he didn’t want to bleed all over the new sofa. The vamps had cleared out, leaving us alone except for a forest of plants and a guy eating chocolate in a corner.

“What are you still doing here?” I demanded.

The blond mage jumped slightly and looked up. “I—No one told me to leave.”

“Leave.” I slammed the medical supplies down on the table.

He scurried off.

I glared at Pritkin. “You swore you’d be all right!”

“And as you can see—”

“You lied!”

“I didn’t lie. I merely didn’t anticipate walking into a—What are you doing?”

I’d knelt on the floor and now I was pushing his legs apart so I could fit between them. “I’m going to rebandage you. If you’re smart, you’ll sit there and let me.”