9. DINNER PARTIES ARE THE WORST

9

DINNER PARTIES ARE THE WORST

T he guys took the clothes that Grant had brought, and Ship at least changed out his hippie clothes for something a little more manly.

Richard sized Grant up and even held out his hand. "You're a friend to my sister?"

Grant raised both eyebrows. "You're one of the brothers who tried to kill her?"

I grimaced.

Richard nodded. "I am, but I'm on her side now. It pisses you off that I tried to hurt her?"

Grant flashed his fangs. Richard smiled. "Good. Because she needs as many people protecting her as possible."

I held a hand up between the two men and faced Grant .

"You think I don't know I'm in trouble?" I asked him. "Everyone eat. This is going to be a long night."

They all dug in, and even Berek and Claire didn't hesitate. Despite my stomach growling fiercely, I waited for the others to get food on their plates.

Grant looked over our small group. "Do you know you're a Norse god?"

Everyone froze. Yeah, I hadn't mentioned it to them yet. It's not something you just bring up.

I pointed a finger at Grant. "Boom, I did know that."

He blinked several times, his eyes big behind his glasses. He looked like a scrawny teenage geek, from his messy hair and oversized glasses to the canvas shoes and punk rock t-shirt he wore. "Since…"

"Yeah, since when?" Bebe yelled.

"Oh, it's a recent thing, the discovering of that particular tidbit. So far, it's done nothing for me, so I haven't mentioned it." I slumped against the counter and crossed my arms.

Richard and Ship had stopped eating. "You know who your father is?"

"Tyr," I said. "The guy who showed up at the fight with Juniper."

Ship let out a low whistle. "We could be a reality show."

He really was not wrong.

I turned back to Grant .

"I've been reading everything I can find relating to Norse mythology. I think I've gotten a lead, but the lead needs a map, or some direction. Or something to help me get to where I need to go."

Grant tapped the small journal on the table. "This is why I was gone. Theodore called me and said that…he said that if I cared for you at all, I would come to see him."

I stared at the journal in his hand. "That's a copy, isn't it?"

"He wouldn't give up the original, but he allowed me to make a copy, yes. That is what took me so long." He let out a heavy sigh. "That and Denna finding me and giving me a message. What does look to the east mean? Why did you send her east too?"

"Because I didn't want her in danger. I…gave her a made-up message to get her clear of all this." I grimaced. If I made it through this alive, Denna was going to be pissed.

The vampire tapped the new journal. "This is…it's illuminating."

"Must have been hard to read," Bebe muttered. "Being a vampire and all."

Richard glanced at her. "Think that illuminating words will fry him?"

She gave him a feline grin. "I'm glad someone got my joke."

Ignoring them, I flipped open the journal. Sticky notes had been attached to every page with the tiniest writing I'd ever seen on them. "This is good though, isn't it? That he translated it."

"Depends on how you look at it." Grant adjusted his glasses with both hands and stared up at me. "You are in deep shit, Cin. Your birth was not supposed to happen. The Norse pantheon was done and moving rapidly toward Ragnar?k. The fact that you were born fucked everything up."

"Yeah, I kind of got that much." I felt the eyes of the others in the room swing toward me. I waved a hand at them, trying to diffuse the energy that Grant's words sparked. "I haven't had time to fill you all in on what I learned when I was mostly dead."

"But not all dead." Bebe sucked up a few noodles and squinted one eye at me. "Not all dead which is an important distinction."

I nodded at her. "Right. So apparently my father is Tyr, as I said. Juniper is my mother, despite how I wish that wasn't true."

"Please tell me you didn't kill your mother. Juniper that is," Grant said. "There is a whole section in here, late in the journal," he tapped the book, "about what would happen if you killed her. It leaves very few paths for you to take if that happens."

I just stared at the book, because I wasn't quite ready to admit that I had killed her. "And what would happen if that was the case? "

Grant just stared at me, his face paling. "Please, please, tell me you didn't."

"Well, she did, and that bitch deserved it!" Bebe snapped. "She was trying to kill Cin, was she supposed to just back down, let her head get lopped off and fully let the start of Ragnar?k happen?"

Grant looked at Bebe, obviously he could hear her, as he stumbled back. "You have very little time. That's what it means. It's a ripple effect. In reality, Juniper's death doesn't mean anything…except that it's the first step for you down a path that is…not good. You being here? Second step on that path."

He tapped a line on the book, and I saw a few things I didn't like.

Scrolled across a two-page spread were three pathways, and apparently, I was on the middle one. He flipped the pages. The paths wove across several pages, and I stared at the one I'd set my feet on.

Little images were woven into the path along the way. I flipped the page back and touched the start of it, where a body lay across it. A body that looked like Juniper.

"This is exact, except for the fact that the copy is not marked in blood," Grant said.

I traced it with my finger.

"That looks like Jor," Bebe whispered as I stopped on another image. "Is he coming here? And is that an alligator? Maybe he can turn into an alligator. "

I traced the pencil drawn path as it wove through the next few pages. I found the Norns, apparently, and at the end of the path…there was clearly the death of three wolves. The world went to shit after their deaths and since one of the wolves looked like me…I could see where this was going.

"There is a divergence here." Grant took the book back and showed me. "Here, right when you get to the Norns. Something will happen and it will dictate the rest. That's the only chance you have."

At least I was right about that. I had to find the Norns.

I stared at where his finger touched the image of three women. He wasn't wrong. All three pathways touched the same spot, then three possibilities spun out from there.

No problem, right?

I flipped through the book, looking for something else. Anything that would give me…something. Maybe the prophecy that Tyr had mentioned.

"This is just a journal, what's in here doesn't necessarily mean anything." Yup, grasping at straws. Denial. That's a good thing when shit goes sideways.

"The other two paths." Richard leaned over my shoulder. "How do they look?"

I traced them both to their endings.

My picture was there each time, my wolf dead, wolves dead around me .

There was no ending where I made it.

"Fuck." Richard dropped a hand onto my shoulder. "We won't let that happen, Cin. We won't."

His words, and the belief that it would be okay was…it was everything in that moment. But when I looked up into his eyes, I saw that he knew the truth too.

There was no way out for me.

In the other two endings, I saved the world. But no matter what happened I was going to die.

"Looks like you're going to get the sun again, Bebe," I said.

"No, don't even say that!" She grabbed at me, her claws digging in.

Let's be real, my life hadn't exactly been an easy ride up to now, so why did Grant look at me like he expected me to freak out about a few words in an old book?

I hadn't freaked out when I'd almost died.

Hadn't freaked out when I'd had to kill my mother.

Hadn't freaked out when I realized my fated mate was trying to kill me.

Nope, I'd held my shit together.

My stomach rolled, as the truth hit me like an anvil from a roof, nausea pitching a fit in my lower regions. I. would. Hold. My. Shit. Together.

It didn't matter that I had more to lose now than ever before .

It didn't matter that I was slated to die. I would do what I had to do.

"It ain't happening," Bebe said. "You aren't dying, Cin. We've found a way around all this so far, we'll find a way around this too."

"Bebe is right," Richard said. "This is not the end."

Grant snatched the book from me and turned to a page near the end. "This one path means no rebirth of the worlds—your death does that. As it stands, that's what happens after the traditional Ragnar?k happens. The worlds respawn, the tree of life is still there, and it rebirths the realms. You…killing your mother was the start of the darkest of the three paths. One where the tree of life dissolves into nothing. One where there is nothing left."

Shit…my mother had tied herself to the tree of life, and I'd killed her. If I thought my stomach was rolling before, it was nothing to what it was doing now. Was I the one who killed the tree of life?

Fuck. Me.

Berek cleared his throat. "Would that mean none of the old prophecies would hold? That Havoc and Han would no longer take part in the death of the sun?"

"Exactly!" Grant snapped the book shut. "Which means we don't know what happens next! There is nothing to guide you, nothing to help all this end in a way that the world survives even on a minuscule level. These three paths in this journal are the closest thing we have as a guide. And they aren't exactly sunshine and unicorn shit!"

Grant's voice was rising both in pitch and decibel as he spoke.

I grabbed a plate and threw a steak onto it, slammed a bunch of gnocchi next to it and started in on the food. I didn't have words at this point. Food was always a good answer when the world got dark.

"There is no other way but your death," Grant whispered, but his words dropped into the room like a small bomb. "And I…I don't want you to die either, Cin. But how do we stop this?"

Without an answer, I nodded as I stuffed food into me. It should have tasted decent, should have filled the pit in my belly. But the food was like ash in my mouth, and I struggled to swallow it all down.

Someone put a glass of water in my hand. "Something stronger," I whispered.

It was replaced with a tall glass of amber liquid. I didn't hesitate, I just tipped the entire glass back and let the whiskey burn its way down my throat, let the fire numb some of the horror.

I had—impossibly—made things worse by killing Juniper. I could see the tree of life dying in front of me, the rot, the branches that were skeletal. And the tree spirit had asked me to save it? I was the one who'd caused it. Even if I didn't realize it at the time…

"You think that drinking is a good idea right now?" Claire asked, the condescension in her voice thick. Ah, there she was. The bitch who didn't like me. "Shouldn't you stay sober for an important conversation such as this rather than getting skunked?"

I slammed my empty drink on the counter, hard enough to crack the base of the glass. "I need a minute."

The world blurred as I struggled to get out of the bookstore. The front door was locked down tight, blinds shut so that no light came in, which left me stumbling up the stairs, through the apartment and then on to the backyard.

A hand dropped on my wrist at the bottom of the stairs. The smell of aged books and blood tugged at me. I turned to Grant. "What?"

"Don't go far. There is someone looking for you. While I was gone…do you know that I can hide those I care about?" His voice was pitched low, and I could barely make the words out.

"I know."

"Then understand that while I was gone, that protection was not here. If someone was looking for you, they could find you."

"Ok." That was the best I could give him. I pulled from his hold and turned away.

I didn't run. I let the whiskey burn hot and bright through me as I forced myself to move toward the forest that ringed the town .

Bebe trotted alongside me, seemingly appearing from nowhere. "I'm not leaving you."

"I know. Strippers and ice cream, here we come," I muttered. Because it seemed like as good a time as any for our end of the world plan.

She let out a heavy sigh. "I wish it were that simple."

"I do too."

"You know where you're going?"

"Yes. I just need to…shut the panic down. I need a way to calm things so I can think." I put a hand to a thin pine tree and pushed away from it. I just needed a few minutes, a place to center myself.

There was an answer. I just had to find it.

The pond was exactly what I needed. Because the world was going too fast, the pace that everyone was demanding I run was too fast. The complications of a single action too heavy.

"Oh, you aren't seriously going to get in there, are you?" Bebe yelped. "Girl, you're crazy!"

I was already stripping though. I knew that the pond would still be glacier, it was fed from the river that ran down the mountains behind the town.

Calling it a pond might make you think that it wasn't very big, but that would be inaccurate. The pond was easily twenty feet across, and a hundred feet long, and gods only knew how deep. I'd never tried to go deep in it. The surface was cold enough for my purposes.

The mud squelched under my feet as I took my shoes off, and then before I could take it back, I dove in, the sluice of ice-cold water shutting down any thought but the need for air and warmth.

Basic survival instincts clamored at me, demanding that I come up for a breath, that I didn't stay under the water, or I'd die. Simple. Live or die.

Death would mean that all the worlds were done for. The tree of life. All the realms.

Life meant that there was a chance. I just had to find it.

I hadn't had to use this technique in a long time to calm myself, not since I first came to Alaska when the night terrors and trauma chased me from any semblance of normalcy.

Funny that water calmed me, when so many times it tried to kill me.

I swam toward the middle of the pond before I broke the surface, gasping for air, not liking how close to a howl the gasp sounded.

My skin hurt with the intensity of the cold, feeling almost like I was in a fire, rather than the cold.

Bebe paced the edge of the pond. "Seriously?"

"It's great." I hissed the words out between my teeth, barely able to think .

"Okay, so you want to discuss the situation?" Bebe said.

I nodded. "I…the tree of life is dying. I've been asked to save it. But I was the one who somehow started its death by killing Juniper. Because my mother tied herself to the tree."

Bebe's tail lashed. "What is the tree of life?"

Right, I hadn't told anyone about all that, I mean…I'd barely let myself think about what had happened when I'd almost died. Never mind telling them how I'd seen the tree dying, and the tree spirit there asking me to save her.

Probably that was part of the issue now. I'd suppressed all the shit I'd gone through in the last week, and it was eating me up.

"Haven't you been listening when we are reading through the books?" I asked, no ire in my voice.

"No. I've been sleeping."

"Norse Mythology…" I paused, treading water. Though, I suppose it wasn't exactly a myth now. Now it was real.

And I was living it.

"The tree of life is the center of all the nine realms." I bit the words out as I swam around in a circle, as if the movement would help. "The spirit of the tree—Suvenia—asked me to save her. To save all the realms. But if what Grant is saying and the book is saying is true, it's my fault that it's dying in the first place. That Juniper's death set this into motion."

She watched me for a moment.

"That's some heavy shit," Bebe said. "You think we can do it? Save the tree?"

We. There it was again. I blew out a shaking breath. "I think we have to. I have to."

"There is no ‘I' in team, bitch. You and me, to the end of whatever."

A shuddering breath slid through me, and some of the fear and anxiety slipped away as I swam for the edge of the pond. I ducked my head under one last time, blowing the last of the air from my lungs, just before I surfaced again.

It would be okay. I'd find a way through this, just like I found a way through everything that the world and my supposed fate had thrown at me.

I came up from under the water to Bebe screeching. "Han! Han is here! Run! Swim! Just get away!"

I looked up to see Han leaning against a tree, watching me, no weapon in sight. No axe dangling from his hand.

That didn't exactly make me feel better as he stared at me, a slow smile crossing his cruelly beautiful mouth.

"Hello, Princess."