Foretold (9 page)

Not a frilly thing in sight.

Sliding glass doors opened to a wooden deck. Snow about three feet deep rested in drifts against the glass. This kitchen would have felt homey if that sight was just a regular, plain old winter mix.
In winter
. Ari glanced at it more than once as he worked the stove.

It was a constant reminder that nothing was right with the world. Should be blazing hot out there now, should be birds and butterflies and bees filling the air. Summer stuff.

And I shouldn’t be in a house with strangers chasing down a mother who might have killed someone. My shoulders sagged.

Ari flipped a pancake, caught my hungry gaze on the plate of stacked ones and smiled. “Morning,” he murmured.

“Good morning,” I said to the whole room. Usually, I couldn’t eat when I was this upset, but the scent of hot pancakes and warmed syrup made my stomach grumble.

Hallur sat across from me with his foot propped in a chair. “You look better than you did last night.”

“Before or after I hit the floor?” I could not stop my gaze from straying to Vanir’s broad shoulders as he growled and moved to another drawer. He had to shove Ari aside to get to it.

They acted a lot like Kat and I did.

Heat crept up my cheeks when Hallur caught me staring at his brother. I quickly looked down at the table, running my hand over the thin lines carved into the top. I tried not to think about Coral crying during our quick phone call. I planned to call her back later, make sure she didn’t try to drive in that shape—not in all this stupid snow. “My cell phone,” I blurted.

“On the coffee table.” Ari set the spatula down and cupped both hands around his coffee mug, locking his knees when Vanir pushed him. “We found it in the woods last night. It’s dead. We don’t have chargers that fit that kind, so I hope you brought one.”

I had. In my suitcase. “How far is it to where my car went in?”

“Couple of miles.” Vanir opened another drawer. A few pieces of paper fluttered out. He ignored them. “I’ll go get what I can out of it this morning. Then I have to go back to the sheriff’s office. Dreading that.”

I didn’t have to ask why because I knew it had a lot to do with his friend, and plus, in the motels I’d managed to find on the way here, I’d caught the news. The media had latched on to
Snowmageddon
again. They had no idea how close they were to the truth. The sheriff’s office would probably be a hotbed of people arrested for crimes like looting—panic had a way of loosening rational thought. I’d read every rendition of Ragnarok I could get my hands on and one thing that seemed similar across the board was the flood of evil that would take over. Crime would rule.

Hallur held his cup toward Ari. “Think you can tear yourself away from that pot long enough to share?” After Ari reluctantly took his cup, Hallur frowned at Vanir. “Take Ari with you when the tow truck gets here. I’ve already called them, so that should be soon.”

Vanir dug into another drawer, shoved his hand toward the back. “I’ll need help if the river’s up more or if her car has moved.” He laid something on the counter, then reached over to snatch a bite of pancake. “What do you say? You’re the one with the biggest muscles.” He grinned, batted his eyelashes comically.

Ari smacked Vanir’s hand with the spatula. Hard. “Shut up. And keep your grimy hands off my cakes.”

When Vanir turned to me, he held scissors. He pulled a chair across from mine and propped my foot on his jean-clad thighs.

He started cutting the bottoms off the pants. My mouth fell open. “You just ruined a perfectly good pair of sweats. I would have given them back as soon as we get my suitcase.”

“This is a cheap pair—no big deal. I have several.”

His hand was still warmly wrapped around my ankle and I hoped the table blocked his brother’s view—though it did nothing for my cheeks. I’m sure they could feel the heat from my blush.

Vanir kept cutting until the pants didn’t sag over my feet. Setting the scissors on the table, he dropped his hands back to my ankles. I immediately tried to remember the last time I’d shaved my legs, then thought about what I jerk I was for even thinking about such a thing with my crazy mother out there.

“Did Willy call yet?” he asked his oldest brother.

Hallur shook his head.

He looked at me. Tightened his hands on my skin. I wondered if he was looking for comfort in the touch because it was easy to see from his changing expression that he’d started thinking of his friend again.

“I took the cops to Steven last night after you passed out. They have no idea what killed him. The local force is jammed, so we have to wait on a forensics team—I think from Fort Smith.”

“Can’t imagine why she’d want to hear the details, Van.” Ari came to the table, setting a cup of coffee in front of me. He sat down, turned his gaze to the piles of snow on the porch. “She didn’t know Steven.”

I preferred Coral’s homemade teas, but the coffee smelled good and gave me something to do with my hands, so I held it under my nose. No, I hadn’t known Steven, but it was possible I was indirectly responsible for his death because my crazy mother wanted to take out my possible killer first.

Vanir was no killer.

Still, I couldn’t believe my mother was. I flashed back to the last time I’d seen her smile. Laugh, in fact. She’d been dancing around the kitchen, tossing pieces of apple muffin at Coral. Yeah, it was one of her weird, manic moments but I’d walked into the kitchen and she’d grabbed me and hugged me so tight my world had felt perfect.

Tears burned the backs of my eyes again. I’d never, ever cried this much. Afraid I’d lose it front of them all, I jerked my leg from Vanir’s grasp and stood. A little coffee spilled over the lip of the cup when I nearly dropped it onto the table. “My head is really hurting,” I offered as an excuse for my abrupt switch in mood. “Can I use this restroom again?”

Vanir shot up. “Of course. And I’ll get you some Tylenol.”

The bathroom door opened and his aunt came out. She wore a faded Green Day T-shirt, her long, slim legs covered in jeans with a hole in one knee. A thick blue towel wrapped her head. She saw the direction of my gaze and waved her hand. “All yours. Sorry about the steam.”

When I passed her, she held the empty toothpaste tube in the air, glared at the brothers one by one. “What do you guys do with this stuff? I just put this in there last week.”

Escaping into the bathroom, I shut the door and leaned my forehead against it, then took two long, deep breaths. I had no idea how I was going to get away without a car.

Or how I was going to find my mother before she figured out she’d gotten the wrong boy.

Chapter Eight

“Thanks for letting me crash with your family last night.”

My butt was turning into a Popsicle on this iron bench while we waited for the mechanic to come back out of the office he’d disappeared into. My eyes stung a bit from the burned-oil smell filling the place. Shivering, I eyed a couple of oil-splotched, red canvas chairs, then dismissed them. Who knew how long I’d be in these clothes? The ones in my suitcase made me gag with their river stink.

We’d left my sad-looking Honda outside in the parking lot of this garage, a mangled glint of blue among the twenty or so snow-topped vehicles filling the lot. Apparently, the auto repair business was booming. Go figure.

“The room is yours as long as you want.” Vanir shoved his hands in the pockets of his khaki-green parka from last night. He’d pulled his hair into a ponytail. I liked the look on him, though I normally didn’t like longer hair on guys. With those blond locks slicked back, his face was all interesting sharp angles and his mouth...he had a great mouth. Full lips. Last night’s kiss came back to me and I looked down at my hands. My first kiss, and it had happened during a
rune tempus.

Seriously
not
fair.

I wanted to try again. Just once. Before he found out why I was here and hated me. “I’d feel weird mooching—I don’t really know you guys. A lift to a hotel would be cool, though.” We’d found my purse. Most everything inside was ruined, but the cash was still good.

He let out a breath, leaned against the brick wall behind him. “Okay. We can check the one on Highway 59, but last I heard every place was full. People are waiting out the storm.”

“I’ll start calling around. I bet I can find something.” Sure, a part of me was
dying
to sleep in that room next to his. The intimate late-night-chat thing could happen again. I
sooo
wouldn’t mind that. But I was torn. I needed to stay near him, try to help him...but I needed to find my mother before anyone else did.

The cold creeping under the huge brown coat Hallur had loaned me didn’t compare to the arctic freeze settling into my heart.

I would have sworn on my sisters’ lives my mother wasn’t capable of all this. And every time I thought about it, my heart got heavier, my stomach knotted harder and I wished my sisters were with me because being without them sucked.

I rubbed my hands together, tried to focus on what I needed to do, not what I wanted for me. My head was a lot better, but the bright, low-hanging lights kept sending small shafts of pain spearing through my temple. Squinting up at the Take It on the Chin, Let McConnell at Your Engine sign on the inside of the metal garage door, I grimaced. Someone needed rhyming lessons. “So, are you related to everyone around here?”

Vanir had yet another uncle tow my car. The poor hunk of metal looked pitiful. Not that it had been pretty before. I’d bought it off Daddy Mac and it had belonged to his daughter years before. But one whole side was now dented in. Even if they got it running, I’d have to crawl through from the passenger’s side.

“Big family. This isn’t even a real town right here, but more of a place my family settled—kind of an offset to Heavener and Poteau.”

“Like a compound?” I narrowed my eyes. “You guys in a weird Norse cult or something?”

“Norse cult?” Both blond eyebrows went up.

Laughter tickled my throat, surprising me. Last night, I would have sworn I’d never feel the urge to laugh again. “They exist you know. Weird cults—even Norse ones. Though most of them are made up of...I guess you’d call them fans. People with a fascination for the culture and history.”

“You’ve met them?”

I nodded. “Met tons of interesting people. We moved a lot.” And we always quickly rushed off when we discovered people with Norse roots. Mom’s paranoia kept us nomads. “Did you know that more people in the States have common ancestors than they realize?” Another frigid draft snuck down the back of my neck. Felt like exploring dead fingers. For a second, I thought about Steven’s ghost haunting me. The word
haunt
was from an old Norse word.
Heimta.

Which also meant “to bring home.”

I closed my eyes, really wishing I was home with my sisters right now.

Vanir shifted against the wall, his coat making a rasping sound on the brick. I looked up, caught him staring. Welcome warmth flooded my gut to fight the cold. He reached out, ran his finger down my cheek.

He was the most touchy-feely boy I’d ever met. I could easily want him touching other...things.

And with that, fire slammed into my cheeks. Vanir’s gorgeous mouth stretched into a grin and I knew without a doubt he was picking up on at least some of what I was thinking. If not exactly, at least the general idea.
Oh
,
gods.
I scrambled for some words, hoped the red in my cheeks could be attributed to cold. But it was kind of uncomfortably gooey in the garage.

“You’d think the air in here would be dry from running the heaters, but it’s so humid it’s chewy.”
Did I really just say that?
The heat in my cheeks this time had nothing to do with attraction. Kat would have never said something so lame. Coral would have already charmed him with her sweet smile. She was the one boys gravitated toward. I think it was because she seemed less complicated. She wasn’t, though. But me? I talk about chewy air.
Great.
Maybe I should have spent less time working and more learning to have actual conversations.

It was true, though. The heaters couldn’t seem to keep up with the cold slithering through all the openings in here and the big, rolling doors were incapable of holding out cold. But the air was strangely humid. I felt a little sticky under my borrowed sweats and gray sweater.

“So, you think we might have common ancestors?” he asked.

“Probably—especially if you can trace your family back to the runestone.” I was referring to the Heavener Runestone, a twelve-foot-tall, ten-foot-wide rock pillar with mysterious carvings on it. Locals had called it Indian Rock until the carving had been proved to be Norse runes. Some now believed Vikings had settled in Oklahoma, just as they had up north where my mother was from. The history books my mother used in homeschooling never said a word about this, but my mom’s people had known this was true and she’d passed on the knowledge to us. “Supposedly mine settled into the Minnesota area around the Kensington Runestone, but who knows? My mom was kind of, um...well, she was a little easy. My sisters and I don’t even know who our father is.”

“I hope we’re not related.” He hadn’t pulled those dark brown eyes off me once.

Felt like squirming again. I was still covered in scratches, without makeup or gel, so my hair laid in a flat sweep. At least I didn’t have the mud gooping it up anymore. But I wouldn’t be picked for a magazine cover anytime soon and I couldn’t help but wish he was seeing me the way I normally looked. “Even if your ancestors came in with mine, the years of dilution make us something more than distant cousins, eh?”

“Something like that,” he murmured. He leaned over like he was about to whisper and instead jerked back up when the metal door at the back of the garage slammed open.

Vanir’s uncle crashed back into the room from the tiny office in the back. Tools rattled on wall pegs, and when the door swung back I spotted a hole where the handle had hit many times. He was bellowing before he even got all the way through the opening. “It’s going to be a day or so before I can take a good look at your car. Every towing business in the area is on call and I was just called on three more. Folks are going nuts around here, driving like maniacs.” He walked around car parts, oil cans and toolboxes without once looking at his feet. Impressive.

Vanir’s uncle was so animated he sucked up all the energy in the room. He had deep creases in this cheeks and what looked like permanent oil smudges in his short, cropped gray hair. He laid his hand on Vanir’s shoulder. “Everyone’s heard about Steven this morning. I’m so sorry, son. Didn’t think it was cold enough for him to go like that, not as young as he was. We lost three older folks to the cold last night.” He shook his head. “No one knows what to do about all the snow. I’ve heard every pair of gloves and boots is gone from every store. Every shovel, too. I hear there isn’t a shovel left on a shelf anywhere in this country...or any others for that matter. Hope you and your brothers have a lot of canned goods in that old pantry. Especially if this gets a lot deeper.”

“We’re fine,” Vanir answered. “You know Hallur and that garden. We canned a ton of food last year.” He held his hand out to me and I let him pull me up. “But we could use a few things. Raven’s stuff was ruined in the river. We’re going into Poteau.”

“Drive slowly.” He handed me his card. “Give me a call in the morning. It’s possible I’ll get time later to take a look at your car. I can tell you now, we’ll have to replace all fluids, drain the transmission and oil pans. The brakes don’t take too kindly to being in water, and I hate to say it, but mildew issues might be a permanent problem. It will probably have to be gutted.”

I nodded to show I understood even as everything clenched inside. I liked my car. No, I
loved
my car. It represented my first bit of freedom. Ever. I bought it with my own money. This trip and the dent it would take in my college savings to fix my car would set my plans back a year or more.

Vanir squeezed my fingers, then tugged me toward the door. “He’s good with cars and he’s fair, don’t worry. Thanks, Uncle Phil.”

Bright sunlight met us outside. It reflected off the snow, blinding me instantly. Wincing, I held my hand cupped over my eyes. “Looks like we’re getting a reprieve.”

“Baldr must be in a good mood, rewarding us or something.”

Wished I could agree. Vanir was talking about the Norse god of light—a being I could imagine wasn’t too happy with me right now because I kept so many in the dark about my mother’s possible involvement.

Once my eyes adjusted, I only had to squint a little as I looked out over the wintry landscape. About a foot of snow covered most areas with deeper drifts against wind-blocking surfaces. If it hadn’t been so scary, it would have been pretty. Not the cars lined up and half-covered with snow in the parking lot, but the rest of it. The white-covered trees and hills. The sunlight reflecting off all that white. It could have been postcard material if it wasn’t so crazy scary.

But something else here was off.

The hair on my arms pricked. There were lumps in the snow.
Everywhere.

I pulled my hand from Vanir’s and reached into the pocket of Hallur’s coat to get the gloves he’d also loaned me. They hadn’t stayed on so well before, but I slipped them back on and curled my fingers into fists to keep them from sliding off as I walked to the closest lump.

Squatting, I eyed it, wishing I was wrong, but my gut told me exactly what these were. Brushing off the snow proved it.

This one was a bird. Its beak was tucked into its breast, but the brown wings were still slightly spread as if it had hit a wind gust head-on and died midflight. Vanir brushed snow off a different lump. Another bird, same kind.

“They must have been in the same flock.” I swallowed the hellacious lump in my throat, my eyes stinging as tears burned the backs of them. Standing, I brushed the snow off the gloves. Small mounds stretched out as far as I could see. The bigger ones could be larger birds, could be small animals. All frozen in time. “They must have been trying to go south and they all just...died.” A wave of vicious, surreal inevitability swamped me and I knelt to cover the bird back up. “This snow is going to change so much. The entire ecosystem...” I trailed off, meeting his dark eyes and seeing my fear reflected back at me.

He shoved his hands in the wide side pockets of his coat. “You say ‘this snow’ like you know it’s going to last. What exactly do you know, Raven?”

And here is where it gets tricky.
It wasn’t in me to lie about everything. The one lie—not telling them about my mother’s possible involvement in the death of his friend—was enough. And unfortunately, that one spiked into branches that included the prophecy of a norn death...my possible death. I couldn’t tell him about the norn’s soul, yet he was pretty damned smart. Would figure it out once he clued in on the
rune tempus.
Especially if he was already aware he carried Odin’s soul.

And okay, I was
dying
to ask about that one. He had to know, right? Was it squirming around in him like mine was? Was it stronger because it wasn’t a mere sister of fate goddess like mine, but the boss of all Norse gods? It had to be so strong. Was he scared it would wipe out his personality, too?

I blew out my breath, watched it mist in the cold air. “I want to say it’s just a freak storm, that’ll it’ll go away, but—”

“You know it isn’t.” He stepped closer to me. “Look, I’m freezing. Let’s get into the truck and talk. Let it warm up.” He took my hand again and accidentally pulled off a glove. “Sorry. We need to pick you up a pair that fits. Your hands are so small.”

He held my fingers in his palm and I stared at the contrast of our hands because, compared to his, mine looked tiny. “It’s part of my short-person curse.” I pulled the other glove off, shoved them both and my hands into the pockets as we turned and walked over the packed snow of the parking lot. Our shoes made crunchy, squeaky noises. “Besides, you heard your uncle. All the gloves are gone.”

“Maybe I can scrounge up an old pair from when I was little.”

“That’s it, rub it in.”

He chuckled. “Or can you knit?”

I snorted.
Me.
Knit.
“No, but it might be time for all of us to learn. Think there’s one of those
Knitting for Dummies
kind of books?”

“So you do know this snow is going to last a long time.”

I stopped. Nodded.

“I thought you might,” he murmured. “You know, normally, I’d be worrying about starting school next week, keeping my grades up so I can get into the college I want next year.”