I outlined my idea for a database, floundering as I tried to couch it in terms that would be comprehensible to someone whose idea of modern innovation was the Gutenberg printing press. Aboveground, there were plenty of members of the eldritch community who have embraced technology. It was different in the underworld. Well, except for Mikill’s dune buggy.
“Enough.” Hel opened her right eye and raised her graceful, elegant right hand to stop me. “Although the means may be unfamiliar, the notion is not. Humankind has catalogued the world since first they began scratching marks in the soil. Even so, we have never abetted them in this task.” She closed both eyes and fell silent a moment before opening them again. “Although I have misgivings, your idea has merit. I grant you permission to execute it.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “Thank you, my lady.”
Her right eye closed again. Oops, not out of the woods yet. “And this mortal you have brought into my demesne?”
“I would need his help to accomplish the task,” I said. “You might say he’s the only scribe in town.”
Hel said nothing, which I took to be her equivalent of raising her eyebrows and saying, “And . . . ?”
Despite the cold, a trickle of sweat ran down my back beneath the old down coat I’d donned for the occasion. “He promised to give me everything I want for one glimpse of you.”
The shadowy frost giant attendants behind Hel’s throne murmured at the audacity of Lee’s request. The goddess turned her head this way and that, revealing one perfect and one devastated profile in turn as she silenced them with a look. “I will consider it, Daisy Johanssen. Tell me, what else passes above?”
A blue jay roosting in the rafters gave a rather self-satisfied squawk, leading me to suspect it had observed me stumbling along the streets of Pemkowet the other day, half-blind, pain-dazed, and clinging to Jen’s arm. I shot it a covert glare as I reported on events of the past month, including Emmeline’s attempt to hex me and her threat to return.
But I managed to keep it on a professional level and Hel heard me out impassively. She was a goddess; she didn’t care about petty issues—she cared about results. “Well enough, my young liaison,” she said when I finished. “See that you continue to uphold my order.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Hel glanced upward. A pair of jays fluttered down to perch on the back of her throne, peering at me with bright, beady eyes. “There have been reports of a . . . person of interest . . . inquiring about purchasing large tracts of land in Pemkowet.”
“A person of . . . oh.” The sweat trickling down my back turned icy and my tail twitched uneasily. I remembered the lawyer I’d seen leaving the PVB. Hel was being polite. “You mean a hell-spawn like me.”
“No.” Closing her ember eye, her fair right side regarded me with gentle compassion. “Quite unlike you, Daisy Johanssen.”
My throat tightened with an unexpected surge of gratitude. “Thank you, my lady,” I murmured. “Have your, um, harbingers told you more? Is there something you’d like me to do about this?”
“No. I do not know.” Hel was silent for a long moment, her expression undecipherable. “It troubles me. Learn what you may.”
I inclined my head. “Of course.”
“Now!” Her voice rose, making the rafters tremble. Her ember eye sprang open, blazing in the ruined left side of her face. “Send in this mortal who thinks to bargain for the sight of me!”
Twenty-three
I have to admit, I took pleasure in witnessing Lee’s initial encounter with the Norse goddess of the dead.
Maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t been such a jerk to me, but he had. And yeah, I felt bad about the rough time he’d had in high school, and the fact that his mom was sick, but . . .
What can I say? It was satisfying. Right up to the point where it turned scary.
Mikill escorted him into the sawmill. Hel sat silent on her throne, the right side of her face stern, the left side terrifying.
Swathed in his voluminous leather duster, Lee looked like a gaunt scarecrow with a penchant for goth attire and baseball caps. His knees began to tremble so hard I could almost hear his bones knocking together; at least until he dropped to said knees on the floor of the old sawmill, bowing his head in Hel’s presence.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to give offense.”
Hel drummed the fingers of her left hand, black and withered as charred bones, on the arm of her throne. “Rise.”
He stood unsteadily.
“You thought to barter for entrance to my demesne,” the goddess said. “Now you are here.” She raised her left hand, clawlike fingers cupping the empty air. “I could stop your heart. I could kill you with a thought, mortal.”
Her left hand, the hand of death—the hand with which she’d given me dauda-dagr—squeezed.
Lee gasped and staggered, clutching his chest.
And okay, yes, at that point I started to worry. “My lady!” I said in alarm. “I brought him here. If there was offense given, it was mine.”
It was true, but probably not the smartest thing I could have said. The baleful red gaze of Hel’s ember eye shifted onto me, her clawed left hand twisting slightly. “And will you answer for his trespass as well, my young liaison?”
It felt like those withered fingers grasped the heart within my chest, squeezing, squeezing. I drew a choking breath, my heart struggling to beat within the confines of that iron grip.
I had no one but myself to blame, and it made me angry. I should have known better than to bring Lee here without asking permission. But at least now there was something I could do with my anger. I couldn’t kindle a shield between us, not with the might of Hel’s blazing left eye on me. Instead, I kindled one inside me, envisioning it shielding my vulnerable heart from her immortal grasp, giving it a scant space in which to beat. “Forgive me for my transgression, my lady,” I wheezed. “I beg you to show us mercy.”
Hel considered her response for what felt like an eternity. I held my inward shield in place to the best of my ability, my heart thudding painfully against it. I didn’t think I could keep it up for much longer. Lee’s face was dangerously pale and it looked like his eyes were beginning to bulge in their deep sockets.
At last Hel opened the hand of death, releasing us both. “Tell me, mortal,” she said to Lee. “Was it worth it?”
“Yes,” Lee breathed, lifting his head. The blood returned to his face. He gazed at Hel with awe. “If I die now, it was worth it.”
I coughed, took a deep breath, and let the remnants of my inward shield go. Unless I was imagining it, Hel’s gaze flicked toward me, and there was something in it that resembled amusement, insofar as a vast and ageless deity with disturbingly bifurcated features was capable of looking amused.
It was pretty quick. I probably imagined it. Then again, receiving a rapturous tribute from a mortal whose heart you’d very nearly stopped seemed like the sort of thing that might appeal to your sense of humor if you were a goddess of the dead.
“That is well.” She lowered her left hand. “Now go forth and fulfill your bargain. Daisy Johanssen, I accept your apology. You have my leave to take the mortal and depart.”
I bowed in acknowledgment and gratitude. “Thank you, my lady.”
Doing his best impression of a newborn colt, Lee exited the sawmill on wobbly legs, his face flushed with ecstasy. “I didn’t expect it to be so . . . so, so, so . . .” At a loss for words, he folded his lanky frame into the dune buggy’s passenger seat. “So . . .”
Cramming myself into the storage space, I reached over to pat his shoulder. “Yeah. I know.”