“Better. She’s crazy about you! Like I told you she would be.”
Ingrid smiled. She’d always wanted a daughter, and she had to remind herself that Maggie already had a mother.
chapter eleven
Of Gods and Men
By Sunday, Joanna and Norman had made it most of the way across Pennsylvania but not quite to the border of Ohio and had stopped for the night at the Happy Hunting Lodge, a bed-and-breakfast off I-80, smack in the middle of the snowy woods. The two-story centuries-old brick-and-wood saltbox appeared run-down from the outside, but the interior was clean and cozy.
The walls of the room—the “Gleeful Newlyweds Suite” of all things—were lemon, decorated with small oval- and square-framed sepia photographs of stocky-looking men and women with squinty eyes. There was a heavy, antique wooden bed made up with crisp white cotton sheets. In the bathroom, squeezed into a triangular wedge beneath the sloping roof, the brass fixtures gleamed, as did the glossy white claw-foot tub. Joanna found it heavenly to sink inside, washing off the dust from the road. After a long soak, she threw on one of the complimentary plush terry robes.
In the bedroom, she stood over the dresser, her wet silver hair a twist over a shoulder, as she lined up Norman’s evening meds, extracting a pill from each container—high blood pressure, cholesterol, and so on. Altogether, he had four different pills to take. Being immortals didn’t make them impervious to the ailments of age, and these days they found themselves especially vulnerable with their magic ebbing.
She looked out the window into the darkness of the woods, where a thin stream threaded through the trees. An owl hooted. Norman lay on the bed with an abstracted expression, his hands clasped behind his head.
“Remember the first time we walked to the Bofrir?” Joanna asked as she sat on the side of the bed, offering him a glass of water and the pills in her palm. Everything that was happening now had started back then, in Asgard, when the bridge was still standing. They were Nord and Skadi, gods of the sea and earth, back when the universe had begun, when everything in the nine worlds was new, and even their love was a nascent discovery, fluttering eyelashes against cheeks, a very first kiss, delectable, sweet, untainted. They had walked the Bofrir, that rainbow path wrought of dragon bone, the vessel that entwined the powers of all gods within, connecting Asgard to Midgard.
“Remember?” she repeated.
Norman sat up and took the pills silently. He placed the glass on the bedside table next to his phone. “My body might have weakened, my magic waned, but I am not senile yet, Jo.” Lying back down, he took in a breath. “I remember, we stared across that great abyss, wondering what it was like on the other side.”
“And now we’re stuck here, unable to return,” she said.
“Well, would you? Go back?” asked Norman. “I mean now, having lived in Midgard? Would you want it any other way?”
The last was a challenging question. The bridge’s destruction had imperiled their lives—the lives of gods as well as mortals. As paradoxical as it was, she wouldn’t trade her experience in Midgard for anything. “I love it here,” she concluded.
“Yes,” said Norman. “This is home now.”
“But why did it happen? And what exactly happened that day? We still don’t know.” Joanna sighed, frustrated. The bridge had been destroyed and now Killian Gardiner—the god Balder—had been accused as the culprit and seized by the Valkyries. But if anyone believed Killian was truly behind it, Joanna had a bridge to sell them.
“Well,” he said, “we do know that Freddie was there, since his trident destroyed the bridge and was found in its ruins, and that Killian was a bystander. Killian attempted to shift the time line to bring the bridge back, but he couldn’t. He also tried to keep Loki there, but of course he got away. Neither Freddie nor Killian saw what really happened though. Or they don’t remember. Or their memories were tampered with.”
“It’s Loki, it’s always been Loki,” Joanna said. From the beginning her suspicions always ran toward Bran Gardiner, better known as Loki. Freya had seen to it that he had been banished from North Hampton, but where was he now? The dark god of mischief had a vendetta against Freya and her family. Loki had been sent to the frozen depths for his part in the bridge’s demise, and Joanna was sure he was behind Freya’s disappearance as well. She looked at Norman, her blue eyes shining in the dimly lit room.
Her husband nodded. “It does appear that Loki’s powers prevailed and he can travel through the passages of time as he wishes. But no one actually saw him destroy the bridge, so no one knows what really happened.”
“But it had to be Loki. His powers increased, he can move between worlds; it had to be him.”
“Not necessarily,” replied Norman with a frown.
“You have an alternate theory?”
“I might.”
“Care to share it?”
“Not yet,” Norman said, and it was clear he was thinking of that long ago time, when they had been young and in love. Oh, the suitors she had had. Joanna smiled to herself. She could have had the most powerful god in the universe, but she had wanted Norm.
They fell silent. The owl outside their window had quieted, too, and the only sounds were of the wind through the forest and the old B and B creaking on its stone foundation. Norman’s cell rang, and they both jumped.
Norm glimpsed at the caller ID. “It’s Art!”
“Oh, thank the gods,” said Joanna.
It was strange to hear his brother’s voice, which sounded so tired and gravelly. “Art! How are you? You sound as if you’ve been living in a cave!”
Joanna could hear Arthur’s muffled response, but she couldn’t make out the words. She stared inquisitively at Norman, egging him on to tell her something.
“Huh!” Norm turned to Joanna. “Well, what do you know?… He’s hiding out in a cave in Ohio.” He signaled to Joanna to grab pen and paper from the suite’s desk, and when she brought them over, he scribbled down the directions his brother gave him.
chapter twelve
The Salon des Refusés
Gert and Freddie’s living room was filled with cigarette smoke that coiled upward to the ceiling. Someone had brought a small vintage record player that scratched out John Coltrane’s Blue Train in the background, a bluesy, moody, slipping, sliding tempo.