Chapter 5
I awoke… in a bed.
Problem was, it wasn’t my bed.
It didn’t take long at all to remember what had just happened. In fact, as soon as I opened my eyes, the memory struck me right in the middle of my skull.
I jolted, a large, soft pillow tumbling out from behind my head and striking the cream carpet below me. Filled with panic, I swiveled my head as I assessed the room.
It was darkened, the only light visible through a crack in the curtains on the far wall.
“Who’s there? Where am I?” I demanded. But the empty room didn’t answer.
Shaking, shivering all over, the cold in my chest so hard and dense it felt like I’d swallowed a glacier, I pushed out of bed. A thick comforter fell off my trembling form as I jumped to my feet. I was unsteady and instantly had to shove a hand out. I locked it on the wall, taking a few seconds to steady myself. Then I shifted back. My eyes were bleary, so I headed toward the only illumination – the crack in the curtains. Still trembling, I reached it, grabbed hold of the fabric, and yanked it open.
And that would be when I gasped. I was on top of the city. Well, virtually on top of it. I was in one of the massive, tall towers in the downtown district. The view was unrivaled, the kind of picturesque panorama you get in one of the top hotels.
“Where… where the hell am I?” I demanded as I turned hard on my foot, feet dragging through the plush carpet.
Now I’d thrown some light into the room, I saw how nice it was.
My room back in my tiny, miniaturized apartment was about 2 m x 2 m. Enough for a short bed and that’s about it. I kept my clothes in plastic boxes under the bed.
This room? God, I couldn’t tell you how large it was. Big enough that it took me more than a few steps to reach the door on the opposite side.
Everything was modern, from the bed to the furniture to the door.
In fact, the door was so modern, it appeared to require a key code to open. As my fingers latched around the handle and I rattled it, a beep filled the air. “You do not have the right to leave this room,” an electronic voice informed me in a dull tone.
“What?” I spluttered as I took a sharp, fast breath.
I’d only hyperventilated a couple of times in the past year. Now it looked as if it would be the third time in a day. My breath began to ram hard into my chest as I tried to suck in as much oxygen as I could.
Just as I felt my body lock with dizziness, the door beeped. I had time to shove backward before it opened.
I expected to see Franklin Saunders.
I didn’t.
Instead, I saw a woman. One I recognized from the party.
“You’re… you’re Franklin’s secretary,” I managed. “Where is he? And why am I here? What—”
The woman brought up a hand. She may have been dressed in an exceedingly expensive blue satin dress last night, but now she was in jeans, boots, and a sturdy-looking leather jacket. “Firstly, I am not Franklin’s secretary. That’s insulting. Secondly, you’re here because you’re working off your sins.” Her voice dropped, tone becoming unmistakably judgmental.
Still struggling for breath, I managed to lock a hand on my chest. “Work off my sins? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Do you need a paper bag or something? Calm down. Franklin would have explained the process to you last night. You can’t win any sympathy from me by acting all doe-eyed and terrified.”
“Terrified?” I stuttered, hoping it would reveal just how terrified I was.
I began to back away, leg catching a chair. Before I could tumble over and knock my head against a coffee table, I caught my balance just in time.
With one eyebrow raised, the woman took another step into the room. “It’s time to get you registered. Then, if I were you, I would work double time. I recommend you make a good impression on Vali while you still can. He may have found it in his heart to contract you instead of killing you, but trust me, his heart can change.”
Tears began to streak down my cheeks once more. I stumbled backward until I reached the bed. Flopping onto it, I brought up a hand and slammed it over my chest. I slammed the other hand over my mouth. And that’s when I noticed that I was wearing two large, silver cuffs.
In an instant, I remembered the blue symbols from last night.
I brought my hands up as quickly as I could, staring at them in terror. But there was nothing there.
The woman narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms in front of her bust so tightly it was almost as if she wanted to squeeze herself in half. That was nothing to mention her frown. It cut so hard across her cheeks, it was as if a butcher had sliced her across the face. “You need to start taking responsibility for your sins,” she growled once more.
“What sins?” I bellowed at the top of my lungs, not out of anger but out of terrified desperation. It was slowly dawning on me that this wasn’t a dream.
There was only one thing I could be thankful for: those squirming, dancing, burning blue symbols were no longer writhing under my skin. As I warily brought my hands up and drew down the cuffs of my shirt, I stared at the silver bangles.
I frowned. I looked up just in time to see that the woman was frowning, too.
“They’re magical locks. They’ll only come off once you know how to use your powers.”
“Powers?” My voice shook.
“Yes, powers,” she said in a strong, punchy tone like a teacher demanding a pupil pay attention. “Magic,” she said as she brought a hand up and casually flicked her fingers to the side. Instantly, a disc of brightly blue colored light spread out from her fingers.
I gasped and jerked back. “That’s impossible.” I struggled through a breath. I was way beyond hyperventilating. It felt like I would never take a breath again. As I cowered against my bed, it felt like it would be the last moment of my sorry existence.
The woman rolled her eyes. She also flicked her fingers to the side. That circle of light shifted under her fingertips, kind of like a cog spinning within a clock. She pressed her finger against a glowing symbol. As she did, something lit up over her skin: green flames.
I’d never seen anything like it. Not on television, not at the movies, not in the news. It was completely and utterly impossible. My shoulders shook so badly as I remained pressed against my bed that the frame jittered against the wall like someone trying to knock through the plaster.
She let the flames leap across her skin for several seconds. Then she clicked her fingers. That circle of light in front of her hand shifted, the cog spinning to the left. She selected another symbol, and abruptly, spinning particles of dust erupted from her hands. They traced around her fingers with such speed, it looked as if she’d shoved her fist into the center of a hurricane.
“This- this is impossible,” I stuttered.
“No, it’s not impossible; it’s magic. Now get used to it. Like I said, this innocent act won’t work on me. And trust me when I say it won’t work on Vali, either.”
“Vali?” I managed to stutter.
“Franklin Saunders.” Her voice took on the strangest tone for half a second until that steely, angry determination returned to her expression. “He’s your new master.”
“Master?” My voice shot up high.
“Last night you signed a contract with the god of revenge, agreeing to work away your sins. It was that, or die.”
“Wait, what? What are you talking about? What sins? What contract?” As I said that, I stopped. A sharp, clear memory slammed into the center of my head. I remembered Franklin Saunders leaning in front of me. I remembered the creak of his knees. I remembered the smell of his cologne. And, more than anything, I remembered that deep, dark look in his eyes. The one that drew you into infinity. He’d pressed some kind of strange scroll against my bleeding thumb, then I’d passed out.
I brought up a shaking hand and clamped it against my mouth. “What do you mean he’s my master?”
She clicked her fingers,
and the swelling dust around her hand disappeared with a flicker and a crackle of energy. The spinning circle blinked out, leaving her normal. Well, a measure of normal. She put her hands on her hips and took a strong step forward. “You came to the attention of the god Vali, the Norse god of revenge. He exists to mete out punishment when we humans,” she patted a hand on her chest, her jacket scrunching, “anger the gods. Vali, under certain circumstances, sometimes gives sinners a second chance.”
“A second chance?” I asked in a hollow tone.
She nodded low, a few wisps of her loose blonde hair trailing across her shoulders and the long cut of her neck. “A second chance. But we have to earn it. Otherwise, he’ll take it back.” She spoke with such finality, I couldn’t help but shake. I was now completely covered in sweat. It didn’t just slick my brow; it drenched it as if I’d just hopped into the shower. At least I wasn’t hyperventilating. But I could feel it – the nerves were sinking deeper into my gut, chasing up into my legs, making them feel as if they were as heavy as stones.
I flattened a hand on my chest and tried to calm myself. Ah, who was I kidding? How the heck could you calm down from a situation like this? Apparently, I’d signed a contract last night, and I was now indebted to the Norse god of revenge.
With her hands still on her hips, the woman continued, “You are now indentured to Vali, and you must work off your sins by working for him.”
“Working for him?”
“You must use your magic to track down other criminals and bring them to justice.”
My head started to spin. It was so bad, it felt as if somebody had attached my brains to helicopter rotors and turned the engine to full. I pressed a sweaty hand through my hair, my fingers getting tangled and caught up in my knots.
“You must use your magic to track down other magical criminals.”
“Other magical criminals?” I asked in a far-off, distant tone, almost as if I were beginning to disassociate from the situation.
She nodded firmly. “I realize this is a quick introduction. Obviously, you didn’t know anything about magic before yesterday. That happens sometimes.”
“It does?” I asked weakly.
She nodded, expression still firm. She may have been finally explaining things, but I could tell she was doing so begrudgingly. “Magic has existed since the day dot. But it’s a heavily regulated power.”
“Regulated by whom?”
“The gods.” She crossed her arms again.
“The gods?” I was sure my head couldn’t spin any faster. Yet with a lurch, it achieved Mac 10. I wasn’t religious. Okay, I’d been to church a few times with my grandmother, but that was it. I didn’t believe in divine beings; I believed in life, in money, in survival. Now this blonde bombshell was telling me that I’d angered the gods with my sins.
I felt so woozy. I was about to throw up. I clapped a hand over my mouth, my fingers shaking.
She shot me a withering look. “Just hold it together. If you are this weak, you will never work off your sins. And if you don’t…” she trailed off.
I looked up sharply. That implied threat was the only thing that could make me drop my hand. “If I don’t?”
“You’ll die,” she said matter-of-factly.
I die? Oh god no. God!
I crumpled even further into my hands.
“Though Franklin usually gives new recruits time to settle in and learn the ropes, he wants to test you off the bat.”
“I’m sorry?” I blinked, my eyelids feeling as heavy as two mountain caps.
She shoved a hand into her pocket and pulled out a scroll of all things. It reminded me of how Franklin had done the same. While her jeans and blouse were tight, her jacket wasn’t, but there was still no way a long scroll could have fitted inside the fabric.
She pulled the scroll out and rolled it open, an officious look on her pretty face. “He wants you to go after John Lambert, a fire practitioner who has been doubling as a hitman.”
“I’m- I’m sorry? What? A fire practitioner? A hitman?!” My voice went up so high, I could have cracked the window.
She nodded firmly. “Like I said, Franklin wants to test you off the bat. Obviously, he’s not convinced taking you in was the right thing to do.” Her voice dropped down low, and she shot me such a judgmental look it was obvious I was nothing more than pond scum in her eyes.
I’d clamped my hand back over my face, and there wasn’t anything this side of a tow truck that would be able to remove it.
“You’ll have one chance to impress him. If you don’t…” she trailed off again.
I didn’t need her to finish her sentence – I could finish it myself: if I didn’t impress Franklin, I’d die.
It slowly, slowly started to sink in. With a pang, I realized just how dire this situation was.
My hand fell from my face. My shoulders loosened, and I sat there, loose and limp on the edge of the bed.
For the first time, I fancied that just a flicker of compassion crossed through the woman’s gaze. “Did you think working off your sins would be easy?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Working off my sins? I still couldn’t accept that the handful of thefts I’d done in my teens justified this. As for not seeing my grandmother before she died? It was tragic, but it was hardly the kind of crime to justify being indentured to the Nordic god of revenge.
I closed my eyes and clapped my hands over them. I was wrong. This had to be a dream – some kind of cruel hallucination. I shook my head and waited for it to end.
The woman simply stood there and curled her lip with disdain. “If you do that, there’s no way you’ll complete this case. And if you don’t complete this case…” she trailed off again.
Angrily, I let my hands drop. “Who the hell do you people think you are? I haven’t done anything wrong, and I certainly can’t go after a magical hitman.” My voice hit such a note of indignant frustration on the word magical, I felt it would tear the lining from my esophagus. “This isn’t possible. None of this is possible,” I defaulted to saying.
The woman took several more steps until she stopped right in front of me. She brought up her left hand, clicked her fingers, and stared right in my eyes. As she did, that same disc of magic appeared in front of her hand. She flicked her fingers to the left, and suddenly licks of water began tracing up and down her hands. “It is possible, and if you don’t get used to it and complete Vali’s orders, you’ll die. Now get ready; get dressed.” She pointed to one of the chairs in my room, and I suddenly saw there was a neat pile of folded clothes on it. “There’s a bathroom through that door.” She jammed a thumb behind me, and I noted an en suite. “Get washed. And for god’s sake, do your hair. When you’re done, you’ll have your first meeting with Vali. I suggest you are a lot less emotional and a lot more thankful when you see him.”
I sat there, crumpled, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“He’s an unforgiving man,” she said as she turned hard on her foot and headed toward the door. Before she bustled through, she paused, that same tiny flicker of concern buried deep in her stare. A second later, she extinguished it as she crumpled her brow low. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t done something heinous. Now is when you pay for your sins. Few people get the opportunity to do that. So time to take responsibility for what you’ve done and be thankful.” With that, she walked out of the door, slamming it behind her.
There was an electronic click, and I could tell that the fancy lock re-engaged.
I sat there, and I don’t know how long it took me to finally push up. My thoughts were a broken mess.
I was no longer aware of the tears as they streamed down my cheeks, trickled along my neck, and stained the torn collar of my uniform.
Eventually, I managed to lurch into the bathroom. It took my sweaty hand several tries to twist the handle on the door. I staggered in, falling against the sink, clutching it as I pressed my hot, tear-streaked cheek against the porcelain. I hugged it as if it were
the only comfort I had left.
As I heaved and sobbed, seconds turned into minutes. Heck, maybe even an hour passed. It took me so long to push back.
The en suite was generous and had a claw footed bath. I pressed my back into it, locked a hand over my face, and hid behind my fringe.
I breathed and breathed and breathed.
Slowly, achingly slowly, the fear and sorrow gave way. Just there – deep in the center of my tummy – I felt a flicker of curiosity. It was enough to force my hands to drop as I stared at the heavy bangles around my wrists again. I poked at them experimentally. When they didn’t explode, I brought my fingers up and gently caressed them. Nails trailing down the metal, it felt different somehow, smoother than any other metal I’d ever felt. Colder, too. So cold, in fact, they should have been freezing my hands off. Yet they weren’t.
I brought my head up and looked straight into the mirror. I faced my reflection – my knotted, messy hair, my torn, singed uniform, and my puffy red cheeks. “What the hell is happening?” I begged my reflection.
She couldn’t answer. In fact, there was only one way to find out. I pushed up, staggered into the other room, grabbed my clothes, and had a shower. As the water washed over me, I tried to let it extinguish my burning fear. It helped, but only a measure. Enough that I managed to dry myself and dress.
I faced my reflection once more before turning and heading back to the main door in my room. The woman had warned that I should get dressed quickly and see Vali.
I felt numb, cold all over.
I reached out a hand, curled it into a fist, and knocked on my door. I was surprised when it opened with a click.
I jerked back as if I’d been struck, but the door simply swung open. It revealed a long corridor.
Warily, as if I expected to be shot at any second, I pushed out, shifting my head from side-to-side, my freshly brushed hair trailing softly around my shoulders. I crept out into the corridor.
When alarms didn’t blare and security guards didn’t rush toward me, I let my shoulders deflate a fraction.
I continued forward. Eventually, I reached a door. I could tell it was important, because it looked as if it was made out of a meter of solid wood.
I hung around it for a full two minutes before I gathered the gumption to knock.
It swung open without any warning.
I walked in.
The door opened to one of the most opulent, fanciest offices I’d ever seen. Move over the Oval Office. This looked as if it belonged to a king. Or perhaps a god, I realized as I shifted my head and saw Vali seated behind a desk on the opposite side of the room.
Instantly, I stiffened. Instantly, my hackles rose. And instantly, my breath froze in my chest. Right there underneath my sternum, I felt that storm of cold, that grain of ice. It was lodged above my heart. I jerked a hand up to it, clutching the fabric of my top as I stared at Vali in total, abject horror.
He simply looked back, an expression of calm control plastered over his face. He was working on something, bent over a book as he wrote. He flicked his stare up to me several times, but then returned it to what he was doing.
I began to back toward the door, realizing I’d probably interrupted him. That’s when the damn thing slammed closed. It shut with such force, it buffeted my hair over my forehead.
I let out a pathetic yelp. Then I heard the sound of a book being snapped shut.
Warily, slowly, I looked up, my neck as stiff as sheets of steel.
Vali leaned back, arranged his hands on his desk, and stared at me. He didn’t say anything.
With my hand still tightly clutched around the fabric of my blouse, I managed a tight breath. “I was told to come see you. I just knocked—” I began.
He brought up a hand. It was stiff, and it was clear he was telling me to shut up.
I pressed my lips together and bit them.
“Megan would have explained the process to you,” he said.
“Process?” My voice shook.
“You’ll be sent out on a job tonight. I’m eager to find out what you can do. Just as you should be eager to pay off your considerable debt.”
“Debt?”
“Your sins,” His voice rattled low. And though, up until now, you could have confused him for an ordinary human, what his voice did to the room revealed he was so much more. Somehow his tone pitched through the very floor, shook up my legs, and lodged hard into my stomach.
I took a nervous step backward, but with nowhere to go, I was stuck. Trapped.
He leaned forward, unclenching his hands, shifting his shoulders, and cracking his neck. “Megan would have shared the details of this case with you. You’ll see her for a full case history on John Lambert before you head out tonight.” He spoke like I had a clue what he was saying.
I clearly didn’t. I had absolutely no idea what was going on here. And as more people threw useless, unconnected facts at me, I became even more confused.
I brought up a hand and locked it over my head. “What’s going on?” I asked in the most pathetic whimper I’d ever made.
“What’s going on is that you are working off your sins, and you will be working them off for some time.”
“But I—” I began, my hand dropping as the anger flared in my gut. I wanted to tell him I still had no idea what was going on, but more than anything, I wanted to tell him that my sins weren’t that bad. Whatever he was doing to me couldn’t be justified.
But then I met his gaze, his dark warning gaze. Somehow, right there in the center of his eyes was something… different. There was a kernel of something….
My grandmother had once called me gullible. She said I believed in people when they didn’t even believe in themselves. Kind of like I could see the good side to Larry, I usually found myself excusing and justifying criminals based on their history. Maybe they’d grown up in a violent home. Maybe they didn’t have the privilege others had. And as someone who’d grown up in privilege, I understood what kind of an advantage that was.
So right now, even though I wanted to resist what my heart was telling me, I got the sudden impression that deep, deep under the surface of this god of revenge was something – something kind, something good.
“I have already established your crimes, just as you have already signed a contract indenturing yourself to me. You must now work off your sins. And you will begin tonight with John Lambert, the hitman,” he said so matter-of-factly, it was as if he was talking about nothing more offensive than sporting results.
“A hitman?” I could barely push my words out. “How on earth am I going to catch a hitman? A magical hitman?” My breath became shallow again, driving hard into the center of my throat.
For the first time, Vali’s gaze narrowed in concern, but it didn’t last. He cleared his throat. “You will do so by using your magic.”
“Magic?” I turned my head down, attention falling on my bangles for the first time since I’d seen them. I tried to take them off. I latched a hand on one, spying a lock in the middle of the metal.
Vali punched to his feet. His chair clattered behind him, thumping against the carpet with such a bang, it was as if he’d fired a gun.
I jolted backward.
“You will not remove those,” he said as he swiftly walked around the side of his desk and stopped a half meter before me, looming over me like a storm cloud.
I shuddered back. “What? What are you talking about? What are these?”
“They are magical locks. And you will not remove them unless under express instruction from me.”
“Why?”
He paused. Paused for such a long time, I could tell he was quickly thinking of some excuse. “Because I demanded it of you,” he defaulted to saying.
“Because you demand it,” I repeated slowly, voice a jumble of breath. “But what… what were those symbols that… covered me last night?”
He growled. “You will be told everything you need to be told. So do not ask questions out of turn.?
??
Ask questions out of turn? Last night I had been completely covered by magical light.
I stood there and faced him. Half of me cowered at the sight of the Nordic god of revenge. The other half couldn’t damp down my curiosity. It couldn’t stop staring into the center of his eyes, hoping to catch just another glimpse of that kind heart.
I didn’t get a chance to see it again, because Vali turned hard on his foot. He straightened his brass tie pin before shifting around, picking up his chair, and sitting in it once more. He sat there silently. And as every silent second passed, I clammed up more and more, nerves climbing high over my back and clenching around my throat like hands.
“I don’t get it. If I can’t remove these locks, how exactly am I meant to use magic to catch that man, and why exactly do I have to catch him?”
“You have to catch him because he is not just a hitman, but a magical hitman. He uses his abilities – power no ordinary human should have and powers taken directly from the gods – to harm others. He has killed over 35 people, some of them brutally, all in the name of profit. He is irredeemable,” Vali said so matter-of-factly and so emotionlessly, it was like we weren’t talking about a human life at all.
I shivered at the cold expression on Vali’s face. But more than anything, at the thought of 35 murders.
Suddenly that shiver turned into a shard of ice that stabbed me right in the center of the chest. “You… you honestly expect me to be able to catch this man? I only found out about magic last night,” I began, getting desperate.
“Yes, I expect you to catch this man. Like I said, it’s a test. A test to see whether you are ready to take responsibility for your sins. You have, as yet, failed to acknowledge them. If you do not do so by tonight and use everything at your disposal to catch this man, then…” he trailed off. He picked up his pen, opened the book, and scribbled something on one of the pages.
Somehow I got the distinct impression that it would be the ledger of my crimes.
I stiffened, letting my hands fall behind my back. I curled them into tight fists. That was literally all I could do. I couldn’t shout at him, and god knows I couldn’t beg. I would have loved to turn on my foot and stride out of this building, but I didn’t have that option, either. I was totally and completely trapped, a magical slave of the Nordic god of revenge. And yet I still faced him until he finished writing and closed the book.
“Until you learn to control your… abilities,” he said after a considerable pause, “you will be given weaponry.”
“Weaponry?” My tone was dull, dead.
“A magical gun.”
“A magical gun?! But I can’t shoot. I’ve never fired a weapon before!” I began.
He brought up a hand, so stiff, so cold, so white with tension it looked as if it had been carved from ice. He spread his fingers wide in a silencing move. “You will learn. As I said, you will either dig deep tonight, take responsibility for your sins, and do everything within your power to catch this man, or…” he trailed off.
“Or I’ll die?”
He met my gaze then nodded once. “Leave now, Lily-white.” He said my name, stringing it together in one word. “And only come back once you obtain your target.”
“Obtain my target?” My breath caught in my throat. “You want me to bring him in alive?”
Vali suddenly looked up sharply. “Without question. For if you murder, there will be no redemption.”
I nodded. I nodded even though I didn’t understand a word.
I turned on my foot and headed toward the door. Though it was closed, I heard something unlock, and it creaked open.
Before I managed to take a step through it, I heard Vali shift once more. “You will not take your locks off under any circumstances. Do you understand?” His voice achieved such a low note of warning, I was certain it would trigger an earthquake.
With cold dancing up my back, I forced myself to nod.
I walked forward. With every step, I waited for this hallucination to end, but with every step, it simply became more real and more horrible.
I’d gone from being indentured to the so-called Nordic god of revenge, to being given an ultimatum to track down a magical hitman by tonight, or suffer the consequences….