Part 3: Chapter 7: Somewhat Twilight-ish
(Ooh! Isn't he dreamy? Ooh! Anyway... teenage-girl thrills ahead.)
Chapter 7: A Marked Man
They flipped a coin to decide who would do the mirror test first. Imogen lost.
In the dining-room, she could still feel the sturdy old floorboards vibrating under her slippered feet. Though it was a school night, the party was going strong.
Fiona stood in front of the door with her arms crossed, scowling into the dark. “This is ridiculous.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” said Imogen, lighting the second candle. “I mean, if you’re going to stay, don’t ask me what we’re doing and don’t tell anyone. You saw what happened to Mr. Blanding in the mirror. Aslaug, can you see me?”
After a full evening of mirror tests, the fat white candles were little more than waxy puddles. The rune was a huddle of opaque scratches on the pale, fluid surface of the mirror, slightly more than an inch high. Imogen wondered if anyone had noticed.
For the second time, she gazed at herself between the two flames. She saw no eyes, no devil’s horns, no angel’s halo. Nothing.
And that was that. The next thing would be to go through her own sloppy notes, make sense of them, and force Aslaug to memorize the list of Jotunized people. There were so few of them that Imogen thought she could probably name them already, not to mention count them on the fingers of both hands. (Kristen, Jeremy, a very fat girl named Kayla Humphries, Mr. Pfennig the plumber; a skinny, tired-looking woman who was somebody’s mom; Billy’s friend Ren Perkins; a long-faced senior basketball player named Logan something; and, rather unexpectedly, Karin Lind. Oh, and Mr. Blanding.) How hard could it be not to look any of them in the eye?
What Aslaug would find hard, possibly impossible, was learning to look at the rest of them, even Imogen and Stephen. Trusting that it was safe.
“I see,” Aslaug said now, stiffly. “I see you.”
“Do you?” Imogen wheeled, too fast to give Aslaug time to glance away, and caught the other girl’s face between her hands. Aslaug felt as thin and nervy as steel wire - much like Fiona. “Do you see me now?” Imogen asked, staring in the way she was famous for.
Aslaug closed her eyes at first. Then, realizing Imogen would not let her go until she opened them, she peeked.
“I won’t burn.”
“I know.” Aslaug was still looking downward, into the dark. “But. But…”
“If I’m Jotunized, I’d rather burn and get it over with. Do you get what I’m saying, Aslaug? Stop flinching and look at me.”
“All right,” said Aslaug. She looked.
Imogen was startled to find it hurt a little. It glared, like when you are in a car that is driving straight toward the sun. She told herself there was nothing special about Aslaug’s eyes - and it was true that in the candlelight, she couldn’t even see what color they were. But she felt them. Like the eyes of Sigurd in the story, they stung you, making you stop what you were doing. In a soft way, they burned.
“My turn,” Stephen said.
For the first time in her life, maybe, Imogen broke a stare-off. “Watch him in the mirror, Aslaug,” she said.
Stephen stepped where Imogen had been. His body went rigid instantly, as if he had seen something wrong.
Imogen stopped breathing. She took a step back, and a deep-down shiver caught her at the knees and moved rapidly all the way to the hairs on her head.
She forced herself to look at Stephen reflected in the mirror. Being taller than her or Aslaug, he filled more of the oval, but no unearthly white globes hovered over his head or his shoulders. Imogen was so relieved that she breathed out in a noisy sigh. “Why’d you freeze like that? You scared me.”
“What?” said Aslaug, peering into the mirror as if she hadn’t noticed a thing.
“He’s all right. Like me.”
Stephen raised his right hand, palm facing away from the mirror. His reflection raised its left hand, and Imogen saw that the rune tattoo on the back of that hand glowed.
It was not the brightest glow. It reminded Imogen of the stars Aunt Val had painted on the ceiling of her childhood bedroom, with their sickly greenish radiance that only appeared in the dark. She opened her mouth to ask Stephen if he had decorated his hand with fluorescent body paint and then closed it. He was still standing motionless and ramrod-straight, like a person who is in pain.
“Are you OK?” said Aslaug, taking notice at last.
Stephen caught his breath. He drew the tattooed hand close to his chest and moved away from the mirror, taking wincing steps like an old man.
“Someone really did something to your hand,” said Aslaug in a fluttery voice.
“It’s an enchantment, I bet. That’s why we can see it in the mirror,” said Imogen, ignoring Fiona’s eye-roll behind her. She was sure of just one thing: she had to talk with Stephen alone. As long as he was trying to impress Aslaug, he would pretend there was nothing wrong.
She cleared her throat. “Your mom’s going to be mad if you aren’t home soon, isn’t she?”
“OK,” said Aslaug. “OK.” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself. Turning to Stephen, she asked, “Are you sure?”
“I’ve always been sure.” He was still hiding his hand, and Imogen didn’t like the way his voice sounded - too sharp, as if he was using his annoyed tone to hide something else.
“You see, the problem is,” said Aslaug. As she talked, she raised her face to Stephen’s. Then she clapped her hands over her eyes, like a little girl. “The problem is, even if it’s safe now, how do I know it’s safe tomorrow or the day after? I’ve known Kristen and Jeremy my whole life. I used to look at them when we were little.”
“If either of us gets Jotunized, we’ll just have to tell you,” said Imogen.
“What if you can’t?” Now she was letting her fingers slip from her eyes one by one, like someone tiptoeing into cold water. Imogen yearned to rip them away.
“What Imogen said before.” Stephen’s voice was still too tight. “If they’ve touched me, I want to burn. I don’t want to live.”
“Why not?” Aslaug asked. Her eyes were free now, but she still held four spidery fingers clamped on either side of her skinny nose. Above them, her eyes caught the yellow light and shone, big and liquid. “Brynhild was crazy, Stephen. That’s why she wanted to die. Maybe there’s hope for the other ones.”
“Brynhild needed to die,” Stephen said. Imogen could see him quivering a little now, as he absorbed the too-brightness of Aslaug’s eyes. “She had Sigurd killed. There are some things you can’t do and still…”
“What?”
“Live.” A shiver passed over him. “Once you lose the thing that makes you part of other people, there’s just no reason. Brynhild knew that. Everyone they touch knows that, down deep.”
Aslaug slipped out the back way and marched across the fields. When they had watched her flashlight bob all the way to the base of her driveway, Imogen said, “Are you going to tell me now?”
“Tell you what?” Stephen slumped against the kitchen wall. His face wore a light sheen of sweat.
“What happened when you looked in the mirror.”
“I didn’t think you guys noticed. Except for the glowing part.” He straightened, the corner of his lip twitching. It reminded Imogen of how he had looked while Orin was hitting him - and that reminded her that Orin understood the mirror test, sort of.
But who cared about Orin? “Maybe Aslaug didn’t notice. She’s not used to looking at people. But I did.”
Stephen nodded. “Can we go some place we’re really alone?”
She led him up three flights of stairs, past the closed doors of the bedroom where Granny slumbered and the study where Fiona was probably already back scowling at her computer screen. In the attic room, she flicked on three lamps and glanced with embarrassment at the sheets bunched on her bed.
But Stephen was in no shape to notice the sheets, the overflowing laundry hamper, the sticky glasses on the TV table, the Princess Diaries DVD sitting in plain view, or anything else. He sat in one of the ancient green velveteen club chairs, then bounced forward as if his back hurt. “It itches. Never has before.”
“What does?”
“They do. My designs.”
“You have ones besides the one on your hand?” She was sure she had seen him with bare arms; no tats there.
“Would you look at them for me?” said Stephen. “I need to know which parts are gone.”
She nodded. “Where are they?”
“Here.” He peeled off his Army jacket, then tugged a waffle-weave shirt over his head. “It’s OK,” he said, raising one hand reassuringly. “I’m not going to take off all my clothes.”
“I know,” said Imogen. She tried to think of a snappier retort; couldn’t. When he pulled off his second waffle-weave shirt, identical to the first, the sight of his flat stomach made her redden and drop her eyes.
Stephen didn’t seem to notice. He tossed his shirts on the back of the chair. He rose, turned his back to her, and sank to his knees on the faded carpet.
Imogen gasped.
It wasn’t just that his entire back was inked. She’d seen people with lots of tattoos before - maybe not in real life, but certainly on TV. But those tattoos were like Disney cartoons compared with these. Stephen’s back was thick with runes. They looked as if they’d been made in the most primitive way possible, with a thick needle and some smeary ink. A procession of long, skinny, faintly red and green bars wound its way between his shoulderblades, where the knobs of bone and muscle stuck out, and then black and blue bars crawled to his waist. Some of the bars had funny little hooks and crosses on them.
And now, for the first time, Imogen thought the runes did look like letters. They were so wavery and blotchy and sloppy she knew they had been meant to say something, not as an artist’s design.
Some of them weren’t even inked. Inching closer, she saw a cluster of fat notched lines on his right shoulder. They were a dull raspberry color with silver puckers, like scars or a skin inflammation. “Stephen, are these thick ones…?”
“Burns,” said Stephen. “With a poker. It’s faster than the ink, but it hurts. Can you tell me if there are any bare spots?”
She shivered. “You got yourself branded?”
“Look, they really itch. When I looked in that mirror, it was like everything caught on fire. And now I feel like some of them are gone.” He sighed. “I know some of them are gone, because I couldn’t have shown them to you before. Something was stopping me. I couldn’t have told you how I got them, either. But now I think maybe I can.”
Imogen reached shakily for her camera. “The easiest way is if I take a picture of them, then show you on my laptop. I don’t know where anything starts and ends.”
“Neither do I,” said Stephen. He sank into a more comfortable cross-legged position. “That’s why I’ve been studying runes so hard. I want to know what they actually say. But I can’t even figure out the one on my hand. Or the one on the mirror, really. I just knew it would work.”
“But why did it do this to you?” She willed her hands still, so she could frame his back in the viewfinder.
“I don’t know. My guess is, that rune reacts to anything a Jotun’s touched. Loki helped make these words on my back, and Loki is a Jotun.”
“Loki did this?” She was relieved when she was able to turn her back on those crude, painful-looking tattoos, so she could open her laptop and plug in the camera.
“Mainly it was him. But he was helping Sigurd. They did it together.”
“Sigurd? You mean the Sigurd?” said Imogen. “Of Brynhild and Sigurd?”
She could feel her tone going sarcastic, and she knew she should stop. What if Stephen really believed that Sigurd the Dragon Slayer and Loki the Trickster had made his tattoos? They hadn’t, obviously, but someone had. Maybe, she thought, it was his mom’s crazy boyfriend Toby who had hurt him, hurt him over a period of years. Things like that happened. Stephen might not want to admit it, even to himself - especially after Toby and his mother were both dead. And now she was making fun of him, which was awful.
But Jotuns were real. She had seen them and felt their cold.
“I think it was that Sigurd,” said Stephen, sounding unperturbed. He rose from the floor and tugged his first shirt layer back over his head, wincing. “I mean, he’s a ghost, of course. He can’t be alive in this time or any other. Gunnar’s brother stuck a spear through him.”
“In that case, I guess he would be a ghost,” said Imogen. She felt helpless. What would Aslaug say in this situation?
“He is. Loki was the one who dug up his bones and scratched the runes on them,” said Stephen. He looked pleased with himself, but not particularly crazy - more like a boy who’s just figured out how to cheat his way to the next level of a video game. “Hey, I like this!” he said. “Now I can tell you about all these things, see. Before, the runes made me keep quiet. When I opened my mouth to say the wrong thing, nothing came out. Now I can tell you I’m not really-”
“What?” said Imogen.
There was silence for a moment. Then Stephen laughed, in a dry way. “I guess I’m not allowed to tell you everything.”
“What are you talking about, exactly?” She carried her laptop over to the chair so he could see the image of his mutilated back.
“That’s kind of the point,” said Stephen, gazing at the screen. “What I’m talking about, I’m not allowed to say. I’m supposed to be this person, and I more or less still am him. But Loki gave me a present. I’m not sure why. I bet he’s just messing with me. But you can see for yourself - some of them are gone.”
He pointed at a spot on the screen. Though Imogen didn’t really want to rest her eyes there, she looked long enough to see he was right. She had been too shocked by the parade of rune tattoos to notice where they thinned and broke off. But now she could see a patch of bare skin where his waist nipped in above his left hip.
“Loki took some runes away?” she asked. “How? And what do you mean, you’re supposed to be some person?”
“The spell must have been written into the rune he gave me for the mirror test.” He grimaced. “Yeah, Loki gave me that rune. I didn’t find it myself - believe me, I tried. But the slimy bastard has an agenda. He showed up and just offered it.”
“You mean Mr. Blanding?” She was still two-thirds sure that Aslaug and Stephen had made up Loki to explain Mr. Blanding’s strange behavior.
“No,” Stephen replied curtly, plunging one arm into the sleeve of his jacket. “He took his own form. You’ll see soon enough.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting this Loki.”
“Yeah, well.” He rolled his eyes, with a disdain worthy of Fiona herself, and stood to go. “He’ll be smooth, and you’ll think he’s the coolest guy you’ve ever met in your life, and you’ll believe him when he says I lie about everything. He has that effect on girls.”
“I won’t,” said Imogen.
Stephen paused for an instant. “You probably will.”
Chapter 7: A Marked Man
They flipped a coin to decide who would do the mirror test first. Imogen lost.
In the dining-room, she could still feel the sturdy old floorboards vibrating under her slippered feet. Though it was a school night, the party was going strong.
Fiona stood in front of the door with her arms crossed, scowling into the dark. “This is ridiculous.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” said Imogen, lighting the second candle. “I mean, if you’re going to stay, don’t ask me what we’re doing and don’t tell anyone. You saw what happened to Mr. Blanding in the mirror. Aslaug, can you see me?”
After a full evening of mirror tests, the fat white candles were little more than waxy puddles. The rune was a huddle of opaque scratches on the pale, fluid surface of the mirror, slightly more than an inch high. Imogen wondered if anyone had noticed.
For the second time, she gazed at herself between the two flames. She saw no eyes, no devil’s horns, no angel’s halo. Nothing.
And that was that. The next thing would be to go through her own sloppy notes, make sense of them, and force Aslaug to memorize the list of Jotunized people. There were so few of them that Imogen thought she could probably name them already, not to mention count them on the fingers of both hands. (Kristen, Jeremy, a very fat girl named Kayla Humphries, Mr. Pfennig the plumber; a skinny, tired-looking woman who was somebody’s mom; Billy’s friend Ren Perkins; a long-faced senior basketball player named Logan something; and, rather unexpectedly, Karin Lind. Oh, and Mr. Blanding.) How hard could it be not to look any of them in the eye?
What Aslaug would find hard, possibly impossible, was learning to look at the rest of them, even Imogen and Stephen. Trusting that it was safe.
“I see,” Aslaug said now, stiffly. “I see you.”
“Do you?” Imogen wheeled, too fast to give Aslaug time to glance away, and caught the other girl’s face between her hands. Aslaug felt as thin and nervy as steel wire - much like Fiona. “Do you see me now?” Imogen asked, staring in the way she was famous for.
Aslaug closed her eyes at first. Then, realizing Imogen would not let her go until she opened them, she peeked.
“I won’t burn.”
“I know.” Aslaug was still looking downward, into the dark. “But. But…”
“If I’m Jotunized, I’d rather burn and get it over with. Do you get what I’m saying, Aslaug? Stop flinching and look at me.”
“All right,” said Aslaug. She looked.
Imogen was startled to find it hurt a little. It glared, like when you are in a car that is driving straight toward the sun. She told herself there was nothing special about Aslaug’s eyes - and it was true that in the candlelight, she couldn’t even see what color they were. But she felt them. Like the eyes of Sigurd in the story, they stung you, making you stop what you were doing. In a soft way, they burned.
“My turn,” Stephen said.
For the first time in her life, maybe, Imogen broke a stare-off. “Watch him in the mirror, Aslaug,” she said.
Stephen stepped where Imogen had been. His body went rigid instantly, as if he had seen something wrong.
Imogen stopped breathing. She took a step back, and a deep-down shiver caught her at the knees and moved rapidly all the way to the hairs on her head.
She forced herself to look at Stephen reflected in the mirror. Being taller than her or Aslaug, he filled more of the oval, but no unearthly white globes hovered over his head or his shoulders. Imogen was so relieved that she breathed out in a noisy sigh. “Why’d you freeze like that? You scared me.”
“What?” said Aslaug, peering into the mirror as if she hadn’t noticed a thing.
“He’s all right. Like me.”
Stephen raised his right hand, palm facing away from the mirror. His reflection raised its left hand, and Imogen saw that the rune tattoo on the back of that hand glowed.
It was not the brightest glow. It reminded Imogen of the stars Aunt Val had painted on the ceiling of her childhood bedroom, with their sickly greenish radiance that only appeared in the dark. She opened her mouth to ask Stephen if he had decorated his hand with fluorescent body paint and then closed it. He was still standing motionless and ramrod-straight, like a person who is in pain.
“Are you OK?” said Aslaug, taking notice at last.
Stephen caught his breath. He drew the tattooed hand close to his chest and moved away from the mirror, taking wincing steps like an old man.
“Someone really did something to your hand,” said Aslaug in a fluttery voice.
“It’s an enchantment, I bet. That’s why we can see it in the mirror,” said Imogen, ignoring Fiona’s eye-roll behind her. She was sure of just one thing: she had to talk with Stephen alone. As long as he was trying to impress Aslaug, he would pretend there was nothing wrong.
She cleared her throat. “Your mom’s going to be mad if you aren’t home soon, isn’t she?”
“OK,” said Aslaug. “OK.” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself. Turning to Stephen, she asked, “Are you sure?”
“I’ve always been sure.” He was still hiding his hand, and Imogen didn’t like the way his voice sounded - too sharp, as if he was using his annoyed tone to hide something else.
“You see, the problem is,” said Aslaug. As she talked, she raised her face to Stephen’s. Then she clapped her hands over her eyes, like a little girl. “The problem is, even if it’s safe now, how do I know it’s safe tomorrow or the day after? I’ve known Kristen and Jeremy my whole life. I used to look at them when we were little.”
“If either of us gets Jotunized, we’ll just have to tell you,” said Imogen.
“What if you can’t?” Now she was letting her fingers slip from her eyes one by one, like someone tiptoeing into cold water. Imogen yearned to rip them away.
“What Imogen said before.” Stephen’s voice was still too tight. “If they’ve touched me, I want to burn. I don’t want to live.”
“Why not?” Aslaug asked. Her eyes were free now, but she still held four spidery fingers clamped on either side of her skinny nose. Above them, her eyes caught the yellow light and shone, big and liquid. “Brynhild was crazy, Stephen. That’s why she wanted to die. Maybe there’s hope for the other ones.”
“Brynhild needed to die,” Stephen said. Imogen could see him quivering a little now, as he absorbed the too-brightness of Aslaug’s eyes. “She had Sigurd killed. There are some things you can’t do and still…”
“What?”
“Live.” A shiver passed over him. “Once you lose the thing that makes you part of other people, there’s just no reason. Brynhild knew that. Everyone they touch knows that, down deep.”
Aslaug slipped out the back way and marched across the fields. When they had watched her flashlight bob all the way to the base of her driveway, Imogen said, “Are you going to tell me now?”
“Tell you what?” Stephen slumped against the kitchen wall. His face wore a light sheen of sweat.
“What happened when you looked in the mirror.”
“I didn’t think you guys noticed. Except for the glowing part.” He straightened, the corner of his lip twitching. It reminded Imogen of how he had looked while Orin was hitting him - and that reminded her that Orin understood the mirror test, sort of.
But who cared about Orin? “Maybe Aslaug didn’t notice. She’s not used to looking at people. But I did.”
Stephen nodded. “Can we go some place we’re really alone?”
She led him up three flights of stairs, past the closed doors of the bedroom where Granny slumbered and the study where Fiona was probably already back scowling at her computer screen. In the attic room, she flicked on three lamps and glanced with embarrassment at the sheets bunched on her bed.
But Stephen was in no shape to notice the sheets, the overflowing laundry hamper, the sticky glasses on the TV table, the Princess Diaries DVD sitting in plain view, or anything else. He sat in one of the ancient green velveteen club chairs, then bounced forward as if his back hurt. “It itches. Never has before.”
“What does?”
“They do. My designs.”
“You have ones besides the one on your hand?” She was sure she had seen him with bare arms; no tats there.
“Would you look at them for me?” said Stephen. “I need to know which parts are gone.”
She nodded. “Where are they?”
“Here.” He peeled off his Army jacket, then tugged a waffle-weave shirt over his head. “It’s OK,” he said, raising one hand reassuringly. “I’m not going to take off all my clothes.”
“I know,” said Imogen. She tried to think of a snappier retort; couldn’t. When he pulled off his second waffle-weave shirt, identical to the first, the sight of his flat stomach made her redden and drop her eyes.
Stephen didn’t seem to notice. He tossed his shirts on the back of the chair. He rose, turned his back to her, and sank to his knees on the faded carpet.
Imogen gasped.
It wasn’t just that his entire back was inked. She’d seen people with lots of tattoos before - maybe not in real life, but certainly on TV. But those tattoos were like Disney cartoons compared with these. Stephen’s back was thick with runes. They looked as if they’d been made in the most primitive way possible, with a thick needle and some smeary ink. A procession of long, skinny, faintly red and green bars wound its way between his shoulderblades, where the knobs of bone and muscle stuck out, and then black and blue bars crawled to his waist. Some of the bars had funny little hooks and crosses on them.
And now, for the first time, Imogen thought the runes did look like letters. They were so wavery and blotchy and sloppy she knew they had been meant to say something, not as an artist’s design.
Some of them weren’t even inked. Inching closer, she saw a cluster of fat notched lines on his right shoulder. They were a dull raspberry color with silver puckers, like scars or a skin inflammation. “Stephen, are these thick ones…?”
“Burns,” said Stephen. “With a poker. It’s faster than the ink, but it hurts. Can you tell me if there are any bare spots?”
She shivered. “You got yourself branded?”
“Look, they really itch. When I looked in that mirror, it was like everything caught on fire. And now I feel like some of them are gone.” He sighed. “I know some of them are gone, because I couldn’t have shown them to you before. Something was stopping me. I couldn’t have told you how I got them, either. But now I think maybe I can.”
Imogen reached shakily for her camera. “The easiest way is if I take a picture of them, then show you on my laptop. I don’t know where anything starts and ends.”
“Neither do I,” said Stephen. He sank into a more comfortable cross-legged position. “That’s why I’ve been studying runes so hard. I want to know what they actually say. But I can’t even figure out the one on my hand. Or the one on the mirror, really. I just knew it would work.”
“But why did it do this to you?” She willed her hands still, so she could frame his back in the viewfinder.
“I don’t know. My guess is, that rune reacts to anything a Jotun’s touched. Loki helped make these words on my back, and Loki is a Jotun.”
“Loki did this?” She was relieved when she was able to turn her back on those crude, painful-looking tattoos, so she could open her laptop and plug in the camera.
“Mainly it was him. But he was helping Sigurd. They did it together.”
“Sigurd? You mean the Sigurd?” said Imogen. “Of Brynhild and Sigurd?”
She could feel her tone going sarcastic, and she knew she should stop. What if Stephen really believed that Sigurd the Dragon Slayer and Loki the Trickster had made his tattoos? They hadn’t, obviously, but someone had. Maybe, she thought, it was his mom’s crazy boyfriend Toby who had hurt him, hurt him over a period of years. Things like that happened. Stephen might not want to admit it, even to himself - especially after Toby and his mother were both dead. And now she was making fun of him, which was awful.
But Jotuns were real. She had seen them and felt their cold.
“I think it was that Sigurd,” said Stephen, sounding unperturbed. He rose from the floor and tugged his first shirt layer back over his head, wincing. “I mean, he’s a ghost, of course. He can’t be alive in this time or any other. Gunnar’s brother stuck a spear through him.”
“In that case, I guess he would be a ghost,” said Imogen. She felt helpless. What would Aslaug say in this situation?
“He is. Loki was the one who dug up his bones and scratched the runes on them,” said Stephen. He looked pleased with himself, but not particularly crazy - more like a boy who’s just figured out how to cheat his way to the next level of a video game. “Hey, I like this!” he said. “Now I can tell you about all these things, see. Before, the runes made me keep quiet. When I opened my mouth to say the wrong thing, nothing came out. Now I can tell you I’m not really-”
“What?” said Imogen.
There was silence for a moment. Then Stephen laughed, in a dry way. “I guess I’m not allowed to tell you everything.”
“What are you talking about, exactly?” She carried her laptop over to the chair so he could see the image of his mutilated back.
“That’s kind of the point,” said Stephen, gazing at the screen. “What I’m talking about, I’m not allowed to say. I’m supposed to be this person, and I more or less still am him. But Loki gave me a present. I’m not sure why. I bet he’s just messing with me. But you can see for yourself - some of them are gone.”
He pointed at a spot on the screen. Though Imogen didn’t really want to rest her eyes there, she looked long enough to see he was right. She had been too shocked by the parade of rune tattoos to notice where they thinned and broke off. But now she could see a patch of bare skin where his waist nipped in above his left hip.
“Loki took some runes away?” she asked. “How? And what do you mean, you’re supposed to be some person?”
“The spell must have been written into the rune he gave me for the mirror test.” He grimaced. “Yeah, Loki gave me that rune. I didn’t find it myself - believe me, I tried. But the slimy bastard has an agenda. He showed up and just offered it.”
“You mean Mr. Blanding?” She was still two-thirds sure that Aslaug and Stephen had made up Loki to explain Mr. Blanding’s strange behavior.
“No,” Stephen replied curtly, plunging one arm into the sleeve of his jacket. “He took his own form. You’ll see soon enough.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting this Loki.”
“Yeah, well.” He rolled his eyes, with a disdain worthy of Fiona herself, and stood to go. “He’ll be smooth, and you’ll think he’s the coolest guy you’ve ever met in your life, and you’ll believe him when he says I lie about everything. He has that effect on girls.”
“I won’t,” said Imogen.
Stephen paused for an instant. “You probably will.”