Page 16 of Valkyrie Unknown

“Yeah, but it really pisses you off.” Loki plucked an artificial-sweetener packet from the bowl of them and let it float in the air in front of him. As he twisted his finger, it twirled, faster and faster. It would be hypnotic if I cared.

The paper vanished, and fake sugar crystals flew everywhere.

Except at him.

Aside from our most recent encounter, I hadn’t seen him in fifty years. There had been intense, passionate, no-holds-barred hate sex. “I stopped giving a fuck what you do a long time ago,” I said.

“Did you? Then why are you here?”

After the sex, the two of us had talked. Reminisced. Relived a past romance that had been dead for centuries. We’d also brought up the prophecies.

I poured more coffee into my mug. “They have the most mediocre coffee for a hundred miles in any direction. Why wouldn’t I show up for that?”

Prophecies were vague. Open to interpretation. Whether it was because the dragons liked the riddles or because didn’t have a specific interpretation either was a mystery. That night, though, Loki and I had compared notes about the ones that directly involved us. We figured out that the woman in one of his was the same as in mine, and we had good reason to believe most everyone had interpreted both wrong.

We didn’t have any idea what the right interpretation was, though.

At the end of that night, I realized Loki had been about to walk away from the idea of this mysterious woman who was meant to destroy him. To bring him to his knees. He’d all but given up on any of the prophecies.

Something we discussed, though, as we lay basking in the afterglow of a good grudge-fuck, changed his mind. It set him on this path again, filling him with the determination to find Azzie. To kill her before she could get to him.

That was why I felt obligated to protect her. That was the reason I approached her mother.

“Hmm…” Loki dragged out the sound. “Your bullshit is as compelling as ever. Because you’ve always given a fuck where you drink coffee.”

“I’m allowed to change.” I understood something about Loki that most got wrong. He learned a long time ago that so many people expected him to lie, he would tell the truth most of the time to throw them off course.

Given the mood he was in now? I needed to believe most things that came out of his mouth. Or at least consider them.

He twisted sideways in his seat and leaned against the wall with a smirk, just as the waiter brought him a fresh mug.

“Lord of mischief.” The waiter-slash-host-slash-cashier winked at him.

Loki smirked. “You have no idea.”

The guy walked away, to collect payment from someone else, but he glanced back at us twice.

“Are you flirting with him?” I couldn’t hide my disbelief. “He’s a child.”

“Do you expect me to wait until they’re fifty? One hundred? They’re so fragile, they’re not much fun at those ages. He’s old enough to know what he’s doing when he consents.” Loki closed his eyes. “Thirty.”

He couldn’t tell people’s ages with any sort of magic, regardless of what he pretended, but he was a good guesser and ever better at getting people to give him information.

“Did he tell you that?” I asked.

Loki poured a generous helping of sugar into his coffee and sipped, not hiding his smirk. “When he was asking if he could get me anything to drink, a co-worker wished himhappy you’re-officially-old day. He’s too old to be twenty and too young to be forty. Why do people love the tens so much?”

“You’d have to ask people.” I set a bill on the table to pay for my coffee and stood. “I’m done here.”

Loki put down his cup. “She vanished. One minute she was there, and the next she was gone. But a woman who prefers to travel on foot can’t have gotten far in the last hour.”

I paused. That was a mistake. I should have said,Don’t know whom you’re talking about, and kept walking.

My hesitation gave me away. Told him I knew he was talking about Azzie. I might as well ask my question. “How did you know where she was?”

Loki didn’t have the power to sense magical auras, but he probably had someone working for him who did. It was no coincidence we both found her tonight, though.

He sipped more of his coffee.

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