Page 29 of Odin

Arms came out of nowhere, wrapping Freyja in a tight hug from behind so she couldn't even see her assailant.

"Oh my god, Karl said you are the absolute queen of reindeer dissection. I can learn so much from you. When you're done dealing with Odin, I want to be right there in the lab with you, until you've taught me everything."

Tall, thin and blonde – Freyja's assailant might have been a Viking shieldmaiden, if she'd lived in those times. Her eyes shone with a frightening intensity that made Freyja think about berserkers. She couldn't suppress a slight shudder.

"And you are?"

The blonde's jaw dropped. "Shit. Sorry. I'm Jorunn. I'm the one who found Odin, which means I should probably be more excited about him than all the reindeer corpses, but Vikings are more Karl and Sibyl's thing, while I just do reindeer."

"And wolverines, and wolves, don't forget," said a male voice, as a new man stepped into the room, seizing Jorunn from behind so he could nuzzle her neck.

Freyja's head spun. If Thor was Olaf's younger brother, then this man was the baby of the three, who hadn't yet grown massive muscles like the other two, but he still looked strong enough to take them on.

Jorunn began to laugh. "Oh my god, it just hit me. Saint Nik and all his bullshit about us Aussie girls being obsessed with Australian actors, and he totally got owned by a wolverine. Not quite Hugh Jackman, but...oh shit. Karma bit that thieving arsehole on the arse, all right."

Freyja blinked. "Nik was stealing stuff?" She'd heard rumours about artefacts going missing, but Karl had just dismissed it as poor attention to detail when they were packing up, as it was mostly small stuff that was easy to misplace. Had Nik somehow masterminded the theft of the ice mummy, too?

The helicopter pilot had said he'd had to go to the hospital first with Nik, before he'd brought the ice mummy here. That meant the pilot had to be in on it. Then again, he'd said something about cleaning the helicopter, so maybe if the ice mummy had been taken out and switched while the cleaning was going on, without the pilot noticing, he might be as innocent as she was.

Which meant...the body might have been stolen before it even arrived at the lab. Maybe that block of ice she'd taken to the necropsy fridge had been just that – a big block of ice, with nothing inside. Well, except maybe that spear...

Jorunn nodded. "Yep, and he tried to pin the whole thing on me. He was smuggling stuff back in the waste containers. Thor and Sibyl confirmed it, but Karl didn't believe me until he went through Nik's pockets, in the coat and pants he left behind. Quite the haul of Viking valuables. I heard when he arrived in hospital, the police handcuffed him to the bed. I bet he loved waking up like that."

Freyja slumped. If Nik had been unconscious all the way from the dig site, he couldn't possibly have been involved in the body theft. Wouldn't have even known the body existed.

And yet...if someone had switched one ice block for another, it was still possible that she'd never received Karl's ice mummy, and being snowed in here actually proved her innocence, because there was no way she could have gotten out, let alone taken a non-existent body with her.

But the police would never believe it. Not unless the body turned up somewhere else. And she had no idea where it might be, except that it definitely wasn't here.

She reached for her muffin, only to find her plate was empty. Would Sibyl mind if she had another one? If she was going to prison on Monday anyway...

"Hey, it's nice thinking about Saint Nik getting a bit of justice and all, but remember the real reason we're here," said the youngest man, whose name Freyja still didn't know, though he was looking pointedly at her now. "We're here to talk to Odin."

The big daddy of the Norse pantheon? Freyja couldn't have heard right. "Who?"

"Odin. Karl's ice mummy. That's what we've been calling him," Jorunn said.

Fuck. Freyja had thought the police were what she'd have to worry about, but the way these four crowded around her, radiating expectation? They were going to kill her when they found out.

She swallowed. And told them.

The man whose name she didn't know spread his hands wide, as if asking the universe for patience. Or maybe even Odin himself. "What do you mean, Odin's missing?"

THIRTY-FIVE

Freyja had no words left. She'd told them everything, even if she hadn't mentioned her suspicions about Olaf or the helicopter pilot. Well, and the bit about her own personal history. Nik had probably already told them, like he'd told everyone else at the university, and if they didn't know, they soon would.

So she said the only thing she could think of: "I'll show you."

She marched to the necropsy lab, where she had to swipe her passcard twice, her hands were shaking so badly. She wouldn't have minded keeping it a secret for another few days, before her life as she knew it ended, but when had she ever gotten to choose what happened in her life? People just barged in and fucked things up whenever they pleased, and she had no control over anything. She was supposed to have pancakes for breakfast this morning, and instead she'd had a couple of muffins. Good muffins, sure, with weird jam that worked in a way she didn't quite understand, but definitely not pancakes.

She shoved the door open so hard, it bounced off the wall, but one of the men caught it in time before it could hit anyone. She'd be grateful for that later, but right now, she just didn't care any more. How could she, when everything was so fucked up?

Freyja wrenched the fridge door open, and flung that against the wall, too, where it caught on the hook that was supposed to hold it open. So everyone could see how fucking empty the fridge was. Much like her future.

She couldn't even bring herself to look at the empty mortuary trolley, where a solitary spear swam in a pool of melted ice.

"What happened to his clothes?" one of the men asked.

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