Page 3 of Mischief

Silence on the line.

The fan roars.

Through the door, faint, I hear the bed creak, hear Tindra turn over, hear her say my name into the dark in a voice thickwith sleep, half question, and my whole body leans toward the sound of it like a plant toward a window.

I press my forehead to the edge of the mirror.

I close my eyes and I wait for my father to do what he came to do.

He doesn't make me wait long.

"Marit's asking for you."

Andthereit is.

The second name. The only other one that can cut me open.

My sister.

Half my blood and twice my heart, the last person alive I would walk back into hell for, and he knows it.

He’s always known it, it’s the one card he’s held my whole life and he’s never once been too proud to play it.

"She's not doing so good, son." The wet drag again. "You'd know that, if you called. If you hadn't run off and left her in it. You ever think about that? You, down there in the sunshine, and her still up here in the cold with me?"

My hand closes into a fist on the counter.

I think about her every fucking day.

The ache of her, seven years old when I left with her hair in two crooked braids I never learned to do right.

Sixteen now. Sixteen in that house, withhim, and I told myself she'd be all right because I sent money and called when I could and swore leaving was the only way to make myself into something that wasn't him.

Every time I told myself, I knew better. I knew I was leaving her behind to save my own skin and told myself it was the only way I could survive.

"What do you want?"

"There's people," he says, and now the wetness is gone from his voice and what's underneath is cold and businesslike.

The real him, the man who ran crews, moved product, looked at his own children and saw inventory, "who'd make sure Marit was taken care of. Real generous people. She'd never want for anything again. Best doctors money buys. Set for life, and you too, if you played it smart."

The businesslike voice. Best doctors, set for life. He’s talking about my sister like a line item, the same way he'd once talked about me.

"Say it plain. What do you want, and what happens to Marit if I say no."

"An introduction." Light. Easy. Like he's asking me to pass the salt. "That's all. These people I know, they've got an interest in your new friends. The Raiders of Valhalla. Specifically in a certain family that runs the whole thing. Old man named Runes. His boy Tor. And Tor's got a daughter, I'm told." A pause, and I hear the smile come into it, and I want to reach through the phone and tear it off his face. "Pretty girl. Runs a coffee shop, of all things. Sleeps somewhere she shouldn't, from what I know."

Everything in me goes to ice.

"You bring me to the right room," my father says. "You open the right door. And Marit's taken care of, and you walk away clean, and nobodyeverhas to know that the great Raiders of Valhalla let a Krause ride right up into the middle of them and never smelled it."

I stare at my own face in the mirror.

Krause.

The name I cut off myself with a dull knife and left bleeding on the side of a road in Minnesota.

The name none of them know.