Page 8 of The Fanged One

The sight of the world-eater of Ragnarök, Fenris Lokisson himself, standing barefoot in a gray towel and sniffing Havi's shampoo with the grave intensity of a connoisseur finally made her crack.

Linnea burst out laughing before she had the sense to hold it in. Fenris gave her a confused half-smile. "Sorry, I'm sure he has more. Use as much as you want."

Linnea showed him the small cedar-lined sauna attached to the bathroom, which Havi's house magic also kept warm. She gestured into the heat, said something brisk and impersonal about leaving him to it, and shut the bathroom door behind her.

Linnea made another coffee, and she drank half of it standing at the counter with her eyes closed, and her wolf, who had finally simmered down to a low, excited buzz, was now interested only in the closed bathroom door. She needed to contact Freya or Havi. She had a feeling Aunty Alruna would know how, but she wasn't sure she wanted to ask the queen in case the gods didn't want her involved.

Havi's cabin had a landline because he was old and contrary, and it lived on a small table by the front door. She went looking for an address book, a notebook, a scrap of paper, anything that might point her at a number for him or Freya.

Havi's cabin was insultingly tidy. There was a small leather-bound journal in a drawer that turned out to be six pages of fishing entries from last summer.

She put her face in her hands because she was going to have to do this with magic. She had been a völva for nearly two years, so surely she could call her own goddess on the metaphysical landline if she dared to.

Gudrun had taught her how to do the trance work, or dream walking, so she could reach out and act as a bridge between the gods and Midgard. She had never dared do it outside of training, and she was about to have to try while a Norse god showered in the next room.

"This is my life now," she informed the empty cabin. "This is what my life is."

An hour later, she was still debating what to do when she heard the bathroom door open.

Fenris had the towel back around his hips, his skin pink and flushed with sauna heat, his hair clean and wet, falling past his shoulders in heavy black waves that dripped at the ends. His scars stood out across the warm flush of him, ankle to wrist to chest to throat, every one of them bright as a trail of moonlight.

Instead of a fearsome god, he looked like a disoriented man whose hair and beard were a wild mess of tangles.

Linnea found herself saying, "Would you like me to help cut all of that for you?"

She gestured vaguely at his head with what she hoped was a brisk professional manner. Her wolf, who had been mercifully quiet for the last half hour, woke up with a sound of interest and started wagging her tail.

Fenris hooked his foot around the leg of the kitchen stool, pulled it out, and sat down on it. He lifted his chin, and he gave her one of the few words he was willing to spend. "Yes."

Linnea was too surprised by his voice to move for a moment.

Fenris mistook her response for something else because he cleared his throat and added, "Please?"

"Okay, stay right there." Linnea couldn't stop the smile from spreading across her face as she got up and went to look for scissors.

5

Fenris sat unnaturally still on the kitchen stool, the smooth wood alien beneath him after so much stone and earth.

I shouldn't be letting her do this, he thought, because he hadn't been touched in a long time, and it was sending hot longing through him.

He sat with his back to her, his hands on his thighs, and he told himself, while she took the first careful gather of his hair in her hand, that he should stand up and say he would do it himself.

He stayed where he was because her hands were on him, and that was all his body seemed to care about.

She set the comb down on the counter beside him, made a small, thoughtful noise, and picked up the scissors instead. The first cold metallic snick of them was so close to his ear that his wolf flinched inside him before he could stop it. Every muscle locked, a primal protest against cold steel so near the vital pulse of his throat.

Hush, he told it, and it settled once more.

Linnea worked the comb through the outer layer of his hair with careful strokes that didn't falter when she met a knot, just slowed and parted it patiently between her fingers. He closed his eyes because the alternative was to look at his own hands and find them trembling slightly on his thighs like a fool.

She was humming and didn't seem to know she was doing it. It was a low, little melody like all women sung when their hands were busy.

It was different from the songs she had sung to him in the dark and in dreams while he had lain at the bottom of the void where her voice was the only thing that touched him.

Easy, his wolf warned him, very quiet. She will stop if you move.

I know.