Page 3 of Loki

She considered putting it on a plate, but reindeer were animals – they didn't use plates. She knew that because her teacher had said her cat stole a pizza off the bench when she wasn't looking once. Jojo couldn't imagine a cat eating pizza. Did it hold the pizza in its paws, or just lick off the toppings? And what if there was pineapple on it? Ugh.

Shaking her head, Jojo went to bed.

The next morning, her mum was still snoring on the couch, though the bottle was definitely empty now, and Jojo crept into the kitchen to see if Santa had left any presents.

The bench was empty, except for the carrot.

Jojo's shoulders sagged. The reindeer hadn't eaten it.

Which meant the naughty girl and her mum must be wrong. Reindeer didn't like carrots.

Then and there, Jojo swore she'd find out what reindeer did like, and everything else about them, so that one day, she'd know exactly how to catch one, and that would be her new best Christmas ever.

Then someone snored, waking Jorunn up from her dream before it got any darker. Before she'd grown too old to throw tantrums as distractions while Mum shoplifted, and her mother had begun teaching her all she knew about stealing stuff.

Which had been a lot, especially after some idiot in the Centrelink office had decided to try and get Mum off welfare payments by sending her on a training course for shop security guards. Once Mum knew what they were trained to look for, she'd started stealing more than just groceries and alcohol. Stuff she could sell. And she'd made Jorunn do it, too, because kids could get away with way more than adults could, without anyone calling the police.

Even now, when Jorunn walked into a shop, she found herself automatically scanning the space for cameras and security measures, exits and staff. Not that she'd stolen anything in years, and she had no intention of ever doing it again.

Instead, she'd been working her arse off to get all the way to Norway, with a Harald Medal, no less, to fund her research. Talk about a fresh start. No one here knew about Mum, or all the stuff she'd stolen. Here, she wasn't Jojo any more, the kid yoyoing in and out of trouble like her namesake, while Mum drank the proceeds of her thieving and half the time forgot she even had a daughter.

Here, she was Jorunn Gabard, PhD candidate and reindeer expert, here to see the real thing in the wild.

Another snore. Ah, it was Sibyl, her roommate. If you could call someone you shared both a tent and the Harald Medal with a roommate.

Better than the alternative – Saint Nik, the arsehole from hell.

But she'd take a whole camp full of Niks if it meant getting away from her mother, so she could live her own life, and make her own mark on the world. Because she was a survivor, and she wasn't going to let another selfish arsehole get in her way again.

Sibyl shifted onto her side, and the snoring stopped.

Jorunn couldn't help but smile. Sibyl wasn't an arsehole, at least. Even in her sleep, she was the sweetest, nicest person Jorunn had ever met. She even felt sorry for Nik not getting to go to Egypt, when everyone else muttered about it being karma.

But karma worked both ways – and she was going to soak up all the good karma now, after the years of hell she'd endured to get here.

She'd find reindeer, whatever it took.

THREE

Loki soared through the sky on silent wings. He'd left Odin's army encamped in the pass, and he'd return to them before dawn, when he was done scouting. Of course, he'd have to shift back into human form first, so as not to shock anyone. Odin knew about his ability to shapeshift, and the other magics he'd inherited from his mother, but no one else – not even Thor – knew the true extent of his abilities.

Enough that the others knew he was a brilliant scout, with a way with animals. Animals knew, recognising him for what he was, but most of them didn't mind. Sleipnir certainly hadn't. Thor's goats, though...those beasts had gone out of their way to make his life difficult. He preferred horses and reindeer, though he was partial to a haunch of roast goat, and he suspected they'd known that.

But tonight's scouting mission wasn't about Thor or even Odin. No, now it was finally time to visit vengeance on Jarl Erik.

Nothing but pristine snow in the pass, and on the plain below. He could hear prey in their burrows beneath the snow, and between the piled boulders that were too sharp to be snowcapped at this altitude, but he didn't stop to hunt. He'd eaten his fill as a human, and he had no intention of remaining a long-eared owl long enough to need to eat in this form.

Odin would make sure there was a big bowl of salt cod pottage waiting for him when he returned with news in the morning.

Now, all he had to do was find Erik's army...

Ah, vermin of a very different kind. The kind that feasted and sang, all unknowing that death was on its way.

There were no nykrs in sight. Only a village with a longhouse larger than the one Odin lived in, filled with men and women making merry.

Not for long, Loki swore as he swooped in.

The thatch roof rustled beneath his talons as Loki settled over one of the largest smoke holes. The vermin within the thatch were nothing to what dwelled beneath it. For in the carved chair at the high table sat a man who could be no one except Jarl Erik, flanked by two men who were surely his sons.

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