Page 62 of Soul of Shadow
The Seal was malfunctioning.
Maybe it had only happened for a second. Maybe only one draugar had slipped through. Maybe a god or spirit hadletit through, though she didn’t know how that would be possible. According to Elias, the Seal was a physical object. One that could only be pulled from the earth by a human. And if it had held for so many millennia, she didn’t think it was stored in a place that could be randomly stumbled upon by a hapless traveler.
But what did she know?
Still. If the Sealhadbeen broken entirely, Charlie would have known. In all likelihood, the world would be in an uproar. There would be rioting in the streets, pastors out preaching about the end of all time. Silver Shores wouldn’t look as peaceful as it did any other evening.
After pulling into her driveway, she rubbed her face, dizzy with the questions swirling around in her head. She needed a good night’s sleep. She needed to not think about Elias or draugar or Nordic gods for at least twenty-four hours. Maybe her mom would let her drive the Bronco to a wellness retreat in the Upper Peninsula.
Yeah, right. Of course her mom wouldn’t let her do that.
And even if she did, Elias would somehow find her.
Elias. Even though she was wrapped in the warm sweatshirt he’d given her, shivers racked her body when she thought about him. About his lips on hers, pure intangible shadow and yet somehow the most real thing she had ever felt in her entire life.
As she got out of the car and trudged up the driveway,she couldn’t help but wonder what the kiss meant. If it meant anything at all. Maybe he would have kissedanyonewho was pressed that closely to him. Maybe what she felt between them was pure attraction and nothing else.
Still, as she opened the front door of her home, one hand pressed to her lips, the memory of his shadows still tingling on her tongue…
She couldn’t help but feel that it was something else entirely.
As always, the vätte needed to be fed. Over the past few days, through trial and error, Charlie had discovered the following about the creature’s diet:
Likes:oatmeal, bananas, chicken, peanut butter, brown rice, and chocolate chip cookies.
Dislikes:vegetables and anything resembling seafood.
After saying hello to her mom and explaining that Mason was at an after-party she didn’t feel like attending, she took a cookie from the jar on the counter and brought it up to her bedroom.
“This is your second cookie of the night. Tomorrow, we have real food,” she said as she handed it to the vätte, who immediately started clapping and bouncing up and down. “Got it?”
He nodded, snatching the cookie with his tiny hands and shoving it into his tiny beard.
As the vätte ate, Charlie sat down at her laptop to browse the local news, in search of any updates on the disappearances. They’d been running headlines on Maisie’s disappearance all day, but she didn’t see anything she didn’t already know: another tree, another pair of shoes. No new information on the carvings, which was what Elias had promised her—right up until they got completely off track. Instead of studying whatever he’d uncovered, they’d gotten chased by a draugar and made out in his bed.
Oops.
Her eyes drifted up to look out the window. The night was dark and still, not a terrifying creature in sight. Where had the wounded draugar gone? Or that wolf, the one Elias was so keen on finding? And whydidElias want to find the wolf? As far as she knew, the wolf had nothing to do with their investigation, but she bet there were many things that Elias was still keeping from her.
Well. Maybe Elias was checking out of the investigation until Monday, but she certainly wasn’t.
The site for one local news station had several high-resolution photos of the carved trees on their home page. Charlie clicked on the photos, zooming in as close as she could while still keeping the symbols in focus.
What had Elias said?
I think they might be related to another realm. One even deeper than Helheim.
A realm deeper than the underworld. How was that possible?
Now that she thought about it, she didn’t really know much about the eight realms—or nine, as humans thought of them. How were they connected? Were they just different planets, floating about in space, or was there some other structure to them?
