Page 50 of Disabling Relics for Dummies
Maybe those awful cooking lessons with Old Scratch would pay off if it would help Bjorn. Killian and Loki didn’t do all the cooking. Yeah, we got delivery, but they did breakfast and I made dinner for the most part. I usually packed leftovers or made sandwiches for lunch at work.
When I got to the kitchen, Killian and Loki were packing up breakfast, and Sleipnir had his head in my fridge. What was he doing? He shut the door when he realized Bjorn and I were here and grinned at me.
“That’s amazing! You can keep your food cold when it isn’t winter, and you don’t have to eat the meat or salt it immediately!”
Okay, Sleipnir was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. He was pretty much the same height as Loki but more muscular. Sleipnir looked like he could rip a bitch in half if he wanted to. He was losing his shit over my fridge. Oh, I was going to have so much fun showing this one everything about this century.
Bjorn wouldn’t have known what any of this was either, but he seemed to just take everything in and adapt. I appreciated that about him. Killian had his hands full trying to rein me in, and I had a feeling Loki and I were going to feed off of each other. Bjorn could be an additional sane person to our group because that certainly wasn’t Loki or me.
I could have been mad Loki sprung additional houseguests on me, but I wasn’t. I could have asked them all to go back to the hotel, but I didn’t want to. They were a part of this. They could help us stop Valentine and Thorunn.
I didn’t know if this was some fucked up fate thing like my sister had with the library cards. I didn’twantto think about it, so I wasn’t. I was just going to take things as they came. Fate might have opinions about my love life, but so did I. I seemed to be hitting the cock lottery right after I ended my dick exile, but I wasn’t rushing into anything.
At least, that was what I was telling myself. Unfortunately, fate was a little bitch.
“Wait until I show you movies and the supernatural market, big guy. Welcome to capitalism. It doesn’t all suck.”
“He was fucked off to the Aether, but capitalism justscreamsReyson,” Loki said. “There are now a million different kinds of breakfast cereals that are twists on the exact same thing, but people can’t afford medication. That has God of Chaos all over it, but Reyson wouldn’t have done that.”
“I’m so confused,” Sleipnir said.
I wrapped my arm around his waist. At least, I tried to. Wow, he was big and firm. I wanted to show him everything because there was this genuine joy in him at seeing new things, but I didn’t want to overwhelm Sleipnir. I wanted him to like this century and fit right in because it meant a lot to Loki.
“Baby steps. You don’t have to see everything at once. How about you come see where I work first? It’s a pretty famous museum. We have items and relics from all over the world. We can give you a tour and a history lesson of some of the things that happened while you were gone.”
“I’d like that too,” Bjorn said.
Sleipnir frowned.
“Did you plunder so many villages that people pay you to come to see the treasure you stole?”
I started choking because that was a sensitive topic for literally everyone at the Museum of the Profane. I got why Sleipnir said that. There weren’t museums around back in his day, but we were a different kind of museum.
Nothing in here was stolen from any culture. If we got something we suspected should be with a group that was currently still alive and might want it, we reached out to them about returning their historical items. This wouldn’t have been my dream job since I was in high school if this museum were like some of the other museums and put things on display that had significance to living people.
Estates donated everything here, or when asked, the people in the area didn’t want it. Sometimes, things were discovered that were considered bad luck or dangerous to the locals. Those all came to me to diffuse and then go on display. Sometimes, famous people died and were estranged from their families. They didn’t want them getting a damned thing when they died.
They’d keep it this big secret, and when their family would go to the will reading after expecting money and property, they’d find out they were fucked. Most of the time, all the money was split between the Academy, Museum, and Library of the Profane. They split everything in the house. Books went to the library, and magical and historical items came to the museum. There was generally an additional fuck you in there that their houses and other properties were donated to organizations that would put them to good use.
So, yeah. Sleipnir was used to Vikings, and I got why he said that but we put alotof care at my museum to have banging exhibits that people came from everywhere to see, butnotstealing things from cultures that wanted the items. How did I explain this to him?
“All the items were given to us. If they were brought to us, but they belonged to someone else, we gave them back.”
Sleipnir’s eyes widened, and he looked at me in awe.
“Are you a queen? I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
Oh, my Lilith, I really wanted to hug him. Was that weird? This big, massive man with hair plenty of people paid good money to try to get at the salon was looking at me like I was an actual queen because I ran a museum. How adorable was that?
I just went for it. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed him. And I made him totally uncomfortable. It was either a Loki thing or the fact that he still thought I was a queen.
“I’m not even remotely close to a queen, Sleipnir. Most places don’t have kings and queens anymore, but a few do. I’m not remotely responsible for laws being made. I try to be by voting, but sometimes, politicians promise shit when they are running and then don’t follow through when they are elected. I can’t even approve vacation time because Gertrude is a frigid, slut shaming toad who hates me.”
“Do you want us to kill this Gertrude? Why are you hugging me?”
“You can’t kill people in this century because they are irritating, but it means a lot that you offered. I hugged you because you’re just so precious.”
Sleipnir grunted.
