“They’ve probably been watching the hotel all night,” Asher jammed his thumb into the “down” button and the elevator doors swished shut. My stomach gave that familiar drop, and my grip tightened on the metal bar, feeling more queasy than I usually did riding elevators. I suspected it was more the idea of being chased that was making me feel butterflies.
“Maybe they’ve fallen asleep,” I said hopefully, “you know, TV cop style, falling asleep on the stakeout?”
Asher grinned, “We can always hope.”
We reached the lobby, and he checked in the with the tall blonde lady at the desk, “We’re heading out, gonna try to get a head start on ‘em.”
“Remember to hustle,” she beamed at both of us, “how you doing, Jess? You look less pissed off this morning.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that particular observation, “yeah,” I glanced at Asher, hoping my face wasn’t turning red, “I guess you could say that.”
He shot me a cheeky grin, “thank god for that, I don’t think my skull could take another of your bashings. Ready to go?”
More butterflies is my stomach, “I guess as ready as I can be.”
He turned to the desk, “wish us luck, Kathi. We drive like the wind!”
She waved at us, “Good luck! Run fast!”
That didn't sound reassuring. Asher grabbed my arm just before we went out the door, “as soon as we get into the open parking lot, we run for the van. Run like stink, got it?”
This was already scarier than I’d thought, so I just swallowed and nodded.
Asher threw the door open, and we were both hit by a rush of cold wind. It stole my breath, so I wasn’t prepared when Asher suddenly took off at a sprint, the wind sending his words back to me, “Go! Go! Go!”
I bolted forward, wind whistling in my ears, my feet hammering the concrete, sending shocks up my legs and jostling my sore limbs. I scanned the parking lot, trying to spot some sign of movement, but there was only the same silver truck in the parking lot. The wind was whipping the trees that surrounded the driveway. Anyone could have been hiding there. It was impossible to tell.
We covered the distance to the van, with Asher only a few steps ahead of me, and I tore the door open and threw myself onto the seat, panting heavily. The doors slammed, and Asher started the engine with a roar. His eyes were wide, cheeks flushed red. He almost looked like he was enjoying this.
The van burned rubber as Asher took us backwards, and I pressed my cheek against the window trying to look behind us. Still, I couldn’t see anyone, just tree branches waving.
We sped down the driveway, Asher stomping on the gas so hard that I grabbed the handle above my head, clinging to it for dear life. I could feel my lips peel back in a death grin, and had to repress the urge to tell him to slow down before he killed both of us. Oh God, I hope he’s a good driver!
We whipped around the corner, onto the main road, and Asher gritted out through his teeth, “any tail yet?”
I pressed my cheek to the window again, staring at the side-view mirror, “No one…” the words died on my lips. There was a black SUV hurtling around the bend behind us. Cold dropped down my spine, “Wait…oh crap…”
Asher glanced up, spotted the SUV in the rear-view mirror and grimaced, “not surprised.”
“What now?”
I gasped as the van sped up, tires screeching around each corner. The way Asher handled the wheel, it was obvious he’d practiced this before, maybe on a racetrack. I just hoped I could hold down the contents of my stomach.
“Now we try to shake them.” Asher grinned. His eyes were glittering with reckless excitement. He was obviously in his element, so at least someone was enjoying this. I clung more fiercely to the handle on the roof, squishing my cheek against the glass. The side-view mirror showed the black SUV was gaining, and as I watched, the window was lowered, and someone stuck their head out. A mass of black hair flew out behind them. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but I was pretty sure it was….what’s her name? I realized with a start that I’d never learned the name of the girl who hated me. Well, whatever her name was, was leaning out the window of the SUV behind us. She stretched out one arm and a ball of glowing flame suddenly appeared in her palm.
“Oh shit!” I jerked my face away from the window, bracing myself.
“What?” Asher looked up at the mirror, “oh, that….”
I shrieked as a flash of orange sizzled past the window, “She’s throwing fire at us!”
“I know!” Asher growled.
“Drive faster!”
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
I turned around in my seat, craning my neck to stare through the back window. The SUV was swerving back and forth over the yellow line. It had fallen back a little, and the person in the driver’s seat – I felt a pang of sick horror when I saw the shoulder- length blonde hair – was gesturing wildly at his passenger. They were obviously arguing.
My stomach was suddenly churning furiously, my chest tight with anger. Trent was the one chasing us. Trent, and that horrible black-haired girl. Who the hell did he think he was? What exactly was he going to say if he caught me again? I couldn’t imagine our reunion, Hey, sorry I boinked your mom, are we good now?
“Jess!” Asher’s voice was sharp with warning, and I jerked back around to see my right hand entirely encased in crackling flames, “Shit!”
“Throw it!” Asher jabbed at a button on his door, and my window whirred down, the wind stealing in to whip my hair with icy fingers, “throw the fire back at them!”
“I don’t know how!” I screamed over the noise.
“Cup it in your hand, into a ball and just throw it! Like a baseball.”
Right. Baseball. I took a deep breath and cupped both hands around the flame, stretching my torso out the window, receiving a face full of cold wind. Whipping both arms back, I released the flames, throwing it like a curveball.
My fire hurled through the air, growing hotter and brighter as it went, splashing up against the windshield of the SUV in a burst of brilliant orange, momentarily obscuring Trent and his passenger. The SUV swerved wildly, running two tires onto the side of the road. There was a loud crunch as the vehicle sideswiped a tree, and then the black SUV was suddenly growing smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror.
Asher gave a woop of excitement, “That was awesome!” He kept the car going at the same speed, and soon enough we were around another bend in the road and had lost sight of our pursuers.
“I can’t believe that,” he crowed, “I would have given anything to see the look on Trent’s face!”
“Me too,” I muttered darkly, and Asher glanced over and shook his head, “Uh huh, no way you’re sulking after that. You just threw a fire ball, Jess. Like a pro.”
“I don’t know how pro it was,” my cheeks flushed at the praise, well…and the way he kept glancing over at me with his eyes all wide and excited like that, “I had no idea what I was doing!”
Now that we were out of danger I realized how much my arms and legs were trembling, like my body was finally allowing itself to have a complete mental breakdown. I let out a shaky breath, “that was…tense.”
“Hey, you did great.” Asher shook his head, fingers tightening on the steering wheel, “You did…better than I can do.”
“Well, you were kinda driving….” I trailed off at the look on his face, “What?”
“I should tell you now,” he muttered, ducking his head and looking out the window, “you’ll find out soon anyways, as soon as we get home…”
“Tell me what?” I experienced another flutter of nervousness. What now?
“I don’t…I’m not like you. I mean, in some ways I am,” he hesitated, “I have human blood in me, because of my mom. But…something weird happened to me. Nobody knows what it is…”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to confess. Did he have a tail or something? I just nodded and waited for him to continue.
Asher sighed, “I’ve never thrown fire…”
“So…what, you’re just…not good at it or something?” I faltered when his face went dark, worried I’d horribly insulted him.
“No,” he said, “worse than that. I can’t use fire at all.”
I frowned, “So…you don’t have any fire? What about ice, you mom’s…”
“Not that either…” he was shaking his head, eyes fixed on the road, “I’ve never…it hasn’t manifested itself. And they’re saying it probably won’t. I’m probably…a dud.”
He said it like it was dirty word. The way normal men would admit they were impotent, like it was a shameful secret, “So…big deal. At least you’re not burning high schools down!” The joke obviously fell flat, because Asher didn’t say anything, he just stared at the road, “Well,” I blurted finally, “maybe it’ll still come. What age does it usually…” Stupid question. I guess it probably came when I got it, “so late teen years?”
“Yeah,” Asher said, “and I’ve already been through all that. Nothing happened, and it probably won’t.”
What did you say in this situation? Sorry you don’t have any fire power, that sucks! No, that hardly seemed right, so I sunk down lower into the seat and chewed hard on my bottom lip, finally changing the subject, “So, we lost them. Now we’re going to…to…”
“Muspelheim,” Asher finished, “we’re going to the castle at Muspelheim.” To my relief his easy grin was back, “you’ll get to meet my parents.”
“Oh, yeah…” my stomach began to churn all over again. His parents, the king and queen. Panic was making my palms sweaty all of a sudden. There were probably all kinds of procedures to follow when you met royalty, bowing just right…or curtseying? Weren’t girls supposed to curtsey? I didn’t have a dress. Hell, when was the last time I even wore one? I was going to show up at this castle and be totally and completely out of my depth, surrounded by sparkling royalty, bumbling around in jeans and an over-sized boy t-shirt.
“You’ll do fine.” Asher reached out and brushed my knee with his fingers, which only added to my stomach flutters, “my parents are really nice, they’ll love you. And they don’t chop heads off or anything…”
My eyes went wide, “is it…normal to chop heads off?”
Asher grimaced, “Well, at one point…”
“The crazy queen lady,” I muttered, “I remember…Trent told me.”
We were driving through a more heavily forested area now, thick pine trees hemming in the road on either side, “brace yourself,” Asher said.
“What?” That didn’t sound so good… “brace myself for…”
It was like the car hit some kind of liquid force-field. The trees on either side rippled, and my head spun suddenly. As abruptly as the sensation had hit, it was gone, and the landscape ahead of us –which had been flat, winding road a second ago – abruptly changed. There was still a long, twisting road, but now it curled up and up, vanishing and reappearing as it wound its way up the giant mountain in the distance. Behind the first mountain, more cropped up, like shadows of the first one, tops crowned with snow. My jaw dropped open.
“Sorry,” Asher said, “I should have warned this morning, told you about the pass earlier.”
“What’s…pass…?” I gasped. My head still spun like I’d developed a bad case of vertigo. Not to mention…a mountain had just appeared in front of us.
“It’s a safeguard,” Asher explained, “to keep humans out of Muspelheim. Jotunheim has it too, we can’t just have humans wandering in accidentally, so when they drive through the pass they just go on to wherever it is they were going, but the pass registers our jotun blood and allows us in.”
Things just kept getting weirder, it seemed. Pretty soon I wouldn’t be surprised by anything. I just nodded, trying to pretend like I was cool with all this. Like I got it, “okay, pass only lets jotun in. Right. That’s a big mountain.”
“That’s where we’re going,” Asher said, “when we get around to the other side you’ll see it, the castle I mean…” his eyes glittered with excitement, “I can’t wait to show you around. You’ll love it. I think you’ll like it more than the ice palace, you seem like a hearth and hall type of girl.”
He grinned at me, and my skin prickled under his gaze, “what does that mean?”
“Means fur and firelight and feasts where you eat until you literally can’t eat anymore.”
“That does sound pretty good,” I admitted.
The mountain seemed to grow taller as we got closer, and the road began to take us in a long, circular route, around the base. Pressing my cheek against the cold glass window I craned my neck to look up at the mountain. The trees at the very top were crowned with a light dusting of snow.
Slowly the castle came into view, revealing dark grey towers and turrets covered by climbing ivy. It was set into the mountain side, and almost looked like it should be there naturally, like the stone had shaped itself to form a home for the jotun. The van began the steep incline, engine straining as Asher stomped down on the gas. It seemed to take forever, climbing up and up, the castle looming larger every second.
Finally it towered over us, and the van pulled into a flat cement lot in front. To the left of the castle a red fence contrasted with the dark stones, velvety green vines spilled over the top. A secret garden next to the fortress of war. It was both terrifying and beautiful somehow.