"Why is he here?" Frieda said.

Dag glanced around at all of us, his shoulders broad and hulking. As his eyes narrowed, a dangerous smile curled his lips and made him look fiendish. "What are we waiting for?" He said. "Let's go find out."

"Let's do it." Frey stuck out a fist and Dag pounded it.

Frieda stepped forward and reached out to grab their arms, but Val moved in front of them first. He held up a hand. "It's what he wants," he said.

"It's an attack," Dag said. "We'd be fools to think otherwise."

Val's gaze was steady. "Yes. And we'd be fools to react so quickly. Let him come to us."

Frey bristled. "He already a""

"He's right." There was a resolve Bren's voice that made them all stop and turn. "We'll go back to the apartment. Discuss our options. No one wanders far until we know what's happening." At this, he gave Skye a pointed look and did not continue until she made eye contact and surrendered a tiny nod. "Talk to Neil," he said to Val, "find out what he's doing about the quake."

"He's shutting down for the night," Skye told him. She stared at the ground.

"Fine," Bren said. "The three of you on shift should check in with him and meet us at home." He motioned for Skye and Frey to walk ahead of him, then tugged at my hand.

I pulled back. "I can't. My mother is probably freaking out right now wondering where I am." As if to confirm, my phone beeped to let me know I had a text. Then it started to ring.

"I can't let you stay here Jenna," Bren said. "He saw you. It's not safe."

I answered my phone. "I'm okay," I said, not waiting for my mother to speak. "On my way there now." I hung up.

Bren shook his head. "No. I'm not leaving you here."

"I can't tell my mother that I'm ignoring an earthquake to be with you." I said, waving the phone at him. "She'll never let me see you again."

"This is more serious than that." His fingers crushed mine. I flinched and he loosened his grip.

"I have to go. She's my mother." As I pulled away I felt an instant distance from him. I froze in place, unable to withdraw any further.

"I'll go with her." Frieda stepped up next to me. "I won't let anything happen to her, I promise. We'll figure out something to tell her mom."

Bren was quiet for a long time looking from one to the other of us, the struggle changing his face. Finally he nodded. "Don't let her out of your sight. And if you even think there's something wronga""

"Don't worry," she said. "You'll know." She glanced over her shoulder at Frey. "What about him?"

"I can hear you, you know," Frey said.

She ignored him. When she turned back to Bren, her eyes were pleading.

"He stays with me." Bren said. "All the time."

Frey scratched at his temple. "Well, my next piss should be interesting."

"Promise." Frieda's eyes were locked on Bren. He took in a deep breath, peered around Frieda, and gave Frey a hard, fierce glare. "Promise."

Frieda turned to Frey. Frey stared at her for a few seconds, then lifted his hands, palms up like he was being robbed. "No screwing around," he said.

Bren grabbed me and held me for a moment, then looked down into my face. "Be careful," he said. When he kissed me, I felt only the helplessness of knowing he wasn't safe.

They watched us until we were inside. I looked back from the other side of the glass to meet his gaze once more. Then we went to find my mother.

She was in the office behind the reception desk with Mr. Neil. He was on the phone and she was righting a small, overturned filing cabinet. They both straightened when we stepped in.

"Jenna." My mother crossed the room in a few long strides and took my shoulders, peering down at me. "Are you alright?" She hugged me before I answered.

"Fine," I said. "You?"

"I'm fine. Just a bit of a mess and some scared guests."

"This is my friend Frieda," I said. "She's an instructor here."

"I can see that," my mother said, gesturing to her jacket. "Hi Frieda. Are you alright?"

"Yes, thank you." Frieda smiled.

Mr. Neil hung up the phone. "No injuries reported yet. Maybe we'll get lucky."

"My uncle is looking to check in with you Mr. Neil," Frieda said. "We were on our shift. Should I text him to come here?"

"No, no." Mr. Neil thought a minute. "Better tell him to meet me in the employee lounge. I think it's best to direct everybody there. They can check in so we know they're alright, and then go home for the evening."

"I'll let him know." Frieda slid her phone out and started pecking at it.

"Where did you get the jacket?" My mother asked.

I looked down at myself. I had forgotten I was swimming in Val's coat. "Oh. I went to see Frieda before her shift and I forgot my coat there. When I got caught outside during the quake, her uncle Val gave me his."

"That was nice of him," my mother said. "He works here too, doesn't he?" I knew the look on my mother's face. It was the one that read: I'll give you two seconds to tell me what I already know.

"Frieda's Bren's cousin." I said. "Val's their uncle."

My mother nodded and looked at Frieda. "Well, maybe now that you can vouch for the fact that I don't bite, Bren will come by and say hello."

"He will," Frieda said. "I'll make sure of it."

This time, my mother's smile was genuine. "Jenna, I don't mind if Frieda stays for a while, if it's alright with her uncle, but I don't want you to leave again tonight. Earthquakes can be followed by aftershocks and I want to know where you are."

I knew I'd find a way out, but I didn't want to argue with her while she was still shaken. I changed course instead. "So is Mr. Neil going to close up?"

She nodded. "But there's a lot of cleaning up to do and we have to check on each guest and employee. It's going to be a long night."

Frieda and I exchanged a look.

"Okay," I said. "I guess we'll go up to the suite and hang out for a while then."

"That's fine. Frieda, just make sure you let your uncle know where you are."

"I will. I'll tell him now." Frieda held up her phone.

"And if there's an aftershock," my mother said, "get under the table and hold on."

Upstairs, Frieda and I sat peering over the back of the couch as twilight darkened into night on the other side of the window. The slopes were empty except for a few members of ski patrol, meticulously hunting the trees and bushes and banks beneath the lights.

"Frieda," I said.

Her green eyes slid to mine.

"Who is he?"

She stared at me for a moment, then lifted her head off of her outstretched arm and sat upright.

"Loki is a lot of things," she said. "But mostly he's a criminal. A dangerous one. He's been imprisoned in Asgard for a long time. He's never gained his freedom before the onset of the battle."

"The battle. Ragnarok."

She nodded.

"And he's never been free before then?"

"Not once he's been confined. Never."

"So what does that mean?" I said. "Does it mean it's happening? Could it be happening without you?"

She shook her head. "Everybody who has a role in the battle has to take part. Each fate affects the others."

She seemed to draw into herself then, her focus dulling, and I wondered what she had seen of Ragnarok. What it was like for her.

"Did you fight in the battle?" I asked quietly.

"No." She said. "I was responsible for the slain. Quieting their souls, reuniting them with others." Her expression grew sad and I had a terrible thought.

"Dag?" I asked. "Did hea" I let the word hang between us.

Her smile had an ache in it. "Dag was one of the greatest warriors in Asgard. But he was taken away from me before the battle." She swallowed and turned back toward the window. When she didn't elaborate, I left it alone. It hurt to see such pain in her eyes, and I wondered if she and Dag had run away so that they could stay together. I thought again of all that Bren had told me about Ragnarok.

"Bren said you only needed one god to withdraw from the battle in order to stop the cycle. How many of you were a part of it?"

She turned back to me, my question seeming to clear her thoughts. "We were all a part of it, in a way. I greeted and guided the dead. Skye judged and sentenced the criminals. Val was forbidden from fighting," she said, grinning, "because he was the most gifted smith in all the worlds. Every great warrior had a weapon or chainmail fashioned by his hand. And if he fought with one of his own? He would have been a terror." Her eyes flashed.

I thought of the care with which Val had been filing Bren's board the day I met him. "He made your boards," I said.

Her grin widened, but I felt the smile fall from my own face as I thought of Bren. She hadn't mentioned him and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what she knew, but she caught my expression and eyed me with gentle regard.

"Bren's power runs deep." She said. "Almost everything else in Asgard is shallow by comparison. If he had taken sides in a battle, there would have been no battle, so the gods did not engage him in such things." She paused and her shoulders grew tense. "It made him angry to watch ego and vanity destroy us over and over. Sometimes, all of Asgard and beyond shook with his temper."

I thought of his reaction to Loki, the hostility in his eyes. Of how my body had run cold at the sight of it.

"He's better here," she said quickly. "But he's seen so much, so many mistakes repeated over and over. So much needless death and destruction. It would be enough to make anyone crazy. If we hadn't all been so desperate, I would have been afraid to ask for his help. I'd probably have been afraid to approach him at all."

I shook my head, my eyes narrow as I tried to imagine Bren in this light. Finally, I returned my gaze to hers. "I can't believe he was soa"

"Scary." She finished. Then she waved a hand at me. "But he's different now. That's the great thing about being here. You can have a past. In Asgard, we talk in the presentaHe fights in the battle, she marries this guy, I receive the deadabecause it's happening over and over. Here, I can say, *I tried anchovies on my pizza. I won't eat them again. And I can rest assured that anchovies are in my past. How great is that?"

I smiled. Maybe I had taken some things for granted, but I wondered if Frieda understood how much we had in common with Asgardians. It was a mistake to get drunk, to date rape someone, to cheat on your wife, but people did these things over and over. I suddenly understood Bren's frustration.

"Is it really so different here? Even after all this time?" But before she could answer, I had another, related thought. "Have you always been teenagers here? Can you choose that?"

She nodded. "There's no physical aging in Asgard. Not as you know it here. Your outside sort of reflects your inside. We could change, if we wanted to, but this is how we've always felt."

"What about Val? He looks almost my mom's age."

Her expression faded a bit. "He's had a hard life. I think it's difficult for him to leave it behind him. The memories." She shrugged. "He's never shown an interest in changing his appearance, and it quickly became apparent that we'd need a guardian, so it worked out."

"Hm."

We gazed out the window again. Two men in red patrol jackets had just arrived at the base of the mountain. They skied over to the lift and boarded it together, heading back to the summit. The snow on the pines lining the trails sparkled, reminding me of the huge evergreen at Ringsaker. As I listened to Frieda sigh, something nagged at me, some question I had meant to ask. I frowned and stared at my reflection in the window, filing through our conversation.

A sound like a handful of sand hitting the glass made us jerk away. We glanced at each other, then back out the window, and realized it was hailing.

Frieda hissed. "He's a piece of work," she said.

"So, this won't be on the local weather report?" I asked, watching marble-sized ice balls ricochet off the window and back out into the night.

"The quake either." She said. "Except maybe as some weird fluke they can't explain." She was restless now, biting on her pinky, her eyes shifting around the room. "I hope they're okay. I guess I'd know." Her speech was quick and light. She twisted her ring and as I watched her fingers worrying over the silver, my lost thought began to surface. I didn't dare move as I reeled it in. A moment later, a chill puckered my skin and I arranged it into words.

"Frieda," I said carefully. Her eyes flicked up to mine. "You and Skye, Dag and Val, Brenanone of you fought in the battle. Bren said you only needed one."

I paused, watching her face soften. Her shoulders dropped.

"It's Frey?"

She nodded almost imperceptibly, her eyes wet, and I remembered how she made Bren promise to stay with Frey, the agonized way she had looked at him. I didn't want to ask what I already knew.

"Like Dag," she said, a waver in her voice, "Frey is a great warrior. No one would choose to face him in battle. He's smart, and so bravea" she shook her head. "But when he's on the warpath he's as stubborn as a boar. You cannot tear him away until he has done what he has set out to do. Until it's over. Even if it meansa"

"Frieda I'm so sorry." I interrupted her. I didn't want her to have to say these things out loud. I wondered how many times she had watched her brother die in battle. It seemed like torture to me, to live knowing how much you would lose. This is why she had wanted to insure Frey's protection, why they had all surrounded Frey and Bren during the quake. Frey was the break in the cycle, and Bren was braced in the gap, holding the two worlds apart.

Frieda laid her head back down on her arm, and I rested my chin on my hands and watched the hail, the apartment quiet except for the stiff, icy patter.

When the door opened, we both stirred and sat upright, our eyes drowsy with sleep. My mother stepped over the threshold, closed the door behind her and leaned against it, a thick wisp of hair hanging in her face. She sighed and gave us a weary smile.

"Hi girls."

"Hi," I said. "What are you doing back so early?"