Then Freya realized—she had recognized him, from the very beginning, at the engagement party. It was why she was drawn to him from the start, the minute she saw him, why her love for Bran had been conflicted and confusing, saddled with guilt and sadness. Now she understood why she had been so agitated that evening.
Bran Gardiner was Loki. The God of Mischief and Chaos. Trickster. Shapeshifter. The Sly One. Con man. Liar. Thief. Loki had spun a web of lies from the very beginning, had tricked her into falling in love, had woven a spell around her heart, a powerful glamour that had bound her to him. That first night when she had met him, when her dress had slipped, she realized now, was his doing, so that he had an excuse to touch her. Then those nights at the bar, seven in all, where he had stared at her; all the while he was hypnotizing her to make sure she was the one who made the first move, to complete the spell.
“There are no words . . .” Freya bowed her head in grief.
“I did not wait five thousand years for an apology,” he said softly.
“I am not worthy of you.”
“You do not understand. We belong together. Always,” Killian said. “I could not say anything. I was bound by the prophecy and could not reveal myself until you had recognized me for who I was. I could only hope, although I did try to warn you all about the danger in my own way.”
“The dead birds on the beach that Joanna found in the beginning of the summer. That was you, wasn’t it?”
Killian nodded.
“How did you know I was here? How did you find me?”
“Bran tracked me down and sent me an invitation to the engagement party. I think he could not help himself. He wanted me to see that he had won, that he had found you first. So that I would know that he had what I wanted more than anything in the world. He always blamed me for his imprisonment in Helheim.”
Freya realized that Bran’s plan would have worked if he had not been so sure of his victory. But his pride became his undoing; by tempting fate and inviting Killian to witness his triumph, the spell he had cast over her heart had begun to fade the moment she had seen Killian. She had even tried to wed him that night in the forest. She had known who he was, truly; part of her had always known.
“When I arrived he told me his sentence had ended, that he’d been freed by Helda. But I began to be suspicious. Here, open the closet door, there’s a bag on the floor.”
Freya did as told and brought out a brown paper bag. Inside was a wool hat, flecked and crusted with blood. “This is Bill Thatcher’s,” she said.
“I found it in the basement when I first arrived and I hid it away until I could find out whose it was and where it was from.”
“He was the one who killed Bill. Bill and Maura always walked that ridge, across from Fair Haven.”
Killian nodded. “Bran came to Fair Haven in the middle of January, on the eve of the full moon. He must have worried that they had seen him in his true form when he first came to the house, so he attacked them.”
Now she understood why she could not see who had murdered Bill; Loki’s magic had prevented her from doing so. “He disguised himself as my mother.” Freya told Killian what had happened—that Maura Thatcher had woken from her coma and fingered Joanna as Bill’s murderer.
“I stayed so that I could figure out what he was planning, and because I could not keep away from you, of course. I suspected he was lying, that he had not been released and instead had broken out of his prison, and in so doing let darkness into this world. I still do not know how he did it—he must have a powerful weapon at his disposal, something that has allowed him to travel between the realms.”
“His ring. He carries a ring on him,” Freya said. It is my father’s, Bran had told her. It is dear to me; it is all I have left of him. “Odin’s ring.” Made of dragon bone, it could take its bearer through the Nine Worlds, she told Killian.
“So that is how he broke out of his confinement. I thought it might have something to do with Fair Haven, where he was living, and on a hunch I sent Ingrid the plans, thinking she might be able to unlock the code.”
“She did. She knows what’s in Fair Haven. It holds a branch of Yggdrasil.”
“So that was his secret,” Killian said. “He had used the path through the tree to arrive in Fair Haven, for he knew the legend of the Guardians, and as one of us the house would accept him.”
“I told him that you had given the plans to Ingrid and that she was close to figuring it out—he must have stolen them back, and that was why he attacked her, using your form. Oh, Killian, I’ve been so—”
“Stop. He has always played us false. It is his way. He knew what he was doing when he breached the tree and released the poisoned sap into Midgard.”
“Then we are lost,” Freya whispered. Her happiness at finding her true love was tempered by knowledge of the darkness that Loki had unleashed upon the world.
Ingrid appeared at the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But, Freya . . .”
“What’s wrong?” Her sister looked fraught.
“It’s Tyler. He passed away a few minutes ago.”
chapter forty-four
The Labyrinth
Then we don’t have much time,” Killian said. “It’s the poison. It’s stronger now. The children are the most vulnerable, but there will be more victims, more deaths, if we do not stop this.”
“Ingrid . . . Killian is—”
“I know,” Ingrid said with a brief nod. “I figured it out as well. Remember what I told you about Ragnarok? First the oceans will die? And how the toxin that’s in North Hampton is similar to ones found near Sydney, Greenland, and Reykjavík? They just found one near Vietnam. Bran has been spreading it around the world since he arrived in Fair Haven in January.” She explained how at first she had attempted to trace it to Killian’s travels, but she could not find the Alaskan freighter where he was supposed to have served, nor the Sydney resort where he was supposed to have worked as a scuba instructor. As far as she could see, Killian had never been to any of those places, and with a start she’d realized that the person who had told them that Killian had traveled the world was Bran.
She began to investigate Bran’s background and travels, and she realized her mistake in identifying the brothers as soon as she put together the news clippings about the toxin’s locations with a copy of Bran’s itinerary from the Gardiner Foundation, which was published on their Web site. The dates and places matched exactly. Under the cover of charity work, Bran had traveled to each and every place on the map that the toxin had been found. The explosion in the middle of the summer meant the tree was beginning to collapse inwardly. Her suspicions confirmed, she had done a little more digging on the foundation and discovered that in contrast to all the hype, there was very little good it was actually doing; most of its work seemed to be tied up in endless bureaucratic meetings; the foundation had hardly given any money to any of the causes it supported. It was a tax front, a fraud, a way to hide the Gardiner fortune.
She told all this to Freya and Killian. Now she understood that Bran was Loki all along. Like her sister and mother, she had been fooled; due to the restriction, they had been rusty and blinded and lost without their magic, and had failed to sense his use of a powerful spell. She blushed to think of her dream of Killian the other night. Another of Loki’s tricks, of course, to throw them off his trail.
“I know where he’s headed,” Ingrid said. “Through the secret door in Fair Haven. In the ballroom. Come on.”
“Go,” Killian said to Freya. “He has Odin’s ring; he could be anywhere in the universe by now.”
“I can’t leave you here,” Freya said.
“My leg’s shattered, but I can control the bleeding; don’t worry about me. I’ll only slow you down.”
Freya kissed Killian once more and then joined her sister. “Let’s go. It’s time to end this.”
Ingrid led the way to the ballroom. She cast a spell that shattered the plaster and revealed the ghost door she had found underneath.