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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The contract had a lot of subclauses, glowing runes, and at least three different kinds of ink. Some of the words squirmed on the page even as Esther put her name on the dotted line. I did not feel good about this.

“Shouldn’t we at least read it first?” I asked.

“You know a lot about interdimensional contractual law?” Esther finished signing. “No, of course you don’t. In fact, the person who knows the most about these kinds of contracts was Kracek the Destroyer, but we can’t consult him because . . . ”

“Because I killed him, yeah. But he really was an asshole.”

“An asshole, yes, but the best damned draconic lawyer in the seven realms. Bit of a good golfer, too.” Esther put down the pen and gestured to Revna. “I assume you’re screwing us over somehow?”

“That is for me to know, and for you to find out,” Revna said. “At the least opportune moment, I imagine. Unfortunately I cannot return the Naglfr to your service, as it has been stolen. And until the matter of the Totenschreck is managed, I can’t even return all of your domains to full and working order.”

“That’s fine. We only need mine,” I said.

“Hang on, that’s hardly fair. I can’t walk around looking like . . . like . . . ” Chesa gestured to her jeans and comic book T-shirt. “Like a human!”

“Not to elf-shame you, but we’re all humans here,” I said. Revna cleared her throat. “Most of us. Point is, you’ll be able to get by on residual glamor until we can straighten out the realms. For now, we just need to ramp up my domain. I can get us to Folks Fanger.”

“You don’t even know where it is,” Chesa said.

“If John believes he can get the team where it needs to go, then I’m willing to believe him,” Esther said. “With just the three of you—”

“You’re not coming with us?” I asked.

“No, dear child, I am not. I need to work with Revna on establishing the links to the rest of your domains. If we can get them up and running, you’ll start recharging immediately. That’s more important than anything my old bones could contribute.”

“So . . . just the three of us. Huh.” I looked from Chesa to Matthew. “You guys ready to go?”

“Reborn ready,” Matthew said. “Let’s light this candle.”

“Do we really have to go through your domain?” Chesa asked. “I’m a little nervous finding out what my ex-boyfriend’s mythic ideal is like. Can’t you just go there, get whatever you need, and bring it back here?”

“What, you’re expecting legions of waifus or something?” I asked. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing that pathetic. We’re going to be leaving directly from there to Ragnarok.”

“You mean Folksvangr,” Esther said. “Right?”

“Whatever,” I said with a shrug. “So, what, you’re going to open a portal or something?”

“Something like that,” Revna said. “You have everything you need?”

I lifted the grease-spotted pillowcase with a smile.

“Then let us begin,” Revna said. “Security! Get these buffoons out of here.”

“Security?”

The floor rumbled and shifted under our feet. The tables slid like cannons on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Two shapes rose from the ground, with rough-hewn rock faces and skin as rough as sandpaper, and eyes that glowed like magma. Revna gestured to the three of us.

“They’ve overstayed their welcome. Send them home.”

“Esther!” I shouted as the stone elementals loomed toward us.

“There are only two ways out of Valhalla,” Esther said. “Walk out the way you came, or get thrown out. And the way you came leads back to a suburban parking lot, so . . . ”

“Try to land on something soft!” Revna called, as the elementals picked the three of us up, each with one giant hand. They waddled toward the front of the ballroom and, with a slow windup, tossed us through the front window.

The second the glass shattered around my shoulders, the world changed around us. The dim light of the parking lot was replaced by smothering night. A crystal-bright moon shone overhead. Below us was an expanse of forest that stretched to the horizon. We were hundreds of feet in the air, but I could just make out a pinprick of light, nestled in a clearing far below.

Home. Now all we had to do was fall the hundreds of feet between here and there.

“You’re not going to like this part!” I shouted to Chesa and Matthew. They probably couldn’t hear me, though, on account of their own screams of terror. I crossed my arms and plummeted to earth, the cold wind whipping past my face. I sighed. “Ah, it’s good to be home.”


My domain is all about fear. I should have mentioned that to Chesa and Matthew before we did this, but that would have spoiled some of the effect. Plus if they knew that, they might have anticipated something even more horrific than falling to their death, and I didn’t want to see whatever spirits ran the domain taking their fears and running with it. So instead of being chased by flying knives, or eaten by giants, or whatever it was that Chesa and Matthew would have thought up, we simply fell to our deaths.

Not actually. We fell for a long time, screaming the whole way, but when we hit the ground we bounced a couple times. Kind of like a trampoline, only it was the earth itself. I’d done this a dozen times, and was getting used to it. Chesa had been through this once, though that was before she had her own domain. For Matthew, this was a first.

“You should have warned us!” the priest yelled once we’d come to a halt. “I assumed she’d thrown us straight to Hel. Good God, that was terrifying!”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Fear, and overcoming fear. Though how you overcome the fear of falling when you’re actually falling . . . Yeah, I’m not sure about that.” I led us up the gentle hill to my cabin. It was the same as I’d left it, only no longer on a quiet street. Thin smoke rose from the mossy chimney, and the flames of the hearth flickered against the thick, wavy glass of the front window. “Anyway, we’re here. Everything seems to be in order.”

“This is your mythic domain? This is the best you could come up with?” Chesa asked. “You could create anything, and you settled on a cabin in a creepy forest?”

“We’re not all elven princesses,” Matthew said. He wiped the sweat from his face and looked around the clearing. “I like it, John. Humble.”

“That’s what I was going for. Humble.” I eased the front door open and, sword and shield in hand, peered into the front room. Seeing Chesa give me a weird look, I tried to explain. “Last time I was here, Percy was hiding in the kitchen. I don’t know what he has to do with all this, but I’d rather not stumble onto any more zombies.”

“Great domain, John. You’re not even safe here,” she said as she brushed past. “Is there at least a bathroom?”

“You don’t want to know about the bathroom,” I said. “Should have gone before we left.”

“Anything can be a bathroom if you try hard enough,” Matthew said. He sat down in front of the fireplace, hands steepled in his lap. “I smell soup!”

“Yeah, a pot of eternal stew in the kitchen. It may not be a treehouse castle, or the brilliance of a chorus of angels, but it’s still tasty.”

“Sure sounds good,” Matthew said.

“It is.” I stuck my nose into the kitchen, saw nothing of interest, then started toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Matthew cleared his throat. When I looked back, he blinked at me expectantly. “Would you like some stew?”

“I mean, if you’re offering.”

“I wasn’t,” I said. His mien remained unchanged, so after a long second I sighed and headed back to the kitchen. “Just keep an eye on this hallway. Should be empty, but you never know.”

“Loving this place more and more by the second,” Chesa said. She perched uncomfortably against one of the chairs, legs crossed daintily. “Do we really have time for stew?”

“Apparently,” I said.

When I ducked into the kitchen, I ran directly into a cleaver the size of my head, held precariously close to the parts of my head that were most incompatible with cleavers. I yelped and scrambled to bring my sword around. The sound of my scream brought Matthew and Chesa running, and startled my assailant just enough to cause him to drop the cleaver.

Percy backpedaled into the stove, upsetting the pot of soup and burning himself on the hot metal. He joined his scream to my own, accompanied by the sound of several gallons of scalding hot stew spilling out across the kitchen floor. Chesa and Matthew burst into the room, weapons drawn.

“Percy, damn it! What are you doing here? How are you doing here, for that matter?” I shook the now-soaked leg of my greaves, slopping bits of stew around the room. “I looked in here not ten seconds ago, and the room was empty!”

“I . . . I’m not sure, Sir John,” the terrified zombie said. “All I know is that I wasn’t here, and then I was, and I heard sounds in the antechamber. I took up the first weapon I could find, and that’s when you burst in like some kind of barbarian.”

“I’m not the one sneaking around other people’s houses and threatening them with kitchen implements!” I shouted. “If anything, you’re the barbarian!”

“I don’t even know where ‘here’ is,” Percy said miserably. “All I can remember is being in the garden, and then the storm started, and then I was here, and then I wasn’t, and now I am again . . . ” He rubbed a khaki arm across his face, rubbing away thick, silty zombie tears. “All I want to do is go back to my garden, and my flowers, and those stupid gnomes!”

“That’s all I want, too, Percy! For you to go back to—”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough of that.” Matthew imposed himself between us, putting a hand on Percy’s quivering shoulder. “The guy’s been through enough. We drop into his world out of nowhere, drag him on a quest he didn’t choose, and now the ancient Nazi sword that controls his soul is back and digging at his mind. You can understand that, right, John?”

“Everything except the sword bit,” I said. But seeing the way Percy responded to Matthew, I immediately felt bad about yelling. Hardly my fault. He’s the one who appeared out of nowhere.

“So what do we think is going on here?” Chesa asked. “How does this guy just keep popping up?”

“Definitely something to do with the sword. Revna said she was able to track him to the Tears, and he disappeared around the same time we all lost a firm grip on our domains. He’s probably flickering between the Unreal and the mundane.” Matthew scraped a little stew out of the toppled pot and pushed it into Percy’s hands. “It’s okay, buddy. You’re not going to have to go on any more adventures today.”

“The hell he isn’t,” I said. “If there’s any chance he can help us with the Tears, we have to bring him along.”

“I don’t know what help I could be,” he said.

“You were in the army, right?” I rummaged through the umbrella rack next to the door. It contained all the various murdering paraphernalia I had looted from the monsters in my domain. I came up with a warhammer with a long iron spike at the end, and handed it to Percy. “This is like a rifle, only you have to swing it to shoot someone, and they have to be right next to you.”

“I know how a hammer works,” he said gruffly.

“What if the Totenschreck can still control him?” Chesa asked. “What if he falls under the control of the valhellions, and tries to kill us?”

“Well . . . ” I said, looking nervously from her to the recently armed zombie. “Well, we just won’t let that happen.”

“Sure we won’t,” Chesa said. She looked around the kitchen, seemingly half expecting the cabinets to come alive and try to eat her. “Shouldn’t we get going? You said you have something in here that can help us reach Folksvangr?”

“Not in here,” I said. “Out in the forest.”

“So what are we looking for? And why is it in the forest?” Matthew asked.

“A dog. And because that’s where he lives.”

“How is a dog supposed to help us?” Chesa asked.

“Not a dog. All of the dogs,” I said, leading them outside. “Oh, almost forgot.” I ducked back inside and opened a cabinet beside the door. There, behind a silk curtain, was my spare helm. I tucked it under my arm and looked around. Then, closing my front door and hoping the house was still intact when I came back, I led them into the forest.


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Framed