Soul Fire (Darkling Mage 8)

“Bullshit,” I said. A little rude for a first-time meeting with a new entity, you say? Probably. But I was getting fed up with all these roundabout tricks the gods and demons

liked to play just to talk to me, how they expected everyone to just bend to their whims and caprices.

“If you say so,” Loki said, his smile so mirthful that I knew he was holding back his laughter. It was his defining trait: he was constantly on the verge of losing his shit and cracking up, like he knew the punchline to the world’s funniest joke.

But he wasn’t about to tell it.

I asked him anyway. “What the hell is so funny?”

“Look,” Loki said. “I know you’re tired of stumbling upon gods and goddesses wherever you turn.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You read my mind.”

“But shouldn’t you be at least a little bit flattered? I went through all the trouble of finding you, and getting you to come here.”

“See, here’s the problem with that. I’ve met so many entities now, and all of them were so blunt with me. Either they chased me down themselves, or met me with hostility the very moment I stepped into their domiciles.” I looked around the rooftop garden, its warm breeze doing little to improve my mood. “Wait. You’re telling me this entire building is your domicile?”

Loki gave me a simpering grin. “A small part of it.”

I whistled. “Good for you. But again, how do I know that you’re who you say you are? I know where some gods keep their tethers, and that’s proof enough for me. That’s like a mailing address. You, on the other hand? Nobody ever said anything about a Norse god controlling an entire fast food empire.”

“What can I say? I’m good at both business and keeping my profile – low-key. Hah.”

I frowned at him. If Loki wasn’t being so pompous, I thought that we might even have gotten along. We certainly had matching egos and bloated self images.

“Look,” Loki continued. “I don’t know what to tell you, other than you’re just going to have to trust me.” He placed his hand on his coat, puffing his chest out, standing erect. “I am Loki, father of Hel, the goddess of death. Father of Jormungand the world serpent, and of Fenrir. Mother of Sleipnir.” He sighed when he saw how unimpressed I looked. “Listen. I don’t exactly carry around pictures of my kids in my wallet.” He flicked his garden shears up in the air, sticking his hands in his pockets. The shears glimmered in the sun, then vanished.

“This extremely circuitous way of getting my attention at least has me listening, I admit,” I said. “Just the type of weirdo games you entities like to play. And it can’t be a coincidence. Odin wants my head on a platter, and you come crawling out of the woodwork. What I find hard to believe is that you’re really the guy behind Happy, Inc. You’re telling me that you’ve been slinging burgers for a living?”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing. I would thank you not to denigrate the fine art of burger-slinging, Mr. Graves. Was it not a fry cook who saved your life?”

I held out my hands. “Whoa, whoa. I never said anything about dissing Charlie, or his profession. But yeah, about that. Whose idea was it to put a cardboard disk in a hamburger?”

Loki chuckled. “We knew ahead of time that you, specifically, would discover the Lucky Patty. This was planned. How else was I supposed to make your acquaintance?”

He was mocking me, with his sharp grin, the knife-like curve of his eyebrow. “Whatever happened to phone calls? Or you could have just ambushed me in a dark alley, or barged in on me while I was in the shower.” I folded my arms and huffed. “That’s what every other entity does, anyway.”

“Now, where’s the fun in that? I’m a trickster god, after all. It’s in my job description. I wanted to keep things interesting. Entertaining. Fun.”

I waved my hand around myself, at the gardens, at the building. “So all this? This has been your idea of fun?”

He smiled warmly. “Oh, for the past sixty years or so? Happy, Inc. is a family-owned business, always led by a member of the Thorpe clan.” He stuck his chest out again, flicking his lapels proudly. “It was always me, of course. Kind of fun, assuming different identities over the years. Zebediah Thorpe, Felicity Thorpe after him – that was fun – then it was Zachariah.” He turned his lip up. “Wasn’t too fond of that one. So now, here I am, Theodore Thorpe, heir to the Happy, Inc. fortune, and the young maverick behind its expansion into the trendier side of fast food.”

“And dog treats.”

“Indeed. I’m very happy with the performance of Puppy Yum biscuits.” Loki must have noticed the look that passed across my face. “Oh, don’t worry. We don’t process them and Snacky Yum-Yums in the same place. I realize the similarity in their names, but your cheesy, high-sodium snacks are safe.”

I nodded, and squirreled away that information for the next time I ran into Artemis. Knowing how comfortable she was with animals, though, she probably wouldn’t have minded either way.

“So this is the face you wear now,” I said.

Loki chuckled, running his tongue along the rim of his teeth. “Not handsome enough for you?”

“Not my type,” I said, carefully avoiding the magnetic well of handsomeness that was his dumb, cocky face.

“This is my true face. I’m every bit as attractive as the legends say.”

“None of the legends talk about you being attractive.”