Forecast (5 page)

“I doubt that.”

“I don’t. That place is a madhouse right now with everyone thinking it’s the end of the world. It couldn’t be that hard to sneak in there.”

“Taran.” I, too, leaned farther over the table and crossed my arms so we weren’t that far apart. It was a small table. “I hate to break this to you, but we
are
in the beginnings of Ragnarok and there really
is
magic. How can you not believe that after watching me stop time?”

“And if I wish hard enough, my hammer will return to me? I can hold out my hand—” He broke off, gasped. His hand was out, but that’s not what made the blood drain from his face.

We both stared at the hammer that appeared on the table between us.

Chapter Four

He reached for it.

“No,” I whispered, putting my hand on his arm. “Don’t put your fingerprints on it.”

We both stared, and I could hear his breaths pick up in volume and speed. For a moment, his terror was so stark, so vivid—I could taste it in the air between us.

I touched his arm.

“That blood doesn’t look days old, Coral.” He suddenly sort of deflated, his shoulders sagging, his face losing all traces of the amusement it held before. “I think you were right. Someone else has been hit.”

I flashed back to my vision of that morning—the kids on the dock, the boy flying off the pier. “I think so, too,” I whispered.

He buried his face in his hands. “With my background, nobody is going to believe I’m not doing this—not if this damned hammer keeps showing up around me!”

“What background?”

He lifted his head, dark eyes bleak. “Fights. Lots and lots of fights.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, shoved back from the table and paced across the kitchen then back. “I get angry. Stay angry.” He scowled. “Just stuff from my past—it’s not easy to explain.”

Not wanting to look at the blood anymore, I picked up the paper towels I’d used to wipe up the chocolate and dropped them over the hammer. Curiosity about his past burned questions onto the tip of my tongue, but I held them back. “I think I can help you figure out how your hammer is disappearing. It has to be some kind of spell.”

“Can you figure out how to make it stay gone? I don’t want the damn thing anymore.”

I shook my head, adamant. “No, you may need it. It’s probably important.”

“It’s just a hammer my mother had made for me. That’s it. There’s nothing special about it.”

“Taran. The thing just appeared on the table between us.” I rubbed my sternum because my norn was kicking up a fuss something fierce. She twisted and writhed, and I couldn’t help but think she was angry with me because I was missing something. Could this be my mother? Her powers weren’t
that
good. And crazy or not, she really hadn’t ever been cruel. But then recently she’d locked herself in her room with an iron skillet used for hexing spells, and she’d shoved Raven into a wall. Hard enough to make Raven cry, and that wasn’t something my ultraresponsible sister often did.

But smashing in kids’ heads with a hammer?

No way.

A door slammed, and Taran’s eyes flew open wide as a man’s voice cursed in the entry before there was a loud thump. He reached out to wrap the hammer—I guessed to hide it—and made a strangled sound in his throat when he lifted the paper towels.

I gasped.

The hammer was gone again.

Shocked brown eyes met mine as all the color bled from his face.

But we didn’t have time to say anything else because a man walked into the kitchen. One who could only be his father because he looked so much like Taran, it was crazy. A fierce frown pulled down lips with the same shape as his son’s as he bent to rub his knee.

“What’s with the toys right in front of the door?” He straightened, ran his hands through his shorter, slightly darker hair, his movements agitated. The few gray strands stuck out in weird directions. He took up more space than Taran, with wide shoulders and thick thighs. Other than that, they shared the same sharp, elegant features.

Taran was going to grow up kind of hot. My face felt as if someone had lit it on fire, so I cleared my throat and sat up straight. Forced away the awkward, weird-as-nine-hells observation.

Brown eyes focused on me.

Taran scrunched forward in his seat. He still looked like as if he’d just seen a ghost, and I wondered why his dad wasn’t picking up on it. The tension in the room was so thick I felt it on my skin.

“Hey, Dad,” Taran finally said before clearing his throat. “This is Coral.”

“Nice to meet you. I thought I knew all Taran’s friends.” He stepped farther into the kitchen and slid off his suit jacket, before draping it on the third chair. He didn’t wear the usual cop uniform, so I wondered if he was some kind of detective. Mud splattered his tan slacks up to the knees. He had the same sort of overpowering presence Taran did. The kind that made a person
very
aware he was in the room—the kind that drew the eye. Though...my gaze was drawn more to Taran. Embarrassingly so.

His dad looked away from me and his gaze landed on the gargoyles by the door. Light brown eyebrows went up. “I just tripped over one of those by the front door. What’s going on?”

I opened my mouth to tell him about their protection, but Taran’s fierce head shake shut me up.

“We were playing a joke on Josh and Grim.” Taran’s tone changed as he talked to his dad. It lost the confidence that laced most of his words before, now sounding flat, forced. His stance changed, too. He’d sagged in worry earlier, but now he just looked tense, distant—and faintly guilty. “Sorry about that.”

“Okay.” His dad barely looked at him.

It wasn’t my imagination that the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. “Let’s get them out of the walkway now, Taran.” He looked at me. “Coral, right?”

I nodded.

“I’m Grady. You have parents who can come pick you up?”

I blinked at the sudden subject change. “No, sir. I have my car.”

“You live far?”

I shook my head. “No, but it took me a long time to get here this morning.”

He picked up his coat. “It’s late, and Taran obviously didn’t share that he’s grounded, so I’ll follow you home.”

There was no arguing with this man. That was clear. I wanted to stay and help protect Taran, but I could only hope his father being home would do the trick. That and the saltpeter and dill, because he made us pick up the gargoyles.

Taran and I exchanged numbers before I left, and I caught his dad watching him out of the corner of my eye. There was something in his expression that made my heart ache—a weird mix of exasperation and yearning when he looked at his son. He made me wonder what it would be like to have a father. It wasn’t the first time. Shame still ate a hole in my chest when I thought of all Mom’s boyfriends over the years and how many of them I tried to use as a replacement. She’d once told me I ran them off before she could.

Mr. Breen, or Grady, didn’t give Taran and me any time to talk alone. Frustration kept me quiet and I saw my feelings mirrored in Taran’s expression.

We needed to figure out what was happening with that hammer.

Grady Breen followed me all the way home, even though it took nearly an hour to get there in the snow and traffic. He didn’t leave until I waved safely from my open doorway.

I hurried into the house, my bag clanking against my hip, shivering because the power was still out, and I could see my breath in the air. Thankful that Raven always insisted we keep the garage stocked with propane for emergencies, I pulled out one of our old camping heaters and set it up in my bedroom. I could keep the door cracked for ventilation.

Forgoing what was sure to be an icy shower, I changed into two pairs of pajamas and Raven’s robe. While the water heated for tea—this one chamomile and mint—I hauled a bunch of Mom’s spell books onto my bed so I could look for something that might explain how someone else called Taran’s hammer. I was starting to get really scared that it could be my mother, though I could not come up with one reason why.

My hands started to ache with cold, and I remembered that my mom had a stash of fingerless gloves in the top of her closet. Her room smelled kind of funny, so I looked under the bed, opened all the drawers, but she had so much crap for spells stashed everywhere, all the scents started to meld.

I sneezed.

Giving up on the smell, I reached into the top of her closet, grabbed the gloves and the yarn caught on something—something that crashed onto the floor and spilled everywhere. I knelt and grinned at the tiny, black rocks.

“Black salt,” I murmured. “Perfect.”

Despite the weird odor in the room, I could easily pick up the nose tingling mix of iron and black pepper. Mom had used scrapings from a skillet—which would normally be a bad thing—but not this time. For the first time in days, a light filled my heart. Black salt worked as powerful protection and because my mother had made it, it would work twice as hard against her if she tried to do harm. I scooped all the granules into a vial and stashed it in my bag.

Before I settled with my tea and books, I huddled in front of the heater, pricked my right finger and let three drops of blood fall onto my left middle fingernail. It was an old trick my mother had taught me years ago—one I should have remembered to try the night before. The drops would form into a shape...or a clue. As I watched, the blood moved, merging into a rune. One that resembled a
P.

Thurisaz.

I frowned because that could mean anything. In some cultures, it represented frost giants. In some, or really all, it meant something dangerous or bad. Trials and tribulations, or natural force devastation, which was so obviously going on that wasn’t any help. Sometimes the rune was used in stories of Loki. Most of the time, it was about Thor and his hammer. Again, too obvious.

But...it also could be about a thorn—which was sharp and piercing.

I stared at the bloody rune, my gut in a knot.

Thorns were often used in powerful, dark spells.

* * *

Taran called and asked me to meet him for a late lunch at a fast-food seafood restaurant on Miracle Strip Parkway the next morning.
Guess he’d decided to ignore the grounding
. I picked out a pair of skinny jeans with a huge red-and-blue sweater—again the colors of protection—then put matching feathers on clips into my hair. The ensemble would all clash with the orange snow boots, but I didn’t really care. Color cheered me.

I was five minutes into the drive when I realized there wouldn’t be a lot more driving—not in my little Neon. The snow had let up the night before but now it fell in sheets. I hoped it didn’t stay like this because I couldn’t imagine how everyone would keep doing the things they needed to do. Get to jobs, schools. I had to drive slowly, and the entire time my hands shook because I was terrified of other vehicles running into me. Cars crammed the parking lots of hotels and grocery stores. I drove past stores with closed signs on the doors. Normally people would be on the sidewalks and streets...on the beaches.

When I finally got to the restaurant, I felt as if I’d been driving for days. I had to park a ways from the entrance because the parking lot was packed.

I opened my car door and swung my legs around to get out, and the wind nearly knocked me back into the car. Snow stabbed at the exposed skin of my face and hands as I pushed my way out of the car and slammed the door. I promptly slipped and grabbed the side mirror, dangling there. The healing wound on my palm stung as I held on to keep from hitting the ground.

A group of kids hurried past me, then stopped. I thought they were going to offer to help me, but the sudden raucous squawks of ravens drowned out even the sound of the wind. Hundreds landed in the parking lot, noisy, stabbing at each other with sharp beaks. The wind grabbed black feathers and drops of red blood, spreading them on the mounds of white in morbid contrasting colors.

A hand grabbed my elbow, lifted me, and I looked up to find Taran had come out. But like everyone else, he watched the birds. It was as if they’d been possessed as they fought each other. I wondered why they hadn’t frozen and died like the flock I’d seen before.

And again I wondered what the ravens were doing in Florida.

The rate their number was growing sent ripples of alarm up my back.

Taran pulled me close to him as some of the birds swarmed around us. One dived toward his face and he batted it away, then wrapped his arm protectively around my head as he walked me across the parking lot.

The scent of fried fish, shrimp and French fries made my mouth water when Taran opened the door. We turned and watched as other people ran toward the restaurant. Then the birds suddenly swarmed into the air in a tornado like formation and flew off.

“That was wild,” Taran muttered. He scowled as someone jostled into us, making me hit the window. Taran pulled me closer. “Hey, dude, watch it.”

The man who’d run into me grimaced. “Sorry. Never saw crows like that before. They freaked me out a bit.” He moved away.

“That’s because they weren’t crows,” I murmured to Taran under my breath.

He looked down at me, lifted an eyebrow.

The noise of the packed restaurant swirled around us. I stood on my toes to get closer to his ear. “Those were ravens, and it isn’t the first time I’ve seen them. They shouldn’t be here.”

“Maybe they’re just flying south, thinking it’s a regular winter—that sort of thing.”

“Maybe,” I said, though in my heart, I knew it was something a little scarier than that. All I could think about were the stories of Ragnarok. The ravens and the wolves.

Taran’s face went slack with surprise when he turned to face the restaurant. “I swear there weren’t this many people in here just a second ago. I saw you pull in and was worried when you dropped—thought you’d hit the ground.”

People filled every booth and table and even more milled about, some in line for food and others standing around talking. Quite a few were around our age, and on nearly every face, there was an expression of fear or worry. The noise level drowned out thought.

A handful of kids gathered near one of the cash registers, and I couldn’t help but stare at a couple of them because they were huge. One was unnaturally big, like close to seven feet tall. Their matching jackets told me they were on the same sports team at their high school.

I tugged on Taran’s coat. “Do you go to school with them?”

He looked where I indicated with a nod of my head, then grimaced. “Yeah, I do. Unfortunately. The tall one, Billy, is an asshole.”

Billy picked that moment to glance over, and the scowl that scrunched already-rough, craggy features put my back up. He looked at Taran as if he’d just scraped him off the bottom of his shoe. He walked closer and my neck bent back. I’d never seen anyone that tall in person. His shoulders were twice the width of the kid next to him. His face was so strange—sort of wide and slightly flattened as if he’d been dropped on it when it was still forming.