Perfekt Order (The Ære Saga Book 1) (10 page)

I glanced at the piece of paper above my
dresser and flushed. “Maybe.”

“Hold up.” Heather looked at the ceiling.
“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” We waited in silence, until a
scratching noise came from overhead. It raked hard nails across the
surface above us, as if it wanted to claw through the ceiling
and…

We stared at each other with wide eyes, then
bolted for the hallway. Heather dropped her book as she ran.

“Oh my God our house is haunted!” I gripped
Heather’s arms.

“It’s not haunted. It’s just an animal. But I
really don’t want to find out what it is.” Heather squeezed her
eyes shut.

“What’s going on, you guys?” Brynn bounded
out of her room, with Charlotte on her heels.

“We have a ghost,” I whispered.

“You, of all people, do not believe in
ghosts.” Charlotte crossed her arms.

“Oh, yeah? Then how do you explain that?” I
pointed at the ceiling as the scratching gave way to a scuttling
sound, now over the hallway. “Cheese and crackers, it’s following
us!” I wrapped one arm around Heather, the other around Charlotte,
and pulled us all together. I motioned for Brynn to join our
huddle. “Brynn, get in here!”

“Cheese and crackers?” Charlotte
snickered.

“Seriously, it’s an animal.” Heather took a
breath. “A creepy animal with freakishly long claws from the sound
of it. Ew! I just pictured that.”

I shivered. “Someone go ask it to leave.
Charlotte, you do it.”

“I’m not going into the attic. Are you
insane?” Charlotte squealed as the scratching moved toward her
room. “Heather, you go up there.”

The scratching shifted toward the sound of
our voices so the clawing came from directly overhead. I lowered my
volume, hoping to throw it off track. “No,” I whispered. “That
thing is following us. It’s probably rabid, or full of germs, or I
don’t know. No. Just, no.”

“Oh for the love of Odin!” Brynn groaned.

“Who?” Heather asked.

“Odin. God. Never mind. I’ll go see what it
is.” Brynn marched into her room and came out holding a flashlight.
Then she trounced down the hallway and pulled down the string
leading to the attic door in the ceiling. The ladder folded down,
and she began to climb.

“Brynn! Wait!” I called. “What if it’s big?
Shouldn’t you take a baseball bat or a taser or something?” My mind
flashed to the image of an enormous wolf latched down on my arm,
and I rolled my shoulders back to still my shiver.

Brynn turned around. “Seriously? You want me
to tase a raccoon?”

Charlotte’s eyes grew wide. “You think
there’s a raccoon up there? Those animals are evil. There was this
one back home—it would walk right up to us in broad daylight and
snatch our food right out of our hands. No boundaries.” She stepped
closer to me.

Brynn rolled her eyes. “I’m not afraid of a
raccoon.”

“You should be,” Charlotte muttered.

“I want you guys to remember I did this for
you the next time bathroom duty comes up on the chore chart.” Brynn
stepped up a rung. “This buys me two turns, right?”

“I hate that stupid chore chart,” Heather
muttered.

“You do? I thought you liked the order?” I
blinked.

“No,
you
like all that order. I just
want to sleep until nine on Saturday mornings; not get up at six to
clean the bathroom because some chart tells me I have to.”

“I had no idea. I’m sorry, I—” I broke off
when the thing in the attic clawed its way down the hallway. Now
the noise was headed straight for Brynn.

“Look out!” Charlotte squealed. “It’s coming
your way!”

Brynn took the last few steps up the ladder.
She turned on her flashlight and pointed it through the hole in the
ceiling. The scurrying retreated, the scraping now frantic as the
creature moved away from the light. “Oh, gross,” Brynn moaned.

“What? What is it?” I yelled.

Brynn marched down the ladder and folded it
up into the ceiling, looking disgusted. “Rats.”

“Ewwwww!” We screeched in unison. Charlotte
tucked her head against my shoulder and Heather shuddered. I patted
their backs.

“Shh. It’ll be okay,” I soothed even as I
squeezed my eyes shut.

“That’s disgusting!” Heather said.

“It’s not a big deal.” Brynn shook her head,
her curls bouncing. “We just need to get an exterminator in here.
I’d off them myself, but I’m pretty sure they’ve moved into the
walls and—”

“Ewww! They’re in the walls?” I moved
Charlotte and Heather away from the side of the hallway.

“I am not sleeping here,” Charlotte
declared.

“They’re full of diseases!” Heather
added.

“You guys.” Brynn put her hand to her
forehead. “They’re just rats.”

“Just rats.” I shuddered. I marched into my
bedroom and pulled the pillow and comforter off my bed, and some
books from my desk. The scurrying sounded again and I hurried back
into the hallway. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll camp out in the
living room until the exterminator can get here. I’m sure there’s a
crew that can come in before the weekend. Hopefully we’ll be back
in our rooms after one, two nights, tops.”

“Sounds good to me.” Charlotte ran into her
room and came out with a pillow and blanket, and study
materials.

“You want us to camp out in the living room?
Like, all share one little room with no beds in it? And study and
sleep there?” Heather put her hands on her hips.

“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. No. But explain to me
just how a big kumbaya girl scout meeting is going to fit with the
jam-packed
schedule
you mapped out for me.” Heather arched
an eyebrow.

I stared. “Why are you mad at me? I didn’t
put the rats in the attic.”

“Because.” Heather blew her bangs off her
forehead. “You think you have the answers to everything. You
literally charted out our lives without even asking us, and now
you’re telling me I have to write a paper and study for a quiz and
get all my reading done while sharing one room with three other
girls for God knows how many days?”

“When I made the cooking and chore schedules,
I told you we could tweak them if they didn’t work for you guys,” I
reminded Heather. “That offer still stands. And actually, you
did
ask me to help make up a study schedule for you.”

“Well, I never asked for a cooking schedule.
Or to be assigned bathroom duty, or sweeping-out-the-gutter duty,
or whatever other asinine chores there are on that thing.” Heather
rolled her eyes. “You think you have everything figured out, Mia.
You want to shove everyone and everything into your neat little
boxes instead of letting them be what they are… your friends
included. Well, I have news for you. We’re not all as perfect as
you are.”

Whoa
. If the clenched jaw and balled
fists were any indication, Heather was really upset. I looked to
Charlotte to see if she felt the same as Heather, but her wide eyes
were the picture of shock. A quick scan of Brynn’s body language
revealed barely contained tension—her lips were in a tight line,
and her torso was angled at Heather. She looked like a guard
animal, poised to protect.

If I didn’t make things right with Heather,
we were in for an extremely uncomfortable year on Daffodil Lane. I
folded my hands and stifled my ego.

“Listen, Heather, I’m really sorry. I’ve
always done things a certain way because it’s worked for me, and
having schedules worked for the girls I lived with at prep school.
But I get that it’s not working for you, and I shouldn’t have
pushed my way of doing things on you. You too, Charlotte, Brynn—I
thought that stuff was okay with you guys, but if it’s not we can
drop the charts. Cook our own dinners, just clean whenever.” I
cringed as the words came out of my mouth, but I pushed on,
ignoring the mental image of dirty bathrooms and dish-filled sinks.
Friends—and avoiding a war zone—were more important than tidiness.
Just deal with it, Ahlström
. “I’m sorry I upset you. I hope
you can forgive me.”

I held my breath while Heather stared me
down. After a long minute, she unclenched her fists and shook her
head.

“It’s fine. I’m really stressed out about
keeping my grades up, and this forced relocation put me on edge.
Let’s just go downstairs and try to finish our homework. If it’s
too crowded, I’ll study in one of the campus libraries until we get
the rat situation handled.” Heather walked into her room and came
out with her sleeping and studying materials. Brynn followed suit,
stepping in between Heather and me.

Charlotte and I exchanged a look as we walked
down the hallway.
Crisis averted
.

“Consider the cooking and cleaning schedules
officially voided,” I offered as we all walked downstairs.

“I kind of like the schedules,” Charlotte
murmured.

“Me too,” chirped Brynn. “I like knowing what
to expect.”

“Seriously? I’m the only one who didn’t like
hearing ‘It’s Saturday, your turn to clean the bathroom?’” Heather
paused at the bottom of the stairs.

“Well, I don’t like it
per se
,”
Charlotte agreed. “But I do like having a clean bathroom.”

“Whatever.” Heather rolled her eyes. “I guess
we can keep the stupid schedules.”

I turned around and put my hand on her
shoulder. “I can be a pain. I know. How about you get to sleep on
the couch while we’re stuck down here, and I take your next
bathroom shift so you have more study time?”

“Make it twice and you’ve got a deal.”
Heather nodded, and I knew I was forgiven. At least,
temporarily.

“Great. Let’s get our rat situation sorted as
soon as possible so we can all get back to our normal routine.” I
sized up the living room. “Because Heather’s right; a slumber party
does not an ideal study environment make.”

“Are you… really? All this fuss over some
tiny rodents?” Brynn shook her head.

“Tiny rodents with razor-sharp teeth,”
Charlotte pointed out.

Brynn sighed. “Well, I’ve never been to a
slumber party. Where do we start?”

“You’ve never been to a slumber party?” I
asked, as she spread her comforter out on the rug near the couch.
“How is that even possible?”

“They’re not really a thing where I’m from.”
Brynn positioned her pillows and sat down with her backpack in her
lap.

“They don’t do slumber parties in Sweden?”
Charlotte staked out a spot across from Brynn.

“Sweden? Uh, no. Not so much.” Brynn’s voice
sounded weird.

“Huh. Well, they’re fun. Except when they’re
haunted by evil rats.” I shivered as I set up my makeshift bed.

We waited for the sound of nails in the
walls, but the rats seemed to be confined to the attic.

For now.

I tucked my legs underneath me and set my
notebook, textbook, and the Norse mythology tome I’d checked out of
the library on my blanket. Then I picked up John Lindow’s text and
found the page titled ‘Norns.’ My roommates took the hint,
immersing themselves in their own studies. We read in silence,
interrupted by the occasional turning page.

“Charlotte?” I placed a bookmark on the
‘Norns’ page and looked up.

“Mmm?” She flipped a page in her own
text.

“Why would the Norns be so secretive when
they knew they had information that could save the realms?” I
asked.

Charlotte looked up in confusion. “What
now?”

“The Norns. Did you study them in your AP
class?”

“Some, but we focused more on the main gods
and realms,” Charlotte recalled. “But if we’ve got Brynn here,
she’s probably way more qualified than I am to talk about Norse
gods.”

“Why?” Brynn asked.

“You’re from Scandinavia,
ja?
”
Charlotte tried for her best Swedish accent, but ended up sounding
like Zoolander. “I just figured you guys grew up with those
stories.”

“True. What do you want to know?” Brynn
stretched out on the floor.

“Well, I’m reading about the Norns. This
author makes them sound like the Fates since they can predict the
future, but instead of weaving they fed the world tree. I guess I’m
wondering why they didn’t use their gifts to help Odin and the
other gods when they knew something bad was going to happen?”

“Because whoever they warned would try to
avoid getting hurt,” Heather guessed, closing her anatomy textbook.
“Which would change the course of the future.”

“But they can help stop the bad stuff. They
have the answers. Why not share them?” I challenged.

Brynn shook her head. “It’s dangerous to know
something good is coming. The gods have a lot of enemies, and if
one of them got word of an Aesir or a Vanir—”

“A what?” Heather asked from the couch.

“The gods of Asgard are called Aesir, and the
gods of Vanaheim are called Vanir—they’re both good guys. And if
one of the bad guys found out one of the good guys had a power that
could destroy them, they’d go after the threat. Which would also
change the future.” Brynn shook her head. “Scandinavian mythology
is very structured. Every god has his or her role to fill, and
every life is fated to complete a specific task. Interfering with
those tasks could throw off the balance that the Norns strive to
maintain. Because in Norse mythology, without
perfekt
order,
there is
absolut
chaos.”

Finally. Something in all those stories I
could relate to.

“Now the infrastructure of Asgard requires
certain gods have information above and beyond the generalized
prophecies the Norns hand out.” Brynn studied her cuticles. “Like,
the Goddess of Love needs to know the prophecies that relate to the
future of a potential couple. Say one is destined to fulfill a
calling by the sea, and the other is destined to rule a mountain
land, it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to bring those two
together, right? So the Norns give the Goddess of Love access to
information that helps her better perform her role as matchmaker.
Similarly the Norns would give the God of War access to the
prophecies relating to warring realms, or hostile elements.”