slam of heat and humidity made me hold my breath. I immediately unwrapped my scarf because the material scratched when I started to sweat. The leaves next to me were bigger than my head. I moved one aside to peek through the vines but didn’t see any movement. Except for bees. There were a lot of bees. Which was weird because I’m pretty sure they don’t do well in cold.
Not that it was cold in here. Gods, it was a freaking sauna!
Grimacing, I kept an eye on the small buzzing creatures as I walked down an aisle, moving aside heavy dangling leaves, recognizing cucumbers. Halfway down the row, my hands started itching, and I realized the vines had these tiny prickly things on them that aggravated my skin.
Sweat ran down my spine. I thought about taking off my coat, but I reached the other end of the greenhouse and heard voices.
“I spotted powdery mildew on some cucumber plants this morning, so I’m going to prune them. Can you grab that portable television and bring it to me? I want to keep up with what’s happening south.”
“Sure thing, Arun.”
Both voices were male, both sounded young. And Arun was the right name. But he sounded like the guy I’d met in the diner. I peeked through the door, spotted two guys standing between the rows of greenhouses. I couldn’t see one of them. The one I could see was freaking huge, with broad shoulders, tight jeans that showed the thickest muscled thighs I’d ever seen and a cowboy hat on his head. A cowboy hat. I stretched my neck to see if he wore boots, too. He did! Black steel-toed cowboy boots. He lifted his right hand to adjust his hat, and it looked like he had black gloves to match. Something glinted off that hand. I squinted because who wears jewelry on the outside of their gloves?
He moved again so I could see his hand clearly, and I sucked in a breath. It wasn’t jewelry—it was some kind of metal. And it wasn’t a black glove. He had a prosthetic hand.
“Did you find Gullin and Freya?” His voice boomed as big as his body.
I lifted my eyebrows at the mention of Freya. And Gullin. It was so not random; I was in the right place for sure.
“Yeah, they wandered outside and got lost in the snow. It’s over their heads now, so we’ll have to try to keep a better eye on them. Silly things.”
“I’ve got to check some of the heat mats in the last seed greenhouse—then I’ll grab your TV. And maybe some lunch, too.” The big kid in the cowboy hat moved out of the way.
Those amused seal-brown eyes locked on me. “Bring a couple of extra sandwiches. I got distracted by something pretty when I was out and never got around to eating.”
“Gotcha.”
Panic kept me from moving right away. My first thought was to hide. Maybe I was imagining him being able to see me crouched behind the leaves. But the smirk on those poet lips let me know he had spotted me. He walked toward the greenhouse with the same confident strides he’d used in the truck stop earlier. He made me feel strange. He was unnaturally beautiful—godlike unnaturally beautiful. I’d never liked pretty guys. Had always preferred the rougher, craggier faces—but it was kind of hard to look away from this one. I thought of Freyr, reputed to be the most stunning of the Vanir, the sworn enemies of the Aesir.
The freaking fertility god.
Suddenly, the heat in the greenhouse grew unbearable. I bit my tongue to try to moisten my bone-dry mouth.
“The extra sandwich request was for you.” Arun stepped inside, and the space felt instantly smaller. Too tight. “I thought you might be coming here to find me,” he murmured as he pulled off his gray coat and draped it over a wooden chair beside the door. “It’s nice to see you again. I’m Arun Dahl.”
Now normally, I’m not slow, but I stared at him with my mouth open. Open too wide like I was mimicking a starving baby chick. Finally, I found my tongue, remembered how it worked. “Why would you think I would come looking for you? Kind of arrogant, aren’t you?”
“Arrogant? Me?” He laughed. “No, not really. And of course I knew you were coming here. You’re all coming here. You and the others—all those like us.”
I narrowed my eyes. Great. That sounded very cultlike.
“What do you mean like us?”
He sighed, leaned against the table behind him. “So you’re one of those who has no idea what’s going on then? I’m curious. What made you come north? Did you hear the music?”
At that moment, I was more confused than I’d ever been in my entire life.
He seemed to know it, too, because his smile became kind. “You carry a soul just as I do. Just as the other kids who’ve been showing up do. What do you think we’re doing here? With the monster barn? The greenhouses?”
“Growing food? What’s so different about having greenhouses?” I tugged on the neck of my sweater, grimaced at the sweat on my skin. “Look, I came all the way here from Florida to find you.”
“And yet you said I was arrogant for thinking that.” He pulled the beanie off, revealing the lightest blond curls I’d ever seen. And his hair didn’t look bleached. In fact, those curls looked so soft, I had to fight the urge to touch them to see if they felt like baby hair. Funny, I would have thought soft curls and a pretty face on a boy would have made him seem kind of feminine. Not on this guy. “I’m flattered,” he said.
The confusion he made me feel did what confusion always did to me. Made me mad. I hated not knowing what was going on at all times, hated the blurred edges that showed up too often in life. “Don’t be flattered. I came because I thought my mother might try to hurt you, but I found out this morning that she went to Oklahoma, so I don’t have to stay.”
It was his turn to look confused. “So you think your mother left Florida to come all the way here to hurt me, but now she’s in Oklahoma. That’s kind of crazy.” He grinned. “It’s also kind of cool to have a girl riding to my rescue. Who’s your mom?”
“That’s not important now that I don’t have to stay.”
“But you do have a god or goddess’s soul, don’t you?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, took a long deep breath, then looked at him again. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that question. You don’t think that’s a strange thing to ask someone?”
Right then, I flashed back to my conversation with Raven that morning.
“Vanir has brothers, all with Norse names, and they look like their Choctaw-Irish father. And everyone here knows what’s going on. I just know it. This whole situation is too surreal, Kat. We’ve spent all our lives hiding our magic, knowing others don’t even know about it, and I walk into a family who knows things. Even the sheriff, I think. It’s like I marched right into a book.”
“Sounds like it’s all coming together. Ragnarok. Just like the stories.”
Arun moved away from the table, surprising me once he was standing next to me. I had to look up more than I’d expected. I’d been wrong at the truck stop—he was probably a couple of inches over six feet. “It is
