“One of these things is not like the others,” I sang under my breath, as I white-knuckled my Jeep between a couple of eighteen-wheelers. I’d been sandwiched between monster vehicles for so many miles, I could no longer feel the tips of my fingers.
Maybe I shouldn’t have started my trip in the middle of the night, after all.
Not that I’d had a choice. I hadn’t been able to find a hotel with an available room the night before and after four hours of sleeping in my car, I’d decided driving had to be a better option than freezing to death.
What had I been thinking?
Oh yeah. That somehow it was my responsibility to find a teenage warrior who was going to save the world. If, that is, he didn’t kill me because of some weird prophecy.
Now minutes before sunrise, I was doing everything I could to stay out of blind spots while the trucks kicked up snow all over my smaller vehicle. Between that and what was coming from the sky, I felt like I was caught in some surreal dream sequence in a bad eighties horror movie—as if any second, the trucks around me would converge, develop abominable snowman faces and we’d end up battling it out at a sleazy truck stop.
My phone rang, the screen lighting up the dark momentarily. It wasn’t one of my sisters’ distinctive tones, so I didn’t take the time to look to see who was calling. With the way one of the trucks kept swerving, someone else shouldn’t have been driving in the middle of the night, either. “Soooo not answering while I’m playing caravan with big rigs,” I muttered between clenched teeth.
But the ringing didn’t stop, which meant it still could be one of my sisters. I had two—we were triplets. Growling, I snatched up the phone, glanced at the screen and, though I didn’t recognize the number, I answered. “Yeah?”
The silence lasted long enough for me to roll my eyes.
“Hello! If you don’t answer, I’m hanging up. Who the hell is this?”
“Raven.”
My sister’s tone in just the one word made me instantly start looking for a place to get off the road. The shoulder was too iffy because of the slick snow and the water on either sides of the highway. “Gods, Raven! You’re lucky I answered. It’s freaking noisy here, and I didn’t recognize the number. Where are you?”
“Oklahoma.” Her voice sounded hushed, and I had to strain to hear her. “I found him. Found Vanir McConnell.”
Three days before, my sisters and I had discovered our egg donor—as if I’d call her Mom anymore—had been spending years researching kids on the internet—kids who could possibly be carrying god souls like us. What she planned to do with that knowledge was anyone’s guess. But with the way she’d been acting, it couldn’t be good. So each of us had picked a warrior to track down. We’d split up for the first time in our lives. Raven was talking about the guy she’d chosen. The one who apparently carried the soul of the Norse god Odin. We were pretty sure the wolves in the article our mother had saved were the big clue on which god.
Mine had something to do with crops, according to the tabloid story I’d picked—or my norn had picked. She’d squirmed like I’d set her on fire the instant my hand had touched that printed paper I’d found in our mother’s room. Crops could mean Freyr, and that particular god could possibly be the most important of them all. He wasn’t supposed to survive Ragnarok—like most of the important gods—but he played a huge part of the end of it, and if he did survive, he could have something to do with healing the earth after three years of winter had damaged it.
My entire life had been about crazy stuff—goddesses and Norse prophecies—and I’d never truly swallowed the Ragnarok part of it all. I mean, come on! Three years of snow, angry waves swallowing the earth, gods battling giants, elves and whatever. Oh, then there was the fire. Always the damned fire.
My stomach churned.
“I know. Coral told me,” I finally answered as I made it past the lake—on the right side at least. I started to pull over but saw the place was a campground. Oh no, we aren’t going to risk that kind of bad mojo. I took the next opening instead into a fast-food parking lot and nearly slid into a parked pickup. My cell hit the floor. “I dropped the stupid phone!” I yelled. “Just hold on while I find a parking space away from these loud trucks!”
I could have gone into the campground, but I’d vowed never to step foot in one again. I’d had enough of those places growing up. Our mother had dragged us from one to another, always moving when her freaky, paranoid internal clock said boo. I’d developed what I thought of as a healthy disgust with all things tent related. And I planned to honor that disgust. Forever.
I parked far enough away from the restaurant to have privacy but still catch a little of the light coming through the windows. A guy in a fast-food uniform scurried past a window, carrying a tray. It looked like they were about to open. I leaned over to feel around the floorboard for my phone and snatched it up. “I’m back. Where have you been? I called you, like, five times last night and Coral is totally freaked.” Okay, maybe Coral wasn’t totally freaked, but she’d been worried. Unfortunately, I’d had to cut the call short. I looked around. The parking lot was mostly deserted. “You’d better call her right away if you haven’t already.” Frigid air snaked through every opening in the Jeep it could find. Felt like it was trying to burrow permanently into my bones.
“I will. I don’t have my phone. Might have lost it.”
“You’d better find it, or pick up another somewhere because we have to stay in touch.” I grabbed a blanket from the pile in the passenger seat and wrapped it around me. With the car running, the heat blasting through the vents, and the snow pattering on the roof, it could have been cozy. If the heat had actually been winning the battle against the cold. “I’m in Wyoming already, and holy goddess crap it’s cold up here.”
“I expected it to take you longer. It took me forever to get here, and Oklahoma is closer.”
“Me? You’ve already found your warrior. Coral told me.” I snorted. “How?”
“I crashed into a river. He helped me out.”
My heart did this weird sort of extra thump, thump, thump and I held my breath, staring at the sunrise that seemed to be battling the clouds for sky space. It looked like splotches of spilled tangerine paint on a dark gray canvas. Not for the first time I thought about how we should have stayed together. How nothing would mean anything if I lost one of my sisters.
“I’m okay,” she said quickly. “The car is in a river and will have