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shoulder.
    “You are hurt,” he said.
    She glanced at her bloodied sleeve. “I can’t even feel it.”
    “You will.”
    Yeah, she thought. It’s always afterward, isn’t it? Pain, grief, guilt. Regular as clockwork.
    “Why don’t you ever sweat?” she asked Konur, pretending she hadn’t heard him. “Too good for such distasteful bodily functions?”
    “We try to avoid them as strenuously as possible,” he said, mockingly grave. Like Dainn had been.
    Fighting the pull of memory, Mist went to check on the two injured mortals. The man was only half-conscious, but the young woman managed to smile at her with something disturbingly like hero-worship in her eyes. It was an embarrassing cult of personality Mist knew was fed by the unwanted glamour she had inherited from her goddess-mother Freya.
    But without the magic of attraction, love and lust, she might not have mortal allies at all. Gods knew that Freya hadn’t done anything to pull in ground troops.
    And neither have you, Mist thought, wielding guilt against revulsion as she had done so many times in the past. Revulsion kept on winning, but she knew it was only a matter of time before—
    “Mist!”
    She jerked out of her thoughts to find the young woman pointing toward the mouth of the alley. A lone Jotunn stood there, ax in hand, as if he were about to challenge her to single combat. She drew Kettlingr and jumped to her feet, rage warring with sense.
    Sense was winning when she finally noticed the Jotunn’s face.
    He looked like Svardkell. Svardkell, the Jotunn father she had never had the chance to know. The one she’d killed, believing he was Loki’s spy.
    Before she could think, she was running toward the street. The Jotunn waited until she was almost within reach, and then spun and ran north toward Bush Street. Mist had nearly caught up with him when she heard the squeal of tires and the whooping of a siren.
    A moment later the sleek black-and-white Interceptor was nearly on top of her, and someone was shouting at her to put the weapon down. She lowered Kettlingr and turned to face the cops. Both had their pistols trained on her, and one was already calling for backup.
    Mist weighed her options. If these were Loki’s men, they wouldn’t be able to shoot her. But there was a loophole in the “no modern weapons” rule Freya and Loki had agreed to in their original “game,” and still abided by; “unaffiliated” mortals weren’t bound by it, and there were still a few good cops who hadn’t been caught in the web Loki had been industriously spinning around the city.
    Those good cops were fighting an uphill battle against a system that used their honesty against them, turning them into unsuspecting weapons, and Mist didn’t want innocent blood on her hands. A passing car had slowed down to rubberneck, and a couple of teenagers had stopped to stare, seemingly unconcerned that they might be drawn into a violent confrontation.
    This could get bad very fast.
    “Put down the weapon!” one of the cops yelled. “Hands behind your head!”
    Slowly and carefully, Mist laid Kettlingr on the sidewalk and raised her hands. “It’s all right,” she said. “I won’t—”
    A gun went off. Mist felt strong fingers grip her arm and yank her aside as the bullet whizzed past her ear.
    “Go back,” Konur hissed, pushing her in the direction of the alley. “I will—”
    “How many times must I tell you not to put yourself at risk?” a new voice interrupted, honeyed and dulcet as always in spite of the scolding words.
    Freya waved Konur away and insinuated herself between Mist and the cops, who stared at Freya in utter confusion. Even in a borrowed elven shape—dark-haired, indigo-eyed, a body far more slender than Freya’s own—the goddess projected a sensual allure that required no glamour to work its magic.
    But she did use the glamour, and the cop who’d prematurely ejaculated lowered his gun and carefully laid it on the ground. The other