Page 38 of Soul of Shadow #1

For the third time that week, Charlie drove home shaking.

After leaving Elias’s house, she had winced and stumbled to the Bronco, which apparently Elias had driven there from the game, taking the keys from her pocket and returning them after.

She scrolled through the unread messages from her friends and brother.

When they discovered she and Elias had ditched the game, they had each reacted differently, Mason saying Get it, sis , Abigail complaining about not having a ride home, and Lou sending a series of eggplant emojis.

They’d hopped in someone else’s car and ended up at a party in Jamie Kissler’s basement.

No one suspected what had truly happened. No one suspected anything . Her loved ones were blissfully ignorant, unaware of the danger that lurked around them at all times, locked away by a magical seal.

Or was it?

As she navigated the familiar streets of Silver Shores, she thought about the larger implications of what had happened with the draugar.

It had broken a windshield. A child had seen it.

And unless that child happened to have taken an eyae rberry with her morning vitamins, that could only mean one thing:

The Seal was malfunctioning.

Maybe it had only happened for a second.

Maybe only one draugar had slipped through.

Maybe a god or spirit had let it through, though she didn’t know how that would be possible.

According to Elias, the Seal was a physical object.

One that could only be pulled from the earth by a human.

And if it had held for so many millennia, she didn’t think it was stored in a place that could be randomly stumbled upon by a hapless traveler.

But what did she know?

Still. If the Seal had been broken entirely, Charlie would have known. In all likelihood, the world would be in an uproar. There would be rioting in the streets, pastors out preaching about the end of all time. Silver Shores wouldn’t look as peaceful as it did any other evening.

After pulling into her driveway, she rubbed her face, dizzy with the questions swirling around in her head.

She needed a good night’s sleep. She needed to not think about Elias or draugar or Nordic gods for at least twenty-four hours.

Maybe her mom would let her drive the Bronco to a wellness retreat in the Upper Peninsula.

Yeah, right. Of course her mom wouldn’t let her do that.

And even if she did, Elias would somehow find her.

Elias . Even though she was wrapped in the warm sweatshirt he’d given her, shivers racked her body when she thought about him. About his lips on hers, pure intangible shadow and yet somehow the most real thing she had ever felt in her entire life.

As she got out of the car and trudged up the driveway, she couldn’t help but wonder what the kiss meant. If it meant anything at all. Maybe he would have kissed anyone who was pressed that closely to him. Maybe what she felt between them was pure attraction and nothing else.

Still, as she opened the front door of her home, one hand pressed to her lips, the memory of his shadows still tingling on her tongue…

She couldn’t help but feel that it was something else entirely.

As always, the v?tte needed to be fed. Over the past few days, through trial and error, Charlie had discovered the following about the creature’s diet:

Likes: oatmeal, bananas, chicken, peanut butter, brown rice, and chocolate chip cookies.

Dislikes: vegetables and anything resembling seafood.

After saying hello to her mom and explaining that Mason was at an after-party she didn’t feel like attending, she took a cookie from the jar on the counter and brought it up to her bedroom.

“This is your second cookie of the night. Tomorrow, we have real food,” she said as she handed it to the v?tte, who immediately started clapping and bouncing up and down. “Got it?”

He nodded, snatching the cookie with his tiny hands and shoving it into his tiny beard.

As the v?tte ate, Charlie sat down at her laptop to browse the local news, in search of any updates on the disappearances.

They’d been running headlines on Maisie’s disappearance all day, but she didn’t see anything she didn’t already know: a nother tree, another pair of shoes.

No new information on the carvings, which was what Elias had promised her—right up until they got completely off track.

Instead of studying whatever he’d uncovered, they’d gotten chased by a draugar and made out in his bed.

Oops.

Her eyes drifted up to look out the window.

The night was dark and still, not a terrifying creature in sight.

Where had the wounded draugar gone? Or that wolf, the one Elias was so keen on finding?

And why did Elias want to find the wolf?

As far as she knew, the wolf had nothing to do with their investigation, but she bet there were many things that Elias was still keeping from her.

Well. Maybe Elias was checking out of the investigation until Monday, but she certainly wasn’t.

The site for one local news station had several high-resolution photos of the carved trees on their home page. Charlie clicked on the photos, zooming in as close as she could while still keeping the symbols in focus.

What had Elias said?

I think they might be related to another realm. One even deeper than Helheim.

A realm deeper than the underworld. How was that possible?

Now that she thought about it, she didn’t really know much about the eight realms—or nine, as humans thought of them. How were they connected? Were they just different planets, floating about in space, or was there some other structure to them?

She opened Google and typed the nine realms .

Millions of results loaded. Most were related to the Marvel movies or were fan wikis devoted to different Norse-themed video games. Buried among the fantasy content, however, were a few pages that listed ancient Norse texts as sources. She clicked one of those and began to read.

There are nine realms in Nordic mythology: Niflheim, Muspelheim, Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, and Helheim. Legend states that each realm is held in the branches or roots of Yggdrasil, the great world tree.

A tree? Charlie thought. How ridiculous. How did they explain stars and galaxies and gravity?

Shaking her head, she clicked back to the search bar and typed norse symbol for helheim , toggling over to the image results.

The first thing she saw was Odin’s knot, the symbol for death that had appeared on the first tree and every one since. The next image held an odd shape that looked almost like a two-sided candelabra. Then she dragged her finger to the third result, which was—

Something huge and glowing landed on the roof just below her windowsill.

Charlie stifled a scream, staggering backward and falling out of her desk chair. She hit the carpet with a muffled thud .

Above her, out the window, the glowing creature rose to its full height, elongating, showing arms and legs and a torso and long, flowing dark hair—a statuesque woman.

As the halo of light around her began to fade, Charlie could make out more details: pale skin; brown leather and shining silver armor; leather gloves; a sword hanging from one hand; a spear and potentially other weapons latched across the back; a silver winged circlet crown; and… goodness… were those wings ?

Yet none of those details were even the most shocking thing about the woman standing on her roof.

Because as the light around her dimmed to nothing, looking at her was like staring into a mirror.

A reflection of herself, but more pale, more muscular, more terrifying.

And Charlie knew, as impossible as it was, who it was that stood before her.

She knew the way one half of your heart instinctively knew the other.

Charlie whispered, her throat as dry as sandpaper:

“S … Sophie?”