Murder on the Lake

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Halloween decorations had made the transition from Runde meeting hall to Villmark mead hall. I wasn't sure they would. Nothing else did, after all. The rickety tables were now solid wood, the battered chairs long benches, the stained ceiling tiles nowhere in sight. But orange and black streamers twisted from rafter to rafter, and the pillars spaced down the length of the room were festooned with bundles of dried wheat and corn tied with colored ribbons. Even the cut-outs of witches and Jack-o'-lanterns were there, hanging on threads from the underside of the thatched roof lost in the shadows above.

It was more than a little incongruous. The Villmarkers were aware of Halloween as a Runde holiday, but they had no version of it themselves. They had harvest festivals, but none on the last night of October. The grain harvest had been celebrated weeks before, and the festival connected to the fat cows and pigs and goats that weren't going to be kept over the winter was still a couple of weeks away. I wasn't sure what that would involve, aside from a lot of meat at the feast and, apparently, some sort of communal sausage-making.

Some magical traditions say that the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest on Halloween night, that magic is more powerful then, especially magic that draws from your ancestors. But the Vikings considered that veil to be thinner all winter long.

Which made sense. The island the original Villmarkers had hailed from was north of the Arctic Circle. There winter wasn't just cold, it was dark, one long night that went on for weeks. I imagined their first winter here on the North Shore had been a happy one. Sure, it was colder here, without the Gulf Stream bringing warm air up from the south, but at least the sun was always there. It might be impossible to see behind steely gray clouds for days and days, but you knew it was there, trying to reach you.

I was still admiring the decorations, sipping at a mug of mulled cider my grandmother had pressed into my hands, when the front door opened and Michelle and Jessica came inside. Jessica, wearing a gorgeous red hooded cloak and carrying a basket full of apples and bread rolls, was clearly Little Red Riding Hood. She usually kept her long blonde hair in a braided crown, a fancy way of keeping it out of her way while she worked in the café, but today she had left it in two braids that hung like pigtails, peeking out of the front of her hood.

I took a little longer to work out who Michelle was supposed to be. Her gown was all princess, sapphire blue with long, draping sleeves, but there were a lot of princesses. Then she turned to look back towards the door, and I saw the blonde wig she wore was so long it dragged on the ground behind her. Rapunzel, for sure.

Then Andrew came in behind them. He was wearing his usual jeans and fisherman's sweater, but a green Robin Hood cap with a long red feather tucked into its brim covered all but one forelock of his dark blond hair. Then he too turned to look back, and I saw he had a little bow and quiver of arrows strung across his back. A little incongruous with the sweater, maybe, but the bow looked like he'd carved it himself. And, knowing Andrew, he probably had.

And finally appearing in the doorway, in normal modern clothes, was Loke. I couldn't decide if this meant he never wore a costume, or if he always did. Just black pants and a black shirt with equally black shoes; it was a little hard to tell.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised at his nondescript look. Loke divided his time between the two worlds far more than I did. He was as likely to come in through the front door under his Runde guise called Luke as he was to come in through the back as Loke.

But I hadn't seen him much lately. He had promised me a visit to his house, to meet his sister, but I had stopped pressing him on setting a date and time for that event.

Something was on his mind, something he didn't want to share with me. I hoped if I didn't press that he would come around more, maybe decide to share what was bothering him with me, but so far that hadn't happened.

"Hey, Ingrid!" Michelle said. "Wow, this looks great!"

"I don't think I've ever seen it so festive," Andrew said.

"It's just a few decorations," I said, "and you guys did as much of that as I did."

"Really?" Jessica asked, looking up at a witch twisting in a current of warm air from the fire over her head. "I guess we did some of it, but there's something different, something more. You did something after we left here, didn't you?"

"Not much," I said, but I was distracted by Loke smothering a chuckle and looking away innocently when Andrew shot him a puzzled glance. At least Loke seemed to be in a better mood.

"Is there a bonfire out back?" Michelle asked.

"Of course," I said. I had paid particular attention to that area when weaving the cold-repelling spells so that the fire and the electric heaters that ringed the patio would have a chance against the cold October wind.

"Apple bobbing?" Jessica asked eagerly, and not for the first time. She was really into apple bobbing, apparently.

"You wanted to start with that?" I asked.

"It's not going to get any warmer," Andrew said and pretended to shiver. "Does anyone else feel like it's just about to snow? I swear we're going to have flakes before the weekend."

"Not according to the app on my phone," Michelle said, glancing at its screen before tucking it away in a pocket hidden inside her voluminous sleeve. "But yeah, let's get the 'plunging our faces into icy water' part of the evening out of the way first."

"Out of the way?" Jessica said. "Come on, you love bobbing for apples."

"I think you're remembering a much younger Michelle," her friend said. But she grabbed Jessica's hand to lead the way out the back door to the patio.

And I found myself momentarily alone with Andrew, whose dark blue eyes quickly darted away when I looked over at him. Had he just been staring at me?

"I didn't even think to wear a costume," I said, looking down at my jeans and sweater. There was still mud on my hiking boots from the river bank. Great.

"You look fantastic," Andrew said, perhaps a bit too forcefully. He flushed, then spoke in a more neutral tone. "I mean, I suppose you put a lot of time into all this." He waved his hands at the room around us, and I saw Loke behind him hiding another grin behind his hand. I narrowed my eyes at Loke, only for a split second but I knew he got the message. Then I looked back at Andrew.

"It's not much, really," I said.

He looked like he had no idea what to say to that. And that being tongue-tied was causing him real agony. But I didn't know what to say either. Why was this so suddenly awkward, talking to him?

"I was going to grab a beer. Did you want a beer?" he asked at last.

"No, I've got cider already," I said, although in truth my mug was nearly empty. "Meet you out back?"

"Sure thing," he said, then made his way to the beer barrels, already surrounded by a milling group of Villmarkers who had come in while my attention was on my Runde friends.

"You stop laughing," I hissed at Loke.

"Who, me?" he asked with feigned surprise. Then he gave me a conspiratorial look. "Come on, you have to see the humor. I mean, how much of this do they even really see?"

"All of it," I said, surprised that he didn't know that. "They just don't remember it."

"Really?" he said, looking around with his eyes slightly unfocused. "Oh. Yes, I see."

"Do you?" I asked.

"Would I lie to you?" he asked. "Everyone else, sure, if the situation called for it. Or if it seemed fun. But you?"

"I have no idea," I admitted. "You're in a strange mood."

He just shrugged, then nodded towards the back door. I walked with him out onto the patio. The wind immediately tossed my hair into my eyes, but it wasn't a cold wind. The warmth-containing spells had worked.

Jessica, her blindfold tied around her hooded head, was already bent over face-first into the barrel full of water and floating apples. The ends of both of her braids were getting soaked. Michelle was cheering her on, and so were Nilda and Kara, my closest Villmarker friends.

They were wearing their full armor, helms and all. They had dressed like this in the mead hall before, after our day out on the lake in the ship when everyone had worn their traditional garb, but unlike that time, the others seemed to notice it today. Two Runde fishermen standing by the bonfire were clearly impressed, trying to sneak closer glances at their swords.

"I think those are real," one whispered to the other.

"Hey, Ingrid!" Michelle said when I approached. "Aren't Nilda’s and Kara's costumes amazing?"

"Indeed," I agreed, then to the two Villmarkers, "Happy Halloween."

"Happy Halloween," Nilda said. There was a slightly stilted quality to how she said it, like she was pronouncing a foreign word, although her English was otherwise flawless.

"Nilda," Kara said, nudging her sister's elbow, "let's grab some mead and come back out."

"Yeah," Nilda agreed, then smiled at me. "Be right back."

"Sure thing," I said. She had only made eye contact with me, and I realized Loke was no longer at my side. Where had he gone off to?

Michelle shrieked and danced back as a wave of water sloshed out of the barrel. Then Jessica straightened up, an apple grasped firmly in her teeth. It was a huge apple, but Jessica's smile was bigger. She pulled off the blindfold, then took the apple out of her mouth.

"Not exactly record time," she said, "but now it's your turn."

Michelle bit at her lip, clearly hoping to find the words to beg off, when another voice came to her rescue.

"May I have a try?"

Another Villmarker woman in full Viking armor had stepped out of the shadows beyond the end of the patio.

"Gullveig!" I said, recognizing Nilda’s and Kara's friend. We had only met a few times before, and then only briefly, but she was impossible to mistake for any other. Tall even by Villmarker standards and basically made of supermodel material, she didn't need the sword at her hip to catch the attention of the Runde fishermen watching from the bonfire.

Michelle stepped back as Jessica tied the blindfold over Gullveig's eyes.

"You could just take an apple from that basket over there if you want," I said to Michelle as we watched Jessica guide the Villmarker closer to the barrel. "There's salted caramel in that fondue pot for dipping the slices in."

"That sounds divine," Michelle said and followed me to the picnic table under the eaves.

"How is Jessica doing?" I asked, pitching my voice a little lower, although I doubted Jessica could hear me over her own shrieks. Gullveig had thrust her head into the water so exuberantly the patio for feet around was soaked.

"She's good," Michelle said, but there was a false note to her voice. I raised my eyebrows at her. "Better than before," she amended. "She doesn't talk about Lisa as much as before, but I think she's still always thinking of her. Wondering what really happened to her."

"I guess that's to be expected," I said. "It's only been a few months." Still, it made my heart sank. I would give almost anything to be able to tell Jessica that her friend's murder had been solved, if not by the police. That the murderer had been caught and would never harm another again.

Almost anything, but not the one thing I would have to give up in order to tell her the truth. Because telling her that would mean telling her about Villmark, and that I could not do.

"Oh, dear," Michelle said with a tisk. "They're both soaked. I'm going to herd them closer to the fire before they catch their death of cold."

"I'll fetch some more hot cider," I said.

The longhouse had filled up while I had been out on the patio. A crowd of bodies, filling the space with a more humid heat than the fire managed, bodies that came with boisterous, loud voices and a plethora of elbows that seemed to thrust out of nowhere to catch me in the ribs as I made my way to the bar to fetch a tray and fill mug after mug with hot spiced cider.

I wasn't much use with magic on the fly, not yet. But I could catch hold of the protection spells that were already woven all around the mead hall and pull them closer around me as I hoisted that tray up on one shoulder and headed back through the crowd towards the patio.

Not that I was a novice with carting trays of food and drink around. But the diner I had worked at in my late teens and early twenties had never been as crowded as this mead hall.

Somehow, whether through magic or through the muscle memory of my time as a server, I made it back out to the patio without spilling a drop.

The others were standing around the bonfire now. Jessica and Gullveig were both shivering, but also grinning from ear to ear. Jessica was admiring Nilda's sword by the light of the fire, calling Michelle's attention to this detail or that as she examined the hilt and scabbard as well as the blade.

But as odd as that tableau struck me - did she really think Nilda had put that level of work into a Halloween costume? - it was nothing compared to the other side of the bonfire. Gullveig was holding her hands out to the flames, but she was also looking at the man next to her as he spoke with her.

I wasn't sure what was stranger, the fact that she was chatting with Roarr, who nearly always kept to himself, or the fact that he appeared to be explaining s'mores to her.

"I'm sure it's all perfectly innocent," Loke said, appearing suddenly just over my shoulder. "It's just about the chocolate, really."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. "And where did you go just now?"

"I was here," he said with a vague gesture that might have meant the patio area, or all of Runde, depending. "And I was just putting your mind at ease. You were staring at Roarr like you were debating taking him down with a running tackle."

"I was not," I said. "Actually, what I was thinking is that he looks in very fine spirits. He's interacting with others and almost looks happy. Granted, I didn't know him before his fiancée died, but that's got to be a good change, right?"

"I suppose," Loke said as if he found the question boring. "Time goes on and all that."

"You are in a mood," I said. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing at all," he said, with too bright of a smile.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"I'm sorry. Am I bringing your party down?"

"No," I said. But then I looked back at the others gathered around the bonfire. "No, you're not bringing anyone down. But you are the only one who's not enjoying themselves this evening. Is there anything I can do?"

"Don't trouble yourself about it, Ingy," he said. "Everyone has low days. It's not necessarily a problem that has to be solved."

I knew the look on my face had to be deeply skeptical, or at least he sensed my intent to continue trying to draw him out, because something changed in his eyes. The warm brown became something flinty, and then he was giving me a sidelong look again.

"But I can see what you're enjoying here. It's like both your worlds are here at once, reflecting each other."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Don't you see?" he asked, taking the tray out of my hands and setting it aside on the picnic table before turning me back to face the others at the bonfire. He leaned close behind me to whisper in my ear. "You have two lives, two worlds, and everything that exists in one has a reflection in the other. Look, there's Michelle and Jessica, your closest friends in Runde. But in Villmark, it's Nilda and Kara."

"They don't look like mirror images," I said.

"I wasn't talking about looks," he said. "I'm talking about their roles in your life."

"Well, there's Andrew," I said, pointing to where he was standing next to Roarr. They were both chatting eagerly with Gullveig. "I suppose his mirror image is you, then?"

"Ingy, you disappoint me," he said. "Loke and Luke reflect each other. And trust me, you don't want to see another version of me out in the world. No, Andrew is your Runde Thorbjorn."

"He is not," I said. But mostly I was just suddenly sad. I never saw Thorbjorn enough. His responsibilities had him away from Villmark more than he was there, and his trips down the hill to the mead hall were rarer even than that.

"He is," Loke said confidently. "What I wonder is, when is that going to be a problem? Having two of them? I suppose if they never meet..."

"You're just stirring up trouble," I said, turning to face him. "You told me once you didn't do that, unlike your namesake. I believed you when you said it. Was I wrong?"

"I'm not stirring up trouble," he said, but he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"You're upset about something," I said.

"It's nothing. Really," he said, putting one hand over his heart and the other up in the air as if swearing an oath. Then he dropped his hands and spoke in a more normal tone. "My sister hasn't been well. Nothing serious," he quickly added, "but when she's down, I'm down. That's why I haven't taken you to see her yet. I'd rather wait for a better day."

"Of course," I said.

"You should hand out those ciders before they get cold," he said, reaching for the tray of drinks and handing it back to me. Then he stepped backwards, off the patio and into the darkness. He raised a single hand in a melancholy farewell before I lost sight of him entirely.

I looked down at the mugs on the tray. They were still steaming, if just barely. But it was as if Loke's down mood had been contagious, and I had been infected. I took a deep breath and put a smile back on my face before turning to head towards the bonfire.

Nilda, Kara, Jessica and Michelle gathered around me, fairly lunging for the warm mugs of cider. Andrew had moved closer to Gullveig, and whatever he was saying to her, she was listening to intently. I could scarcely blame him for not noticing my arrival. Gullveig was like a black hole of attention; she pulled it all into herself without really trying to.

Roarr was still caught in that gravitational pull himself, although much like Loke had just done, he appeared to have taken a step back from the warmth of the fire and was in the process of fading into the shadows that closed in all around the patio.

But his eyes were still on Gullveig. The opening up he had been doing just moments before was over now; he was once more quiet and reclusive, there but not engaging with the people around him. But the look in his eyes as he watched Gullveig listening to Andrew, that was new.

Inscrutable, but new. I worried about what it meant.