“Enough.” Hel opened her right eye and raised her graceful, elegant right hand to stop me. “Although the means may be unfamiliar, the notion is not. Humankind has catalogued the world since first they began scratching marks in the soil. Even so, we have never abetted them in this task.” She closed both eyes and fell silent a moment before opening them again. “Although I have misgivings, your idea has merit. I grant you permission to execute it.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “Thank you, my lady.”

Her right eye closed again. Oops, not out of the woods yet. “And this mortal you have brought into my demesne?”

“I would need his help to accomplish the task,” I said. “You might say he’s the only scribe in town.”

Hel said nothing, which I took to be her equivalent of raising her eyebrows and saying, “And . . . ?”

Despite the cold, a trickle of sweat ran down my back beneath the old down coat I’d donned for the occasion. “He promised to give me everything I want for one glimpse of you.”

The shadowy frost giant attendants behind Hel’s throne murmured at the audacity of Lee’s request. The goddess turned her head this way and that, revealing one perfect and one devastated profile in turn as she silenced them with a look. “I will consider it, Daisy Johanssen. Tell me, what else passes above?”

A blue jay roosting in the rafters gave a rather self-satisfied squawk, leading me to suspect it had observed me stumbling along the streets of Pemkowet the other day, half-blind, pain-dazed, and clinging to Jen’s arm. I shot it a covert glare as I reported on events of the past month, including Emmeline’s attempt to hex me and her threat to return.

But I managed to keep it on a professional level and Hel heard me out impassively. She was a goddess; she didn’t care about petty issues—she cared about results. “Well enough, my young liaison,” she said when I finished. “See that you continue to uphold my order.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Hel glanced upward. A pair of jays fluttered down to perch on the back of her throne, peering at me with bright, beady eyes. “There have been reports of a . . . person of interest . . . inquiring about purchasing large tracts of land in Pemkowet.”

“A person of . . . oh.” The sweat trickling down my back turned icy and my tail twitched uneasily. I remembered the lawyer I’d seen leaving the PVB. Hel was being polite. “You mean a hell-spawn like me.”

“No.” Closing her ember eye, her fair right side regarded me with gentle compassion. “Quite unlike you, Daisy Johanssen.”

My throat tightened with an unexpected surge of gratitude. “Thank you, my lady,” I murmured. “Have your, um, harbingers told you more? Is there something you’d like me to do about this?”