Back outside in the warm summer night, I said good-bye to Jen. Bethany sat in the passenger seat of the LeBaron, staring straight ahead, while Mikill waited patiently beside his dune buggy and dripped onto the driveway.

“Are you going to be okay?” Jen asked me.

“I’ll be fine. Mikill will drive me home.” I made a shooing gesture at her. “Go on; get Bethany out of here before she changes her mind again.”

Jen wasn’t entirely satisfied. “What did Geoffrey the prat mean about Lady Eris’s display with you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “She tried to put the bloodsucker whammy on me. I let them think it worked.”

She looked suspiciously at me. “Did it?”

“No!”

Jen grabbed my chin and lifted it to inspect my throat.

I batted her hand away. “Okay, it worked a little! But I was able to break it. Now get out of here, will you?”

“All right, all right. Call me.”

“I will.”

I waited until the LeBaron’s taillights turned out of the driveway before getting in Mikill’s dune buggy. The frost giant solicitously handed me a fur coat.

“Thanks.” I squirmed into it, pushing back the overly long sleeves. “Where’s Garm’s doggy treat?”

“It is at your feet, Daisy Johanssen.”

Oh, so that was what I was stepping on. I reached down and fished up a crusty loaf of bread, hoping the hellhound wouldn’t mind that it was slightly flattened. “Good timing,” I said as Mikill put the buggy in gear. “How did you know where to find me?”

“I am able to sense dauda-dagr’s presence. The timing was incidental.”

I rubbed the side of my neck again. “Well, it was good anyway.”

“That is well.”

A frost giant of few words, Mikill drove without speaking to the Pemkowet Dune Rides, breaking his silence only to utter his customary warning to hold fast as we departed from the graded trails to jounce over the untamed dunes, Garm’s full-throated howl arising in the darkness before us.

At least this time I was ready for him. “Here, boy!” I shouted as the slavering figure came into view, yellow eyes aflame. Winding up like a pitcher, I threw the bread loaf as far as I could, watching the hellhound bound after it. “Go get it!”

And then we were spiraling down the massive trunk of Yggdrasil II, past the rushing wall of heartwood, past the Norns doing their Nornish thing, drawing water from the well and tending to the roots of the giant pine. I gave them a wishful glance as we passed, wondering whether they would speak to me this time, maybe utter a little sooth.

“No,” Mikill said in answer to my unvoiced question. “They have no counsel for you yet, Daisy Johanssen.”

“Will they ever?” I asked him.

He turned his patient, slush-colored gaze on me. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I do not know.”

I sighed.