I felt breath on my neck and turned to see Loki so close he could have kissed me. I took a hesitant step backward. He held my wax-sealed vial in his hands, the only possession I’ve ever cared about, and my fists clenched when I saw it.

“Megan trusted you to protect her. You failed her,” he said.

“What?”

He didn’t have a chance to reply. The horn sounded again, and more sounds came out of the fog: a snarl, a chink of armor, deep voices. The fog behind Loki darkened, a gargantuan shadow looming over him. It broke through the fog and revealed itself to be a wolf whose size defied nightmares. Its fur was matted and its eyes ran with foul yellow stuff like a stray dog’s. But this wasn’t a dog. Not by a long shot.

Kate swore and I stumbled backward against her. We went sprawling; all the strength draining out of my limbs. The women stood under their tree behind us, silent.

“Father,” the wolf said, his voice like a sword scraping across rock. “It is our time.”

“Nearly,” agreed Loki. “Daniel, we have work to do. I know what you carry in here.” He tapped the bottle. “Pathetic. Why do you think you haven’t seen her since you died? She doesn’t want to see you.”

He tossed my bottle above his head and it disappeared into the wolf’s mouth with a crunch. I gaped as the wolf licked its chops. “Fear,” it said. “It is good.”

Loki reached up to an overhanging bough of the tree and snapped off a branch. In his hands it became a sword. “Now it is time. Let’s go,” he said.

He strode into the fog in the direction Odin had gone. The wolf leapt over us and bounded toward the sounds beyond that indicated an army’s gathering.

I crawled forward, still weak from shock, until I found the neck of the bottle lying on the road, the part the wolf hadn’t eaten. I closed my hand around it until it cut into my palm.

* * *

I don’t know when my mother officially snapped. My father said later it was post partum depression that just never went away. She had seemed normal, a little moody, maybe, but nothing to make me fear her. Then one day I came home from school to find her in the kitchen, crying about a broken computer and scrabbling in a drawer for a knife. She shouted at me to go outside, but I heard my sister Megan crying and I ran down the hall to check on her.

Megan hid in the corner of her room, clutching her blanket. I hugged her and told her it would be okay, that Mommy was just mad and she’d get over it, and that I would always protect her, but my mother was already in the doorway.