He’d duplicated it perfectly, from the elegant jaw to the straight nose and the masterful sweep of sable-black eyebrows, but he couldn’t reproduce the eyes. Roland’s eyes shone with barely suppressed power. Hugh once told me that facing him was like looking into the eyes of the sun. I had done it, and the magic emanating from my father was like an avalanche. It caused me to back down for the first time in a very long time, not because I was afraid I would die but because I was afraid that everyone I loved would die with me. This “Roland” had Saiman’s eyes: sardonic, conceited, and resigned to coexisting with idiots who had a fraction of his intellect and weren’t worthy to share the air he breathed.

I laughed.

Saiman pondered me, clearly knocked off his stride. He must’ve planned to intimidate or unsettle me. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t have looked less like my father if he’d been an eighty-year-old woman.

I tried to look at him again, lost it, and laughed louder.

“Come inside,” he snapped.

“Yes, Dad.” I followed him in, snickering.

Saiman’s face acquired a lovely purple tint. “There is nothing humorous about this.”

“You’re going to have to do something about your new outfit. You keep cracking me up.”

Saiman’s face crawled. My stomach forgot it was inside me and tried to flee in horror. His bones moved, stretching the skin in a vomit-inducing, grotesque jig as if tennis balls were rolling under his skin. His hair disappeared, absorbed, his build slimmed down, and finally a new man stood in front of me. Bald, of medium build, his face neither ugly, nor handsome. A blank canvas of a face studded with sharp eyes. This was his neutral form, the one he wore most often.

“Much better,” I told him, trying to persuade my stomach to keep down breakfast.

Saiman invited me to sit down with a sweep of his hand. His apartment was an ultramodern oasis: curved futuristic lines, steel, glass, black walls, white plush furniture. It was a bit soulless.

I took a seat on the white couch. “For a man steeped in magic, you seem very fond of technology.”

“I like its civilizing influence.” Saiman sat across from me.

“And the fact that it’s getting more and more expensive to obtain has nothing to do with it?”

“That’s beside the point, Sharrim.”

Sharrim. Of the king. That was what Roland’s people called me. Saiman wasn’t just a magic expert. He was also an information broker. Secrets were his stock-in-trade and he was trying to rub my nose in mine. That was okay. Two could play this game.

“I think it’s perfectly relevant to this discussion, Aesir. Tell me, does Loki ever come to visit his grandson? What does he think of your crib?”

Saiman sat up straighter.