“They’re doing something with blood,” I said. “They took mine, they got a bunch of bleeding flowers. I don’t know what exactly they’re doing, but they obviously believe it will help them cross the bridge and get into Alfheim.”

“But why can’t they just go to Alfheim now?” Pan asked. “What’s preventing them from crossing?”

“Some kind of magic?” I shrugged. “Maybe something like the Ögonen but much more powerful. I mean, trolls keep the humans out of our cities, and the Älvolk keep most of us out of Áibmoráigi. It’s reasonable that the álfar figured out how to keep us all out of Alfheim.”

Bryn rubbed her temple. “Can we do anything about this right now?”

“Um . . .” I looked to Pan. “At this very moment? I don’t know.”

“Good.” She stepped away from the wall and nodded. “The last several days have been a major mindfuck for me, and I’m hungry and stressed and this room is making me claustrophobic.”

“I think we could all use a break,” I admitted.

“Margarit, the front desk clerk, told me that there’s a bar and grill close by,” Bryn said.

Pan snapped his fingers. “Oh yeah. The Ugly Vulture is connected to this place by a tree bridge, and I think there might be some other shops connected that way too.” He looked up at me with slightly arched eyebrows. “What do you say, Ulla? Wanna give the Ugly Vulture another go?”

“Sure,” I said, even though I honestly would’ve been happy to stay in the room, pacing and overanalyzing everything I’d learned this summer.

But Bryn was right—we could all really use a break. Plus, I figured that if I cleared my head for a while, I might be able to come back at the situation with fresh eyes.

The Ugly Vulture was kind of a roughneck place, but it was early afternoon so I figured it wouldn’t be too busy. Pan and I hadn’t had any trouble when we went there before, and I thought it sounded like a good way to unwind.

Bryn was freshly showered but Pan and I needed a little bit of time. I tried to be fast—I did a quick smoky eye with a suede lipstick, and I put on my black baby-doll minidress covered in big yellow and orange flowers.

But I took long enough for Elof to return from the clinic and for Pan to fill him in. The blood-analyzing process apparently took fourteen hours inside of the machine, so he had nothing to really do now except wait, and he decided to join us on our outing.