picked on in school, and grew up to be one of those teachers that kids liked to torture. But Luke had never participated in any of that; the pranks were almost always instigated by Tomas Tomasson, a swaggering, egotistical halfback on the team who Luke privately disliked at least as much as Jenks probably did.
As Luke came up on them, the guys looked surprised and then amused to see him as they razzed, “Hey, is that Mars?”
“Someone set your clock ahead?”
“Mars, up before eight? Is the world ending or something?”
Luke scowled and slowed to talk. “Damn Jenks,” he muttered.
It was a testament to the general hatred of Jenks that the guys actually made sympathetic noises. “Oh, Jenks,” Tanner said knowingly. “What’d he get you for?”
“Who the hell knows?” Luke grumbled. “I’ve turned in every paper, on time, and I’m barely pulling a C. He’s making me get tutoring to stay on the team.”
“Sucks, man.”
“Don’t sweat it. Not like they can kick you off.”
“Well, they’re not going to,” Luke swaggered, but inside he was not so sure. He was just going to have to make this tutoring thing work.
“So...Val? Homecoming?” Stu asked him in that verbless way he had.
Homecoming. Luke knew there had been something he was trying not to think about. And Val.
Val was his personal cheerleader; every guy on the team had his own. Luke’s was a dark-haired and fiery beauty. The personal cheerleaders brought cookies or gifts for their team member on Game Day, wrote encouraging little notes and cheered them by name on the field. Some of the more feminist girls and teachers in the school were rumbling about abolishing the tradition of personal cheerleaders, but with the team on a winning streak that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
And it’s not like Val was what anyone would call subservient; her Game Day gifts always had an edge to them that was both exciting and unnerving, a sexy game that she was playing that only she seemed to know the rules of. Luke and Val weren’t going steady but they were an item. He just wasn’t so thrilled with the idea that she expected him to ask her to Homecoming—that in fact everyone did. Where were these things written, anyway? It was like he had no choice about it.
He felt irritated and a little lost.
He knew he had a good life, but there were times that he felt strangely unfulfilled. He couldn’t have said what more he could want, and yet, something felt lacking, some purpose. And then he’d score the winning touchdown and hear the cheers of the crowd, and see Val cheering just for him...
“Would that be a yes or a no?” Tanner prodded.
Luke thought of Val, those legs that went on forever and the way a sweater clung just like skin to her perfect breasts, and that black hair and those black, sultry eyes...and that mouth...
Well, hell, who wouldn’t ask her?
“I guess,” he said nonchalantly. The guys gave one another knowing looks.
“Later,” he told them, and headed toward the library.
* * *
Aurora walked down the locker-lined hall, headed toward the library. She was still getting used to her teenage body and she was so nervous; she really felt sixteen, something she hadn’t felt since—well, since she had been playing sixteen, at this very high school.
The Norns didn’t have to live as mortals, of course; it was just more fun to interact that way. Gods and Norns alike had a long history of intermingling with humans. It had always been a kind of charming game.
But with Luke it had been different. It wasn’t a game at all. Aurora wanted to see the world through his eyes, feel what he felt, explore what he explored—taste, touch, hear, see, smell, sense everything that he did. And it all felt new because she was experiencing it with him.
She wasn’t sure when her feelings had changed, when she started losing her objectivity. Norns weren’t supposed to fall in love with their human charges; it was wrong, it was forbidden. But fallen she had.
She’d cried for him when his parents died, and watched hopefully as his grandmother had picked him up at the hospital to bring him back to what would become his home. That was the first day she’d appeared to him in real life, in the form of a little neighbor girl who could cry with him and laugh with him and hug him for real when he was sad. And more and more Aurora found herself not just watching over Luke but empathizing with him in a way that was different than it had been with her other mortal charges.
She was immortal, of course, but she felt like she was his age, that she had the same feelings he did. Was excited by the same things, was scared by the same things, saw the same colors, wanted the same things.
More and more it felt as if there were no boundaries between them, that she was feeling his feelings. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but what happened when it just did?
That’s when she’d started going to school with him.
But it wasn’t until they’d hit the teen years that Aurora really felt herself starting to go out of control. All those hormones! She was as giddy as any teenage girl around Luke.
And it was right here in the school that he’d broken her heart for the first time...the heart that she wasn’t supposed to have...
Aurora shook her head and tried to pull herself together. Stop it. You only have a day. You have to focus.
She opened the door of the library and walked in. At this hour she had the whole place to herself, except for Mr. Twitchell, the librarian, who didn’t even lower the newspaper he was hidden behind at the circulation desk. She walked into the cluster of round tables and sat down at one out of the librarian’s sight. Her hands were sweating just like a mortal’s as she watched the clock and the door simultaneously, holding her breath...on the verge of tears from sheer anticipation.
Then suddenly the chair across from hers was pulled out, and a red-haired, freckle-faced kid plopped down in the seat, startling her; she hadn’t heard anyone come in at all. His hair was spiky, gelled to within an inch of its life, and he carried a skateboard bristling with stickers, which he slid under his chair.
Loki, of course, ever the shape-shifter, decked out as an adolescent skatepunk.
As she stared at him, he grinned at her. “You like?”
“You look like a redheaded porcupine.”
He looked faintly injured. “I think it’s a good look for me.”
She tried not to glance toward the library door. “Please go away.”
Instead, he tipped back in his seat and put his Converse sneaker-shod feet up on the table. “I thought you should have a chaperone. You’re only sixteen. You have no idea what these jocks can be like.”
She rolled her eyes. “I think I’m safe enough in the library.”
“How little you know, child.”
“Please leave,” she said more urgently.
Loki hauled his legs down from the table and slid forward in the chair in one sinuous move. “Seriously, you’ve been exactly here and now before. And where did it get you? Nearly kicked out of the Aesir, that’s where. Not that the mortal isn’t just fabulous, but they’re all nothing but trouble in the end. Why start a war over this one?”
“No one’s starting a war,” she began.
Loki chortled. “Are you kidding? Val is just about nuclear. She takes this gathering-warriors-for-Odin thing very seriously.”
“Oh. Val,” Aurora said, feeling a tug of worry. She was actually surprised she hadn’t seen her sister yet; that wasn’t good.