“Is… is it safe to pet him?” Dad asked.

 

“I will not bite,” Fenrir answered.

 

Dad’s eyes went wide behind his thick glasses.  “He TALKS?”

 

“I do indeed,” Fenrir said calmly.  “Be grateful I’m not like most dogs.  You would not want to hear what they would have to say, mostly because they would never STOP talking.”

 

“I see,” Dad said, reaching up to scratch behind Fenrir’s ears.  Fenrir liked to put on a stoic air, but you could tell he was as happy as any puppy to get ear scritches.

 

Dan hopped next to my feet, apparently feeling left out.  I picked him up and rubbed on top of him, over the toast slots.  “I’d scratch behind your ears too, but you haven’t got any.”

 

Our petting time was cut short by a knock on the sliding glass door to the backyard.  I turned to see Cat opening the door to let Billie and Astveig in. We’d taught them to get in the habit of portaling into the backyard instead of directly into the house to avoid them walking in on us at unfortunate times.  It had happened a couple times, and the result wasn’t pretty. Astveig still had a bit of singed hair on the side of her head that she tried to style her hair to hide after she portaled directly into Cat’s room.

 

“Uh, Dad, these are our friends, Billie and Astveig,” I said.  “They hop in from time to time.”

 

“Any news?” asked Cat.

 

“Astveig thinks she’s found something that could be of use against Loki,” said Billie.

 

Astveig pushed her tiny spectacles up the bridge of her nose.  “It’s something, anyway. Possibly a loophole.”

 

“A loophole?” Dad asked, confused.

 

“Astveig has been looking into Crys’s curse,” clarified Cat.  “Trying to find some way to break the betrothal. It’s proven trickier than we thought.”

 

“So, what have you got?” I asked, eager for some hope of a reprieve of my supposedly destined fate.

 

“Well,” Astveig began, “it appears the betrothal can only be broken by a superseding contract.  If another contract takes precedence over the betrothal, than the betrothal will be nullified.” Astveig’s face took on an even more dour appearance than usual.  “Here’s where the bad news comes in: the only entities capable of creating such a contract are the gods of the underworld, the realm of the dead, because the betrothal is, to put it in modern parlance, ‘until death do you part.’”

 

The room fell deathly silent.  Even Dan didn’t make a sound.

 

I finally decided to break the silence my usual way.  “So, if I die and am revived, we can bring in Eliza Dushku as backup?”

 

Cat and Billie laughed.  Dad and Astveig looked very confused.  Fenrir and Dan growled at each other in their never-ending rivalry over who gets the doggy bed.

 

“I have no idea who that is,” said Astveig before attempting continue, apparently concluding my quip was probably another of my pointless jokes, and she’d be right.  “But the point is that, if you can pledge your soul to one of the underworld gods, then that god would have precedence over Loki’s claim.”

 

“So, all I have to do is pledge my soul to a death god.  Sounds simple enough. What’s the catch?”

 

“Well,” Astveig said, flipping through one of the books she’d brought with her, “it has to be a consensual agreement.  Meaning, you can’t just pledge yourself to a death god and be done with it. The god has to willingly offer and accept the pledge.”

 

Billie picked up from there.  “And that means you’ll have to find one who is willing to help you, which may not be easy.  They will probably want something in return, and what they ask is rarely something easily obtained.  You can’t just arrive with a bottle of wine.”

 

“This is all so complicated,” Dad said, his face a wrinkle of confusion, which I suspect was more about the fact that wine was not considered an acceptable offering than that we had to deal with gods.

 

“Luckily, there is one death god who might be particularly willing to help us,” continued Billie.  “Hel, Loki’s daughter.”

 

Fenrir’s ears perked up.  “Hmm. My half sister. She’s always been something of an estranged member of the family.  Never got along with Father particularly well.”

 

Billie nodded.  “Indeed. I haven’t seen her in several centuries, ever since Odin gifted her with her realm in the underworld, but the last time I saw her, she was definitely not on good terms with Loki.  She may be willing to hear your plea. And that’s where the final complication comes in: we have no idea how to get to the underworld.”

 

“That’s not… entirely accurate,” Astveig said, trying to hide her embarrassment.  “I have some… IDEAS, at least.”

 

Cat’s ears perked up.  No, not like an actual cat.  “Oh? Do tell?”

 

Astveig shrugged.  “Well, there are people who have gone to the underworld before and escaped, like Odysseus.  Pretty much all of them are dead now though, so it would take summoning their spirits…”

 

Cat squealed with delight.  “Ooh, necromancy!”

 

I gestured for her to calm down.  “Whoah, down girl. What other ideas do you have that, hopefully, don’t include Cat accidentally destroying a city block?”

 

“Well,” continued Astveig, “there’s also trying to find a psychopomp who can guide us.”

 

“What, like Charon?” asked Cat.

 

Suddenly, Billie’s eyes lit up.  “Or Odin!”

 

Astveig’s face hid behind her palm.  “I was really hoping to avoid that.”

 

Dad was once again out of his element.  “Who’s Odin?”

 

“The Allfather,” said Billie.

 

“King of the Gods,” said Cat.

 

“The guy with the hat,” I said.

 

“An asshole,” groaned Astveig.