The Trickster Edda Read online

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  Bleary-eyed and itchy, shoved so far into the couch he shared his corner with a lost remote and the Methuselah of Fritos, Conrad woke up by degrees. The first degree landed a nice urgh so gross need shower uppercut, wrenched the contents of his head inside out and stepped back to allow the second more room for its stunning my friends don’t have clean apartments where am I what happened last night oh god all I remember are giant man-birds roundhouse.

  For a panicked half-second, Conrad scrabbled at the couch crevice, trying to wrench himself upright and out of this strange, tastefully decorated apartment with very feminine walls in no danger of collapsing without duct tape.

  Except no, wait. He remembered. None of this had anything to do with roofies or acid, however much he sort of wished it had.

  Only, seeing the very beautiful and once again clean Laundry Girl kind of laughing at his sudden flailing from where she was towel drying her hair, birds aside, Conrad revised his opinion of current events to pretty stoked. Maybe this Loki thing was worth it. Near-death experiences in quick succession sure beat awkward jokes about bowling for an ice breaker, at any rate.

  Well, no. Never mind. Come to think of it, he’d rather endure the excruciating struggle toward the English language in the face of a pretty girl than ever, ever see those ‘roiding pigeons again.

  “You wake up pretty,” Lily chuckled, wrapping her hair up in a towel all at once in that secret handshake type thing he knew only a woman could ever do—and, oh god, banter with a pretty girl. Near-death experiences were kind of failing him and a bowling joke really wouldn’t work right now.

  “I know. Not everyone can be as gorgeous as me,” he said and shit, was his mouth even attached to anything anymore? But Lily laughed and threw a multicolored pile of her clothing into his lap, smelling just like her, and what did she expect him to…?

  “Those are the only things I have that might fit you,” she said with an apologetic shrug. “It’s either these or the track pants my sister bought me that have Juicy on the butt.”

  And wow, this girl was totally a saint, because in her position, he’d have given his helpless male friend causing all this world-ending shit the ones that said Juicy in half a heartbeat.

  Conrad grinned, and about a million half incoherent different ways of thanking her spilled out of his apparently broken mouth all at once. Something not nearly as clever as it had sounded a second ago in his head tumbled out, and probably it was one of those things on the unspoken list of what never to say to a girl, not ever, not even if she asks, but Lily really was a saint, because she laughed as he tried to nonchalantly duck into the bathroom to die in embarrassment, calling, “Well, if your butt was a juice box, I think it’d be apple.”

  And all he could think of was, You’d be cherry. But that one he knew was on the absolutely not, not even on pain of death list. So Conrad kept his mouth shut and closed the bathroom door behind him, grinning like an idiot. He probably needed to get this permanently happy thing checked out.

  But apple juice?

  Conrad made a mental note to check out Lily’s fridge.