Burden of Power (Chosen by Freya Book 2) by Michael Anderle

Author:Michael Anderle [Anderle, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798888786178
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2023-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bar Boheme, Copenhagen, Denmark, Wednesday night, late

As far as Mads was concerned, the biggest perk of a dive bar was that it was open till the small hours of the morning. The second biggest perk was the crappy lighting.

Why, you could cram a whole crew of dusty, stinking, damp, bleeding, exhausted treasure hunters into the table in the darkest, dingiest corner of the joint. Nobody would pay the lot of them a second glance so long as they kept their voices down and paid the tab.

Mads slumped over the high-top table with his head bowed and a pint of Guinness clutched close to his chest. To his left, Leif mechanically forked fillets of pickled herring into his mouth. To his right, Terra sipped rum and Coke through a straw. The ice in the glass rattled every time she picked it up in her trembling hand. Every few seconds, she reached up to prod tenderly at a swollen lump in her shoulder and wince.

After high-tailing it away from the Zilveren Prins, she’d managed to meet back up with them at an all-night pub a few blocks off the canal. When Mads had first spotted her through the bar’s front window, he thought he was looking at a co-ed in a particularly bad Halloween costume. Sexy dead housekeeper, perhaps. She’d been limping, bleeding, and wincing with every step. Mads would have stepped onto the street and offered to pop that dislocated shoulder back into place, but Leif, ever gallant, had beaten him to it.

At least Mads had been able to offer her a couple of extra-strength Tylenol from the stash he always kept about his person.

Now, here they were, the gang all back together. Quiet and contemplative, and each of them too tired to start the conversation.

Mads felt something hard poking into his thigh. Terra clutched the puzzle box in her lap, afraid to let it go. After the night they’d had, he could hardly blame her.

For a long time after the barkeeper brought over their drinks, nobody spoke.

“So,” Terra said when her rum and Coke was half gone. “That went well.”

Mads shifted his weight, recalling the final thing old Doc Barrow had told him on their last private phone call. Maddox, lad, do try not to make a circus of it.

He supposed he could always blame the fiasco on Terra’s tenuous grasp of her magic. Surely, the doc couldn’t fault him for that.

Leif nudged his plate of bar food across the table toward Terra. “Have some fish,” he suggested. “It’s good. It’ll settle your stomach.”

Terra stared down at the offering. Pickled fish, pickled eggs, a pile of bar nuts swimming in marinade from the fish and eggs, and a side of hard pretzels.

“I saw the barkeeper pull that stuff out of an old mayonnaise jar beneath the bar,” she stated flatly.

“Of course.” Leif looked surprised. “That’s the traditional way of making pickled herring. Best way to eat it.”

“I’d have thought off in the land of the elves, you noshed on things like honeyed fruit and sweet bread.

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