By Tuesday morning, Sigmund still hadn’t figured out what to tell Em. Mostly because if he was being honest, he’d been too busy daydreaming about Lain.

They hadn’t seen each other again that Monday. Lain sent an apologetic text around lunchtime mentioning he’d been waylaid by VPs wanting to discuss advertising campaigns for the next major PyreOS release. So Sigmund had played video games on the Inferno in Travis’s office for a while, until guilt had started to gnaw and he’d dragged himself back downstairs to do work.

It hadn’t been easy, and Sigmund was gaining a newfound appreciation for the Basement’s nickname when compared to the light and vistas of the CEO’s suite. He’d picked at the job queues, but it’d seemed so petty all of a sudden. Who the hell cared about a few lost emails when the gods themselves were sharpening knives and heading for war?

Later, at home, Sigmund’s thoughts had been a whirl of fire and feather. Of bright tattoos and dark, scarred skin.

Dappled. Lain’s true skin was dappled, little splotches of charcoal markings clustered across his shoulders and down his back, tracing the dips and grooves between the bulges of his muscle.

He had a lot of that. Muscle. Not bulky, but smooth and sleek and strong. Like a dancer or an acrobat or Nightwing and, wow, that train of thought was both incredibly nerdy and really, really gay. Sigmund was okay with it, though. He thought Lain probably would be as well. Lain seemed like the type to be all over the stage, gyrating to LMFAO, reveling in his own allure. Or standing and grinning while hands ran all over tattooed flesh to have a one-on-one examination of the same.

Sigmund had a sudden image of Lain, all wings and horns and tail, dancing around like a bird of paradise. Rippling his muscle and fanning his feathers, rolling blank eyes and grinning his stitched-through grin. All for Sigmund’s amusement and . . .

And, after that, Sigmund had to have a little quiet time alone. Then he’d come to the conclusion that he was, maybe, just a little bit of a weirdo.

A lucky weirdo, though. Very, very lucky.

Point being that, by Tuesday, he was itching to see Lain again. Or Travis. Or whoever he felt like being today. Anyone would be okay, really, so long as they grinned that too-sharp grin and looked at Sigmund with those too-bright eyes. It was an intense feeling, that desire. Sort of frightening, and Sigmund wondered if it was normal. He wondered who he could ask.

Today, Lain turned out to be Travis. He was sitting on the floor in the middle of his office, in front of a map of the city—the old-fashioned folding kind that Sigmund had been half convinced no longer existed in the brave new world of GPS and Google. Travis seemed to be inscribing runes onto the paper in his own blood. Sigmund tried not to look.

“Heya,” he said, going for nonchalance as he walked into the office.

Travis grinned—

(score!)

—as he looked up from . . . whatever it was he was doing. “Morning.” He was definitely using his own blood. Sigmund could see it pooling like green-black oil in his left hand. He was also using the fingernail of the index finger on his right hand like a pen.

“Do I want to know what you’re doing?” Sigmund was still trying not to look too hard at the blood-scrawled map. Or to smell the faint stink of melting plastic.

“Reading the leys,” Travis said, looking back down. “Figure out what Baldr’s planning.”

“Like divination or something?” Wayne had a bag of cow-bone runes at home. She used to cast them sometimes, until Em had given one too many lectures on how divination was sixty percent confirmation bias, thirty percent hindsight bias, ten percent magical thinking, and one hundred percent bullshit.

Travis winced, shedding doubt on Em’s conclusions. “Pretty much exactly not like divination, no,” he said. “That’s . . . dangerous magic. This is just reading what is, not what will be.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Sigmund wasn’t sure he understood the distinction, but decided to let it slide. Travis drew one final line, then flicked the remaining blood onto the map with a muttered . . . something. The map released a puff of dramatic purple-green smoke, then the runes on it started to glow. It almost looked as if they were lifting above the paper, that streets and suburbs themselves were spiraling in front of Sigmund’s eyes, turning into a whirling vortex all centered on—

He blinked. By the time his eyes were open again, the effect had faded, and the map was just a map. No blood, no runes, no glowing lines, no inexorable spiral. Travis sighed, settling back on his haunches and tapping his goatee with one long finger.

“No good?”

“I don’t know.” Travis sounded distracted. “There’s something going on, but it’s not happening here. It almost feels like . . . bah!” He lashed out a hand and the map burst into sharp white-blue flames. When they cleared, there was nothing left, not even ash. Wiping his hands on his pants, Travis stood. “What’s up?”

Sigmund tried not to stare too hard at the decidedly un-burnt spot on the floor. “Uh. Dad wants to know if you want to come to dinner tonight? At sevenish?”

“Who wants to come?” Travis had a sly sort of look, and Sigmund felt his face burning at the innuendo, even if that wasn’t actually what Travis was asking. Especially because that wasn’t actually what he was asking.

“Lain. I haven’t told Dad about . . .” Sigmund made a gesture in Travis’s direction. “He’s such a salaryman, he’d freak out.”

That earned him the edge of white fangs and a wiggle of dark eyebrows. “All right, I’ll be there.”

“Cool,” said Sigmund, just as Travis’s computer, phone, and tablet all simultaneously made chiming noises. “What . . . ?”

Travis rolled his eyes

(toward Ásgarðr)

heavenward. “Con call to our Chinese manufacturer,” he said.

“Oh.” Because, duh. Travis was like a super-important billionaire CEO, standing there in a three-piece suit and tie probably worth more than Sigmund’s salary. And here was Sigmund, just barging into his office and inviting him to dinner and, Jesus, he was such a dork. “I should go then. Let you . . . do that.”

Except, moving was apparently not high on the agenda. Sigmund’s feet shuffled a few inches but didn’t manage to get any closer to the door. Waiting for . . . something. For—

For Travis to close the few steps between them, to cup his hand on Sigmund’s cheek, to exhale against Sigmund’s lips as he said, “That wasn’t a hint, you know. I don’t want you to go, either.”

“Oh.” The fabric of Travis’s suit was soft and warm under Sigmund’s fingers. “Good.” When his mouth parted, one long finger stroked his bottom lip.

“Yeah,” said Travis, eyes bright enough to glow. “Good.”

Like this, Travis didn’t feel much different from Lain. Same too-warm, solid body, same loam-and-charcoal smell, same huge, vaguely terrifying presence just behind Sigmund’s eyelids. He was still an amazing kisser, too. Hot hands cupping Sigmund’s face, holding him still while Travis’s mouth and tongue went to work in ways they hadn’t the last few times they’d done this.

Travis had a beard. That was new. Sort of . . . ticklish.

“Hnngh!” said Sigmund. One of his own hands had slipped underneath Travis’s jacket, the other was threading through long, soft, dark hair.

When Travis pulled back, it was with one last sharp-toothed bite. Not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to send strange little cinders burning somewhere beneath Sigmund’s heart.

He felt . . . light. Blown apart and wrecked. But not nearly as wrecked as Travis looked, eyes closed and tongue still dancing over his bottom lip, forehead pressed to Sigmund’s.

“Oh, the things I’d do to you.” Travis’s words were barely audible, just gusts of breath ghosting across Sigmund’s skin. “And I’m trying to be so good . . .”

“Why?” It was much easier to ask Travis’s tie than his face. Cowardly, maybe, and Sigmund could feel the not-quite-fear churning in his gut.

Travis gave a dark sort of chuckle. “I don’t really know.” He sounded a bit perplexed himself. “The fun of it, perhaps. Maybe I’m worried I’ll screw it up if it’s too easy.”

“I have no idea what I’m doing.” It was true. Sigmund’s last girlfriend had been a fling in high school that had lasted all of a month. They’d spent a couple of bleary afternoons locked in his room, fumbling and kissing, but nothing beyond that. He’d certainly never . . . done the ellipsis with anyone. Certainly not another man and really certainly not a god. He didn’t know if he was ready for that. He didn’t know if anyone could be ready.

He was pretty keen on finding out.

“I know,” said Travis. Whether in response to Sigmund’s words or his thoughts, Sigmund wasn’t sure. “But it isn’t rocket surgery. Just a dance.”

“I’m a terrible dancer.”

Lips caressed Sigmund’s again, just briefly, just enough for Sigmund to miss them when they left. “Keep a pocketful of dollars and jump in time to the scrolling arrows,” Travis said. “As long as you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.”

“And you?”

Travis pulled closer, hand sliding down Sigmund’s back, below his back, onto the soft curve of his ass. “Oh,” Travis said, all wicked grin. “I’m always having fun.” He winked.

It wasn’t the truth, not quite. But it was true enough here, now, in this moment, and it would do.

The third kiss was easier. Not as many teeth as the first, not as chaste as the second. Just a kiss, lips and tongues and maybe a few teeth, too.

Only a few. Not enough to bleed.