“I’m sorry about leaving you in the lurch.”

She waved away my apology, tucking the phone into her pocket. “It’s your life, and you have a right to live it the way you want. Damn, she’s having another hissy. So much for relaxing. I’d better go see what bee is up Queen Carmen’s butt this time. See ya.”

“Later,” I said, mentally rehearsing the conversation I was going to have with my mother. A sudden itchiness had me twitching slightly. Maybe I should tell her now, rather than wait until I was in California. “It’s not like it’s going to be one simple conversation,” I murmured as I put Ben’s picture back into the drawer. “I might as well start my martyrdom sooner than later.”

I reached for my cell phone, remembering after a few seconds that it was lost with the backpack. “Bullfrogs! I’ll just have to wait until Geoff gets back.”

I used the time to trot downstairs to check if my backpack had been turned in to the bookstore (it hadn’t), finally using their phone to call the police and report it stolen. I suffered through a lecture about leaving valuables out in the open, then headed back up the stairs to the apartment, wondering how my life had suddenly become so chaotic.

“Goddess!”

I stared openmouthed at the man who turned from the small ancient refrigerator that squatted next to the TV, a chicken drumstick in his hand. He was tall, had shoulder-length bleached blond hair, and blue eyes that had seen more history than I could possibly imagine. “Eirik? Eirik Redblood?”

“Goddess Fran! We are so happy to see you again! You have grown bigger!” A second man popped out of the tiny bathroom, wiping his hands on his linen tunic. He was bigger than the first, large and imposing, with a long brown beard that was split down the middle and braided.

“Isleif? What—?”

“She is pleased to see us,” a voice said behind me. I spun around and stared with continued stupor at the third man. He, too, was tall and muscular, but his hair was walnut, and he had a short goatee and mustache that gave him a roguish look. “Finnvid.”

“Aye, she is pleased,” Eirik the Viking ghost said, frowning as Finnvid captured my hand and pressed his all-too-real lips to my knuckles. “Do not slobber on the goddess, Finnvid. It is unseemly.”

“Sorry.” Finnvid’s brown eyes twinkled at me with an expression I remembered well.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, trying frantically to wrap my mind around the fact that three Viking ghosts—my three Viking ghosts—were standing here in my apartment. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Valhalla? Didn’t Gunn and her Valkyries take you there? I distinctly remember her taking you away.”

“We have returned,” Isleif said simply.

“Freya has sent us to you to beg your help,” Eirik said, waving the piece of chicken at me.

“Freya wants my help? The goddess Freya?” I asked, remembering a very pissed-off, very beautiful woman.

“Yes. Frigga—that’s Odin’s wife—she asked Freya to take care of Loki, and since he keeps trying to sell her to the dwarves, she finally had enough and sent us to help you banish him to the Akashic Plain.”

My mouth was hanging wide open in prime fly-catching position. I blinked at Eirik a couple of times, wondering if I’d suddenly gone insane. I reached out and touched his chest. He, like the other Vikings, wore a combination of fur, leather, and wool clothing. Each man had a sword strapped to his back, and a dagger and ax on his hips.

Eirik’s eyes lit with interest as my hand touched his chest. “You wish to rut at last, goddess?”

“No!” I snatched my hand back from him, remembering well his desire to do things that I had only ever considered doing with Ben. “No, I do not wish to . . . er . . . rut with you.”

“Ah, that would be because you rut with the Dark One. He is here?” The three men looked around.

“No, Ben’s in Europe.”

“Europe?” Isleif pursed his lips and lowered his large body gingerly onto Geoff’s overstuffed beanbag chair. “You have had a quarrel with your man? We will give you advice.”

“No, no, that’s not at all necessary,” I said quickly, all too familiar with their sort of relationship advice.

“Advice,” Finnvid agreed, nodding. He shoved Isleif upright when the latter tipped over backward, having evidently not realized there was no back to the beanbag chair. “We are excellent in advice. I, myself, have had five wives. Eirik has had two, and Isleif has been married to the same woman for over a thousand years.”

Isleif smiled smugly.

“We are experts on women,” Eirik said, taking my hand. “You will tell us about this quarrel, and we will tell you what you have done wrong.”

“Honestly, guys, it’s all good. Ben and I . . . er . . . we aren’t really a couple anymore. He stayed in Europe when I came home to go to college. Now I work for a Web development company.” I fought back a little bit of panic at the thought of the three Vikings, well-meaning as they were, giving me endless advice regarding Ben.

“You aren’t a couple of what?” Finnvid asked.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Tell me about this thing with Freya. Why does she want Loki banned? And how on earth does she expect me to do anything about it?”

“You are the goddess Fran, bearer of the Vikingahärta,” Eirik said, releasing my hand when I tugged firmly. “Freya knows you have the power to defeat Loki, since you have done so in the past.”

“I didn’t defeat him, per se,” I said, mentally going over the events almost five years in the past. “We kind of hit a deadlock. And as for the Vikingahärta . . . I don’t have it.”

The three Vikings goggled at me. Eirik dropped his piece of chicken. “You don’t?” he asked, absently wiping his fingers on his wool tunic.

“No. It’s in Europe. I left it with Imogen.”

“Imogen,” Finnvid drawled, a wicked smile coming to his face. “How I have missed her.”

“Uh-huh.” I gave him a look that told him I wasn’t buying it. His smile grew broader. “She’s keeping it safe for me. I didn’t feel it was right to bring it with me when I went to college, and I haven’t seen Imogen since I left Europe.”

“Then you must retrieve it from her,” Eirik said, picking up the chicken and blowing on it. He must have seen my face because he added, “Five-second rule.”

I gawked at him. “You know about the five-second rule?”

He shrugged. “Odin has many televisions. Sometimes he lets us watch MythBusters. There was a show about the five-second rule.”

I held up my hands, having too many difficulties trying to picture a bunch of Viking ghosts sitting around watching TV. “Let’s get back to Loki, shall we? Freya sent you to me to help get rid of him?”

“Aye. She was impressed with how bravely we fought against him before,” Isleif said. He suddenly brightened as he turned to the other two men. “We can pillage a McDonald’s again!”

“McDonald’s!” Finnvid and Eirik exclaimed in unison, their faces filled with delight.

“Oh, for the love of the birds in the trees . . . you guys know the rules! No pillaging!”

Finnvid patted me on the shoulder. “You need not get yourself roused with anger, goddess Fran. Freya gave Eirik much gold to spend while we aid you.”

Eirik pulled out a credit card. “We have weasel gold.”

“That’s Visa Gold, not weasel . . . Oh, never mind. Just be sure you use that and don’t pillage anything.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know why Freya thinks I can banish Loki, and frankly, the aborted kidnapping of Geoff notwithstanding, I’d rather be left in peace.”

“Goddess Freya wishes you to banish Loki as soon as you can,” Isleif told me, struggling to get out of the beanbag chair. Eirik and Finnvid were rummaging around in the fridge, murmuring softly to themselves over my yogurts and Geoff’s leftover take-out chicken. I gave Isleif my hand, planted my feet firmly, and did my best not to topple over when he managed to get to his feet. “He is scaring away the dolphins.”

I was getting a little tired of all the goggling and gawking, but there was nothing else I could do at such a bizarre statement. “Huh?”

“He scares away the dolphins. Is that chicken I smell? Excellent. I am very hungry. I will eat a whole one myself.”

“What dolphins?” I asked, tugging on the sleeve of the linen shirt he wore beneath his wool tunic.

“The ones at Asgard.” He frowned as Finnvid handed him a lemon crème yogurt. “There is no more chicken?”

“Eirik is eating it.”

“The goddess will get us more,” Eirik answered around a mouthful of fried chicken breast, little crumbs flying from his mouth.

“The goddess will do no such thing. You boys can feed yourselves.”

“She is right. We have the weasel gold,” Finnvid said, sucking on a wing.

“Low-fat? I do not want low-fat,” Isleif declared, examining the yogurt. “I need fat to maintain my strength.”

“You have dolphins in Valhalla?” I asked Eirik.

“No. We have fighting and blood and ale wenches in Valhalla,” he corrected. “The dolphins are in Asgard.”

“But I thought—” I stopped, confused.

“Valhalla is part of Asgard. Some years ago, Odin moved it to the Bahamas because Frigga wished to swim with the dolphins.”

“Your Nordic heaven place is in the Bahamas?” I asked, incredulous.

“I just said so. Loki scares the dolphins away. Frigga is most angry with him, and tried to have him banished from Asgard, but Odin refused. He said that Loki lost much standing with the other members of the Aesir when you defeated him, and it would be cruel to take Asgard from him.”

“I didn’t defeat him. It was a deadlock.”