Tricked by Kevin Hearne

me. What had I done when figures like Hel approached me as a potential ally? My primary reason for going through with the Asgard trip had been to preserve my honor by keeping my word. But I saw no honor in an unstained name now. If Ragnarok began because of me, no one would remember or care that I followed through on my promises. There would be no kind historians to write apologetics for me.
    Usually I try to suppress any emotions that savor of regret, because they are invariably aperitifs to a main course of depression, and for the long-lived, that’s a recipe for suicide. But that doesn’t mean they can’t sneak up on me sometimes.
    And, like, gang-tackle me.
    I felt a slight spell of vertigo as the enormity of what I’d done hit me. I wept silently behind my hands for Mrs. MacDonagh, for Leif, for Gunnar, for Väinämöinen, for the Norse, and for the untold suffering to come becauseof my bad decisions. Druids were supposed to be forces of preservation, not destruction, and I could not dance around the fact that my stupid pride had turned me into a misbegotten cockwaffle.
    Granuaile squatted down next to me and put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Well, clearly she didn’t like what you had to say about that,” she said.
    “Just checkin’ here,” Frank said, his voice thick. “Geologists don’t normally get invited to help destroy the world, do they?”
    Behind my hands, I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No, they don’t.” I pressed my tears away with my palms and then dropped them to my lap. “But don’t ask me who or what I really am right now. I’m supposed to be dead.”
    “Well, it seems to be a day for dead people to be walkin’ around,” Frank said. “And disintegratin’.” He pointed over to the
draugr
bodies, which were turning into ash and mixing with the dust of the plateau.
    “What was the deal with that freaky knife she had?” Coyote wondered aloud.
    “It’s called Famine. She said the next thing she cut with it wouldn’t rest until it had eaten me.”
    “Ew,” Granuaile said.
    Oberon tried to cheer me up.
    Frank Chischilly narrowed his eyes. “Did she say if it works on only one thing or on as many things as she cuts with it?”
    “That’s a pretty specific question. Why do you ask?”
    “Because there’s a couple of skinwalkers livin’ north of here. She’s headed right for ’em.”
     Oberon asked.
    Granuaile scrunched up her face. “Aren’t they shape-shifters of some kind? They use an animal skin?”
    Chischilly nodded. “They have to use a different skin for each shape. They keep to themselves mostly, unless you invade their territory.”
    “You say there’s two nearby?” I asked.
    “Up past the ranches a few miles thataway.” He pointed in the direction Hel had gone.
    I shifted my gaze and glared at Coyote. “So I guess I know why you’re so anxious to have the mine here,” I said. “Its primary qualification isn’t the proximity to Kayenta’s workforce; it’s the proximity to the skinwalkers. You figured I’d take care of them for you once they show up to defend their territory.”
    Coyote shrugged, not bothering to deny it. “I can’t go after ’em myself. If they killed me, then they’d just be that much more powerful.”
    Frank Chischilly frowned, clearly not understanding how killing a man could make the skinwalkers more powerful. But I understood. Skinwalkers can’t use a man’s skin—they already have their own. Coyote wasn’t a man, though, and that’s what Frank hadn’t quite figured out yet: Coyote was one of the First People, and whenever he died he always left his remnants behind. If the skinwalkers got hold of a Coyote skin, as opposed to a regular coyote skin, there was no telling what kind of shredding they could do with his power. And