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“Can’t I call you…I don’t know, Sandra or something? Trixie's kind of porny.”
“Trixie’s clever.”
“Elle is clever. Trixie is porny and makes me resent you.”
Trixie cocked her head in the mirror and tugged at her bra. Underwires were a bitch.
“Lucy,” she compromised.
“Fine. Lucy. You throw-back.”
“It’s classic. Maybe retro,” Lucy said. “I think there’s something wrong with my tits, I swear to fuck.”
“You just need a better bra,” Lorelei replied. It was easy for her to say because she’d been a woman a whole lot longer and always looked perfectly put together, even leaning against a dresser eating ice cream out of the carton. “You have no idea how to shop, do you? You should have called earlier, we could have made a day of it.”
“It didn’t seem like rocket science: cup size, band size.”
“That part isn’t hard,” Lorelei said patiently. “Figuring out the right numbers is hard.”
“I had them measure at the store. I’m used to sports bras, bodysuits, and Zoa’rian slave gear.”
Lorelei sighed and put the ice cream aside.
“Never measure at the store,” she said, examining the fit of the bra band and readjusting the hooks. “When the hell were you a Zoa’rian slave?”
“Wanted the Eye for interplanetary scrying,” Lucy said, winking at Lorelei through the mirror. “Fastest way to the General’s court, if you can defend yourself, is to slip into line and look like the cutest little fuck toy that ever fucked.”
“Lovely,” Lorelei said, checking the underwire. “Don’t the sex slaves dress in what amounts to nipple tassels and a thong?”
“Yeah.”
“The Eye’s the size of a golf ball and Zoa’rite systems can sense magic a world away. How the hell did you smuggle it out?”
“Muscle control and the General’s bio-key.”
“I’m sorry I asked,” Lorelei said, and then paused in her work. “Bio-keys only function inside the body.”
Lucy looked smug. “Yeah, I cut it out of his forearm.”
“I’m going to regret this,” Lorelei said, “but how did you use it?”
“Different muscle control.”
“I hope you washed those when you were done with them,” Lorelei said drily. “Okay, you have a choice to make: you need to either magic these cups a bit bigger or make your breasts smaller. With the top you pulled out, I’d go for the latter, but whatever’s easier and makes you feel flirty.”
“I think you’re right. Elle is better.”
“Not the choice I was talking about, but fine. Elle,” Lorelei said. “Now…”
“It has a certain sophistication,” Elle, formerly Lucy, said as her body rippled and shifted. “Better?”
Lorelei checked the cup size and then pressed her thumb down between both breasts. “Overshot. Go a bit bigger, but don’t let my thumb move. Perfect.”
Elle modelled in the mirror, looking pleased with herself.
“When you’re done preening, can you put your top on so we can get going?” Lorelei said, snapping the lid on the container of ice cream. She leaned in to check her lipstick. “I’m going to need to touch up. I don’t get how you can’t buy a decent bra, but your make-up is flawless.”
“Make-up…illusion…same thing,” Elle said, slipping on a camisole top with a lacy accent. “Jacket or no jacket?”
“Go with the jacket,” Lorelei said, blotting the excess. “You can just take it off if it gets warm or if you want to entice without making any promises.”
“Good point.”
Lorelei smiled. “What can I say, I have centuries of experience. I’m surprised you want to do this.”
“I don’t get a chance to go out drinking all that often,” Elle said. “This way I can go incognito. Not to mention go mostly bare if it’s hot without looking like a tool. Plus, my tits are fab. Also, I’ve a list of places serving half-priced drinks for ‘ladies’ night’.”
“Oh, well…” Lorelei said, rolling her eyes. “I can’t argue with that. Let me toss this in the freezer and we’ll work our way down.”
“Pay the man,” Lorelei said.
Elle feigned sulkiness. “I paid the last round.”
“You’re paying all the rounds,” Lorelei said, implacable. “You screwed me over in Monte Carlo and this is taking up time I could conceivably use to go hustling. I at least need the incentive of free drinks.”
“I gave you some of what I ‘liberated’ in compensation,” Elle said, grinning. She passed the bartender a few bills, including two more rounds to be paced according to their speed. “And you could hustle the crowd here as easily as anywhere else. Just admit it… This is more fun.”
Lorelei thought it over, lips pursed.
“It’s adequate fun,” she concluded, causing Elle to roll her eyes.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Just for that, you can sit here and think about what you said while I go and have a dance.”
She slid off her stool and drifted over to where a handsome young man leaned against the bar. Lorelei watched her go, a faint smile playing about her lips. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but, in actual fact, this was more fun. She was still scamming her fair share of marks and Elle was surprisingly good company in between. Given their past history, she wouldn’t have expected it, but there was something different about her now. About both of them. Part of it was probably the freedom from Asgard’s constraints, but…
Lorelei looked on as Elle addressed the young man, thumping his shoulder when he shook his head, declining her invitation. A gesture toward the washrooms followed by the appearance of a pretty blonde spoke volumes as to the reason for his lack of interest, so Elle gave him a playful shove and assaulted his girlfriend instead. The woman followed her with some confusion, dragging the young man into their wake until, somehow, all three of them were dancing together with Elle sharing a bump and grind between them.
Lorelei could only imagine how that conversation had gone.
Your boyfriend won’t dance with me because he thinks you’ll be jealous, so we should dance and make him jealous instead…
Whatever the lure, the young couple shifted from uncertainty to laughter as Elle chattered on with them, gesturing grandly to bolster any words drowned out by the music, and tried to teach the blonde a particularly sinuous dance move.
Joy, Lorelei decided. Joy was the mitigating factor. Where once, in the past, all schemes would have included an element of revenge or, perhaps, of greed, Elle now sought out things that would bring pure, unadulterated pleasure. Joy for the sake of joy rather than smug and temporary satisfaction over a successful moment in a con that never ended. She could dance because dancing was fun, drink because drinking was good, eat chocolate because chocolate was divine, or gorge on pizza because life was short, and crash on the sofa with no thought for tomorrow.
Joy, then, and liberation. Because a yoke was a yoke even when it was self-made.
Just then, a middle-aged man in a good suit sat next to her and Lorelei turned her thoughts away from observance and toward the thick wallet he withdrew to pay for his drink. Fifteen minutes later, she was counting out that cash in a dark corner, hidden away from prying eyes, while the businessman dreamt that she blew him under the table. She left him enough for cab fare – she wasn’t entirely heartless – and returned to the bar, flicking a switch on her watch to project a small, localized illusion in case she didn’t have time to escape before he came out of his trance.
She smiled when Elle returned, bouncy as a puppy and flushed with excitement.
“You changed!” Elle declared, thumping herself down on her barstool and taking a less than elegant slug of her drink.
“I did,” Lorelei agreed, “and now we have to go because I just scammed someone out of more money than anyone has any business carrying around at one time and I didn’t bother getting him too drunk to remember.”
“Awesome. Let’s go,” Elle said easily and without argument. “There’s a place a few blocks over with a strip show. Should be starting up soon.”
“Tits or dick?” Lorelei said, amused.
“Who cares? Let’s go!”
They gathered their jackets and went.
“I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve been thrown out of a strip show,” Lorelei said, “and that includes the time I was on stage and enthralled an entire bar, not to mention the paramedics who showed up when some guy had a heart attack.”
“If they’re going to use an Avengers theme, they should do their research,” Elle replied loftily. “The Hulk left much to be desired and their Thor was inadequate.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to harass and throw peanuts at him.”
“Lifehack 101: Never miss an opportunity to throw peanuts at Thor or unreasonable facsimiles thereof.”
Lorelei smiled. “That only works for you, darling.”
“But you’re saying it does work…”
“You’re impossible,” Lorelei said and then looked inside a pub’s interior as they passed the sign. “Let’s try here. It looks like a classy kind of place.”
Indeed, the pub oozed class of a glossy, Hollywood sort with oak furnishings and brass trim – or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The patrons lounging around the place dressed in high grade casual, far from the club crowd, but not quite executive level. Lorelei mentally picked out a few marks and wondered how long it would take for them to get drunk enough to scam without being found out by his buddies or the pub staff. One thing she preferred about the club scene: a dimly lit dance floor made for great cover.
Elle and Lorelei slid into place at the bar and each ordered a pint of something unfamiliar. What better time to experiment than a girls’ night out?
But if the pub offered more class than the club, the club won out on clientèle.
“Most of these guys give me a greasy sort of feeling,” Lorelei admitted. “Don’t know if the bulk of the decent guys already wandered off or if this is just the local asshole hang-out, but I think I’ll pass on the pocket change this time. I get the impression it’ll get ugly if things go wrong.”
“You want to test that theory?” Elle said brightly.
Lorelei couldn’t help smiling, but gave her a nudge. “Not if I don’t have to, so keep the bag of tricks in check.”
Elle got her chance without making a move. About twenty minutes later, a man chose the bar stool next to her, signalled the bartender, and then drew back his mid-range sports coat to fish out his wallet.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, smiling indulgently. “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”
“Killed everyone, actually. It was very traumatic,” Elle replied without missing a beat. She took a sip from her drink to allow the man’s thought processes to catch up and then added, “We got better though. So, were you offering to buy me a drink?”
Lorelei supposed he wasn’t one to scare easily because the man smiled hesitantly and said, “I thought I’d start with that, yes. Later I thought we might slip away and have a little fun.”
He put his hand on Elle’s knee as he said this and squeezed it none too gently. Elle’s friendly smile crystallized.
“On any other night I might be interested,” she said. “But I can’t slip off tonight because I promised my friend a ride home.”
“So give her your keys,” the man said, his hand sliding slowly up Elle’s thigh, pausing occasionally to rub in a circular motion. “I can drop you off anywhere you need to go.”
“Oh, well, that’s impossible,” Elle said, feigning sheepishness. “We teleported, you see. It so happens I’m a witch. Sorcery and magic and all of that. The real S&M.”
“Well I’d be happy with some of the fake S&M if that’s what gets your motor running,” the man replied, obviously convinced that she was joking. Lorelei sipped her drink and tried not to look like she was watching the show. “I can pay your friend a cab unless, of course, she’d like to come along.”
“Well, I do like to share with my friends,” Elle said, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.” She paused as the man’s hand slid under her skirt. “Now, what if I told you not to go any higher? You wouldn’t want to provoke a witch, would you?”
“A witch that doesn’t want to be provoked shouldn’t wear silk,” the man replied. All sound ceased as Elle frowned and then the man screamed and yanked his hand back as if he’d been burned, spattering the front of the bar and his nice mid-range slacks with blood. Lorelei choked on her drink.
“Please tell me it's that time of the month,” she said.
“Nope,” Elle replied, grinning evilly.
Lorelei hooked elbows with her and dragged her off the bar stool.
“Okay, we’re leaving now,” she said, hurrying her out the door.
They barely made it a block away before Lorelei rounded the corner, leaned up against the wall, and burst into laughter.
“I can’t believe you did that!” she said, fishing through her bag for a tissue before she laughed so hard she cried and spoiled her make-up.
“The advantages of shapeshifting,” Elle replied. “Great rack, great ass, and jaws of life.” She scissored her thighs and Lorelei burst into fresh peals of laughter. “The unnatural stuff’s a bit…problematic these days, but worth it.”
“I’ll remember that,” Lorelei said. “I think we should stick to the clubs. Much harder to draw attention there.”
“Only if you’ll dance with me.”
“I don’t—“
“Dance with meeee,” Elle whined, stamping her feet until Lorelei agreed. “Cool. Let’s go. I want to find a bathroom and clean up.”
“You didn’t test drive this body before you went out drinking, did you?”
“‘M fine. ‘M a god. Can drink what I want.”
Lorelei sighed and then smiled. She couldn’t help it. As much as it was a pain in the ass to prop Elle up…
Ah, fuck it. A cover name was only good in public where anything too odd would draw unwanted attention and Loki was Loki however she looked.
The fact remained that Lorelei couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much fun. Regular fun, yes, but it took someone like Loki to make it as strange and eclectic as tonight had been. Before completely losing coherence, she had suggested a combination of gallery opening, wine tasting, and punk underground for the next outing. Lorelei looked forward to it, something she had never felt before. The Loki she had known would not have attended any of those unless it served to further some scheme.
How young were they the last time they had simply had fun together? Had they ever?
Loki was already well into his schemes and calculations the first time Lorelei had met him and she wondered what had happened between the last Ragnarök and now to change that. Loki was no less scheming, no less capable of calculations, no less narcissistic or self-indulgent, but the goal differed, if it existed at all.
Now Loki worked for Asgard, or so she claimed, but not so closely that she couldn’t let her mark escape or sneak off for a night of drinking with her in a shiny new body that had yet to reach its previous tolerance for alcohol.
“It’s not that I mind you leaning on me,” Lorelei said, “but you did promise to teleport us back to your place. I left all my portal spells behind on your say-so and I’m feeling pretty stranded right now.”
“Walkin’s good for you,” Loki told her.
“I’m not walking all the way back to your place in heels.”
“‘M fine,” Loki insisted. “Just…air. Need air first. Dest’nation hazy. Try ‘gain later.”
“Next time, I’m cutting you off before the drinking contests start,” Lorelei said, but she smiled when she said it. “Why’s the destination hazy?”
“D’wanna go home. People fine’ju at home.” Loki spoke cheerfully enough, but in low and furtive phrases. “Kiss me.”
“You’re cute, but no,” Lorelei said.
“Kiss me! ‘centive.”
“I don’t believe in giving false hope,” Lorelei said as Loki whined at her, but the request gave her an idea. “You want incentive? How’s your DNA?”
“Healthy,” Loki said promptly. Lorelei grinned and pushed her off as she tried to cuddle.
“Stop that! You’re throwing me off-balance. I mean, you’re a girl. Fine,” Lorelei said, “but I know from previous experience that you were born male. Does your cell structure change or just your shape? Or does being a half-giant give you some sort of freaky half-way DNA?”
“Dunno.”
“You are a paragon of learning and scholarly wit,” Lorelei said.
“‘M a fuckin’ d’light,” Loki told her. “Can change’f you want.”
“No! No, don’t,” Lorelei said, laughing. “Nothing you’re wearing is going to hold up to that. The last thing I need is to explain to some cop why I’m trying to mesmerize a guy in a shredded skirt set. What you can do is delight yourself over to that wall and sit on it before I drop you on the sidewalk.”
She finally managed to manoeuvre Loki – who half-walked, half-danced to some inner beat, and mostly toppled over at the slightest provocation – over to the retaining wall that marked the entrance to an underground smoke shop and plunked her down on it without ceremony.
“Okay, we’re going to give this a shot. Watch the fingers,” Lorelei said, waving them in front of Loki’s face while Loki tracked them with the stunned awe of a kitten discovering the magic of string.
“Just watch, no touch,” Lorelei insisted, heading that problem off at the pass. She put her other hand on Loki’s shoulder; contact always seemed to help. “Watch and listen. I want you to think about what you love most in the world. What you want the absolute most. Your greatest desire. Think about that. Picture it very clearly. It’s waiting at your apartment right…now.”
Lorelei snapped her fingers and Loki’s eyes lost focus for a moment, confirming Lorelei’s suspicion that Loki could still be affected by her spells. Then Loki giggled.
Lorelei wondered briefly what Loki was seeing and then dismissed the thought as irrelevant. All she really needed was for Loki to want to go home badly enough to concentrate and teleport. The nature of the desire was unimportant.
“Can you see home?” Lorelei said. It wasn’t really possible to break through the trance, but sometimes suggestions could steer its direction a little, amplifying certain emotions, or increasing focus. “Can you see what’s waiting for you? Don’t you want to bring us there?”
Loki giggled again, a strangely harmonic sound with a high note and something lower and darker underneath. Lorelei took her arm with the intention of pulling her to her feet, certain that she was preparing to teleport, when Loki suddenly shrieked and threw herself backwards, Lorelei’s hold and startled stiffening the only thing preventing her from falling into the stairwell behind her.
And then she burst into tears.
“Fuck,” Lorelei muttered anxiously and glanced around, still holding Loki’s arm. Even at this late hour, people wandered the city and someone was bound to have heard that scream. If so, no one stepped forward or paid them any mind.
Lorelei debated just leaving Loki there. This was far more than she’d bargained for; she couldn’t cut through the trance and had no way of dealing with it. She would find a way home and pick up her stuff whenever Loki managed to make her way back to her apartment. As drunk as she was, it was unlikely that she would remember anything. The thought of leaving Loki alone worried her, but there had to be a contact of some sort for Thor on Loki’s phone and she was certain that if she called it, the god of thunder would come running.
Or the Avengers. Or no one, if they were out or if Thor could not be reached. Who else besides Thor would be bothered?
Lorelei swore. She was not a comforting person, but she couldn’t leave another woman alone in the city in the middle of the night. Never mind that Loki could physically strip the limbs off the average human; until the trance wore off, she was effectively incapacitated.
“Uh…it’s okay, sweetie. It’s all right,” Lorelei said, releasing Loki’s arm to dig in her bag for her package of tissues. Pulling one out, she tried to brush Loki’s hands away from her face where she rubbed at her eyes like a crying child. Her make-up was probably a total loss, but there was no sense in letting her get it everywhere, Lorelei thought, mopping up her tears and wiping what she could from Loki’s cheeks and fingers.
She wondered how long the trance would last. She thought it was usually fifteen minutes or so, but it varied depending on the person’s perception. Those lost in the fantasy might be held for half an hour and linger much longer under their own power if nothing interrupted them. Those particularly aware of their surroundings might break away in under ten unless the environment supported the fantasy. Lorelei hoped Loki was the latter and since she didn’t know where Loki’s mind wandered, apart from having sent her “home”, reminding her of where she actually was might pull her back.
“Loki? Sweetie? It’s me, Lorelei. You remember that you’re with Lorelei, right?” Lorelei said, taking firm hold of Loki’s arm again in case she should push backwards in another moment of disorientation. She had stopped sobbing at least, her tears slowed to a trickle, pulling in long, slow breaths punctuated by a pause in between. “We went out for some drinks. You remember, right? Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not happening.”
Minutes passed as Lorelei cajoled, but apart from quieting down, Loki did not react. However upsetting the vision was, it was still seductive enough to hold her in her trance. Lorelei gave up and sat on the retaining wall beside her, murmuring occasional reassurances. Eventually, something in her demeanour shifted, solidified, and she was back. She took the tissue Lorelei used to dab at her eyes and finished the job herself, although she said nothing for a while and simply stared out across the street. Finally, she blew her nose and tossed the tissue into the stairwell.
“I need coffee,” she said without a hint of drunken slur.
“You have coffee at home,” Lorelei said cautiously.
“That’s good coffee,” Loki told her. “Need strong, bitter coffee. Coffee blacker than a miner’s asshole and twice as shitty.”
“Loki, I need to get home,” Lorelei said, vowing to never leave her portal spells behind again.
“Just coffee,” Loki promised. “We passed a diner a little while ago. We can get it to go.”
“All right,” Lorelei relented. “To go.”
The diner sat almost empty when she pushed open the door, Loki lagging morosely behind her. A couple of drunk bar hoppers and one man who appeared to be getting off a late shift were the only other patrons. Loki’s face shone waxy-white beneath the fluorescent lighting, eyes red in the black and bruisey remains of her make-up. She fidgeted with her purse and pulled out some crumpled bills.
“Two coffees, please,” she said, thrusting the money at the woman behind the counter. “Your largest. To… To go.” Her eyes darted around the diner and lit on a covered tray. “And a pie. Piece of pie. I need a piece of pie to go, too. Cherry.” When the woman started filling her order without taking the money, she dropped it mindlessly on the counter and turned to Lorelei. “I’m going to the bathroom. If it’s not enough…”
“I can cover it. Go,” Lorelei told her and picked up the crumpled bills as Loki wandered off. She started smoothing them out and sighed when the woman brought the coffee and headed for the dessert display. “We’ll keep the take-out cups, but please put the pie on a plate. I think we’ll stay a little while.”
The woman said something affirmative in reply, but Lorelei didn’t hear her. She grabbed the coffee and headed for a booth while she mulled over scenarios in her head. It worried her that Loki would react so violently to her remote seduction spells. Was it because she was a woman? But then, if she hadn’t retained some sort of male characteristics – even buried deep in her cell structure – she shouldn’t have gone under at all.
The pie arrived at the table shortly after Lorelei sat down. Loki arrived a minute later, face scrubbed raw, lipstick and eye make-up touched up to reduce its smeared appearance. None of it could hide hide her blood-shot eyes. She looked at the booth’s set-up with some confusion before sliding in across from Lorelei and prodding the pie with her fork.
“I thought you wanted this to go,” she said.
“Well, I don’t want to stay here all night,” Lorelei admitted, “but I don’t want to be teleported into a wall either. You looked like you needed to sit down for a minute. Someplace other than a brick wall, I mean.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Loki said. She sliced off the tip of the pie and chewed it without expression.
“How is it?” Lorelei asked for lack of anything else to say.
“Better than I expected,” Loki said. “How’s the coffee?”
“Everything you asked for.”
“Perfect.”
Loki drank from the cup in long swallows, ignoring the scalding heat of it. When she put it down, she was more composed, but went about eating the pie with the same mechanical disinterest.
“So, what scares you about your apartment?” Lorelei said, feeling it best to get right to the point.
“Nothing,” Loki replied between bites of pie, licking blood-red filling from the corner of her mouth. “It’s my place, my home. It’s not scary. At least, not to me.”
“You said earlier that you didn’t want to go home because that’s where people can find you.”
“Oh, that. That’s just…” Loki waved her hands, signalling a loss of words. “That’s where the All-Mother calls me to send me out on errands. She could probably find me elsewhere, but it’s too much effort. Much easier to just try home. That’s… I don’t like it, especially after a fun night, but that’s just annoying, not scary.”
“Then why did you scream your head off when I put you under?” Lorelei said.
“Is that what I did?” Loki said, staring resolutely at her pie as she chopped it into small pieces, occasionally taking a mouthful. “I don’t remember.”
“Are you kidding me?” Lorelei said. “The way you were yelling and crying, I thought I was going to have to leave you there. If you hadn’t been a woman, I might have.”
“You probably could have anyway,” Loki said. “I could peel the skin off of anyone who tried anything.”
“Sure,” Lorelei agreed. “If you know they’re there, but you weren’t responding to anything.”
“Oh.”
“Are you sure you don’t remember what you saw?”
Loki paused with the fork in her mouth and drew it out slowly, leaving it exceptionally clean.
“I don’t, but I could guess,” she said, her voice low, “if you really want to know.”
Lorelei said nothing, finding begging unseemly, but leaned forward to express her interest. Loki took note and then turned her attention to her pie.
“I went travelling with the Young Avengers – at least that’s what they were calling themselves. We travelled across dimensions, saw places that were variations of our own. We didn’t always see people we recognized, but sometimes…” Loki paused to take another bite of pie, withdrawing the fork in the same, deliberate fashion as before. “Sometimes we did. Sometimes people I knew specifically. Sometimes shades of me. Some of those worlds were dead. Some of those mes got what they wanted. Some of those places were one and the same. Sometimes desire is terrifying. So,” Loki said, mashing up a little more of the pie, “I don’t remember anything, but if it doesn’t look like I enjoyed it, that might be why. I might have remembered something I thought I’d forgotten. All right?”
“No,” Lorelei said. “I think you know exactly what you saw, but it’s good enough. Are you ready to go home now or are you going to mangle that poor dessert some more?”
Loki looked down at the mess of crust and filling in her plate and ate it in a few quick bites.
“Yeah, let’s go,” she said, grabbing her coffee. “I’m ready to crash.”
The trip was uneventful, requiring only a quick word to cast the spell, spoken in the mouth of an alley to reduce the visibility of their disappearance. Loki staggered upon arriving home, proof of either fatigue or enough alcohol still circulating in her body to bring her back to a state of inebriation.
“Come on, sweetie,” Lorelei said, steering her toward the bedroom. “I’ll make sure you’re safely bundled up in bed before I go. No passing out on the couch. Or in the hallway for that matter.”
“No bundling,” Loki complained. “Too warm.”
“Okay, whatever. Are you going to change before bed?”
“Yeah,” Loki replied, taking off her jacket and handing it over.
“No, dearest, you can damned well take care of that yourself,” Lorelei said, ushering her into her room. “Don’t forget to wash your face. Let me know when you’re done and we’ll have a proper goodnight. If I don’t hear from you in twenty minutes, I’m coming to see if you passed out somewhere, so be decent.”
Nearly twenty minutes passed before Lorelei heard her name and looked up to find Loki in boy shorts and a t-shirt much too large for her and obviously meant for a different body type. She rubbed at her eyes. Liner still clung to them, but the rest of her face was clean and blotchy from scrubbing.
“That’s not the change I meant, but all right,” Lorelei said as Loki looked down at herself in confusion. “Are you comfortable like that?”
“Hmm?” Loki wondered, tugging at her shirt. “Yeah. I don’t like tight clothes for sleeping. Do you want some?”
“Also not what I meant, but no, thank you. I’m not staying,” Lorelei said and thought Loki looked disappointed although not, surprisingly enough, in a sexual way. “I’m just going to make sure you’re safely in bed, all right? You kinda look like hell. I’m surprised you’re still standing.”
“I’m special like that,” Loki said trailing behind Lorelei who pulled her by the hand.
“You’re something anyway,” Lorelei replied, pulling back the covers so that Loki could flop into bed. She stretched, shocking Lorelei with how young she seemed – in character as well as body – and then reached up to tug on the hem of Lorelei’s jacket.
“You sure you don’t want to stay? ’S real late. I’m tired, so it won’t be weird or anything.”
“Loki, I…”
She meant to refuse. Technically, she had some place to be. Not first thing in the morning, granted, but early enough that time was needed to wash and change. Then again, how long would it take her to get home via portal spell?
Loki watched her passively with the same flat, dim gaze, she had worn since coming out of her trance as though she were looking at something a long way off, but behind her eyes rather than before them.
“Are you afraid to be alone tonight?” Lorelei ventured.
Loki laughed with hollow delight. “Don’t be silly. Nothing here’s scarier than me.”
“No, I suppose not,” Lorelei said, “and I’ve survived that for centuries, so what the hell. Do you have another shirt?”
“Dresser, second drawer,” Loki replied. “Not the bottom. ’S boobytrapped. And cover the mirror or Asgardia—”
“All right,” Lorelei said, getting changed and turning the mirror to the wall. She slipped warily between the sheets, but Loki did nothing, merely lay curled on her side, her hair fanning out in twists and curls like a nest of snakes. She cracked one eye open briefly to be sure Lorelei was staying as promised and hooked her pinky finger into the fabric of Lorelei’s sleeve before closing it again in gentle repose.
Lorelei shook herself loose, gave Loki one of her hands to hold instead, and curled up to sleep. She closed her eyes and thought that, all things considered, it had been a very good night. Given the opportunity, she would likely do it again minus, of course, any attempt at spellcasting. It was…different, she decided, to see Loki purely enjoying herself, and a sign, perhaps, of a change that was too long in coming.
She dismissed any notion – possibly sparked by past prejudice and imagination – of subterfuge, visions withheld for reasons other than personal trauma, or the half-perceived gleam of gleeful possession in the crack of a glimmering, green eye.
After all, she thought, the night played tricks too.