And they’d blame me.

Fen was all on board with the stop-the-end-of-the-world part, and he hoped his family would be, too. They were mostly lone wolves or tithed. That had to mean his dad and Uncle Stig wouldn’t side with the crazy let-the-world-end plan, right? Fen wasn’t entirely sure about some of his family. What he did know, however, was that the Raiders definitely wouldn’t be forgiving of any wulfenkind’s decision to side with a Thorsen.

And Thorsen won’t be forgiving if he finds out I was supposed to capture him and deliver him to them.

His whole family would be angry if they found out he was running across the state with a Thorsen. They might not all like the Raiders, but wulfenkinddidn’t help Thorsens. That part was just the way it was, the way it always had been. Matt didn’t seem like most Thorsens, though. They’d fought side by side against the Raiders, and they’d stood side by side in the face of warrior women. Both times, Matt seemed to want to win more than be a show-off. It reminded Fen of what packs were supposed to be like, what families were supposed to be like. It wasn’t what Fen would expect from a descendant of Thor. Surprisingly, Matt seemed like he was kind of an okay guy. Fen wasn’t about to tell him that, but he really didn’t want Matt or Laurie to know that he’d considered helping the Raiders capture Matt. Matt would hate him—and Laurie would probably be mad, too.

He hadn’t wanted to deliver Matt to them, and he’d been trying to think of a solution. Throwing in against his own kind wasn’t the one he’d meant to pick, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, if Laurie and Matt learned that Fen had given them the shield and that he was supposed to deliver Thorsen to the Raiders, they wouldn’t understand. He knew it.

So they can’t find out.

He knew how to keep a secret. He’d been dealing with knowing he was Loki’s descendant for years, turning into a wolf the past year, paying tithe to the Raiders, keeping secrets from Laurie, and alternately hoping and not hoping that she’d be a wolf like him.

“Are you still with us?” Laurie looked over her shoulder at him.

“Sure.” He thought about telling her the truth, or at least some of it, but Thorsen was watching, and Fen wasn’t about to tell him. Fen would just continue to keep an eye out for Raiders, and they’d deal with any trouble if it came. What he could tell them was, “I know where the shield is.”

“The shield the Valkyries said we need?”

A car passed, with music blaring, and Fen almost growled at how close it came to Laurie. He moved to walk beside her, and she stepped onto the gravel along the road. He nodded. “The Raiders have it. It’s the one I was trying to get.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that’s why you were trying to steal it?” Matt asked.

Laurie hugged him. “You could’ve at least told meyou were trying to keep it out of their hands.”

Gratefulness shot through him: their misunderstanding of his role in the shield’s theft was the perfect cover.

“I never wanted you to know anything about the Raiders,” he told her. That part was true. The part where he was trying to protectit from the Raiders, not that he stole it and delivered it to them, wasn’t exactly true, of course.

He looked from Matt to Laurie and then added, “I don’t know how we’re going to get it from them, but at least we know where it is.”

“And we know that Odin says we’ll talk again, and even I know that Odin is supposed to be all-seeing in the stories. I’m guessing he’ll be able to get us the feathers from his ravens.” Laurie laughed. “Is it weird how easy it is to believe that all of this is real?”

“Don’t know,” Fen hedged. “I’ve always known some of it. Thorsen probably has, too.”

Matt nodded.

“Well, I haven’t, and I still think we can do this,” Laurie said. She stared at the giant carved presidents in the distance and smiled.

After a friendly smile at her that made Fen want to snarl protectively, Matt said, “Let’s go find our clue.”

Fen shook his head. They’d barely survived a fight with the Raiders, and he didn’t expect a tornado to pop up and save them the next time. He knew the Raiders, knew how well patrolled their camps were, knew that the way Hattie and Skull were about the shield meant that it would be well guarded. He couldn’t tell Laurie and Matt any of that without admitting how well he knew the Raiders, and he wasn’t willing to do that. He’d figure out a way around the shield problem later, but for now, he kept his mouth shut and followed Laurie and Matt through the visitors’ entrance to Mount Rushmore.

They walked past the tall gray columns. On one side was a wall with names carved on it, and on the other was a statue of the guy who was behind creating the monument.

There were more stone columns, with state flags on top of them, and at the end was a big open space where people stood staring at the presidents’ faces. Fen wasn’t really much into school stuff, but they’d come here on a field trip, and he’d been impressed by the idea of making such an enormous sculpture. These were the sort of giant carvings that meant explosions and giant power tools were needed. Far cooler than sitting there with a tiny blob of clay, trying to make a sculpture, which is what they’d had to do in art class. He smiled at the idea of getting to use explosives in art class. Thatwould be cool.

The three of them stood there with the people, all staring up at Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln. He felt like one of them should have a camera so they’d blend in, but no one was staring at them like they were doing anything wrong. And they weren’t… yet.

They had to wait for a while until they were able to get closer to the faces—where the Valkyrie had said the clue was—so they killed time until the park closed, watching the movie in the visitors’ center two times, and then buying something to eat using money that they’d all brought. No one asked where he’d gotten his, and he didn’t tell them he’d taken it from Kris’ stash. Laurie had hers and some jewelry she said they could sell if they needed to. Matt had used a cash machine to add to the money he still had from his dad.

“We’ll hide and wait,” Matt said.

They crept into the woods and settled in for a few hours. This part of their quest was far from exciting. Fen was a lot more at ease fighting Raiders than sitting in silence. He wasn’t great at staying still in general, but from the looks of it, neither was Matt. He fidgeted almost as much as Laurie and Fen did. They exchanged an almost-friendly nod.

Eventually, the statues were lit up, and then people started leaving. But the guard didn’t leave. So they kept waiting.

Unfortunately, the waiting part was a lot harder than the hiding. They had a number of places to hide over in the wooded area, but that guard not only watched the visitors’ area but also the monument itself. Plus, there were cameras aimed at the monument and around the area.

Earlier that day he had overheard someone talking about some sort of environmental protest a few years ago that had resulted in new security. Fen was all for taking care of the environment, especially since he was a wolf part of the time, but he wished they’d staged their protest elsewhere because the extra security meant getting close to the presidents’ faces was seeming pretty impossible. There was no way they were going to be able to climb up there with a guard watching and who knows how many morescanning the security feed from wherever the cameras sent their signal.

A couple of hours passed, and they were no closer to progress than when they’d arrived. The guard stayed alert, and the cameras weren’t going to vanish. It was ridiculous.

“I could get up there,” Fen said in a low voice.

Matt shot Fen a warning glare.