The engine of the expensive sedan settled into a low, contented purr as the middle-aged man killed the ignition in the suburban driveway. The air around him shimmered—a barely perceptible distortion that hinted at power barely contained. He snatched his phone, already barking orders into the receiver before the driver's side door was fully shut. "I told you to maintain surveillance! Did you or did you not see him leave the reservation site? I don't care about Elias catching a cold, I care about anything that deviates from the timeline! Get back to monitoring the periphery!"
On the other end of the line, the terrified subordinate tried to answer too quickly.
"We only lost visual for a minute—"
Loki cut him off with a sharp, impatient sound.
"A minute is how the world ends for lesser men."
He terminated the call with a decisive click, shoving the phone into his jacket pocket before striding up the manicured walkway. The woman who opened the front door was pretty, undeniably so, with perfectly coiffed hair and clothes that suggested a life of curated boredom. She tried to offer a welcoming smile, but it was thin around the edges, worn down by stagnation.
The house behind her was spotless in a way that felt unnatural, not lived in so much as maintained. The decorations were tasteful, generic, and expensive. Every room carried the faint impression of performance—of a family imitating itself.
"You're late," the man stated, stepping into the cool, quiet interior of the house. He ended the call abruptly as he moved past her. His eyes swept over her, judgmental and dismissive, cataloging the untouched surfaces and the general air of domestic inertia.
The woman closed the door gently behind him. "Traffic was worse than usual?" she asked, though her tone carried no real curiosity. It was the sort of question someone asked because silence was dangerous.
"What have you been doing all day?" he demanded.
The woman shifted her weight, smoothing the fabric of her dress. "I did the dishes and cleaned up some. Then I watched some programs on television and took a nap. I just finished dinner a few moments before you got here."
For a second she looked like she might say more, perhaps something about being alone too often or Sharon needing more structure or the strange feeling that the days were all beginning to blur together. But years of carefully cultivated emotional caution made her stop herself.
He grunted, a sound indicating marginal approval. "Good! That is why I let you stay here." He moved toward the kitchen without offering any further acknowledgment of her presence. His thoughts were already churning, pulling him toward the next necessary disruption.
The woman's eyes hardened for the briefest instant at the phrase let you stay here, but the emotion vanished as quickly as it came. Resentment was a spark in a room with no oxygen.
"That horse is causing problems at the ranch he is boarded at," he continued, his voice tight with barely suppressed irritation. "He's tearing up the stalls again. I will likely need to have him moved again anyway. I will need to go calm him again." The sheer brute force required to quell Sleipnir's mounting celestial energy was wearing thin on his patience.
The woman followed him partway into the kitchen. "Maybe the stable isn't good for him," she said cautiously. "Maybe he needs more room."
Loki let out a cold little laugh.
"He needs less destiny and fewer mares," he said. "Room has never been his problem."
His thoughts turned to another, more immediate issue, an annoyance he hadn't addressed yet today.
"Where is my little princess?" he questioned, pausing his movement toward the pantry.
The woman's composure cracked slightly; a flicker of irritation crossed her face before she masked it. "She is at her friend's house down the street."
Loki stopped moving altogether.
The room seemed to tighten around the statement.
His brow furrowed instantly, the casual annoyance snapping into sharp anger. "Why are you letting her go out? I don't know those people and she shouldn't be walking the streets!" The rule of isolation was absolute.
The woman folded her arms, finally pushing back, however weakly. "She's not a prisoner."
"She is 13 years old," the woman countered, projecting a desperate need for normalcy. "She needs to have a life. She never does anything."
For a moment she looked almost brave saying it, like some forgotten part of her remembered that children were meant to have friends and scraped knees and small rebellions.
The man's face shifted abruptly, the anger dissolving into a cruel, cunning smile. He reached into his jacket pocket, withdrawing something small and ornate—a necklace with an overly large, glittering pendant. "You're correct. She needs to have some fun." He stepped closer, dangling the gift. "Here is a gift I got you."
The woman's whole expression changed.
Not because she trusted him.
Because she had been starved of spontaneity for so long that even manipulation felt like affection if it arrived in a velvet box.
The woman's eyes lit up, greed overriding caution. She smiled genuinely this time, taking the necklace from his outstretched fingers. "Oh, thank you so much!"
She turned it over in her fingers, admiring the oversized stone.
"It's beautiful," she said, and for one fragile second she sounded genuinely happy.
"Let me help you put it on," he suggested smoothly, moving behind her.
She turned, placing the chain around her neck, and he clasped the clasp securely. The moment metal met metal, magic flared, unseen by mortal eyes but undeniably powerful. The pendant pulsed once with faint silver light before reality folded inward. The air in the kitchen compressed, and with an audible pop that only Loki perceived, the woman vanished. In her place, sitting neatly on the polished floor where she had stood seconds before, was a small, fluffy golden retriever puppy wearing a bright pink collar.
The puppy blinked several times in startled confusion, then sneezed.
Loki surveyed the result with satisfaction, leaning down slightly to regard the animal whose consciousness was now confined to the simple, playful instincts of a dog. "Much better," he murmured, patting the puppy's head affectionately. "And Sif will have some entertainment until I find a better nanny."
The puppy's tail gave an uncertain wag despite itself. Some remnant of the woman's alarm lingered in her eyes for a split second before instinct flooded over it.
Loki—known to the mortals in this suburban tract as Lenny Williams—turned and walked out of the house, heading towards the neighbor's property. Sif/Sharon, his adopted daughter, was there and he needed to retrieve her before they could proceed with the next phase baiting Odin.
The neighborhood was quiet in the way upper-middle-class suburbs often were at dusk—sprinklers clicking, distant televisions murmuring behind closed windows, not a soul outside who mattered. He preferred such places. They looked harmless. People assumed evil announced itself with smoke and screams instead of trimmed hedges and clean siding.
He arrived at the neighboring property, a house that seemed slightly less pristine than his own. He didn't knock. He simply strode to the front door and opened it, calling out just loud enough to carry.
"Sharon! Time to go, sweetie. We have to head to the stable, but I have a surprise for you first."
A woman somewhere deeper in the house called out, "She's in the living room!"
Loki offered a polished smile in that direction, the sort that made people excuse behavior they would otherwise resent.
"Thank you," he called back smoothly.
Sharon, a bright-eyed, earnest thirteen-year-old, emerged quickly from the living room. She still seemed like a normal, if slightly sheltered, girl. "Okay, Daddy!"
She hurried to him without suspicion, clutching her phone in one hand and a cheap bracelet in the other, still halfway wrapped in the soft carelessness of teenage normality.
They walked back to the sedan. Upon entering the house briefly to retrieve her purse, Sharon spotted the golden retriever puppy sitting innocently on a velvet cushion by the foyer table. Her face lit up with genuine, unforced joy.
All irritation vanished from her instantly.
"Oh, Daddy! Look at him! Thank you!" She scooped up the puppy, hugging it tightly against her chest before settling into the passenger seat. "She is so cute!"
The puppy's eyes lingered on Loki longer than they should have.
For the briefest instant something almost like accusation flickered there.
Loki allowed the small moment of maternal distraction before resuming his driving, plotting their route.
"We have to stop by the stables," Loki told her, settling into the driver's seat.
Sharon barely heard him at first. She was too busy stroking the puppy's ears and cooing into its fur.
"What's her name?" she asked.
Loki started the car and pulled away from the curb. "You can name her."
Sharon gasped softly. "Really?"
"Yes," he said, smiling at the road.
That kind of permission always worked.
As they drove through the quiet streets, Sharon played with the puppy, babbling happily about her day—the book she read, the show she watched, the nap she took. From all outward appearances, she was not abused, merely insulated from the reality of the cosmos by her adopted father's careful deceptions.
"I think I'll call her Sunny," Sharon said after a minute. "No—maybe Daisy. Or Goldie. No, that's too obvious. Maybe—"
She looked down at the puppy again.
"You look like a Daisy."
The puppy licked her thumb.
Loki glanced sideways just enough to confirm the animal remained docile.
"The nanny quit," Loki explained casually, steering the car onto the highway ramp leading out of the immediate suburban sprawl. "She said she needed a break. I'll hire a new one tomorrow, don't worry."
Sharon's expression soured immediately. Disappointment was a real emotion, even if the context was false. "She was here for over five years! I liked her, Daddy."
Her voice had that teenage blend of complaint and hurt that would have sounded ordinary to any mortal father.
Loki, however, filtered it only for utility.
"I know, I know," Loki soothed, recognizing the manufactured regret. His plan required her to miss the 'nanny'—another low-level pawn he'd placed to keep her occupied. "But we have bigger things to worry about now, right? We need to see Slipper (Sleipnir's fake name)."
That worked immediately.
Sharon brightened. "Can I feed him?"
"If he behaves."
"He likes me."
"He tolerates you," Loki corrected.
Sharon smiled smugly. "That means he likes me."
They arrived at the stable complex about thirty minutes later. It was a high-end facility designed to handle powerful, somewhat unpredictable equines. The manager, a harried-looking man wearing a stained baseball cap, rushed up to Loki the moment he saw him.
"Mr. Williams! Thank heavens. It's the horse. He's been throwing sessions. Tore up the back stall this morning."
Loki glances at the stall.
"He is trying to mount the mares in the adjoining paddock. He seems manic."
The manager looked both embarrassed and exhausted. "We tried separating him again, but he nearly took the paneling off one wall. One of the handlers says the animal looked at him like it understood every word he was saying, and frankly, I don't like repeating that sentence out loud."
Loki nodded curtly, already moving toward Sleipnir's private, reinforced enclosure. He closed the heavy sliding barn door behind him, ensuring the window—which was already open slightly—was the only breach. The air inside smelled strongly of anxious, powerful horseflesh.
Sleipnir, radiating faint but undeniable celestial energy despite the constraints of the mortal realm, paced the stall nervously, his multiple legs (that only Loki could see because of the spell he used) clattering on the concrete floor as he eyed Loki.
The sight of him was always vaguely offensive in the way only magical family could be.
Too much history.
Too much power.
Too much personality.
"Son, you are causing me a lot of issues," Loki said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He didn't have the time for temperamental divine mounts at the moment. He needed Odin, and he needed to orchestrate his next move.
Sleipnir responded with a series of agitated, high-pitched neighs and stamped a front hoof three times.
Loki tilted his head, listening the way one listened to a particularly argumentative relative.
"Yes, yes," he said. "I'm aware your accommodations are beneath your dignity."
Sleipnir tossed his great head and struck the stall wall with one of the hidden extra limbs, splintering wood that looked intact to mortal sight but burst under celestial force.
Loki sighed. "I can't keep moving you. There are not a lot of stables that exist outside the sight of AN's surveillance, and I am trying to find Odin. Just be patient and stop chasing the women, please. It makes you smell even worse."
The stallion let out a more controlled whinny, a sign of reluctant compliance, turning his imposing head toward the small window.
He was listening now.
Resentfully.
But listening.
"Thank you, son," Loki murmured, genuinely pleased by the rapid processing speed of his steed. "Sif will want to see you. I will bring her in for a moment."
For the first time in the exchange, Sleipnir went still.
Even diminished and hidden behind mortal veils, he knew her.
Loki stepped back to the main door, slid it open partially, and gestured for Sharon to enter.
Sharon, instantly forgetting the drama of the last thirty minutes, dashed in, the puppy tucked under her arm. She dropped to her knees near Sleipnir's massive form. "Slipper!" she cooed, running a hand over his powerful neck. The connection was instantaneous and pure; the horse nuzzled her gently, his agitation easing as he recognized the presence of his true mistress, even if she was currently unawakened. Sharon pulled several small, sugary cubes from the pocket of her shorts—treats Loki had given her specifically for this—and fed them to the horse, who accepted them with tender delicacy.
For a few moments, the whole scene looked almost innocent.
A girl.
A horse.
A puppy.
A father watching.
Only Loki knew how much stolen divinity was contained in that little tableau.
Loki watched the interaction, a strange, almost paternal satisfaction warring with his underlying schemes. He didn't care for the girl, but Sif's presence calmed the beast, and the beast was his leverage.
Sharon laughed when Sleipnir nuzzled her shoulder.
"See?" she said. "He missed me."
Loki folded his arms. "He missed the treats."
Sharon glanced back at him with theatrical offense. "You are so rude."
After a few minutes, Loki tapped Sharon's shoulder. "Time to go, sweetheart. Say bye-bye to Slipper."
Sharon hugged the horse one last time, promised him she'd bring him treats next time, and reluctantly followed Loki back to the car.
As she walked away, Sleipnir pawed once at the stall floor and let out a low sound that was almost mournful.
Loki pretended not to hear it.
Once they were seated and pulling away from the stable entrance, Loki made a discreet call on a burner phone.
"Yes, I need to arrange for a new live-in nanny starting tomorrow afternoon. Preferably someone young but with references related to childcare for a thirteen-year-old, and no visitors. Yes, I'll confirm details tomorrow morning."
There was a pause while the person on the other end asked an obvious question.
"No," Loki said flatly. "Not nurturing. Obedient."
He ended the call and glanced at Sharon, who was already focusing all her attention on the puppy nestled next to her.
"Listen carefully, Sharon," he said, his tone shifting to one of grave importance. "It is very important that you do not, under any circumstances, leave the house without me, starting now. Do you understand?"
Sharon pouted, clearly unhappy with the sudden imposition of restriction. "But why, Daddy? I never go out much anyway."
Loki softened his face into concern. He was very good at this part. The lie had to come wrapped in care, not force.
"Because," Loki said, leaning in conspiratorially, his voice laced with manufactured sincerity, "your mother was kidnapped. I don't know who took her, or why, but I have people searching for her constantly. I need you safe where I can monitor you."
The words landed exactly as intended.
Shock first.
Fear second.
Dependence third.
It was classic Loki manipulation: a partial truth twisted into a golden cage. He knew 'her mother'—the mother—was nowhere near, and the story of kidnapping tugged at the base programming of the vessel he inhabited.
Sharon bit her lip, her eyes wide with manufactured fear and concern for this non-existent mother. She yielded immediately. "Okay, Daddy. I won't go out. I promise."
Then, in a smaller voice, she asked, "Will they hurt her?"
Loki put a hand briefly on her shoulder, measured and reassuring.
"I won't let anything happen that I can stop."
It was not an answer.
It was better than an answer.
Loki smiled; the lie had taken root perfectly. Sleipnir was pacified, Sif was contained, and he had his leverage. Now to find Odin.
As the sedan disappeared back into the safe, quiet suburban dark, the puppy lifted its head one last time and looked at Loki with an intelligence no ordinary dog should have possessed.
He noticed.
And smiled back.
⸻
"If you enjoyed Shane's journey, please drop a Power Stone! It helps the Common Sense Party grow!"