Knavery: A Ripple Novel (Ripple Series Book 6) Read online

  KNAVERY

  Book Six in the Ripple Series

  Cidney Swanson

  Summary: Skandor Dusselhoff wants to save the beautiful Katrin from captivity at Geneses. But Fritz Gottlieb is the one holding her, and he’s not about to let her go. Plus, Katrin’s foster brother Georg has his eye on Katrin. Skandor must learn to use his “magical” ability to cloak himself if he wants to free Katrin before it’s too late.

  Copyright © 2014 by Cidney Swanson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © by Nathalia Suellen. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978–1–939543–27–1

  Also by Cidney Swanson

  The Ripple Series

  RIPPLER

  CHAMELEON

  UNFURL

  VISIBLE

  IMMUTABLE

  KNAVERY

  The Saving Mars Series

  SAVING MARS

  DEFYING MARS

  LOSING MARS

  MARS BURNING

  STRIKING MARS

  MARS RISING

  In memory of Mr. Copus, the first librarian I knew by name

  1

  MIDGARD ADVENTURE! CAMP

  What would Loki do?

  The question came automatically now—so much so that Skandor no longer recognized it as a question. It was more of a lifestyle, really. At least, when his time was his own. What would Loki do? was not a suitable question to ask when snaking the girls’ toilet (for the third time that week) or scouring maple syrup off the floor following a food fight between Vanaheim Cabin and Jotunheim Cabin. Loki would not have been caught dead scrubbing the gooey mess of syrup plus pine needles plus red-gold dirt that turned inexplicably black once it hit the concrete floor of the dining hall. Loki would have transformed into an eagle and soared over the towering pines and sequoias long ago.

  From the hours of 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, Skandor didn’t let himself wonder what Loki would’ve done.

  But when Skandor’s twelve-hour work day was done, the question came into play. Tonight, he’d tracked an eighth grade boy from Jotunheim Cabin who’d snuck off during campfire to meet a seventh grade girl from Alfheim Cabin. Skandor didn’t think they were getting together to brush up on their archery.

  No, the only bolts being shot tonight were the ones Cupid traded in, and there was no room for Greek gods here at Midgard Adventure! Camp. Although, in fairness, among the Scandinavian pantheon, Loki would have been the most likely to fire love-potion laced darts and then invent torments for those afflicted with love-sickness. The two campers had settled in a quiet ravine where the end-of-summer grass grew to three feet. It would have provided great cover if not for the gibbous moon bathing the amorous pair in silver light.

  Skandor scratched a one week old almost-beard (of which he was inordinately proud) and considered the pair. A counselor would have hauled the kissing campers back to campfire by the horns of their camp helms, assailing them with threats along the way.

  But Skandor wasn’t a counselor.

  What would Loki do?

  Throw a bucket of water? Howl like a wolf? Set something on fire? That last one wasn’t going to happen. Don’t play with fire was a rule Skandor respected. Seven winding uphill miles from the nearest highway and fourteen from the nearest fire station, Camp Midgard wouldn’t survive a clash with fire.

  However, after noting the proximity of a cluster of Western choke cherry and Pacific dogwood, Skandor had an inspiration. At morning circle, one of the counselors had given a talk on edible fruits and berries of the area, noting that black bear loved the fruit of the choke cherry.

  Skandor smiled. His imitation of bear noises had been finely honed through years of practice. A grin spread across his face. He knew just what Loki would do for entertainment in this situation.

  He grunted.

  And snuffled.

  And grunted some more.

  And then Skandor shuffled through the brush as noisily as possible. In the dark, or even in moonlight, a rustling field mouse sounded the size of a house cat. A raccoon sounded the size of a mastiff. And a muscled six foot three inch tall eighteen year old sounded plenty big enough to be mistaken for a bear.

  It took a few minutes before the campers noticed anything. In fairness, they were rather preoccupied, but at last Skandor provoked the response he’d been after.

  “Do you hear that? It’s a bear!” The boy from Jotunheim Cabin jumped up and ran to save his own skin, abandoning the girl from Alfheim to her darker fate.

  Rather than running, the girl began to scream at a pitch and decibel impressively high. Evidently, she had taken note of the advice to make lots of noise to ward off bear. For a minute, Skandor continued with his ursine charade—certain that’s what Loki would have done—but as the screams gave way to tears, Skandor sighed, relented, and came to the girl’s aid instead.

  “What is it?” Skandor called to her, feigning shortness of breath as if he’d run all the way from the campfire.

  “Bear!” she screamed as soon as she saw him. “Bear, bear, bear!”

  “It’s okay,” said Skandor. “No bear here. You’re safe now.”

  The girl grabbed his arm, shaking hard. She was terrified. Guilt nipped at Skandor’s heels as he guided her through the swooshing grass to a pathway that would return her to her cabin mates.

  “Bear run from the reek of my boots,” he said, lifting one foul example of his footwear for her inspection. “No bear in this county or the next would be caught dead downwind of these boots. I’ve been wearing ‘em since I was in seventh grade, and I just graduated high school. That’s five years of stink.”

  When this failed to produce so much as a smile, he changed tactics.

  “So, what grade are you going into this fall?” he asked.

  The girl was unable to answer with more than a few hiccupping sobs, but Skandor’s goal was accomplished nonetheless. He returned the camper to the campfire before slipping back into the dark of the pine woods.

  After about thirty seconds of feeling pleased with himself for his devilishly clever bear impersonation, Skandor sighed and kicked at a clump of pine needles. What was he doing here, stuck at Midgard Adventure! Camp, anyway? Thoughts about his lack of purpose kept seeping into his conscious thoughts, steady and insistent, like the water that filled the canoe bottoms until someone (read: Skandor Dusselhoff) tipped them upside down and drained them. For years, pranks had been good enough to slow the steady seeping-in of Skandor’s big questions about purpose and identity. But he was getting too old to believe life’s highest calling was found in scaring the scat out of campers. He ran a hand over his stubbled cheeks and looked up.

  Overhead, stars blinked in and out of sight, filtered by the limbs of towering sugar pines. He inhaled the sweet caramel scent of the sugar pines—usually his favorite smell. But tonight it was cloying; tonight the sheltering branches felt oppressive, like claws reaching to grab him and keep him fixed at Midgard, a bug pinned on velvet behind glass. He needed to get free. There were only two places you could really get clear of the trees—the parking lot and the pond, pretentiously named “Lake Oslo.” Skandor headed for the pond.

  Pranking campers was okay for short term fun, but more and more, his current existence was leaving him … empty. He craved a sense that what he was doing mattered. How much meaning was there to be found in scrubbi
ng syrup off floors? He yearned for something bigger, something more: to seek out his destiny, rushing toward it with arms wide open. A real adventure instead of a Midgard Adventure!.

  Wandering along the dark edge of Lake Oslo, Skandor remembered how his father’s voice used to boom across the parking lot at summer’s end when the last campers were gone: Who’s ready for a REAL adventure?

  And then the four of them—mom, dad, Skandor, and baby brother Jorgen—would pile in the beat-up Chevy Tahoe and drive to Yosemite or Bishop or Death Valley or Pismo Beach—Dad never said ahead of time. And they would kayak alongside whales or hike as far up Mt. Whitney as they could in one day or harness up for a morning of rock climbing.

  Skandor barely remembered the climb on the mica flecked granite wall in Yosemite. He remembered that there were four of them on the drive into the national park and three of them on the drive out. He didn’t cry when he saw Jo-Jo’s deadly fall. There was no blood; his little brother looked asleep, and Jorgen was always falling asleep in strange places. But a week later, when Skandor innocently asked his mother when Jo-Jo was going to get up from naptime because Skandor was bored and wanted to play, well, he’d cried plenty at his mother’s answer.

  Skandor had just turned six when the “REAL adventures” came to an end.

  But he was going to have them again, now that he was a grown adult, or his name wasn’t Loki.

  Well, it wasn’t Loki, of course. His parents had chosen an equally unsuitable name for their first child. It wasn’t even Scandinavian. It was faux-Scandinavian, like everything else at Midgard, from the golden armbands to the inaccurately named longships on the so-called lake.

  Skandor had been ready to jump ship for several years. The winters weren’t so bad. The camp was all but shut down for eight months of every twelve, and during those months, he had the place to himself.

  From camp closing to the first frost, Skandor could slide down the giant flume into Lake Oslo as many times as he wished, without waiting in line. And when snow fell, he could snow shoe and cross country ski the camp’s twenty acres to his heart’s content. His friends from school were universally jealous: You’re so lucky—how come we don’t live at a summer camp? He invited them over to climb the indoor Jorgen Memorial Rock Wall (Oma’s idea, that) or build a giant fire in the county’s only walk-in fireplace. None of the other kids had the supplies to make s’mores for one hundred and twenty, now did they?

  It wasn’t such a bad life, Skandor’s parents told him, and they ought to know. Hadn’t they met at the camp, started by Skandor’s great-grandparents? It was in his blood!

  When his parents began in this vein, Skandor had learned it was best to smile and nod and then sneak out once his parents engaged in the inevitable game of “remember when?” All of his parents’ “remember when’s” revolved around life at Camp Midgard; Skandor was determined that none of his would.

  He had long since given up hoping for the return of the end-of-summer “REAL adventures,” and in truth, Skandor didn’t need sea lions or skydiving. In fact, his idea of getting away was more and more to experience a life where buildings towered over him instead of sequoias. Some place where he could do some research and maybe figure a few things out.

  Until he’d reached his sophomore year, none of his teachers or guidance counselors had been interested in offering him alternatives to a career in the camping hospitality industry: you’re a lucky young man—what I wouldn’t give for a future the state of California couldn’t take away!

  It was true that since Midgard Adventure! Camp had shifted its emphasis from “Scandinavian Summer Fun” to “We’ll Help Your Overweight Child Lose Weight While Having Scandinavian Summer Fun,” the camp had not known a single year in the red. Now the camp was solidly in the black, with lengthy waitlists for each three week session. Accepting the mantle from his parents (as they had from his grandparents) was a very sensible option.

  But Skandor didn’t want sensible. He wanted … more. He wanted a city life where you couldn’t see the Milky Way blazing like liquid fire across the sky every damn night of the year. He wanted mystery and discovery and the chance to figure out who he was.

  Because Skandor had a secret.

  One that allowed him to move in mysterious ways.

  One that maybe tied him in some inexplicable way to the Scandinavian gods and to Loki in particular. One that kept alive certain tropes of ghostly visitations and midnight revels and even made one or two campers swear they would never, ever set foot at camp again, not for all the free canoe time and flume runs in Midgard.

  Skandor could vanish.

  Without a trace.

  Literally.

  And he could take things with him when he vanished.

  Well, he hadn’t been able to take the longship Nidhogg with him, which would have been really excellent, but he could take small things. He could vanish with bows and arrows so that, when he reappeared in solid form, he could loose a bolt or two, terrifying the citizenry of Darkalfheim Cabin who were plotting—with counselor assistance!—to throw water balloons at the hapless residents of Jotunheim Cabin.

  Although he had searched the internet with unrelenting determination, Skandor had never found any sort of explanation for his … ability. And so, as the years passed, he became convinced he was the recipient of a powerful and unique gift.

  But was it science or magic? A fluke of genetics or a gift of the gods?

  If it was genetics, his very existence might herald great discovery. And if it was a gift? With great gifts came great destinies.

  He had a plan for figuring it out. He was good at science and math. He had been the only student signed up for the experimental AP Computer Science: Principles, which had been canceled, but which had introduced him to his favorite teacher, Mr. Chenoweth. Mr. Chenoweth was a former employee of Geneses Corporation International. Talk about a place to get answers! Chenoweth had been a beacon of light and hope Skandor’s senior year.

  His own parents, so sure their son would follow in their footsteps, had saved enough for a few years at community college in hospitality and tourism management; parents like to see the diplomas on the website, his parents told him, but Skandor would rot in Niflheim before he’d agree to that life.

  So he sent out internship applications (with glowing recommendations from both Mr. Chenoweth and Ms. Namkoong, the calculus teacher), and he chewed his nails when the summer drifted past without a single response, and he sought relief from this drab existence by engaging in knavery between 7:00 PM and 7:00 AM.

  The summer wore on. Campers lost hundreds of pounds and gained better habits, and Skandor began to despair of winning a coveted internship at Geneses. The more impossible such an internship seemed, the more desperately he craved answers. He needed a way to understand his magical ability in relation to the First Law of Thermodynamics, and he was pretty sure that Midgard Adventure! Camp was not a place where scientists made great discoveries or where heroes uncovered their destinies.

  Skandor’s belief in his destiny began to waver as fall drew near. Lying on his bed in late August, he stared at the mobile over his bed. It was a model of DNA he’d constructed in third grade from his Oma’s old Tinkertoys. He had meant to do something different from his family. Something daring. Something great. Because he was different and daring. But maybe he wasn’t meant to be great, after all.

  Maybe it was time to be realistic.

  He rose and flipped through the pages of the local community college catalog, trying to convince himself he could forge a life of meaning at the Institute of the Golden Oaks. But it was hopeless.

  “Better name for a retirement community,” he muttered, closing the catalog.

  But then, not two days later, an email arrived in his inbox which would change his fate.

  “By Odin,” he murmured, his eyes bright with the news.

  Because whether it was by Odin or by the working of other forces, Skandor’s destiny was about to unfold.

  2
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br />   I’VE ALWAYS WANTED A SISTER!

  In the pre-dawn emptiness of the Las Abuelitas Bakery Café, Gwyn kept her eyes closed and tried to go all-out Zen. She’d even lit a couple of Auntie Carrie’s incense sticks, the ones labeled “Calm,” in case that might help. She wasn’t giving up. She would do this. It was her genetic destiny.

  After ten minutes of silence and the achieving of an inner peace that would have sent Ma running for smelling salts, Gwyn tried again.

  Slowly, she felt for her toes.

  Rats.

  Stubbornly solid as ever. She opened her eyes again, just to make sure.

  “It’s been a week since the news of your paternity was revealed unto you,” said Chrétien, his voice gentle and low. “Perhaps it is time to … concede.”

  Gwyn scowled at Chrétien. Scowled at the way the headlights of a passing car caught the highlights of his hair, setting it on fire. Scowled at the way his light eyes glinted from under long lashes.

  “You’d be a much better boyfriend if you’d just keep your mouth shut,” she replied. And then, thinking better of it, she added, “Kissing always excepted.”

  Chrétien’s mouth tugged up on one side into half a smile. The folds to either side of his eyes crinkled ever-so-slightly. It was his most seductive smile, as he ought to know from Gwyn having told him a thousand times. It was information she would have used to her advantage, had their roles been reversed, and the fact that Chrétien probably was not intending to use it to his advantage just made her angrier than ever.

  She crossed her arms and forced herself to look past Chrétien at the empty parking lot of Las Abuelitas High School, located across the street from the café her mother owned.

  “I will never concede,” she said, in reply to his earlier suggestion. “Not for as long as I live.”

  Chrétien reached his hand so that his thumb grazed the side of her hand where it rested on the polished table. A shiver ran through Gwyn at the contact. As Chrétien no doubt planned. The scent of flour blackening on the bottom of the brick-lined oven told Gwyn her mother was up. Gwyn collapsed her face in her free hand—the one Chrétien wasn’t seducing at the moment.