Under the Billionaire's Shelter - Jamie Knight Page 0,3

way things had to be.

I got my ID back, turning in my bow and quiver in return. Even a place as open to quirkiness as the city of New York had some qualms with open-carry bowmen. Particularly with one as skilled as I was and after 9/11.

It is a little-known fact, at least among people who see archery as kind of a joke compared to firearms, if not to the cops, that a bolt fired straight and true from a longbow can punch straight through plate armor. Something that many a soldier found out the hard way on battlefields of the past.

Next on the agenda, written out plain and neat in the pre-yellowed pages of my trusty notebook, was a visit to the Crow’s Nest. Somewhat ironically named, the store was at the bottom of a nearly vertical set of fairly rickety stairs, several feet below street level.

Part of the reason it wasn’t shut during the lockdown was how few people actually knew it was there. Still, the owner, Ola Hallegrim, a recent émigré from Norway, wasn’t anyone’s fool, and had positioned boxes of masks and gloves on a table next to the door. God help the smartass who tried to enter the premises, more than big enough to keep six feet apart, without these protections.

“God dag, soster.”

“Od du, bror,” Ola replied, the two of us tapping elbows in lieu of our usual complex handshake.

Her Norwegian was a lot more native than mine, which really only stood to reason, though I did my best to help her feel comfortable.

I drifted through the rows of vinyls. Ola had hired a craftsman upstate to build her record racks from solid aged ash wood. The Crow’s Nest had the best selection of Black Metal in the tri-state area, much of it imported directly from Europe.

Americans still tried their best to copy the style, and it was something, but nothing beat the real thing. It was no accident that the form originated in northwestern Europe. Given a choice, I would take the more melodic and technical Swedish bands, hands down, though the other Nordic countries had their attractions as well.

Collecting my weekly stack, I got as close as I ever did to Ola, playing the usual game of interaction roulette with the aged and cracked debit machine that had been third-hand when she had gotten it through dubious means. I strongly preferred cash, but that had recently gone the way of the dinosaur. Too much direct contact involved, even with gloves.

I nodded to her once more as I left the store.

Thinking that a respectable amount of time had passed, I got out my phone and hit the listing for Brigid’s number.

“Hello?”

“It’s Leif.”

“Oh, hi, Leif!” she said, her voice brightening up noticeably.

“I was thinking about you.”

“I-I was thinking about you, too,” she confessed, her breathless tone implying that her thoughts had not been entirely pure.

“I was thinking about that date.”

“Yeah, about that, how are we going to manage that with the lockdown and everything?”

“You just leave that to me, okay? All I need from you is for you to be home, preferably alone, okay?”

My head was racing with ideas, but I had a plan in mind.

“Okay, I can do that.”

“When is good for you?”

“How about now?”

“Okay. Do you need, like, my email or something...?”

“It’s all figured out. Are you at your computer?”

“Yes.”

“Stay there. We can begin in an hour.”

I snapped my phone shut. I had some preparing to do.

Chapter Three - Lisa

It’s funny how things go sometimes. Just when life is getting bad, a bit of hope comes and makes you think maybe everything will turn out alright.

Suddenly an alert came up on my screen. I didn’t recognize what it was at first, almost having forgotten I had ever set up the video-chat app. Closing my robe quickly, I tapped ACCEPT.

As though by magic, Leif was there. He seemed to jump out of the screen, almost like he was sitting right across from me, in a beautiful chair in a room as dark as mine, illuminated by blue light like I was. It gave him an otherworldly, almost supernatural quality.

He was dressed nicely, in a simple black suit with a blue dress shirt, open at the collar. A small silver Hammer of Thor, symbolic of Nordic mythology, hung around his neck. It was really nice that he had made an effort.

I, on the other hand, was still in my robe, having taken his directive to stay where I was a bit more literally than he