Sorcha's Secret World, Part one.

Chapter 23, A Golden Palace.

"Guard duty... it feels a bit beneath us, doesn't it?" Loki was sitting on the low wall next to me, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His suit jacket was lying on the wall beside him, the sleeves of his white shirt casually rolled up, and sunglasses perched on his nose as he was basking in the sun.

"It pays the bills," I shrugged. I was wearing red jeans and a T-shirt with little strawberries printed on it, my own sunglasses sitting on top of my head. I yawned, the sun was making me sleepy.

"I'm a god, you are an immortal sorceress, surely there are better ways to spend our time?"

"Richard said they wanted someone more powerful than just the average guards on-site, the artefacts they are moving from this warehouse to Temple Hall vaults are powerful and priceless. They are worried the Phoenicians might try and attempt to steal them."

The Phoenicians used to be pirates in the distant past. They are now a mercenary group that sells their services to the highest bidder.

There was something strange happening in The Secret World. Magic was growing weaker. It was as if the anima itself was becoming thinner. It didn't affect me much, my Bee helped me to manifest a surplus of anima. And Loki had his own source of anima, being inherently magical himself.

Anyway, because of this, magical artefacts were ever more sought after than usual, and the Templars had decided to move a collection of their own to a safer location. And we had been relegated to guard duty for the day, so now we were sitting at the side entrance watching one of the country roads that was leading up to the warehouse.

I looked at Loki beside me. I still knew so little about him, really. There had been little hints about his past, he had mentioned Odin specifically a few times. But I still had no idea what his exact relation to Odin was, or to the rest of the Norse pantheon for that matter.

Loki knew quite a bit about me. About my childhood, which had been happy right up until it wasn't. My father was a construction worker who had been a kind and loving father until he hurt his back in a work-related accident after which he turned to drink. I quickly learned to fear his violent temper and his fists.

My mother, who had been warm and kind but had demons of her own, who over time began drinking more and more. She died of liver failure while I was pregnant with Jess.

My brother, who couldn't abide sitting in a chair all day at school and dropped out, moved to the city where he joined a gang and turned to drugs.

I left home early myself after dropping out of college and moving to Dublin to become a live-in nanny. Soon after I met Jessie's father and had become pregnant far too quick, but it didn't matter because we were happy with our own little family. Right up until the police showed up on my doorstep, hats in hand, to regretfully inform me about a drunk driver that had swerved onto the pavement just as Jessie's father was on his way to his early morning shift.

After that, I hadn't been truly happy for a really long time.

"I still don't know anything about you," I said.

"What would you like to know?" Loki asked with a frown.

"Everything!" I promptly answered.

"Everything? It's always 'all or nothing' with you, isn't it?" he chuckled.

I just had so many questions, I didn't know how to start.

"How old are you?"

"Over a thousand years, give or take. You rather stop keeping track of the exact years after a few centuries." he grinned.

"When is your birthday?"

"When is my...? Why does that matter, I don't really celebrate it anyway. The 17th of December, that's as good a date as any."