Page 53 of Viking Vengeance Cruise

Wes nods toward an ice cream shop across the narrow street. “How about I hang out over there? Just promise me you won’t let her take you to a second location. And if she offers you a windowless van, I want a text.”

I make a face at him. “Very funny. I’ll stay at the coffee stand.”

Married to security, best friends with the captain, and I still get the stranger-danger talk. Somewhere out there, a milk carton is holding my photo in reserve.

He turns to Marina. “You up for a scoop of ice cream with me?”

“I’d never say no to the captain.” She gasps at her unintentional double entendre and slaps a hand over her mouth. “I mean, you know, ice cream. With you. A double scoop would be nice. Maybe triple. I’ll stop talking now.”

She’s blushing all the way to her hairline as they head for the shop, and Wes grins the entire way there. He didn’t even buy a ticket, and somehow the man has won the lottery.

A shower of silver stars erupts to my right as Magnus Darkwater materializes, every last sinfully gorgeous and thoroughly annoying inch of him.

“Alone at last,” he purrs, falling into step beside me. “Your devoted captain has abandoned you for ice cream with the redhead. Should I be jealous? I make an excellent consolation prize. Ask any of the four hundred women who consoled me. Several of them wrote songs about it.”

“I think I’ve got this,” I say under my breath.

“I could keep you company. Whisper sweet nothings. Perhaps nibble on your⁠—”

“Magnus.”

“—ear. I was going to say ear.” The grin on him could curdle glögg. “What did you think I meant?”

I ignore him and quicken my pace toward the coffee stand where Poppy has just collected her order.

Dead Vikings. You can’t take them anywhere.

She turns, nearly bumping into me, her golden bob catching the sun with every strand behaving itself. The woman is impeccable on a level I’ve only ever achieved in dreams and one very lucky passport photo.

Her whole face lights up. “Trixie! We meet again.”

“Small world,” I say, laughing. “Or small medieval district, anyway.”

“Would you like to grab a cup of coffee? Help me eat these?” She holds up the bag. “Pepparkakor and drömmar. Gingersnaps and dream cookies. I always overorder.”

“I’d love to.”

And yes, I’m aware I’m accepting baked goods from a murder suspect just days after a woman dropped dead mid-toast. In my defense, they smell incredible. Also, technically, a bench counts as a second location. Wes can lecture me later.

I order a caramel pecan latte crowned with a cloud of cold foam and a sprinkle of cocoa, a beverage that qualifies less as coffee and more as dessert with a job title.

We find a bench under a sprawling tree right as the sky decides to shift moods. Clouds roll in from nowhere, the world goes slate gray, and the temperature drops enough to remind me I’m wearing a sundress in Scandinavia. Poppy doesn’t seem to notice the weather at all, already opening the bag of cookies with a contented sigh.

We both reach in and pull out cookies that smell the way I imagine heaven smells if heaven were run by Swedish grandmothers. The pepparkakor are whisper-thin and crispy, all warm ginger and cinnamon with a snap that echoes in your back teeth, the cookie equivalent of a crackling fireplace. And the drömmar simply give up the ghost the second they hit my tongue, buttery and delicate and dusted with pearl sugar, dissolving into a little cloud of vanilla that makes me want to write the baker into my will.

“Oh wow,” I mumble through a mouthful of cookie. “These are incredible.”

“Right?” Poppy grins, taking another. “I’m going to need a second bag before we leave Stockholm.”

If these cookies turn out to be poisoned, at least I’ll go out smiling and covered in pearl sugar. Honestly, there are worse obituaries. Most of them don’t come with cookies.

Magnus drifts closer, eyeing the cookies with open interest. “Surely you won’t miss just one.” He plucks one of the drömmar straight from the bag, and the thing floats in midair for all the world to see.

Poppy’s eyes go wide, her mouth opening on what promises to be a scream heard clear back in Connecticut.

I lunge forward and knock the floating cookie directly into my own mouth, catching it with what I hope reads as intentional coordination and not a woman brawling with a ghost over baked goods. Which I so am.

“It’s a party trick I learned in college,” I manage, doing my best to swallow it quickly. “I toss it in slow motion. It gets ‘em every time.”