Page 57 of Viking Vengeance Cruise

“That’s pretty vague.”

“Right? But Astrid sounded angry. And Freya’s been different lately. More withdrawn, defensive. She used to be the life of our meetings. She started our mead-tasting nights, hosted the winter solstice party every year, the whole spread. But the last few months she’s been on edge. She skipped hosting this winter entirely, and Freya never skips a party. She barely skips a Tuesday.”

“Do you think it had something to do with another club member?”

Poppy hesitates. “Maybe? I know Freya’s close with some of the other women. But whatever it was, Astrid made it clear she wasn’t happy about it.”

Astrid, it turns out, wasn’t happy about much of anything. For the president of a club built on belonging, she kept an awfully long list of women who didn’t.

A commotion breaks out from somewhere down the lane. Shouting, laughter, what sounds like breaking glass.

“TRIXIE!” Bess’ voice carries over the crowd. “TRIXIE, HELP!”

I jump up from the bench just as Nettie comes barreling around the corner riding, oh my word, the wooden Viking statue as if it were a mechanical bull. She’s clutching the carved warrior’s head with both hands, her legs wrapped around its torso, and she’s screaming “VALHALLA!” at the top of her lungs.

Behind her, a very angry shopkeeper shouts in rapid Swedish and waves what appears to be a broom.

Poppy grips my arm. “Is that your friend?”

“I’ll confirm once I hear the bail amount.”

“How did she even...” Poppy starts.

“Don’t ask,” I say, already moving.

Nettie spots us and tries to steer the statue in our direction, except wooden Vikings don’t come with steering, so she crashes directly into a display of postcards outside a souvenir shop. Cards explode into the air and rain down over Gamla Stan’s finest cobblestones.

“I HAVE CONQUERED SWEDEN!” Nettie announces from the wreckage, thrusting a postcard of the royal family skyward as proof.

Two Swedish police officers arrive, looking equal parts confused and resigned, and I get the feeling this isn’t the first time a tourist has made off with a decorative Viking.

Bess arrives, breathless. “I turned my back for two minutes!”

“TWO GLORIOUS MINUTES!” Nettie agrees.

“I’m looking into a leash,” Bess pants. “Or a tranquilizer. Whichever the ship’s doctor approves first.”

Wes and Marina sprint up, and Wes takes one look at the situation: Nettie still straddling the statue, the angry shopkeeper, the police, the postcards drifting down around all of it. He drags a hand down his face and lets out a long, slow breath, a man quietly doing the math on early retirement.

“How much?” he asks the shopkeeper.

“He didn’t even ask what happened,” Marina marvels.

“He’s learned not to,” I tell her.

Magnus is delighted beyond all reason. “Your friend is magnificent. She should be immortalized in song.”

Heaven help us all if Nettie ever hears that. She’d demand a full ballad and backup dancers.

It takes twenty minutes, three hundred kronor, and Wes’ captain credentials to extract us from the situation. The police let us go with a warning, the shopkeepers get compensated for the Viking and the postcards, and Nettie is banned from that particular street for life.

“They should frame her photo by the register,” Bess grumbles. “Like a bounced check.”

“It was worth every non-American dime,” Nettie says as we hustle back toward the ship. “And let the record show, Nettie Butterworth never turns down a dare.”

And that, my friend, explains everything. It also raises the question of who issued the dare, but some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Poppy walks beside me, dazed. “Does this happen often?”