"Well, I never got Czernobog so confused he didn't know what he was doing before," Loki explained. "I thought I'd knock him out with sleeping pills, you see. Didn't realise why one shouldn't take them with alcohol. And we figured out the result just fine. He'd just messed up the spell so much he couldn't undo it. The humans, they don't mess with spells in the first place. It's all needles and pills with them."

He smiled at War then shrugged. What the heck, he'd told her so much already, might as well admit the rest.

"That and knives and blood. It's the blood that's troubling me more than the not drinking really."