Sven sighed. “Yes and yes, but that still doesn’t mean anything. Even if she is reincarnated, she’s nothing like her ancestor.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you know she is?” Sven countered.
“I don’t.”
“Look, that völva was crazed after being bound here. Trust me, I get her feelings. After a few centuries, I was a bit squirrelly staying put when we’d been explorers before.”
Magnus crossed his arms and let out a sigh. “True.”
“Mercedes is very sweet.” Sven the eternal optimist.
That’s how their town saw him. Always looking on the bright side of life, whereas Magnus been the womanizer, the joker and the leader. What people didn’t see was the sadness Sven carried deep within. He hid it well. Whereas Magnus put all his emotions out there: anger, frustration, all of it, which is why most people in Harmony Glen called him the hotheaded one.
“You’re too nice for your own good,” Magnus said gruffly.
Sven shrugged with indifference. “You know, maybe some good karma will help us out in the end. Release us from this curse.”
“Only true love does that,” Magnus reminded. “Like some kind of demented reversed Sleeping Beauty thing.”
“Are you hoping one day your prince will come?” Sven teased in a singsong voice.
Magnus growled at Sven, who was grinning, his red eyes twinkling.
“Hrisungr.”
“Be nice. You know our mother was married. Try to put good vibes into the universe and you will be paid back in kind,” Sven stated.
“It’s kind of hard to find true love when women were terrified of you for the first several hundred years of your eternity.”
Though not all women. Sure, it was difficult at first, but over his centuries there had been some special booty calls. Of course, love was a completely different matter, and no woman wanted to settle down with a ghoul. Especially in the early days.
Sven chuckled. “Things have changed since the great revelation. We were able to buy this house…”
“A former funeral home.”
“So? Former is the key. Besides, I still think it’s kind of ironic that two ghouls own a former funeral home and are turning it into a bed-and-breakfast.”
“You would,” Magnus grunted, but then smiled because he did see the humor in it too. Both of them had died on this property before Harmony Glen was Harmony Glen.”
“Ghouls running adead-and-breakfastis smart business. Room with a Tomb will do amazing.”
“I do hope so.”
After all this time, he’d accepted his fate. They were cursed but woke up and were sort of undead after that. White skin, red eyes.
It was terrifying waking up to realize you were sort of dead. Trapped between the mortal plane and the undead one. It had taken a while to get used to it, and having to isolate from scared mortals was hard. Especially with the language barriers over the years. Even when they did learn Haudenosaunee and could communicate with the native inhabitants, he and Sven weren’t trusted right away.
The Europeans thought they were zombies.
Okay, most people did.
At least they weren’t trying to snack on brains. People had been scared of them, so for a long time they were isolated. Even though technically they could be considered founding fathers of Harmony Glen, during those foundation years they were often haunting the cemetery. Driven by fear, the way most monsters had been before the great revelation.
Magnus and Sven had lived in a cave in what was now known as the conservation area. When the great revelation happened, they were finally able to come out of hiding and become a part of the community instead of a whispered legend.
A ghost story.
