Free Loki's Wolves by K. L. Armstrong, M. A. Marr

Or what should be happening now. So where do I get the rest?”
    “From Future. She waits.”
    “Where will I find her?”
    “I do not know. That is to come—”
    “All right, all right. Where is she
now
?”
    The little girl pointed. “Out there. She waits.”
    Matt followed her finger to the door. “Where exactly out there?”
    No answer. He turned. The girl was gone.

    This time when Matt walked into the fair, he still didn’t notice the smells, the sights, the sounds, but only because he was focused on his task. Find the Norn.
    Find the Norn? Are you crazy? A Norn? Like in the stories? That’s all they are, you know. Stories.
    Earlier, when he’d thought of fighting the serpent, he’d tried not to focus on what he believed. It was easy when they were old stories, like Noah’s Ark. You could say, “Sure, that could happen.” But then you thought about it, really thought about it, and said, “Seriously? One boat with two of every animal on Earth? How does that work?” It was easier to just not think about it. Accept it. That’s what he’d done his whole life.
    That’s what he had to do now. Accept it. Believe it. He was looking for a Norn.
    Which would be a lot easier if he had any clue what she looked like. The mosaic wasn’t much help. In it, the youngest Norn had been about his age, and the only thing she had in common with the little girl who had actually appeared was her blond hair. Blond hair in Blackwell was as rare as fleas on a homeless mutt.
    He weaved through the crowds. Normally, that would be easy. While people knew who he was, they wouldn’t do more than nod or smile. Now Thorsens wouldstop mid-carnival-game to say something, and of course he had to be polite and respond.
    With so many Thorsens talking to him, others noticed, and they said hi, too. Any other time, that would have been great. The center of attention. Can’t argue with that, especially when you’re usually only there if you’ve done something wrong. But right now, when he was on a mission, it was kind of inconvenient.
    Finally, he spotted her. The Norn on the mosaic had been about his mom’s age, but this girl didn’t look older than Jake. She was dressed differently from the other girls at the fair, too. She wore a skirt of rough cloth, and her hair was piled up on top of her head in a heap of tiny braids. She sat on a bench, legs swinging as she watched kids on the merry-go-round.
    So how did he know it was her? Because his amulet started vibrating. The same way it had right before he’d met the first Norn.
    Still, he had to be sure. So he walked up as casually as he could and said, “Hey,” but she only smiled and said, “Hello.”
    “Are you waiting for me?” he said.
    She got that look of confusion, a mirror image of the little girl’s. “I do not know. That is—”
    “The present. You only know the future. Got it.” And got the right girl, apparently. “Kind of feels like it should be Christmas, don’t you think?”
    She tilted her head, frowning.
    “Scrooge? The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future?” He shook his head when she continued to frown. “Never mind. Okay, so I should be looking for Odin, because he’s going to tell me… what exactly?”
    “How to defeat the Midgard Serpent.”
    Matt exhaled as relief fluttered through him. “And stop Ragnarök? So things don’t need to happen the way they do in the myth, with all of us dying and the world ending?”
    “Some parts cannot be changed. Some can. You must discover which is which.”
    “But you can foresee the future, right?”
    “There are many futures. I cannot tell which will come to pass. You will try to change what the myth foretells. You will succeed in some parts and fail in others.”
    “Right. Except the whole die-defeating-the-serpent thing. I can definitely survive, despite what the myth says?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “And if I do, the world doesn’t end?”
    “It does not
end
, even if you fail,” she said