"Battlestorm"

"You can't be with *her*," Mist said, letting her hand fall. "Not with Hel."
"But I died of old age," he said. "Of sickness and my body's failure. I was never bound for Valhalla."
She tried to touch him, but her hand passed through him and emerged coated with ash.

- from "Battlestorm", Susan Krinard's upcoming contemporary fantasy novel about Ragnarok in the San Francisco Bay Area