by Devon Monk
“Does that impact your decision to vacation in Ordinary?” Myra asked, no emotion in her voice, all business.
I drank coffee and watched the force of a goddess meet my very immovable sibling.
“He is the Prince of the Underworld,” Tala mused.
“I’m aware. He is also a citizen of Ordinary and follows the same laws and rules the other mortals, supernaturals, and deities follow.”
“Are you aware there is a price on his head?”
“Yes,” she said. “But what happens outside Ordinary is of no concern to us.” It was delivered it in her cop voice: calm and confident. It sounded true.
But I knew her. The relationship with Bathin was very new. Myra did not give her heart easily or often or, really, ever.
This was her first real relationship. One she’d almost missed because he wouldn’t surrender my soul. One she’d almost missed because she was not good at being vulnerable with anyone.
Well, except her sisters.
“There is a war coming,” Tala said.
Cold shivers rattled through me. I’d been hearing that same refrain from the gods for almost two years, whenever they had their guards down. I had thought the war had been settled when we, assisted by some sleight of hand on Death’s part, killed an ancient vampire.
I’d thought the war they kept talking about had already come to Ordinary.
“Which war is coming?” I asked. Because I was done with mystery. Putting it all on the table was my style now. I was done going with the flow when deities wanted to be enigmatic.
“The King of the Underworld searches for his son. All of the Below will rise to devour the Above.”
It almost sounded like prophecy, even though she was not the goddess of such. She was a goddess of orbs of light that guided men, and she was said to shine in the night and morning sky to signal safety from the sun god.
She had warning powers, powers of evasion. I just wasn’t sure she had the power of divination.
I shot a look at Myra. She caught my gaze and gave me the slightest shake of her head. No, Tala wasn’t a prophetess, as it were.
Well, that was something.
“We know about the demon king,” I said. “He’s not welcome nor allowed into Ordinary. No demon is, unless they sign a very strict contract.”
Her eyebrows rose while she put two and two together and came to the conclusion that Bathin had signed the contract.
“He’s the only one,” Myra said, answering the look on Tala’s face.
“Isn’t that surprising?” the goddess murmured, giving Myra a new sort of attention. “What one will do for love.”
If Myra was blushing before, now she flashed red hot. Even so, she didn’t change her stance, didn’t look otherwise uncomfortable under the statement and scrutiny.
“This contract,” I tapped the envelope, “is for you to sign. Please read through it and ask me any questions before you sign it. The contract is the same for every deity. If the terms aren’t acceptable, then vacationing might not be in the cards.”
She drew the envelope toward her and retrieved the papers. A pen, made of gold vines twisted around a black core, appeared in her left hand. Instead of leaves, clusters of stars glittered with tiny, bright sparks along the vine.
She quickly read through the contract, then signed on the last line. “What is next?”
I accepted the papers and slid them back into the envelope. “You show up at the edge of Ordinary. Any place you choose. I’ll meet you there and welcome you in, then we’ll take your power to Frigg and set it down.”
She nodded and glanced around the little café. Or maybe she was looking through dimensions, time, realities.
“It sounds…lovely. I will come. Not now, but soon. Thank you, Delaney Reed.”
“My honor and pleasure,” I said. “It is nice to meet you, Tala.”
“And you.”
Myra turned and strode out of the shop, scanning the hallway beyond the door. Like she needed to be somewhere immediately. Now.
I got to my feet. If Myra was moving fast, that meant there was trouble going down.
“Sorry for the rush,” I said, tucking the envelope under my arm. “I hope to see you soon.”
Tala gave me an understanding nod as I swigged my coffee, two, three mouthfuls, getting as much of it down as I could before I hurried after Myra.
A loud crash filled the casino, something big falling over, like a machine or a table or a display case. I tossed the coffee in the trash and sprinted down the hall, right on Myra’s heels.
“What happened?” I asked, just as we cleared the corner of the hall and rushed into the main room.
Xtelle—still a pony-sized unicorn, still wearing those ridiculous sunglasses—trotted out in front of us and waved a hoof, sending glitter through the air.
“Delaney, is that you?” she asked. “Oh. And I see Myra is with you.” The way she said Myra’s name made it sound like a particularly contagious disease.
“You see her, right?” Myra asked.
“Yep.”
“She sees us?”
“Yep.”
“But no one else sees her?”
“Nope.”
I took the measure of the room. A craps table lay toppled on its side, a crowd circling it from a safe distance. No one had been hurt—not that I could see—but it was clear they were shaken.
I itched to spring into crowd control mode, but the casino staff were already doing a great job ushering people back and away, and making sure everyone was okay.
Three craps dealers stood, shocked, eyes wide, glancing at the table, then at the crowd, then back at the table.
“You,” I ordered Xtelle, “stay.”
“I’ve got her.” Myra stuck her hand in her pocket to access whatever she had there. I was confident it’d be just the thing to stop a demon in her tracks. “Stay right there, Xtelle.”
“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” Xtelle said. “Delaney, yoo-hoo, Delaney! Are you paying attention to me now?”
No. I stopped next to the huddle of dealers. “Your table?”
The two women and a man nodded, not looking at me. “I don’t know what happened,” said the woman whose hair was pulled back in a fashionable twist to show off strong cheekbones. “I was just starting my shift and the whole thing just…” She pushed her palms forward.
“No one was near it?”
She shook her head.
“An earthquake?” The other woman was spindly and barely looked legal. “Do you think it was an earthquake? It had to be an earthquake, right?”
“Delaney! Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Pay attention to me!”
“It might have been an earthquake,” I lied. This hadn’t been an accident and this hadn’t been an earthquake.
“It wasn’t an earthquake,” Xtelle shouted. “Delaney? Delaney!”
“One more step, and I’ll throw.” Myra’s words were quiet enough to be swallowed by the general murmur of the crowd.
“It fell over. It just fell over,” the woman repeated.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said.
The big bosses arrived, telling everyone it was an accident and not to worry. Two beefy guys in security uniforms corralled the crowd. Another employee, who appeared to be in management, showed up and escorted the dealers, still wide-eyed and shaky, off to the private elevator.
Maintenance arrived and righted the table.
One of the many security cameras would have caught what happened. I might be able to push my way in until someone let me see it. But this was tribal territory, and I didn’t have authority here.
I walked over to Myra. She was casually pointing a carrot at Xtelle, who was just as casually ignoring her.
“Any idea?” Myra asked.
“Earthquake seems to be the contender.”
“It wasn’t an earthquake.”
“I know.”
“Delaney!” Xtelle stomped her foot and charged over to us, narrowly missing a man
with a walker who was making his slow way toward the exit. “Pay attention to me!”
“You know what would be great?” I asked Myra, taking great pains not to look at Xtelle.
“What?”
“If she had a mute button.”
“Oh, yeah. That’d be really great. But you know what would be better?”
“What?”
“If she had a go away button.”
“Nice.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Xtelle’s nostrils flare and her big glossy eyes burn with pink fire. She growled—a weird sound coming from a unicorn—and muttered something that sounded like, “Fine, we’ll do it the fun way.” She trotted off, shedding invisible pink fire and glitter over everything she passed.
“Since when did she do the fire thing?” I asked.
“Since when did she do the show up here thing?” Myra replied.
“She was in my car just outside Otis. I think she’s following me.”
“Really? Following you? I never would have guessed.”
“All right.”
“Do you think that’s why she keeps shouting at you?”
“Har-har.”
“Do you think that’s why she keeps demanding you pay attention to her? Following you,” she mused. “Golly, you really are an amazing detective, Delaney.”
“This is so funny you should sell tickets,” I said.
“What does she want?” she asked. “Bathin again?”
“Maybe. She told me she wants into Ordinary.”
“Why?”
“Well, since I’m such an amazing detective, here’s my guess: I’m the Bridge, and as you may not know, demons don’t get into Ordinary without signing contracts and getting my okay first.”
“Boo. Okay, I deserved that. Did she tell you why she wants in?”
“Vacation time. Don’t give me that look, that’s what she said. Also, she’d love to eat it whole, which I’m pretty sure is impossible, even for a demon.”
“Eat Ordinary?”
I nodded.
“You told her no, right?”
“Do you see a dotted line with her signature on it?”
“Good.”
Myra had history with Bathin’s mother. None of it good.
I started toward the private elevator. “Let’s see if they’ll give us a look at the security footage. Make sure whatever happened here isn’t something supernatural we need to take care of.”
I got about three steps before Myra grabbed my elbow and hurried us off toward the slot machines.
“Problem?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Family gift?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “We need to move.”
“I’m with you.”
She let go, and we navigated the crowd, shoulder to shoulder. Neither of us were in uniform, but people saw us coming and made space.
Myra stopped next to an empty machine, tipped her head, then took a left. I moved with her.
A woman screamed. We bolted toward the sound, boots thudding across brightly colored industrial carpeting.
Then a cheer rose up, whistles, applause, and the happy ding-ding-ding of bells.
The woman was laughing now, and someone who might be her daughter held a phone, taking selfies of the two of them in front of a machine that was paying out big.
“Okay,” I said slowly, scanning the scene then looking at Myra for confirmation. “This is the reason we hurried?”
She scowled and tipped her head again as if she were trying to tune into a distant conversation.
“Yes!” shouted a man two machines down. A murmur of surprise and applause filled the space as his machine ding-ding-dinged and rolled out the win. He pushed away from the machine to do a little victory dance and that’s when I spotted Xtelle.
She stood in front of the machine. One of her hooves was stuck all the way inside the casing, manipulating the guts of the thing.
“Stop it,” I warned, quiet enough I hoped people assumed I was talking to Myra. “Knock it off.”
“I’m sorry,” Xtelle cooed. “Are you paying attention to me now?” She withdrew her hoof and barreled around three machines, found the one she wanted and wedged herself between the woman on the stool and the machine. She stared at me over those stupid sunglasses.“Don’t,” I warned.
She stuck her hoof in the cabinet.
“Xtelle.”
She opened her mouth and widened her eyes, the image of innocence. Then she jiggled her hoof.
The machine went wild.
Xtelle pulled her hoof out and rocked back on two legs so she could make jazz hooves. “Ta-da!” She sprayed pink glitter in a three-foot circle.
The woman jumped to her feet. “Thank you, Jesus!”
Xtelle dropped back to all fours. “What about ‘Thank you, demons? Thank you, Xtelle!’ Just because I don’t have a book written about me…”
“Stop.” I clapped my hands and smiled like everyone else, moving toward her. Myra turned and headed back the way we’d come. I didn’t know why she was leaving, but I trusted her instincts.
Staff arrived, a mix of polite smiles and narrow eyes. They knew the machines were malfunctioning. They knew a table had just mysteriously fallen over. They knew someone had to be behind all this.
I suspected the table had been shoved by a pink demon throwing a hissy fit. But they didn’t know that.
Xtelle stuck out her tongue and trotted through the machine. Lights flickered, sounds warped, then she popped out the other side.
The crowd was growing, drawn by all the noise. I pushed through it as quickly as I could, while running through my options. How was I supposed to stop an invisible demon on a chaos spree?
I finally made it around the bank of machines and into the next row. I heard an “Eeep!” and the weird thunk of a carrot breaking in half, then spotted Myra pointing two jagged chunks of carrot at one snarling unicorn.
“Hold it right there,” Myra ordered.
Two people passing by slowed to get a better look at what was going on. Since Xtelle was invisible, it looked like my sister had lost her mind.
“All right,” I said, loud enough for the snoopers. “You’ve had your fun. Let’s take this outside. We can talk.”
“I’ll sign the contract,” Xtelle said.
“Bullshit,” Myra said.
“What?” I said.
The snoopers had multiplied, and people at machines turned to give us a good look too.
“Outside,” I repeated. “C’mon.” I grabbed Myra’s shoulder and smiled at the people bug-eyeing the scene.
Myra pointed one of the carrots toward the exit. “That way.”
“Yes,” I said, for the crowd and for the sulking unicorn, “that way.”
Xtelle huffed, tossed her shiny mane, and clopped off, wagging her butt and swishing her tail.
“You might want to put the carrots down,” I said.
Myra dropped the carrots into her pockets and gave the onlookers a little wave.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just get a little over-excited about fresh produce.”
“Good save,” I said. “That didn’t sound crazy at all.”
She huffed a laugh and I patted her shoulder, following her into daylight.
Chapter Four
“Talk.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the Jeep’s bumper. Myra had parked the cruiser in front of my car, but she was leaning next to me.
Xtelle rested her haunches on the back bumper of a neon-green VW bug. The combination of glittery pink unicorn and German whimsy was eye watering.
“Oh, now you want me to talk? Now you want to pay attention to me? I tried to talk, I really tried Delaney, but you and your thick-headed sister wouldn’t listen. You ignored me. Me! The Queen of the Underworld. Well, you can take that mute button and shove it up your…”
“You kicked over the table,” I interrupted. “You hacked into the slots.”
“Winning! Those people wo
n a lot of money because of me.”
“Because of you cheating.”
“It’s a casino. Cheating is a line item.”
“You’re not a line item, Xtelle. You interfered,” I said.
“Yes, Delaney. Yes. I interfered. I am a demon. It’s what we do. Meddle. Tempt. Thumb the scales of fate. Out here? Out in the real world?” She waggled her head like a goose, daring me to throw a punch. “You have no say over what I do. You have no rules or laws over me that you can enforce unless you want to try hauling a unicorn to jail.”
“Does that bother you?” She minced up a little closer to me, then back, like a boxer in a ring. “Does it bother you that I’m out here in the big, wide world doing all manner of naughty things?” Step, step, retreat. Step, step, dodge.
“Dude,” Myra said, “why are you dancing?”
Xtelle stopped, and her nostrils flared wide. “I’m not dancing. That was…a fight. I was ready for a fight.”
“Looked like Footloose to me,” Myra said.
“More like foot lose,” I said.
Myra held out her palm, and I slapped it.
“Rude!” Xtelle said, but there was something in her eyes that looked like mirth. She was enjoying this. “If you want any sort of power over me, you are going to have to let me into Ordinary.”
True. I didn’t have powers over demons, gods, or any supernatural creatures outside Ordinary’s boundaries. If I allowed her into Ordinary, she’d have to follow the laws and rules, and I’d be the one enforcing them.
Which would make Xtelle my problem.
Like I needed more problems.
“You can’t stay in Ordinary,” Myra said.
“I can if I sign the silly contract you keep going on and on about.”
“It’s more than signing,” Myra said. “You’ll have to follow the rules and conditions of the contract. You’ll be bound by Ordinary’s laws.”
“Hello,” Xtelle said, “demon. I know more about contracts than you ever will.”
“Hello, dating your son,” Myra said, pointing at herself. “I know you won’t follow the rules. We’re done here.” Myra turned, headed to the cruiser.
“I’ll do it.”
I blinked.
Xtelle raised her chin, her gaze level. “I’ll sign the contract. I’ll follow Ordinary’s rules.”
