by Devon Monk
When I said nothing, she took it as compliance. “You deserve all the love and happiness in the world, Myra. Not because you are hardworking and responsible and smart and dedicated. But because you’re kind and hopeful and funny and just…you. You shouldn’t close yourself away from all the good things that could be yours just because there’s a chance something might go wrong.”
“Are you calling me a coward?” It made me angry that she thought of me that way, but another part of me knew she was right. I’d risked my heart early, and been turned down, thrown away. I didn’t ever want to feel that way again.
“No. Oh my gods, of course not. You’re one of the bravest people I know. But when it comes to reaching out, to being vulnerable, no, that’s not quite it either.” She bit her bottom lip for a second. “When it comes to risking your heart, that’s when you hesitate.”
She pressed on the back of my hand and squeezed it gently. “And I get it. I know why you are so cautious. I’m not one to talk. It took me years to get straight with Ryder. With what I feel for him.”
“Are you done?”
“You know Jean and I have your back. Anything you get yourself into, anything at all, we’ll be there to handle it if you need us. No questions asked.”
“Is this about me joining the roller derby team without telling you?”
“No.” She lifted her hand and took another drink of coffee. “Maybe. You get pretty…insular sometimes. I’m worried you won’t talk to us when you need someone to listen. Or someone just to bounce ideas off.”
It still stung a little that she thought I wasn’t brave or open enough to be trusted to handle my personal stuff on my own. But another part of me, the logic engine in my head that never stopped chugging, heard what she said, and did not deny she had a point.
I hadn’t told her about that letter yet, had I?
I’d done my best to keep my family—my two sisters and myself—together and safe since Dad had passed away. That had included me stepping up as the family information resource. I had inherited all of the records, journals, and volumes and volumes of lore and legends—enough to fill an entire underground bunker—from Dad.
It was my job to understand the creatures and gods and beings who lived in Ordinary. It was my job to understand the creatures and gods and beings who lived outside of Ordinary. When something went wrong, I was the one who did the research and came up with a solution to the problem.
My inability to date, my broken heart that had had plenty of time to heal back together but had done so crooked and wrong like a poorly set bone. It refused to open up to so much as look at someone much less actually feel something for them…
…except Bathin…
…wasn’t something I could research and find an easy answer for.
“I’m just not in a place where loving someone—loving someone new—fits in my life,” I said. It was honest. Maybe not what she wanted to hear, but it was not a lie.
She knew that too, my surprisingly wise sister, who carried the burden of allowing gods to set their powers down so they could store them and live here in our little tourist town. My sister who stood against the will of gods when they refused to follow the rules of this land, my sister, too old for her years, who faced down powerful beings without once complaining or backing down.
“I like what I do, Myra,” she said gently.
“Are you reading my mind?”
“No. You just get this look on your face when you’re worried about me and the gods. It’s a different look than when you’re worried about me and my missing soul, and an even different look than when you’re all annoyed that I bring that kind of stuff up.” She grinned, and her hand left mine so she could point a finger at me. “Just like that. That’s the face. That’s your annoyed face.”
“So we’re moving on from my lack of love life?”
“Sure. But that’s not what this was all about. You get that, right? What this is all about is you not keeping everything to yourself. This is about you talking to me. I’m right here, Myra. I’m your sister. You know I love you. And you know I’m your boss, too. Which means you should be impressed that I haven’t actually ordered you to do what I want. Because I am the best boss you’ve ever had and do not abuse my privilege.”
I snorted. “Did you find the hydrant?” I asked.
She didn’t press me about the subject change because she was my sister and, yeah, the best boss I’d ever had.
“Nope.” She leaned back, her gaze taking in the diner around us, like she had suddenly seen something or heard a familiar voice. There were more customers here now, and the ambient noise was made of friendly conversations that rose and fell just above the piped-in eighties tunes. I took a look around too. I knew most of the people in the diner, including my across-the-street neighbor who was eating alone in the corner, absorbed in a book.
Jonah was a nice enough neighbor. New to Ordinary, he used to live in a rental shack on the outskirts of town, but as soon as the little one-bedroom ranch style across the street opened up, he’d moved. It was closer to his work at the supermarket and to the beach, so it seemed like it suited him well.
He came across as socially awkward and prone to sweating, but otherwise hadn’t done anything to stand out in the neighborhood.
“And?” I prompted her.
“Ryder tripped over it.”
“In the street?”
“In the middle of the bedroom. Right where we walk to the bathroom every single day, except for yesterday. Blank air? Suddenly filled with a very solid, very heavy fire hydrant that almost very broke his ankle when he fell over it.”
I chuckled. The dragon pig interpreted that sound as approval, and the dragon pig was not wrong. I’d done a lot of research on dragons, and this one in particular since it had trotted out of a sea cave and into my sister’s life. This particular dragon had a knack for illusion. And like most dragons, he liked to hoard things.
But he was known to hoard unusual things. Gold, sure. But more often ancient texts, heart stones of long-forgotten civilizations, and, apparently, fire hydrants.
Maybe he’d left the letter. “Say…” I started, trying to think of how to bring this up.
Delaney’s gaze fixed on whomever had just walked through the doors.
I looked over my shoulder and couldn’t help but be a little happy to see the man walking our way. Well, not a man, a god. On vacation.
Eros, or Cupid when he was a god, just went by Bo here in Ordinary.
Artists did not do him justice. Depicting him as a handsome man or a cute, chubby cherub missed the mark of the god himself by several miles.
Because the Cupid we knew, this man, whom we hadn’t seen in years, looked like a hard-edged, fighting-fit old biker. He was bald and wore two gold hoops in his earlobes and a glint of diamond at the top of the right ear. His beard was really a long gray goatee topped by a mustache that almost, but didn’t quite, make for handlebar style.
He wore black leather jacket, pants, and boots. Tattoos colored every inch of skin I’d ever seen—his arms, shoulders, his feet, back and chest, and his hands. I’d noticed most of that ink when he’d been in Ordinary for several summers, and could often be found down on the beach drinking beer and throwing rocks at seagulls.
“Where’d you stash his power?” I asked.
“Since he’s the first god to come back to town, I just put it in the vault,” Delaney said. “When the next god shows up, it will be his or her responsibility to keep the powers.”
“How many years has it been since Cupid has been in town?” I was usually good at dates, but I was pulling a blank on this one.
“About a decade,” she said. Then she raised her hand and waved him over, offering the open chair at the end of the table.
He clomped over and lowered himself into the seat with a grunt. “Isn’t this cozy?” he said in his musical baritone. “Been a couple of years, hasn’t it, my beauties? Police work agrees with you both. I’m sorry to hear of your
dad’s passing. He was a great heart of a man, with a will of thunder.”
That was Cupid. Outside, he was a take-no-shit badass; inside, he had the melancholy of a world-weary poet.
I supposed if one was the god who could make people fall in love, make things come together—including, if his stories were to be believed, light and darkness, matter and energy, heaven and earth—and if one also had the power to rend all of those things asunder, to tear every note out of the harmony of the universe, one might have a rather unique perspective on the world and all who lived within it.
“Thank you,” Delaney said. “Coffee?”
He nodded and shrugged out of his leather jacket, draping it across the back of his chair. He wore a plain black T-shirt, which revealed impressively muscled and impressively inked arms.
Delaney turned over the extra cup on the table, filled it from the carafe, and handed it to him.
The white ceramic looked tiny in his wide, calloused hands. Across the knuckles of his right hand was the word Gold, and a dove in flight spread over the back of his hand and up his arm. The knuckles of his left hand were tattooed with the word Lead, and an angry owl glowered across the back of his hand and arm.
“How’s Ordinary treating you so far?” Delaney asked.
“Better now.” He gave a little toast with the cup and gulped down half the coffee. He kept the cup curved in his hand, maybe for the warmth, and rested his other elbow on the table. “I see you’ve been up to no good since I’ve been gone.”
“How so?” Delaney asked.
I finished my breakfast. Bo was one of the gods who took to humanity like a fish to water. I supposed working in the business of connections and separations, working in the business of the human heart, gave him an advantage.
“No soul,” he said, nodding at Delaney. “Demon?”
Delaney nodded back. “He’s in town. He’s following the rules.”
“Is he now? He got a name?”
“Bathin,” I said.
Bo blinked once then took a drink of his coffee to hide his confused frown. “Explains the dragon,” he said. “You find that?”
Delaney shook her head. “Gift from Crow. Or so he told me, and, you know—trickster.”
Bo inhaled through his nose, long as a sigh. “Demons are a trick in and of themselves. Didn’t know they were allowed in Ordinary.”
“Ordinary is refuge and home to any creature, as long as they follow the laws and rules,” Delaney said. “Even gods who are hiding out from the one day a year everyone pays attention to them.”
He grunted.
“What are you doing here before Valentine’s Day?” she asked.
He grimaced. “Can’t a man just want some peace and quiet for no reason?”
“A man, sure,” I said. “But a god tends to think out the reasons for wanting to put his power down for a while.”
“I don’t recall getting the third degree last time I came into town.” He wasn’t upset. If anything, his eyes had a twinkle in them.
It looked like he’d missed being here, maybe missed being among people who knew what his day job was, and didn’t treat him differently because of it.
“Well, the new guard runs things a little differently,” Delaney said. “We’ve had a rough year.”
Understatement. She’d been shot—twice. Her soul had been taken. We’d had to track down a kidnapper, a murderer, and an ancient evil. Delaney’s boyfriend, Ryder, had been drafted into service to a god—and not one of the nice ones who liked us.
That was a lot to cram into a three-sixty-five.
“Noticed all the deities are AWOL,” Bo said. “Some story behind that?”
“I kind of died for a minute.” Delaney looked embarrassed, like she was admitting she’d locked her keys in her car.
His eyebrows went up, sending wrinkles across his forehead and scalp. “Well.” He nodded. “Well.”
“Death was here,” I said. “It’s a long story, but turns out he doesn’t like being denied a death he’s been after for centuries. Not Delaney’s, something else. But her letting go of the ability to allow gods into Ordinary was all part of his plan. Not that he let us know.”
Bo relaxed at that. “Thanatos is quite a thing. Relentless.” It was said with fondness, and not for the first time, I wondered exactly where in the ages and stories of gods Bo fit in.
Some said he was the first god; some said he was the son of Chaos and Darkness. Some said he was just a cute kid who happened to have War and Love as parents.
I had the lore and ancient texts that no mortal outside of Ordinary had ever had the chance to read, but no one had seemed to nail down Eros’s origin.
“He opened a kite shop,” Delaney said.
Bo laughed, the sound of it deep and delighted, and as Delaney added in the details of Death in Hawaiian shirts and expensive tailored slacks and Italian shoes, the laugh went hissy and got us, and a few curious people a booth over, giggling too.
He finally wiped the tears off his reddened face. “Ah, I miss this place,” he said. “Can’t believe I waited so long to come back.”
“How long are you staying?” I asked.
“At least through to March.”
“Can’t handle another Valentine’s Day in the real world?” Delaney asked.
“You have no idea. Love.” He shook his head. “No thing more complicated than that thing.”
I picked up the carafe and filled his cup. “Welcome to the club.”
Chapter Four
I’d faced down dangerous monsters, dangerous humans, dangerous deities. I’d been involved in “community-building” exercises that were primarily a test of sheer grit and willpower to get through. I’d done plenty of trust falls and faith climbs, and joined the roller derby so I could get physical and risk breaking a bone now and then—for fun.
But this? This was hell.
“It is not hell,” Jean insisted, pointing her pink-and-white lollipop that matched her hair color at me. “This is what normal people call fun.”
The bowling alley had been rearranged to make room for twenty small tables decorated with bud vases of roses, small mason jar candle holders wrapped in twine and wooden hearts, pens, notepads, a bowl of paper strips, and chess timers.
This was not a chess tournament. I wished it were. I would at least feel like I belonged there. This was…
“Speed dating is so passé,” I croaked. It was like all the spit in my mouth had dried up and turned into the light sheen of panic sweat that covered my skin. “They make apps for this stuff now.”
Jean chuckled. “We are a tiny little tourist town on the edge of the cold, cold Pacific Ocean. We’re allowed to be behind the times in some things. Our internet provider can’t even guarantee we have steady wireless if the wind blows too hard, much less that it will stay connected long enough to right swipe. And yet”—she grinned, the stick of the lollipop tucked against the corner of her mouth—“we endure.”
People milled around. The clash and roll of pins and bowling balls took up a layer of noise in the place, grinding and growling over the music that was supposed to be romantic, but sounded like opera keyed down and played too slow.
The usual stale smells of beer, hotdogs, popcorn, and the weird off-brand disinfectant spray Jacques used on the shoes was mixed in with the heavy scent of vanilla candles, and two chocolate fountains burbling along somewhere near the pool tables.
“You look fantastic,” Jean went on, checking out my outfit.
I wore black slacks and a light blue button-down shirt. Nothing fancy. Nothing speed-date-appropriate. Because when she and Delaney had called me to meet them for dinner and bowling, I’d expected dinner and bowling.
“Here we go.” Delaney handed each of us a beer. “I could see you panicking from clear across the room. Thought a beer might help a little. You know, this is just for fun, Myra. You don’t actually have to date any of these people.”
I was starting to itch. I was allergic to this. A
llergic to dating fast, slow, or at any speed.
“Why don’t you do it, then?” I said.
“Because,” she said patiently as she tipped the beer in my hand toward my mouth, encouraging me to drink, “I am already in love, and so is Jean. Bertie needed one more single woman to round out the list of people who signed up, and it counts as a community event, so she insisted someone from the police force be here to represent us.”
“Why not Hatter?” I said. “He’s single. Why not Shoe?”
“They’re on duty. Someone has to keep an eye on this town while the rest of us take the evening off.”
“You suck,” I said.
She scowled. “Fine. Next time, I’ll let you tell Bertie no.”
She had a point. Bertie was the town’s one and only Valkyrie. She didn’t take no for an answer. Over anyone’s dead body. Ever.
“So I just have to sit at a table and listen to someone talk for five minutes?”
“Three,” Delaney said.
Okay, I could do this. I could. It wasn’t a real date. I’d hauled lots of people into the station and made them talk while sitting across a cold, hard table from them. This was more like that: an interrogation.
My shoulders started to relax a little at that idea.
I could interrogate someone. Easy. All day. Fast or slow. No problem. I could even have a little fun with that.
“Reed sisters,” came a far-too-familiar and far-too-annoying male voice.
Not male. Demon.
I glanced up. Bathin was sauntering our way, his gaze locked with mine.
He wore a deep red button-down shirt that was unbuttoned at his neck, a small charcoal square of cloth in his pocket. The shirt stretched like poured silk over the muscles of his chest, shoulders, and flat stomach. It was tucked into a pair of tailored gray slacks that looked like they’d been made for him alone.
His dark hair was pulled back, not long enough for a band, but longer than it had been when he’d first showed up in town. A curl of it fell artfully over his forehead, and I clenched my hand to keep from brushing it off his face—or slapping it off his face for being so annoyingly perfect.
