by Devon Monk
A mortal god leaving town wasn’t outside the rules, though it was expected that the trips would be short, and that the majority of a god’s vacation time was spent firmly inside Ordinary’s boundaries.
“Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“I don’t...I don’t know.” He groaned, his hand falling away from his face. When I glanced over, I could see the tremble in his hands. “I lost the powers, Delaney. I’m not an idiot. I’m not forgetful. I’m not careless. But I lost them. How does that even happen?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me. Was there any sign of a break in?”
“No. I went to the movie, got home late. I didn’t know they were gone until this morning.”
“And how could you tell they were gone?”
“Just...something didn’t feel right about the shop. I thought I smelled something, like cinnamon? I have some potpourri in the shop, but don’t really like the smell of cinnamon. So I thought maybe a customer had left something behind—a coat, a hat. You know how some people go heavy with the perfume. I’d had some people in to watch me make orbs the previous morning.
“So I walked around, checked the shelves and displays. Checked the work benches, under them. And when I walked in front of the old furnace—the one holding the powers—all I felt was cold.”
“The furnace door was closed?”
“Yes. I grabbed it and opened it, so if there were fingerprints, I ruined them.” He winced. “I guess I should have called you. But I didn’t think they were gone. Not really. Hell, I stood in front of that cold furnace for fifteen minutes before it really sank in.”
“What time was this?”
“Early. I went in early to catch up with stuff left over from leaving early the afternoon before.”
“Rough estimate?”
“Six-thirty?”
“Did you see any signs of break in?”
“The back door was open. I went in through the front, which was locked. My security alarm has been acting weird the last couple weeks, so I didn’t have it activated on the back door—only on the front. But there was still a lock and a deadbolt.”
“Broken?”
“No. Opened.”
“Someone had the keys.”
“No one has keys to the shop. Not back door keys.”
“What about Apocalypse Pablo?” Okay, that wasn’t really his name. His real name was Pablo Fernandez, but everyone in town called him Apocalypse Pablo. Since he liked it, the nickname had stuck. “He comes in to clean for you, right?”
“Yeah. Works the rest of the time at the gas station on the north end of town. He’s...well, you know how he is. Nice enough for a mortal, even if he’s a little...intense. Good with glass, though. Not bad with customers—he’s covered a couple times. I had to tell him to lay off the apocalypse thing after he made a little kid cry. But he only has the front door key. Back door is mine.”
“Do you have copies of the key?”
“No.”
“Would you have left your keys out where someone could make copies of them?”
He frowned and bit on his lip a little longer. “I don’t know. Maybe? I’ve never worried that much about it. Who would go through the trouble to steal my keys, copy only the back door set, then break into my shop? Sure, I carry a lot of inventory, but the glass pieces won’t sell for that much on the open market, and most of them have artist marks and serial numbers.”
“Well, it wasn’t the glass our thief was interested in, was it?”
“No,” he said dejectedly. “It wasn’t. But there aren’t that many in town who even know about god powers, much less where they’re being stored.”
“More than you think. All of the creatures know about you gods. A few mortals. Who did you have in the shop for that last class?”
“Mortals. Tourists.”
“Are you sure they were mortal?”
He frowned and shifted to look at me. “We don’t have a lot of visiting immortals.”
“Sure we do,” I said. “Vamps, shifters, dryads, trolls, you name it, they’ve strolled through Ordinary.”
“I would have noticed a troll in my shop.”
“Even without your power?”
“Yes.”
“Even if your power was angry with you?”
“What?”
“You picked it up, then you put it down a couple hours later instead of keeping it for a year as is required. Ever think maybe your power didn’t like that?”
“The power isn’t alive, Delaney. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t feel.”
I flicked on the blinker and turned into the only McDonald’s in town. There were four cars in front of us, so I put the car in park while we waited our turn in the drive-thru.
“I’ve never been a god. Never will be.” The windshield wiper scraped across the window and I turned it off, letting the patter of rain take up all extra sound beyond the engine. “So I don’t know what it’s like to really be connected to a power. But I’ve held god power. And I can hear it, hear everything that it’s made of. It might not be alive, but it has sentience, it has...needs.”
Crow thought that over, finally nodded. “I suppose, yeah. I don’t like to think of it as something that’s separate. More like a costume I put on to play a part. A very powerful part. Fun too. When I carry my power, my full power, there is no beginning of it and ending of me. I am. Raven is.”
“Do you think your power could pull a trick on you? Steal the other powers away on its own?”
“Not really. I think if powers could steal other powers we’d have seen that, we’d have heard about it in our histories. Gods can steal powers. Mortals, creatures can steal powers. We’ve heard all those stories. But I think power, if it has any awareness at all, isn’t aware enough to actually think outside itself. Chaos only thinks of Chaos. Maybe it thinks of Order, because it is there to destroy it. But I just don’t think Chaos would be aware enough of another force, like time, that it would be able to decide to steal it. Devour it, maybe. But own it? I don’t think so.”
“I asked Death if he could kill a power once.”
Crow jerked. When he turned my way, his eyes were as wide as an open umbrella hat. Trust me on this. I had a ready comparison. “When?”
“When he first came to town. When I was carrying Heimdall’s power.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he didn’t know.”
Crow whistled. “Do you think he’d ever thought about it?”
“No.” I put the Jeep in gear and moved forward two places. “He did think it was interesting in theory.”
“Terrifying, in theory.” Crow wiped his palms on the tops of his thighs. “I’d never even thought of that. Tricking a god, yes. Tricking a power? Wouldn’t happen.”
“So who wants all the god powers? It isn’t just one power that’s been taken, like the power to be young, or to control time, or to rule over nature. This is a big pile of power. Who could touch that? Who could move that? Who could hide that?”
The car ahead of us pulled forward and I rolled up to the menu and speaker.
“I have no idea.” Crow’s stomach growled. “Good thing we have the best police force in the country to figure it out.”
“Flattery won’t get you out of this.”
“Did I say country? I meant world.”
“Knock it off, Crow. You’re stuck with me, and you’re staying stuck. I’ve only begun to grill you for details. What do you want to eat?”
“Two ham, egg, and cheese biscuits, side of hash browns, OJ and a coffee, double sugar, double cream.”
I repeated his order and got myself a plain biscuit, side of bacon, and a large black coffee.
It wasn’t until we pulled away from the pick-up window and he was digging through his bag, heavy with grease and salt, that he finally spoke again. “God power only fits one person at a time, right? Only one vessel per god power?”
I sipped coffee and nodded.
“Then w
hy would a god want all those powers?”
“Ransom? Revenge? So no one else could have them?”
“Maybe,” he said around a mouthful of egg and cheese. “But most of us are here to get away from those things. Especially when it has something to do with our powers—our real jobs. Maybe we’ll want ransom and revenge years from now when we’re done vacationing, but most of us like the time off. From everything.”
“You seemed to be taking this awfully gracefully for someone who has screwed up in such an epic manner. You do realize this is an emergency, right?”
“Well.” He swallowed down a mouthful of orange juice. “Since only the god who belongs to the power can use the power—one vessel per power—I’m not even sure this rates as an emergency. I mean, only those of us who belong to the powers can use them. So what’s the worst that can happen?”
Chapter 2
“He’s dead,” Myra said.
I still stood half out of the Jeep, my fast food bag in one hand. My heart thumped hard and thick in my chest draining blood from my brain.
Ryder?
“Who?”
Thunder walloped the air, rolling across the edges of the horizon as if upset to be leaving some part of town undrowned.
“Sven Rossi.”
I blinked, rain running down my face. It took me a second or two to remember how to breathe while I processed what she’d just said. Another second to swallow and pull my fear in tight.
Ryder was fine. Ryder wasn’t dead.
Why had I automatically assumed he was hurt?
Why had everything in my body gone cold when I thought that was true?
Love, my heart whispered. You love him.
I couldn’t love a guy who’d dumped me after our first date. That was pretty much the hint of all hints that he really wasn’t all that into me.
“Delaney?” Myra put her hand on my arm. Ever since I’d been shot, she hovered more, touched me more. As if I wouldn’t be there when she reached out. As if she were afraid to lose me.
The bullet hadn’t just changed my life. I wasn’t the only one who had nightmares. Even our youngest sister, Jean, hadn’t been able to joke away the bullet I’d taken at point blank.
I think both of my sisters seeing me get shot had only made it worse.
For all of us.
“I’m fine. Sven?” I asked. “When? How?” Sven was the newest vampire to Ordinary. He had been brought into Old Rossi’s fold to become the latest cousin/distant relative/in-law/half-nephew of the rag-tag vampire clan. He worked—used to work—as a bouncer over at Hera’s bar: Mom’s Bar and Grill.
“Just got the call. Jean answered since I was tied up with Mrs. Yates’ penguin.”
“Where was it this time?”
“Attached to the church tower weather vane.”
“We couldn’t leave it up there?”
“Not with the thorny crown and cross they tied it to.”
Mrs. Yate’s penguin was a concrete yard ornament the local high school kids took all sorts of pleasure in harassing. We got a call almost weekly about it being found in some odd or compromising situation.
It was petty mischief that could have been stopped if Mrs. Yates relocated the penguin to her back yard, or better yet her garage, but she stubbornly plunked it down in the exact same place in her front yard every single time we brought it back to her.
Within a week or so, the penguin would be absconded with and taken on an adventure. It was getting to be so well known around town that someone outside of Ordinary had started a blog about it, asking for pictures of the penguin in strange locations. The pictures had flooded in, and so had the page views.
The penguin was quickly becoming Ordinary’s most famous citizen.
“What happened? Where was Sven?” My brain had finally shaken off my initial shock. I strode to the station, Crow already ahead of me, umbrella hat flared over his shoulders.
Myra frowned, just as confused at his fashion choice as I was.
“We found his body about an hour ago.”
“Who called it in?”
“Apocalypse Pablo. Said he thought someone was breaking into the shed on the back of the gas station property. Thought it might be zombies and wanted to sell them a window washer? Not sure how that makes sense, but it’s what he said. I told him to keep an eye on the shed and stay away from it until I could get there. I didn’t...I didn’t think it would be anything more than maybe a nest of raccoons.”
Crow opened the door and held it as we walked in past him.
“Did you go out there alone?”
“Yes. Ryder’s been out of town for a couple days.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She shrugged off her coat and hung it on the hook where it could drip. Doing so made her sleeves ruck up to reveal dark bruises on her forearms.
Huh.
“He had a job to check on up in Washington. Said he’d be back later this week.”
I frowned. He had just called me this morning. “Did he say where, exactly?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason.” I pulled off my coat and hung it beside hers. I flicked my gaze toward her arm, then raised an eyebrow, silently asking what those bruises were about. She hurriedly pulled her sleeve down and ignored me.
Weird.
“Tell me about Sven. Crow, stay here in the lobby and don’t break any more of Ordinary’s rules. And take off that ridiculous hat.”
He popped a hash brown in his mouth. “This hat is going to catch on. I promise you that.”
“Don’t promise me that.”
“Umbrella hats are going to be all the rage.”
“Oh, I’m already feeling the rage.” I flipped my fingers in what I hoped was mime for “kill it with fire.”
Myra walked with me over to my desk. It was out of the way, but I still had a view of the lobby.
“Why is Crow here?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you after you fill me in on Sven. You found him in the shed?”
I sat at my desk, the take-out coffee cooling between my palms. She pulled a chair over so we could both keep an eye on the lobby and Crow, yet still lean in close enough we could keep our voices down.
“I went out there because Apocalypse Pablo said the door was open and he’d kept it locked. When I got there, the lock was broken off the shed door. Too much rain to see any footsteps—it’s practically a swamp back there behind the gas station. I didn’t see blood, no scuffs. Plenty of mud but it’s been raining non-stop.”
I took a gulp of coffee, nodded.
“The shed has an old tractor in it, some tools, but I could finally see a streak of mud through the dust on the floor that led to the back corner. I found him under a blanket. Shot.”
“Still bleeding?” Cut a vampire and chances were he wouldn’t bleed. Kill a vampire, and chances were the thick, slow blood that moved sluggishly through his veins was going to make an appearance.
“Shot through the middle of his forehead.”
The horror of what she was saying clamored there in the back of my brain, but I didn’t have time for it right now.
I liked—had liked Sven. He seemed to fit into the town and the vampires here with ease, and had made friends with pretty much anyone he met.
I didn’t know anyone who would have wanted him dead. But he had come here after living a full, and probably overly-long, life outside this town. I didn’t know what had happened in his past, what he had done, what had been done to him in the years before he decided to move to Ordinary.
It was agreed that Old Rossi took care of vetting the fangers who became a part of Ordinary. I knew he was very thorough in checking their backgrounds.
I trusted Old Rossi as my father had before me and my grandfather had before him. Old Rossi knew which vampires to bring into Ordinary, and which to keep far, far away.
But I’d never had a vampire show up dead inside the town’s boundaries. Outside the town’s boundaries either for that matter.
“One bullet is not enough to take down a vampire.”
She rubbed her thumb over her middle finger, a nervous habit I hadn’t seen her do for a while. “It wasn’t just the bullet.”
“Okay?”
“There were symbols drawn on his chest and both palms.”
“What kind of symbols?”
“I’ve never seen them before.”
That wasn’t a good sign. Myra was the daughter Dad had bequeathed all of his books and journals to. She had been steadily reading her way through them for over a year.
“What were they drawn with?”
“Blood.”
“Excuse me?”
This was a vacation town. A sleepy beach town where little kids built sand castles and our highest repeat crime was expired parking meters. We didn’t do corpses covered in weird symbols drawn in blood.
“Blood,” I said.
“Blood. Looked like it to me. If it isn’t, we’ll know soon. I had the body delivered to Old Rossi.”
“Not the morgue?”
“You think someone other than Old Rossi would know more about this? How to kill a vampire with only a bullet and some squiggly lines?”
She was right. Old Rossi had been in town for several hundred years. Back when it was just a spot where gods had chosen to vacation and creatures had decided to settle. As I understood it, he had been born mortal and done a stint as a soldier. I didn’t know which war.
The story of how Rossi had been turned had only been pried out of him once, by some great-grand so far in my past I’d lost count of how many generations back. That story had been passed down in oral tradition, details lost over the years. By the time my father heard it, then passed it on to me, the names and dates had all been blurred by voices long dead.
The Old Rossi I knew was the same man my father and grandfather knew. To all outward appearances, he was a middle-aged, easy-going hippy sort of guy who ran naked meditation sessions and crystal-powered yoga raves.
He had, as far as I knew, left his long-ago-past life in his long ago past.
