Nobody's Ghoul

by Devon Monk

  The look on his face told me I’d blown it. Botched the landing. It wasn’t just a broken ankle, it was a snapped spine. A busted neck.

  He wasn’t talking about letting it go that long. He had just meant a day or two. A week or two. Just until we cooled down.

  “Ryder—”

  “I’m hungry,” he said, his voice not quite steady, but getting there. “Are you hungry?”

  I was. But I was also very aware he was changing the subject. Trying to stay out of a fight. And maybe that was good. Maybe that was the right way to deal with this. But I couldn’t leave this here. Couldn’t remain in the hurt we’d caused.

  “It’s not the wedding,” I said.

  “I’m thinking tacos.”

  “It’s not just the wedding.” I was striding along with him now, out of the garage, the wind gone cooler with the setting sun, heat and dust still drifting up from the gravel around us.

  “Or we have chicken in the fridge. Grill it? We might have mushrooms.”

  “I feel shitty that I’m not doing more for it. It’s like I’m not even a part of it.”

  “Then do more!” he snapped. “Be a part of it. Make a decision. Pick a color. But if you say you’re going to do it, do it.”

  “This is what I’m talking about. Everything is so serious. You have seventeen notebooks on flowers. Just on flowers!”

  He spun and glared at me over the open back of his truck. “Now I’m the bad guy because I was trying to do my research?”

  “Do I need to mention the cheese? The award-winning cheese that isn’t good enough for you? Or how about the twenty-four venues we’ve looked at that all had something wrong with them?”

  “Mold is a health hazard. So is a leak in the roof. But if you want to get married on a leaky houseboat crawling with black death, then by all means, bring the hip waders!”

  “Maybe I want to wear hip waders! Maybe that would be fun! Maybe it would be spontaneous. Hip waders for everyone.”

  He tipped his head skyward, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed down a scream. “Do you want to wear hip waders?” he asked the sky.

  “No,” I said. “That wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I got a little off track.”

  “So what is the point?” He tipped his chin down again, gave me a carefully neutral look. He was trying to listen. I knew he was. This was my chance to sort through the jumble of feelings and make everything better. Make everything right.

  “I don’t…I don’t know.”

  “Hello there?” a voice called out. “Hello? Might I ask you a question?”

  Ryder frowned, and I’m sure my expression mirrored his.

  Than, the god of Death, stood on the sidewalk, one hand lifted shoulder high like he was in class and uncertain if he should draw attention to himself.

  “A question?” he repeated.

  Ryder looked back at me. “See you at home.”

  “I have to stop by Myra’s to tell her about the ghoul stuff.”

  “What ghoul stuff?”

  I nodded toward the garage. “Hogan smelled a ghoul on or in the car. Ghouls can eat flesh and take on the appearance of the thing they ate.”

  “That’s disturbing.”

  “Fingernails and hair works, too, I guess. So we might have a ghoul in town. Who might look like anyone. Except me. You know I’m me.”

  “I do,” he said, “because no one drives me batty like you.” He must have heard how that sounded, and pulled up a smile, soft and genuine. “I’ll throw kebabs on the grill.”

  “That sounds amazing. Need me to bring anything?” This was good. This was a way back to the neutral zone, toward solid non-yelling ground. I was breathing a little fast, my pulse thrumming in my ears.

  “Beer. Any kind you choose is fine. It doesn’t have to be…special.”

  “Right. Yeah. Yes.”

  Ryder swung up into the truck. My heart hammered away in my chest, still running through the routine, bruised, aching, but stretching for that final flip. I raised my hand in a wave.

  Ryder didn’t look back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Than waited on the sidewalk, his hands crossed in front of himself. The eye-watering short-sleeved, button-down shirt he wore was smothered in fluorescent flamingos bent into alphabet shapes. He had on a pair of knee-length chino shorts, white tube socks, and sandals.

  I’d never seen his knees before. Or his shins. All together it was a little shocking to see him looking so vacation-y.

  “You’re really getting the hang of it here, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Why do you say so?”

  I waved at the shirt, the shorts, the sandals. “You look like a proper tourist. I thought you were taking a walk for a couple days to clear your mind.”

  His eyes widened, and he glanced over my shoulder. “Well, I was? But you can see I am not?”

  “I can see that. Did you need something?”

  He pressed his thin lips together and gave me a conspiratorial nod. “Will you give me directions?”

  “To where?”

  “I believe it is a residence?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He leaned in slightly and lowered his voice even more. “Do you know where the demon lives?”

  “Three choices in town. But I thought you knew where they live.”

  “I am…uh…unfamiliar with their current whereabouts?”

  My phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked the screen. Myra. “Hold on. What’s up?” I said to the phone.

  “I just thought I should call you. Are you all right?”

  “Other than sticking my foot in my mouth and almost cancelling my own wedding? I don’t even own a pair of hip waders. What was I thinking? Yeah, I’m doing really great.”

  “Oh-kay,” she said, dragging the word out. “Do we need to talk?”

  I scowled. I knew what ‘talk’ would involve. Myra lecturing me on being my most honest self, and not sabotaging a good thing before I’d even gotten a chance to enjoy it, and to face my own crap and deal with it so I could be happy instead of grumpy and therefore more apt not to make everyone work overtime at the station.

  “No, we don’t need to talk. Ryder and I need to talk—hold on.” I lowered the phone. “Where are you going?”

  Than was several yards down the sidewalk, wandering off like he had forgotten we were in mid-conversation. At my shout, he peered back over his shoulder. He looked a little guilty.

  “Didn’t you want an address?”

  “Yes, but I have suddenly remembered I have…another…appointment?”

  “Okay?” I said. He was acting a little strange—well, stranger—so I told Myra to hold on a second longer and jogged down to him.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.

  “Yes?” He waved a hand down his body, at the shirt, at the shorts, at his shins, his socks and sandals. “I need a walk to…clear my mind?”

  I chuckled. “I have no idea why you’re asking me. You’re the one out here walking.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” he said. “Perhaps I will see you later?” He stretched those long legs of his and got moving.

  I stared at him for a second. Something about that exchange had felt off. Awkward. But then, Than was always an unusual conversationalist. Still, he’d been a little twitchy. Or at least twitchier than I’d seen him.

  He wasn’t the sort of person that I’d ever say was overly emotional. Droll and unimpressed seemed to be his default.

  But there was always something right behind that slightly bored mask. He had a crackling curiosity for all manner of things, a sense of humor he couldn’t quite squelch with feigned disinterest.

  He was kind, which was sort of a surprise, given his god power. He’d always been warm to me.

  That conversation had just been awkward with none of that warm stuff. The kind stuff.

  I wondered if a ghoul could take on the shape of a god.

  We were both walking in
opposite directions, but just in case, I turned and sniffed the air. I didn’t smell anything ghoul-ish. All I smelled was dry concrete, exhaust, and cooked garlic from someone’s kitchen.

  “…going to hang up if you don’t talk to me,” Myra’s voice came from my phone.

  “Sorry,” I said, heading back to my Jeep, but throwing one last look Than’s way. He paused at the corner, looked both ways twice, then continued down the road. “I’m back. What were you saying?”

  “Have you even set a date?”

  I stepped up into my Jeep. “Technically?”

  “Actually.”

  “Yes. We have a general time nailed down.”

  “A day?”

  “Well, not that nailed down.”

  “A month? Tell me you landed on a month that works for both of you.”

  “So have you seen Than lately?”

  “You haven’t chosen a month? What’s wrong with August? Or September when it’s a little cooler?”

  “Last I heard he was going on a long walk, right? Did he come back? I mean, I know he wasn’t leaving Ordinary’s boundaries because he’d have to pick up his power, but is he back from that?”

  “We’re going to ignore the wedding conversation? We know that won’t make it go away.”

  “Is this the royal ‘we’?”

  “Dear lords, okay. Fine. Last I heard he was going for a walk a couple days ago, so yeah, he should be back around today or tomorrow.”

  “Okay, well, I think he is. I just talked to him.”

  “I thought I heard his voice in the background,” she said. “And now you need to tell me why you were asking me where he was when you were looking at him.”

  I switched my phone to speaker and started the Jeep. “Odin and Zeus didn’t see anything strange with the car. But I found some cardboard stuck in the trunk.”

  “That’s good. That’s something. Was it like the packages?”

  “It had red ink on it. Also, we might have a ghoul in town. Hogan walked into the garage and smelled ghoul.”

  There was a pause, a stretch of silence as I flicked on my indicator and pulled out into traffic.

  “A ghoul,” she finally said.

  “Whose ghoul?” Bathin’s voice rumbled in the background.

  “Nobody’s,” Myra answered. “What does ghoul smell like?”

  “Rotted flesh and melted vinyl, according to Hogan. How about I stop by and fill you in on it?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You only want to come by because you’re avoiding something—and I’m going to guess it’s dinner with your very patient, if slightly cheese-obsessed, fiancé.”

  I groaned. “But I have more stuff to tell you about the case.”

  “He’ll figure out the cheese, Delaney.”

  “But then it will be flowers, and not just flowers, but award-winning flowers. He’ll probably have them flown in from some exclusive hothouse in Antarctica, because only tropical frozen Baby’s Breath will do.”

  “He’ll figure out the flowers too.”

  “It was the crab,” I said.

  “Ryder wants crab? Well, at least that can be sourced locally.”

  “No. The ghoul was the crab.”

  “In the car? Are you sure?”

  “No, but the chewed up crab claw we found could mean the ghoul saw you and Jean coming, found something to eat and boom. Crab escape.”

  “Crab escape,” she repeated. “So you want me to put out an APB on a crab?”

  “I’m guessing it switched forms pretty quickly after getting harangued by seagulls.”

  “And now it could be anything. Including seagulls.”

  I made a quick decision and headed toward the Puffin Muffin. Apology dessert might be a good move tonight.

  “Yeah,” I replied, “anything living.”

  “But how does that work with mass? I mean if a ghoul is of a certain size can it become something much smaller in mass, and also expand into something much larger? Are there rules for how it can take on likenesses? Does it have to change size in incremental amounts? Work its way up to a size or down to a size?”

  “That sounds like something my brainy sister is going to figure out.”

  She huffed a little laugh. “Okay, yes. I’ll check the lore. See what I can find about ghouls. If it was a ghoul in that car, then it wasn’t breaking any of the god rules to get here. Other than falling out of the sky.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t have to put down powers or sign a contract to get into town. But still, if it didn’t have anything to hide, it should have at least checked in with one of us and explained it wanted to live here.”

  “Maybe it’s just visiting,” she said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe it’s just delivering a bunch of stolen god weapons, for reasons unknown.”

  “Yep. That’s the maybe I’m stuck on too.”

  “I’ll head out to the library tonight.”

  “Don’t… No, don’t let this ruin your evening. Unless you think there’s a quick and easy way to spot a ghoul, then whatever you dig up can wait until morning.”

  She hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  I turned into the Puffin Muffin’s gravel parking lot, avoiding most of the potholes. “Do you think you need to go out there? Family gift-wise?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s pick this up tomorrow.”

  “All right. Talk to Ryder.”

  “I plan to.”

  “Pick a date for the wedding at least.”

  “Yep.”

  “Delaney,” she said, then the background noise changed, and I thought she might have moved out of the room she’d been in with Bathin.

  “Yeah?” I turned off the engine, and paused with one hand on the door.

  “I know why Ryder’s working so hard to make the wedding perfect.”

  “Yeah?” My heart was beating a little hard. This was part of what both baffled me and stressed me out: Why was he working on it as if it were some giant production? What kind of expectations did he have for this event?

  “Because if he left it up to you, you’d overthink it and be flying to Antarctica to try and find flowers.”

  “Hilarious.” I hung up on her laughter. Then, to absolutely no one: “I do not overthink things. Do I? No. Okay, maybe sometimes. Or maybe a lot of times. But only in certain circumstances. Which is normal, isn’t it?”

  I got out of the Jeep and strolled into the bakery. The place was mostly empty, which was a rarity for the shop, but we were rolling into dinner time and the bakery, which did the bulk of its business in the morning, would be closing soon.

  Gale was working the counter and gave me a wide smile. “Hi, Delaney! What can I get you?” Gale was human and had been working at the bakery since she’d retired from teaching.

  “I’m not going to ask what’s good,” I said, “because I know it’s all good. So what’s left?”

  She leaned back and ducked a bit to scan the display case. “A few caramel snickerdoodle cookies, some of those mini fruit tarts, and three, no two kinds of brownies. We also have some refrigerated pie left. Um…I think a cheesecake, a key lime and a chocolate mocha silk.”

  “Better get me the pie. Let’s do key lime.”

  “Special night?” she asked.

  “Nope. This is an apology pie.”

  “Well, key lime is a good choice. Coffee to go?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Aw, but apology, right?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, why not? How about a nice dark roast. Make it two. And strong.”

  “Drop in a shot of espresso?

  “Perfect.”

  “Let me just get that pie.” She slipped through the door behind her.

  I pulled out my phone and texted Ryder.

  Bringing dessert

  I pressed send, and stared at the screen, waiting for his answer.

  Nothing.

  Okay, either he was angry and ignoring me, or mo
re likely, he was busy getting the grill ready for dinner and didn’t have his phone on him.

  But just in case it was the first thing, I sent another message.

  Be home in 5

  There was still no answer by the time Gale came back with the pie in the bright Puffin Muffin box.

  “Two coffees, dark with espresso, yes?” she asked, even as she was pulling out cups and lids and prepping the machine.

  “Yes.” I thought about sending another message, changed my mind and stuck the phone back in my pocket. I’d be home in five minutes, and whatever mood Ryder was in, I’d figure it out.

  We’d talk. I’d tell him we should pick a date, for this year. September. I’d always liked September. It would be a good wedding date. A good anniversary date.

  Just choosing the month settled something in me. I could imagine the fall colors, deep green fir trees, vine maples gone rust and gold. Maybe we’d hold it outdoors, even if it rained. I didn’t think we had a place indoors large enough for everyone.

  I could tell him all those things. Things I knew he’d already thought of. This could be the beginning of us being on the same page.

  I’d admit I had invited all the gods to the wedding, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t retract that. I’d admit I’d been pretty awful about the whole thing, had been overthinking all of it and getting nowhere. I could step up. Do my part. Maybe mess with his orderly plans and add some fun to it.

  “Need a carrier?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Gale placed everything on the counter. I handed over my card, and she rang me up.

  “So have you decided on a wedding date yet?” she asked, as she punched buttons.

  “Not yet. Why? Are you part of the betting pool?”

  She laughed. “No, I just was hoping it was going to be soon. I got this cute dress I want to take out for a spin. If I’m invited to the reception, that is.”

  “You are. Of course you are. We’re still working out all the details.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Not a problem. This is going to be amazing. The wedding of the year.”

  I stepped aside as a young man walked in. “Please tell me you still have those caramel snickerdoodles.”

  “I still have a dozen,” Gale said.

  “Life saver.” He dug out his wallet.