by Devon Monk
“In that case,” Shoe said from the coffee station, “I’ll brew a new pot.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The report took some time, as I had to write one that didn’t have any of the supernatural or magic in it, and then write the other with all the supernatural happenings that had gone down today, which would be stored in the library.
I’d sipped my way through the mug of coffee Shoe gave me, and kept drinking it when it got cold. Shoe had some kind of magic touch when it came to making a pot of drip coffee. I had asked if he put vanilla in it or cinnamon or something and he’d looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I’d watched him make it. Several times. Nothing fancy, just water, filter, grounds. But when I did the exact same thing in the exact same order with the exact same measurements, it didn’t turn out nearly as smooth as his brews.
By the time the coffee was gone, and both reports were done, all the adrenalin of the day had worn off. I wanted to go home and face-plant in my bed. But Vivian would be there. Well, maybe not in my bed. Hopefully not in my bed.
But she’d probably be on our deck, curled up on our couch, maybe even drinking a glass of our wine.
I was exhausted just gathering my stuff, but I put on my game face. Ryder had had to deal with her a lot longer than I had. I could do my part to try to bore her too.
I dug around in my desk drawer looking for my keys, patted my jeans, then remembered Ryder had my Jeep.
I sighed. “Shoe, could you give me a lift home?”
He looked up from one of the cold cases we were still working—someone had been walking through the grocery store and crunching all the cookies in the bags and leaving them there for people to buy. It was only the one brand, but we still hadn’t caught them in the act.
“Thank gods, yes,” he said. “Anything’s better than this.”
I smiled. “You know how to make a girl feel special.”
He chuckled as he pulled keys from his pocket. “I am one smooth-talking bastard. All the ladies say so.”
Hatter laughed so much he choked, and was still laughing when Shoe slammed the door hard enough to test the strength of hinges.
Shoe was in such a crappy mood for the short drive to our house on the lake, that I just let him grumble and grouse.
If I’d thought any of those things he was accusing Hatter of were true, I’d have reassigned them new partners. But they’d come down from Tillamook, veteran police officers even my dad had trusted with the supernatural happenings in town.
They were peas in a pod, even if one of those peas currently wanted to smother the other one in his sleep, and also had detailed plans of how he’d carry that out without getting caught.
We pulled up to the house. Lights on in the living room and over the porch, but none on the deck.
“Thanks, Shoe.”
“What? Oh. Sure. Hey, boss?”
I looked over at him.
“Do we need to start planning for the final show down?”
I nodded. “I’ll get the gods together and find out how they want to handle it if Ordinary is attacked. We’ll pull the old covenants and see if there are any provisions on whether or not the gods can actually stand in Ordinary to defend it against foes.”
He was nodding and nodding. “I was talking about the wedding.”
“Final battle?”
“Should I have said blessed event?”
“Sorry about your raise.” I opened the door.
“I already got my raise.”
“I’m docking your pay for smartassery.”
He laughed. I slammed the door and watched him drive away while wondering how I got so lucky to have such annoying employees who still made me like them so much.
“Delaney! Delaney!” a voice called out from the bushes on one side of the house.
Even without looking over, I knew it was Xtelle. I thought about ignoring her, but she’d probably barge into the house after me. If Vivian was still in there, it would be a disaster.
I strode over to the bush, which was doing a fairly good job of hiding her in the shadows.
“Hey, Xtelle. You can’t be here tonight.”
“We’ll be brief,” a second voice said from another bush. I squinted, and could just make out Avnas’ dark form.
“You both need to leave.”
“But we have intel. On the spell book thing,” Xtelle whined. “You promised you would reward us.”
I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t stand out here talking to the bushes. Just my luck Vivian would look out and see me acting like a total weirdo.
“Tell me tomorrow.”
“But the reward,” Xtelle said.
“Tomorrow.” I rubbed my sore shoulder. “It’s been a really long day, Xtelle. This can wait until then.”
I turned to leave but the branches of the bush shook and Xtelle pushed her head through them. Luckily, she was in pony form.
“The book has been found and lost again,” she said out of the side of her mouth as if somehow that would make it look like she wasn’t talking. “Several creatures are trying to hunt it down, including a god.”
“Really. I’m going inside. Let’s pick this up tomorrow…”
“Cupid,” Xtelle said. “Cupid wants the book.”
Tired as I was, my mind spun with possibilities. Cupid had briefly stopped by Ordinary not too long ago, but hadn’t been back since. I wondered why he was so interested in the spell book now. I wondered if finding it would be made easier or harder now that we had the missing page.
I wondered what part Ordinary would play in his hunt for it.
“Now, I really must be going,” Xtelle said. “I can not believe you forced me to hide my magnificence in a bush. I shall expect my reward in diamonds, rubies, and gold. A crown would be appropriate, a tiara sufficient.”
She unstuck herself from the brush, made a couple wet kissy sounds, then she and Avnas trotted off into the night.
Telling me a god was looking for the god spell book wasn’t really the intel I’d wanted. I didn’t even know how reliable her sources were. She could be making it all up, just to see if I’d actually give her a crown.
She was going to be so disappointed.
I pushed the whole thing out of my mind to deal with tomorrow. Tonight, I needed to face the monster hunter in my home.
Game face: on. Shoulders: still sore. Determination: ready to rumble.
I opened the door.
The soft swaying blues of The Sky is Crying flowed through the house.
I walked in, my shoulders dropping, my feet moving to the rhythm of the song as I dropped my bag at the door.
The lights were low, but I didn’t hear laughter, didn’t hear voices.
I walked into the space between the kitchen and the living room, and just stood there.
The sky was dark, a twinkle of lights across the lake winking through the window. The flames in the fireplace twisted and hissed. Dragon pig slept with its feet straight up in the air, an empty roll of tin foil across its round little belly.
Spud looked up from where he lay beside his buddy, and tapped his tail on the floor before putting his head back down on his paws and closing his eyes.
I didn’t see Ryder in the living room, didn’t see him on the patio, didn’t see him in the kitchen.
Then the floorboards in the upstairs bathroom creaked, water shut off, and I closed my eyes. I tracked him from the sounds he made. That twisting pivot on the ball of his foot as he shifted around the bathroom door like he was navigating an obstacle course instead of just walking down the hall.
The double step he took outside our bedroom door, so he could three-point shot something onto the dresser, the pat of his palm on the newel post at the top of the stairs.
All of that was Ryder. Every movement, every sound a part of him filling my life.
I breathed it in, this awareness of him in my life. The space he took up in it. The space he took up in me.
I loved it.
He thundered down the stairs like a spilled bag of rocks and hit the bottom almost silently.
“Delaney,” he said. “Damn it.”
I opened my eyes. “It’s like poetry when I’m with you.”
He rubbed his hand over his hair, messing it up, and grinned at me. “Yeah?”
He was barefoot, and wore a pair of old sweats that hung low on his hips, and a Pink Floyd T-shirt that had holes all the way around the collar.
It was a good look on him. Relaxed. Loose. Comfortable. He fit here. In this house, with me.
I wanted to touch him, hold him, be held by him. So I walked toward him.
“I was going to have a glass of wine waiting for you,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I was going to light some candles.”
“I don’t need candles.”
“Huh. What do you need?”
I pressed my fingertips to the space just below his collar bone, feeling the steady beating of his heart like an echo of my own. I flattened my hand, and ran my palm down his chest until I could cup the heel of my palm against his hip bone. “You.”
His breathing had gone thready but that was all the invitation he needed.
He bent, I lifted. Warm arms wrapped around me. I tucked one foot behind his ankle, pressing into all the spaces of him where I fit.
His lips lowered to mine as the song cried out about seeing his baby in the morning.
“What about Vivian?” I asked.
He paused, his lips so close they brushed mine when he spoke. “Gone.”
“Hotel?”
He pulled back a little and looked down at me. “You want to talk about her right now?”
“Just trying to keep track of loose ends. It’s been a day.”
He tightened his arms once, then eased up on the pressure, and took me by the hand.
“Wait,” I said. “No. I thought there was going to be kissing. What about the kissing?”
“Buried under loose ends,” he said. But he smiled. “I put a blanket and pillows on the couch. Let me pour the wine.”
I protested and tugged on his hand, and almost got him wrestled down on the couch with me, but he was flexible and strong and got out of my hold.
“That better be good wine,” I grumbled as I kicked off my shoes with a groan and crawled up the couch, messing with the bed pillows he’d stacked there and pulling my favorite blanket down around me.
“So where is she?” I asked.
“Spokane, I think.” He poured thick red port into small glasses. “She got a tip from Under the Oregon Moon. It’s a Facebook blog that follows supernatural sightings in the area. Wouldn’t tell me what it was, but I ran the police reports from the area. Wanna guess what showed up?”
“Aliens?”
“Close.” He brought both glasses over, handed me mine, then eased onto the couch with me. It took some finagling, but we both managed to get comfortable, my head on his shoulder, both of our glasses of wine forgotten on the floor.
“What did you find?”
“Reports that cows in the area are being drained of their blood. But the only wound they can find are two punctures on their necks. They’re not saying they look like vampire bites.”
“But they totally look like vampire bites,” I finished for him. The text Rossi had sent earlier suddenly made more sense. “Well, hell,” I said.
“Mmmm?”
“I don’t think we can have our wedding in a church now that he’s called in that favor for us.”
“Rossi?”
“Yeah. Such a meddler.”
“I don’t care. He got Vivian out of our hair. So no church wedding it is.”
“Bertie wants us at the Community Center.”
He hummed again, his fingers running softly over my shoulder.
“We’re gonna need some place bigger than that, I think,” I said.
He didn’t say anything, but his breathing was becoming more rhythmic, lengthening.
“You asked me. Yesterday. How many gods I invited.”
“Okay,” he mumbled.
“I invited all the gods,” I said. “All of them. Even the ones who aren’t in Ordinary.”
He grunted and then chuckled. “We’re definitely going to need something bigger than the Community Center. Beach?”
“Too cliché?”
“Forest?”
“Maybe.”
“We could do it here on the lake,” he said softly, his words a little fuzzy.
The song ended, and the tick of the clock I’d hung in the laundry room tacked down the edges of the darkness. I knew I didn’t have to decide right now. I knew Ryder was almost asleep.
But it was important. To be a part of this. To let him know.
“Anywhere,” I said. “Anywhere there’s you, I’ll be there. Just let me be with you. Never let me go.”
I wove my fingers into his, and he was just awake enough to slot them together the way that worked best. Our way.
“Love you, Laney.”
“Love you, Ryder.”
His hand stilled on my shoulder, and beneath my ear, his heart—my world—beat strong and steady.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the amazing people who have helped me bring this installment of Ordinary, Oregon, and all its rascally citizens, to life.
To my cover artist, Lou Harper of Cover Affairs: thank you for the inspiration of a car dropping out of the sky. You are the best, and I truly appreciate all your work, patience, and talent.
Big shout out to my intrepid copy editor Sharon Elaine Thompson, who always makes my sentences shine. Thank you bunches to my brilliant beta reader, Dejsha Knight, who keeps me hopeful. Ladies, you saved my bacon on this one. Thank you.
I’d also like to give a heap of gratitude to author, publisher, and founder of Rainforest Writers Retreat, Patrick Swenson. This book began during the three day word count battle at the (virtual) retreat this year. I needed the push, and Rainforest Writers Retreat (the event, the people, and that darn word count whiteboard) never disappoints.
To my husband, Russ, and my sons, Kameron and Konner, I love you, always. Thank you for being the best part of my life and for sharing your lives with me.
And finally, to you, dear readers: Thank you for visiting Oregon’s most magical vacation destination. I hope you enjoyed hanging out with the gods, ghouls, and people who call the town their home.
Oh! One last thing. There are some exciting things coming up right around the corner for our Ordinarians (Ordinariites? Ordinariers?) including (or so I’ve heard) a big wedding. Rumor is they’re going to serve the really good cheese. I hope to see you then!
About the Author
DEVON MONK is a USA Today bestselling fantasy author. Her series include Ordinary Magic, Souls of the Road, West Hell Magic, House Immortal, Allie Beckstrom, Broken Magic and the Age of Steam steampunk series. She also writes all sorts of short stories which can be found in various anthologies and in her collection: A Cup of Normal.
She lives happily beneath the lovely, rainy skies of Oregon. When not writing, Devon can be found drinking too much coffee, watching hockey, and knitting silly things.
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Also by Devon Monk
ORDINARY MAGIC
Death and Relaxation
Devils and Details
Gods and Ends
Rock Paper Scissors
Dime a Demon
Hells Spells
Sealed with a Tryst
Nobody’s Ghoul
Brute of All Evil
SOULS OF THE ROAD
Wayward Souls
Wayward Moon
Wayward Sky
WEST HELL MAGIC
Hazard
Spark
SHAME AND TERRIC
Backlash
HOUSE IMMORTAL<
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House Immortal
Infinity Bell
Crucible Zero
BROKEN MAGIC
Hell Bent
Stone Cold
ALLIE BECKSTROM
Magic to the Bone
Magic in the Blood
Magic in the Shadows
Magic on the Storm
Magic at the Gate
Magic on the Hunt
Magic on the Line
Magic without Mercy
Magic for a Price
AGE OF STEAM
Dead Iron
Tin Swift
Cold Copper
Hang Fire (short story)
SHORT STORIES
A Cup of Normal (collection)
Yarrow, Sturdy and Bright (Once Upon a Curse anthology)
A Small Magic (Once Upon a Kiss anthology)
Little Flame (Once Upon a Ghost anthology)
Wish Upon A Star (Once Upon a Wish anthology)
