Chapter 1
Old road out in the middle of nowhere?
Check.
All by myself with no cell signal?
Check.
Chainsaw-wielding maniac glaring at me through his one good eye?
Check.
Hello, Monday morning.
Chainsaw maniac was also dripping wet in the middle of a truly violent thunder storm and pointing the growling three-foot bar of rotating teeth toward me threateningly.
I rolled my eyes.
Gods could be such drama queens.
“Shut it down,” I yelled over the buzz of the machine in Odin’s gnarled hands. “Now.” Just for good measure, I dragged fingers across my throat in a “kill it” gesture.
He yelled something which I couldn’t hear over the blast of thunder that knuckled across the clouds. I was pretty good at reading lips, especially when the lips were using four-letter words.
I put one hand on my hip, the other dug the citation book out of my light jacket. It was August and the little town of Ordinary, Oregon, should have been sunny and dry. Instead, it’d been raining pretty much non-stop since July.
Our daily thunder storm sieges were courtesy of Thor, who was upset he wasn’t on vacation here with the other gods.
“I will write you up.” Odin couldn’t hear me, but it turned out he was pretty good at guessing at a message too. Didn’t hurt that I clicked the pen and poised it over the citation pad, giving him one last warning look.
He killed the motor on the saw.
Good choice.
“I’m busy, Delaney.” He waved one beefy hand at the stacks of timber—maple, oak, cedar, and a smaller pile of myrtle—surrounding him. Most of the logs were covered in bark, moss, and various fungi, but a few were cut down into butter-brown lengths and chunks. Wet piles of sawdust humped across the area to the side of his little house in the forest. More wood debris pillowed up against the poles of the tarp he’d been working under, and a thin coating of dust sprayed over the round of oak he’d been cutting through.
“This can’t wait,” I said. “If you need me to pull out my badge and drag you into town, I will. Or you can get out of the rain and get this meeting over with.”
“Meeting,” he scoffed.
“You think it’s a joke?”
“Crow called for it, didn’t he? Of course it’s a joke. Waste of time.”
“Crow has your power—has all the gods’ powers,” I reminded him. “He said it’s important.”
“Never trust a trickster, Chief Reed.”
“It won’t take long. Your soggy logs will be here. Sooner we leave, the sooner you’ll get back.”
I eyed the massive chainsaw that he held as if it were no more than a steak knife. “Crow’s allowed to call an emergency meeting of deities.”
“Pranks and parties,” Odin growled. “What does he know about emergencies?”
“Well, since I’m sure he’s caused quite a few in his time, I expect he can identify one correctly.”
Odin grumbled and snarled. The thunderstorm grumbled and snarled back, flashes of lightning blinking away the mid-day gloom.
“I have a lot of work to do.” He waved again at the pile of wood behind him. “It’s been a slow year. This art isn’t going to make itself.”
Odin made his living selling chainsaw art. He was great with the chainsaw part of chainsaw art, but he wasn’t all that good with the art part.
“Odin.” I waited out a crack of thunder. “Come with me. We’ll deal with Crow’s emergency, then I’ll go home and get dry, and you’ll come back and make bigger piles of sawdust. Deal?”
He curled his lip.
“I have a thermos of hot coffee in the Jeep. All yours.”
His snarl disappeared as the reality of a nice hot cup of coffee soaked into his chainsaw-rattled brain.
The rain, which had been steady and cold, turned hard and freezing. It was like some god up there was pelting us with frozen marbles.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. This better not take all day.”
He stowed the saw under the tarp, took one lazy swipe at the sawdust and wood chips covering his face and short beard, then stomped over to the Jeep. The Jeep bent under his weight as he crammed his huge shoulders, muscles, and girth into the front seat. He didn’t bother with the seatbelt.
Thunder cracked again, rain going liquid and gloopy, drenching me even beneath my rainproof jacket.
Thanks a lot, Thor.
As if in answer to my thought, thunder chuckled across the hills.
~~~
Ordinary stretched along the Oregon coast, a small vacation town where gods kicked off their powers like a pair of old shoes and went about living a normal life among the creatures and mortals who lived here year round.
A Reed such as myself had always been in Ordinary. I’d grown up here with my two younger sisters, Myra and Jean. After our dad’s death a year ago, I had taken over his place as Chief of Police. Myra and Jean worked with me, keeping the peace in the sleepy little tourist town.
We Reeds were mortal, with a twist. Our family line had been chosen by the gods for one important thing: to uphold the rules and laws of Ordinary by making sure god powers were guarded and the secrets of gods and creatures who resided in Ordinary remained just that.
I loved my job, loved taking care of Ordinary and all the creatures, deities, and mortals within its boundaries. Even with all the trouble that came with those responsibilities, I still managed to live a pretty normal life.
Why just a couple months ago, my heart had been broken by Ryder Bailey, the man I’d been infatuated with for most of my life. I pushed the thoughts of Ryder way, way to the back of my brain where there were so many pushed-away thoughts of him it was standing room only.
Still, it was better to keep my mind on my job instead of on things I couldn’t change.
When gods vacationed in Ordinary, they became mortal. That meant they could get sick, hurt, or killed just like any other mortal. Like the fisherman Heim, who was also the Norse god, Heimdall, who had washed ashore dead. I’d not only tracked down the killer, I had also found a mortal to take on his god power before it tore apart the town.
That mortal was my ex-boyfriend, Cooper Clark.
Like that hadn’t been awkward. Hey, I know you and I used to date, and you dumped me at my father’s funeral, but would you like to be a god?
Okay, maybe my life wasn’t exactly normal.
“What?” Odin snapped. His beefy arms strained to cross over his chest like twisted tree trunks.
“What?” I flicked the windshield wipers up a notch and slowed for the puddle that spread across one-and-a-half lanes of the main road through town. If Thor didn’t get over his temper tantrum and give us a break, we were going to have to close roads and issue flood warnings.
“You look worried.” He shrugged as if uncomfortable admitting he was paying that much attention to me.
“It hasn’t stopped raining for five weeks, tourist dollars are way down, we’ve got a fundraiser coming up this week, one month of summer left, and our resident trickster is calling an emergency meeting. A little concern isn’t out of place here.”
“Think he’s leaving?”
“Crow?” He’d been in town all my life. I’d grown up thinking of him as an uncle. It would be a different town without him. “I don’t know.”
“It’d be better without him.”
“Right. Because unleashing the trickster god upon the living world would make our lives any easier. Gods leave here and the first thing they do is remind us that they have their full powers back.”
Thunder broke the sky in half and set off several car alarms. “Point proven,” I said.
“You like him.”
“Crow? The annoying not-my-uncle?”
Odin wore an eyepatch over his left eye. So he had to lean forward and twist to make eye contact with me. “He’s one of your favorites.”
“And you think of Thor as a son.”
“I know Thor,” he said as if that answered everything. “So should you.”
“I know the mortal Thorne Jameson.” I slowed for the light, then turned into the parking lot outside Crow’s glassblowing shop. “Decent voice, good taste in vinyls. Collects rubber duckies. But once he picked up that power and went full god of thunder? I don’t know that guy hardly at all.”
“You know the god power doesn’t completely swallow our personality, nor does the lack erase it.”
“Meaning?”
“Crow is a trickster whether he’s carrying the power of Raven or just blowing balls for tourists.”
I put the Jeep in park, biting back my smile. “You know how that sounds, right?”
He plucked at the dusty sleeve of his flannel shirt. “I meant it how it sounds. Crow isn’t your uncle. He is just very patient.”
“Patient?”
“He knows what he wants, Delaney Reed. And, like a spider, he will wait for his moment to strike.”
I studied his face. No bluff and bluster there. Odin was very serious.
But Odin didn’t exactly get along with the other gods in Ordinary. The rivalry between Zeus and him was on a constant simmer. The petty shots they took at each other’s businesses and life choices kept Aaron, who was Ares the god of war, in a constant state of entertainment.
Other than Thor, who had picked up his power and was therefore unable to return to Ordinary for a year, Odin wasn’t really buddies with the other deities.
“You think Crow’s pulling a long con?”
Odin’s deep blue eye shadowed down darker. A chill washed up my wet, cold skin. Just because gods put down their power didn’t mean there wasn’t an echo, a coal of it caught somewhere deep within them. They were mortal, but they were still the vessels of god power. It made them uncannily charismatic. It made them the flame mortal moths were all too tempted to fly into. And even that tiny spark was enough to make a regular gal like me sit up and take notice.
“Only Crow would know. But he has spent many years becoming your friend, Delaney. Your lifetime. Have you ever asked yourself why?”
“Because he likes me?” I gave him an innocent blink.
He grunted.
“Because I’m likable?” I fluttered my eyelashes. “Possibly even adorable?”
“You are not in the least.” He tried to scowl, but the smile won out.
“Because Crow and all the rest of the gods in town are happy that the family job of keeping this town safe fell into my adorable, capable, likable hands?”
“We’ve had better police chiefs.”
“Since when?”
He shrugged one mountainous shoulder. “I’m sure you weren’t born yet.”
“Well, then I’m the best you’ve had in ages.”
He grunted. “I promised your father I’d keep my eye on you. Since I only have the one, I trust you won’t make me strain it.”
Oh. This was what he was getting at.
My dad had driven off a cliff. Crashed down and died right off a road he’d driven all his life. It had come as a shock to everyone in town: gods, mortals, creatures, and most of all, his daughters.
But I guess sometime before that, he had asked the gods to look after me, to help me as I took on his position as not only the police chief but also as the only person who could transfer god powers to a new mortal if a god died.
I might not be a friend to all the gods in town, but my father...my father had been respected by them. As far as I could tell, the gods had promised to help me if I needed it.
It was annoying. And kind of nice.
“If I need help, I’ll ask.”
He studied me, and I was caught again by that magnetic pull of power echoing in him. Good thing my Reed blood was immune to such things. We Reeds were fire-proof little moths.
“Good.” He nodded once. “Your father was too stubborn. He should have asked for help much sooner. Maybe things would have gone better for him.”
“What does that mean? What things? What better?”
But he was already barging out of the Jeep, the door swinging wide so rain and wind could flip through the paper clipboard in the backseat and rattle the sack of groceries on the floor. The door slammed shut.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. Odin might not have meant anything by that comment except that my dad was stubborn and didn’t know when to ask for help.
Another family trait.
Still, it had seemed like there was something Odin regretted. Some decision my father had made that Odin thought should have been vetted through the gods.
And while it was interesting that Odin was hinting about it, more interesting was that he was telling me about it now.
I wondered if it had something to do with Crow’s emergency.
I flipped up the collar on my coat and stepped out of the Jeep. A fistful of rain slapped at my face and more trickled down the back of my neck as I crossed the parking lot to the shop’s door.
Not even a little bit funny, Thor.
Lightning cracked like a wink. Thunder ho-ho’d on the horizon.
Jackass.
The parking lot was full of cars and the shop windows glowed a soft yellow. The neon CLOSED sign burned blue, keeping away waterlogged tourists who were probably disappointed they’d packed bug spray instead of waterproofing.
“How about you lay off the water works for the rest of summer?” I muttered to the sky, knowing Thor wouldn’t listen to me. “We got nothing but wet to look forward to until next June. Can’t you give us a break before you drown us?”
My phone rang. I curled my hand around it but didn’t pull it out of my coat pocket yet. Odin stood in the doorway, bracing the door open with one big arm. He wasn’t looking at me. He was scowling at the interior of the shop.
“Thanks.” I checked the number on my phone. Ryder.
My heart stuttered into tiny beats and the world did that fade-away thing. All the Ryder thoughts I’d pushed off spilled out of my brain closet and started a party, front and center.
Ryder Bailey had been my childhood obsession, my pre-teen dream, my teen angst. I’d been in love with the man before I even understood that love might add up to something more than holding hands and swapping sandwiches at lunch.
After an eight-year absence, he’d come back to Ordinary, set up his own architecture business and, wonder of wonders, dated me.
Once.
Apparently, me taking a bullet was the deal-breaker for our relationship. He’d had his fun, we’d tumbled into bed for exactly one night, then just slightly slower-than-a-speeding-bullet, he was over me.
I still wasn’t over him being over me.
Stupid heart.
“Hey,” I answered, out of breath, even though it wasn’t physical exertion that made my lungs malfunction.
Three months. We’d been working together off and on, me the Police Chief him our only Reserve Officer, for three months. I’d done my best not to be anywhere near him.
My sisters had wanted to kick him off the force completely, but we needed the manpower. Since they couldn’t kick him out, they’d resorted to giving him the crap jobs, scheduling him opposite me, and occasionally making him ride along with them and their silent disapproval.
“Are you naked?” His voice was low, warm, teasing. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d been drinking.
Whoa. Not what I’d expected. I pulled the phone away from my ear to glance at the screen, then pulled it back so I could talk.
“Are you drunk? This is Delaney,” I said. “Police Chief Delaney.”
“I know.”
Nothing but the soft sound of his breathing and a background noise I couldn’t quite place. Cars? Voices?
“I’m at work,” I said, happy that the words came out steady. “I don’t know where you are, or what you think you’re doing, but don’t call me like this, Ryder.”
“Wait. Delaney.” His phone moved and a whoosh of wind gurgled down the line. “I thought you’d be in bed...”
A horn honked, and then another. A bus or something bigger...subway maybe, clogged up the background.
Where ever he was, it wasn’t Ordinary. And from the slight softening at the end of his words, I’d say he was either exhausted or under the influence.
“Are you all right?” It was the best I could give him. Just because he broke my heart didn’t mean I shouldn’t worry about his well-being.
That was sort of the job description of being police chief. I’d be just as concerned for anyone else’s well-being in Ordinary.
Liar, my heart whispered.
“Hell, I didn’t think. What time is it?” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Ryder? You need back up?”
He chuckled a little at that, then the sound behind him grew louder, like maybe a lot of cars had all roared to life inside a parking garage.
“No, thanks. I’m good. I just. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry about that, Chief. Should have listened and had the extra orange and cookie. Dizzy. What time is it? Oh. Morning.”
“Ryder?” That slightly defeated tone in his voice kicked spikes through my heart. He sounded like he was saying good-bye. Like he was making a last call before being shipped off into something dangerous.
But Ryder was an architect. He didn’t lead a dangerous life.
“I’m good. And Delaney? It’s really nice to hear your voice. Sorry I...just sorry.”
He hung up.
He hung up on me.
My heart rattled back into place like a dropped dinner dish, swirling, swirling to a ragged clatter.
Why had he called me? Why had I heard fear in his voice, or if not fear, worry, tension?
Why had he sounded like a man who’d been given his last phone call and had decided to waste it on a woman he’d dumped?
Why was I still staring at the disconnected screen on my phone?
I was dimly aware of Odin dragging his arm away, the door shutting, the room quieting. I looked up.
Dozens of gods were staring at me.
Neat.
More than half of them looked like they could read my mind and knew exactly all the things I was thinking about Ryder. How much I still cared for him even though he dumped me. How much I wanted to be his friend–no, how much I wanted to be more than that. How much my heart would jump at the chance to have him again, even though my mind knew that could never happen.
He had dumped me while I was lying in a hospital bed, shot. There was no chance for us, he’d made that clear. And I wouldn’t let him hurt me again. I was done being burned by the men I thought loved me. I was fine being alone and didn’t need to share my crazy life with anyone.
Then why did the sound of Ryder’s voice make me so lonely?
I pocketed my cell and tipped my chin up, the drip of rain slithering from my long braid down my back. “All right. Where’s the emergency?”
I did a quick head count. Twenty-five deities in the room. I knew them all, from Athena to Zeus. As per the rules of vacationing in Ordinary, they all had regular mortal jobs and gave back to the community in some way.
Death, who went by the name, Than, was the newest god to give this vacation thing a whirl and had been in Ordinary for the last three months. He stood off to the right of the room, close to the glass blowing furnaces Crow used to make his glass art, and where Crow taught tourists how to make their own fragile, molten treasures.
Than was tall, thin to the point of gauntness, and austere in his manners. Today’s outfit was a bright pink shirt with the outline of Bigfoot centered above words that said: UNBELIEVABLY ORDINARY. Over that, he wore a black Hawaiian shirt with what I hoped were oddly phallic geoducks. If not, then he needed an X-rating on that shirt.
His black hair was shaved close to his skull, and his eyes missed nothing as he silently considered each and every deity in the room. When he met my gaze, his expression was quiet and intense, studying me. He blinked once, a slow closing of that invasive gaze, and I found it suddenly easier to breathe.
He didn’t smile—he never smiled—but there was the glimmer of wry humor in the angle of his eyebrow. He was enjoying this turn of events, this new, ordinary life he was living.
The gods could live, work, and even fall in love in Ordinary. However, procreating while in Ordinary was not allowed.
So far, none of the gods had wanted to have kids during their vacation time which meant, so far, I hadn’t had to ban any of them from Ordinary.
The other deities shuffled and shoved Crow forward into the center of the room. They formed a half ring around him. None of them seemed happy to have been dragged away from their jobs and lives for the man who now stood in the middle of the room.
“Crow,” I said.
“Delaney Reed.” He gave me a smile that looked like he’d just swallowed needles. “Good of you to come.”
“You called. We’re here. What’s the emergency?”
He wore a white T-shirt under a flannel hoodie. The white shirt brought out the coppery darkness of his skin and made his brown eyes glow beneath artistically messy black hair. He stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.
“There’s a...situation.”
I waited for him to continue. We all waited. It was uncomfortable.
“Get on with it!” Odin yelled.
So much for order. A crack of thunder rattled windows and made the blown glass items shelved around the room shiver.
“The...uh...there’s a problem.” Crow’s gaze fixed on me. He was sweating, a sheen across his forehead and upper lip. His eyes held an emotion I was pretty sure was fear.
I’d never seen him look this way before.
Never.
“It’s okay.” My instincts went red alert. “We’ll figure it out. What’s the problem?”
“The...uh...the...powers?”
I didn’t know why he was asking me something about the powers. He had them. Locked up in the old furnace in the back corner of his shop. Once a year, all the god powers got moved to a new keeper. That person was always a god, and since the stored powers moved around, even the strongest rivals couldn’t complain about some god unfairly having say over where their power was, and how it was being guarded.
“I know of them,” I said dryly.
“They’re sort of...” he shrugged.
“What does that mean? Use your words.”
Twin droplets of sweat traced downward from his temples. His clenched smile looked like it would crack a molar.
“How about you show me?” I suggested.
He nodded, stiff as a shadow puppet, before he walked off to the furnace.
“It’s...not as bad as it looks.” His hand hesitated on the latch.
“Just open the oven, Crow.”
“I called you.” As if making that point was important. “I called everyone as soon as I realized.”
“Realized what?”
He pulled the old metal door open, hinges grinding.
The furnace was empty. Cold. No god powers flickered there like flames made of crushed stars. No god powers sang there in the voices and orchestras only I seemed to be able to hear.
The furnace that should be filled to roaring with the power of each and every deity in this room was empty.
“Where are they?” I said into the hush. “Where are all the powers?”
Crow shook his head. “I have no idea.”
~~~
Little known fact: a room full of angry gods sounds a lot like a bingo hall fight. There was a lot of finger-pointing, insults, charges of cheating, grudges, moral lapses, and bad fashion choices. None of it had anything to do with the matter at hand.
“Enough!” I yelled from near the empty furnace. Crow was hiding behind me.
Coward.
Not that I was much of a shield against a couple dozen pissed off deities, but frankly, I was probably the only one in the room who didn’t want him dead.
“Let’s take this one step at a time. First, can any of you sense where your power is?”
A few of them shook their heads. A couple got far-off looks in their eyes as if they were trying to unsuccessfully pull up an old memory.
“No one?” I asked.
Zeus, who was dark-haired, tan-skinned, and kept his goatee trimmed and gelled, lifted one hand, long fingers spread. He was dressed in an elegant charcoal suit that probably cost more than I could get for my Jeep. He ran a high fashion and fancy decor shop for clientele who liked that sort of thing. Even here in this little beachside vacation town on the edge of Oregon, he did brisk business.
“Let me explain,” he began, and I braced for a lecture. “Each of us knows that our powers are here. Within the boundaries of Ordinary.” He didn’t stop and look around the room, but I did.
No one nodded, but they weren’t arguing either.
Progress.
I gave Odin the eye. He always argued with Zeus. But even he was silent, thick lips pressed in a tight, thin line.
His silence sent a roll of dread through my stomach. When Zeus and Odin weren’t arguing, things were really going to the dogs.
“We know the powers are still together,” Zeus continued. He took a breath, considering what to say next. “But without breaking the contract we have all signed to become citizens in Ordinary, there is no more we can do to find our powers.”
The only deity who seemed minutely surprised by that was Death, who simply made a small, curious sound in the back of his throat.
Yeah, I had the contract memorized too. There was no drawing upon god power for any reason, for any emergency, life, death, or otherwise while the deity remained within the confines of Ordinary. When a god wanted his or her power back, that transfer was handled by a member of the Reed family. Specifically, me.
And once that power was picked up, the deity was required to leave Ordinary for a full year, no backsies.
That’s when it clicked. Someone in this room had broken that rule and remained in town even though he’d pulled on his power.
I glared at Crow. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” His eyes darted everywhere but my face. “I didn’t steal the powers. Why would I steal them when I already had them? My power is gone too. I don’t know where they are. I didn’t do anything!”
His voice went up and up. I’d never seen him this freaked out.
“You have to believe me, Delaney.” He wiped his hand over his mouth and finally, his gaze met mine. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
I could feel the anger, the frustration of all the people in the room like a dozen palms flat against my back, pressing me forward, pressing in to crush Crow.
I squared my shoulders and took a breath to calm down. Being angry wasn’t going to solve anything. What I needed were facts, options, and action.
And maybe some back up. I considered calling in Myra and Jean. Between the three of us we should be able to keep this gathering from turning into a bloodbath.
Or maybe I should hide Crow somewhere like in a holding cell before the gods put two-and-two together and realized that just because Crow was a trickster and his power had certain flexibility when it came to rule-following, his actions had started these dominos tumbling.
“Raven,” Odin grumbled, using Crow’s god name, “Answer her.”
“I thought I did.” Crow’s wide eyes asked for my forgiveness. For my mercy.
It was hard to see him like this, my friend. My almost-uncle. Even though he was technically more related to the gods in the room than he was to me, I was the only shield between him and the casually—creatively—vengeful deities at my back.
“Facts,” I said in my calmest police chief voice. “Let’s start there, okay?”
Crow nodded.
“Three months ago, you picked up your power to help me find Cooper Clark so that I could give him Heimdall’s power.”
“Yes.”
“The other gods who picked up their power to help me find Cooper were Hera and Thor.”
“Yes.”
“Hera and Thor left town for a year, according to the contract.” As if to punctuate that statement, thunder thumped across the sky, rattling windows and shelves.
“Yes,” Crow whispered.
“You came back to town. You gave your power back into hiding. You broke the rules.”
For the first time that day, I saw something other than fear on his handsome face. His eyebrows dipped and his mouth twisted a sideways smile. “Broke is kind of strong...bent, maybe?”
“Broke is exactly strong enough. Because it’s the truth. That’s the thing that is the opposite of what you usually do.”
“Rude.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder at the room full of angry.
“Okay. Okay.” He stepped out to stand beside me, though still back far enough I was between him and most of the room. He raised both hands, pleading for his brethren to stay calm.
“I broke the rule. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had my power back and that high, that invincibility of being filled with power...” He bit his bottom lip and shook his head a little. “You all know what it’s like. I hadn’t picked up my power in years. Decades.”
Lightning strobe-lighted the room. Thunder cracked and growled.
“I let it get away from me. The temptation. The possibilities of what I could do with my power, and what my power could do...if I let it.”
Someone, I thought maybe Ares, swore.
“This isn’t my fault. Not really. Not me, Crow. It’s my power, Raven’s power’s fault. Three months with no backlash? It tricked us. I’m as much a victim as you are.”
The room dissolved into the bingo-hall shout-down again.
I let them all get it out of their systems.
Crow sidled sideways to get more of me between them and him.
“Nope.” I pressed my hand on his upper arm and felt the damp heat of his fear radiating through his thin shirt. “They’re not going to kill you. That would get them kicked out of Ordinary for good. They, apparently unlike you, follow the rules in the contract.”
I turned. “None of you will kill Crow, because if you do, I will haul you in for murder and then banish you from town for the rest of your existence.
“Since you all know he’s complicit in the misplacement of your powers, I will consider each and every one of you a suspect if Crow shows up dead, injured, or sporting so much as a new hangnail. The law is here for a reason, and I’m here to enforce it.”
A few feet shuffled. A few voices swore. Finally, Frigg spoke up. She was just under six feet tall, yellow hair pulled back in a single ponytail that fell against her heavy flannel jacket. Her jeans were frayed near the knees, and a smudge of grease streaked one thigh. Her shirt had her towing company’s logo over her heart: Frigg’s Rigs.
“All right, Delaney,” she said calmly. “We know how to follow the rules. And the rules say since Crow picked up his power, he gets kicked out for the next year.”
“I agree.” Crow made an offended noise. I ignored him. “But first we’ll have to find his power so that he and it are out of Ordinary. Was your power in that oven too, Crow?”
He nodded.
“Then we have to find the powers before we can kick him out.”
Frigg inhaled, exhaled. “Well, crap.”
My thoughts exactly.
“So what we all need to do now is stay calm and start looking. Where could the powers be? Who might have taken them or,” I held up my hand to cut off speculation, “could the powers have moved on their own accord, or been drawn away by some other natural or supernatural force?”
The silence was worse than the grumbling. Thunder rumbled, quieter this time. Maybe Thor was done drowning us with his displeasure of having to stay out of town for a year.
Zeus sighed. “Where do you suggest we begin searching, Delaney?”
A few of the gods threw deadly glares toward Crow, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t fire up the murder wagon.
Yet.
“We start with Crow staying with me.”
“What?” he protested.
“Under protective custody, if you come with me willingly. Under arrest if you don’t.”
“Well, seeing as I have so many choices...”
“No choices,” I said. “You have no choices.”
“And then what?” Frigg asked.
“I’d like all of you to let the police handle this. No tearing this town apart on your own.”
The room exploded into complaints and groans, and a few outright strings of curses in languages I didn’t know.
Was someone swearing in Pig Latin?
I spread my stance, hands tucked on the front edges of my belt.
“We’ll look for the powers. We’ll question any creatures who might know where the powers could be. We have the resources of the entire town, mortal and creature at our call. You all have businesses to attend. As long as the powers remain in Ordinary, you continue your vacations just as if we knew where the powers were.”
“You expect us to do nothing?” Hades spoke from near the back of the room. Hades was built like an ex-football player, wide at shoulders, thick through the chest. Even in slacks and sweater vest pulled over a pale orange button down shirt, he looked like he could break someone in half with a pat on the back.
He ran the frilly little beachside bed and breakfast where each room was decorated in literary themes: romance, mystery, western, historical, fantasy. For a god who ruled the cool, impersonal underworld, he was a happy, I’d dare say even soft-hearted man.
The contrast between what his god power represented, and what he preferred to do on vacation made me wonder once again just how much the gods held on to their mortal personalities even after millennia as deities. Or maybe just how much the gods delighted in doing the exact opposite of their normal god-power duties while on vacation.
“If you think of anything, tell me. If you see anything that could lead to your powers, tell me. If you have a vision or hunch or dream, I want to know. Ordinary is a small town. It shouldn’t take us very long to cover it.”
Of course I was massively simplifying the problem. It wasn’t just finding the powers that was the problem. Whoever or whatever had taken them would need to be dealt with too, even if it was only Raven’s own power that had hidden the rest of them away.
I had no idea what sort of creature or person in existence could not only sense god powers, but could also handle them and physically move them.
I made a note to look back over the list of current and past creatures who had called Ordinary their home. Who in town could touch a god power and not be destroyed by it?
There was another possibility, of course. That the powers had been drawn away by some kind of supernatural force instead of some kind of supernatural being. It was a long shot, since I’d think any number of creatures and deities would feel something hinky going down in town, but it wasn’t completely impossible.
But then almost nothing was completely impossible in Ordinary.
We’d need to check in with anyone sensitive enough to the forces, magics, and powers in the town who might have felt a shift.
Which pretty much meant I’d be going door-to-door asking people if they’d felt a disturbance in the Force.
Terrific.
“Well then,” Ares, who looked like a twenty-something computer geek and owned the nursery and garden center, clapped his hands together to break the silence. “We have our battle plan. Crow stays with the Chief, the rest of us go back to our daily lives and wait for our powers to show up in the local lost-and-found. Easy.”
But of course, the way Ares said it made everyone grumble again.
Just because he wasn’t currently the god of war didn’t mean he could resist stirring up trouble amongst his neighbors.
I glared at him, and he gave me an angelic smile.
Jerk.
“I know it won’t be that easy,” I said. “And I know you all are uncomfortable standing on the sidelines of a crime. But it is a crime. According to the contract of Ordinary, all crimes are handled by the police. Me. That doesn’t mean I don’t want your help. If any of you suspect where your powers might be, or who they might be with, call the station. We’ll be the point on this investigation, but input on the search is welcome.”
There was a general rumble of annoyance and agreement, and then Frigg opened the door.
“We trust you, Delaney,” she said. “You’ve always done right by us.” She walked out the door, then jogged through the rain.
The rest of the deities followed her example. Hades, Thanatos, Zeus, Ares, Athena, Brigid, Nortia, Momus, Poseidon, Bast, and many more, gave me a nod or a glare, then stepped out into the rain.
Only Odin and Crow remained behind.
Crow stood with his back against the cold furnace, his eyes closed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. His shoulders were slumped. He looked like a man who had just escaped being mauled by a room full of lions, tigers, and bears.
Close enough.
“Get your coat,” I said.
He tipped his head and opened his eyes, but his fingers remained between his eyebrows.
“What?”
“Lock up the shop. We’re going now.”
“But...what?”
Okay, maybe he was still coming to grips with his near-death experience.
“You’re riding with me today. Protective custody. I need to take Odin back to his place. Let’s go.”
“But my shop. My...my work. I can’t just shut everything down.”
“Yes, you can. As a matter of fact, you need to make some long-term plans about shutting it down or giving it to someone else to run. Because as soon as we find the powers, you will pick yours back up and leave Ordinary like you should have three months ago. You broke the rules. That’s not going to fly.”
Crow dropped his hand, his arms loose at his side, his head thunked back against the kiln. If defeat had an avatar, Crow could model for it.
“All right.” His voice had gone very soft. “I got it. Let me shut things down. Give me a minute.”
He pushed off the furnace and headed to the back of the shop to his small office and outside door.
“Do you believe him?”
I looked over at Odin who stood near the front windows. His back was toward me, his hands planted against his hips so that his elbows jutted out. He looked broad and strong as a granite outcropping standing there while the storm whipped against the glass.
“Crow?” I asked.
He grunted in agreement.
“Do I believe he doesn’t have the powers anymore? That’s pretty obvious.”
Odin shifted his weight and turned toward me, backlit now by the gray day. “Do you believe he doesn’t know where the powers are?”
My first response was to say yes, of course I believed he didn’t know. He was obviously freaked out over the loss and afraid of what the other deities would do to him because of his lapse. I didn’t think there had ever been a god who had failed to keep the powers safe and hidden while they were in Ordinary.
Crow had just put himself in the history books, and not in a good way.
But he had admitted the power tricked him. Maybe somehow, even in a subconscious way, he might know where the powers were. “If he knows, I’ll make him tell me.”
Odin shook his head slightly. “You heard me before, didn’t you, Delaney?” His voice had an even timbre I wasn’t used to from him. He sounded almost...fatherly. Odin had never been fatherly. Cranky, egotistical, and self-centered, yes. But not fatherly. Not to me.
“Heard what?”
“Crow is not your uncle. Not family. Really, none of us are. Your father understood that. There is a division between gifted mortals, like you and your bloodline, and gods who are temporarily mortal. Even though we don’t carry our powers, we don’t...see the world in the same way as a mortal. We can’t. We have been changed too much by the power we bear.”
I nodded. I didn’t think I’d ever heard this many words out of him in all my years of knowing him. It was surprising enough that I didn’t want to interrupt.
“We don’t see the world in the same manner as mortals. We don’t experience time as a mortal would.” He gestured with one meaty hand as if he were trying to drag words out of the air, then planted his palm back on his hip. “We do not love as a mortal loves. Not even if we try.”
Thunder rumbled slow and low outside and the rain picked up.
The entire conversation made me feel sad, though I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was because it was so unexpected. I would never have guessed Odin had this kind of insight to share. Never would have thought he’d given any time to consider what a mortal might think and feel as compared to a god.
But then, he was known as a wandering god, as a wise man. Maybe the accident-prone, grumpy chainsaw artist I knew was just an act he put on. A part he played to fit in this ordinary town in this ordinary world.
“So if Crow has found a way to make you think he loves you, that he cares for you as a mortal cares for another mortal, think twice, Delaney, before you believe him.”
Thunder rolled again, a soft rumble to the north, nearly out of town now.
“If I believe Crow doesn’t care for me, for my well-being, because no god is capable of that kind of caring, then how exactly am I to take your advice, Odin? It’s very kind of you to warn me like this.”
He shook his shaggy head, his grin a slice of white in the dark shadows over his face. “I’m not saying this out of kindness. I’m just telling an officer of the law to be wary of me and my kind, especially when we’re trying to be helpful.”
“Or when you’re worried about me?”
He scowled, but I wasn’t buying it. It had only been a couple months ago, right after Heimdall’s murder that Odin and several other gods had told me they had promised my dad they’d help me if I needed it.
There was plenty at stake for the gods to want to make sure I did my job and did it well.
But it wasn’t just for their own survival that the gods had offered to help me. My father had forged a friendship with the gods of our town that hinged on mutual respect. He hadn’t spoken much about how the Reeds before him had interacted with gods, other than to say they had always carried out their duties. But I’d gotten the impression that past Reeds hadn’t seen the use in socializing much with the gods.
Back in those days, generations ago, the town was really nothing more than a small collection of buildings along the dirt road that followed the coastline dotted with fishing boats and cabins built into the hills. There wasn’t much for a Reed to do but to occasionally hike out to a god’s place and make sure they weren’t using their powers while inside the town’s boundaries.
Dad had changed that. He had been not just the police chief, he had also been a man the gods could turn to with questions, troubles, and opinions.
He had become their friend, no matter what Odin wanted to call it.
“Yes,” Odin agreed, bringing me back into the conversation. “Especially when we seem to be worried about you.”
“Are you?”
“Worried?”
I waited.
“You are more than your ability, Delaney. I understand that. Many of the gods do. But just as many gods and creatures and mortals in town see you as your job. As the law. As the police chief. That is a dangerous position to hold. One of extreme expectations. One that could put you in the line of fire when those expectations are not met.”
A chill washed over my skin. Hera, who had gone by the mortal name Herri and run a bar here in town, had picked up her power to help me find Cooper too. Unlike Crow, she had left town for one year as required by the contract.
She had told me that there was a war coming. She had told me it was headed toward Ordinary. I’d been looking over my shoulder for three months. Other than the constant rain, Ordinary had seemed normal enough.
Until all the god powers had been stolen.
“What line of fire? If you know something about the war headed our way, I want to know.”
“War?” his eyebrows shot down. “Is that what you think?”
Hera had also told me to choose my allies carefully. That people might not be who I thought they were. I studied Odin and went with my gut. I trusted him.
“Hera mentioned a war headed our way. Do you know anything about that?”
He rubbed one calloused thumb over the corner of his mouth, his gaze on the floor. “Through the ages there have always been wars among gods. Just because we vacation doesn’t mean we give up our basic instincts. But war. Here.” He was silent for several minutes.
I listened to the cars hushing by the shop, wet pavement making tires louder than engines.
“What does your blood tell you, Delaney?”
His words flashed like fire across my skin, then sank deep into my bones where they pulsed. My blood. Reed blood. Protectors of Ordinary.
We were connected to this land, connected to all the forces and creatures and gods who walked upon it. Our roots ran deep, into the soil, the sand, the salt. And I knew, in that quick instant that something was coming for Ordinary. A storm. War.
But all I said was, “I don’t know.”
“You had better. And soon. Your father didn’t listen to the blood.” He shook his head. “You understand that, don’t you?”
I swallowed. What did our blood have to do with Dad, with a possible war? “What happened?”
“He chose sides. Too late.”
Crow stomped into the room. “All right. I’m ready.”
He wore a quilted canvas jacket and had shoved a gray beanie over his dark hair.
He was also wearing an umbrella on his head.
Neither Odin nor I moved. A hundred questions were spinning through my mind. Too late for what? Choose what sides? I wanted to ask Odin what he knew. It should have been second nature for me to grill him. I was a cop. I knew how to ask questions and get answers.
Also: umbrella hat?
As soon as Crow had walked back into the room, Odin had shut down. That warmth—no, heat—that had been in his gaze, in his words, was once again stowed behind the man I’d known for so many years.
A grumpy, accident-prone chainsaw artist.
The quick change must mean he didn’t want to talk in front of Crow.
Or he was just as baffled by the hat as I was.
Choose sides. Between the gods? Or was Odin just angry at Crow for losing his power and trying to make me turn against a man I considered my uncle?
“Everything okay?” Crow asked looking between us. “Delaney?”
“What is on your head?”
“My hair.”
“Over that.”
“My beanie.”
Really?
“Why are you wearing an umbrella hat on your head?”
“Where else should I wear a hat? Really, Delaney, you’re ridiculous.”
Odin hrumphed and headed toward the door. “I’ve wasted enough of my time today on you, Crow. If Delaney weren’t here I’d show you just how much I’ve enjoyed wasting my time on someone who couldn’t do one simple job right.”
Crow licked his lips and glanced at me for reassurance. I’d never seen him so nervous around another god before. No, strike that. I’d never seen him nervous around anyone before.
Either he was afraid of Odin, or he was playing me so I would take his side.
Okay, that kind of double-guessing everything was going to have to stop right now. I was not paranoid. I refused to become paranoid. Unless maybe I should be paranoid.
“Let’s go, bumbershoot head.” I waved at the door, telling them both to walk out in front of me so I could keep an eye on them.
Okay, maybe I was a little paranoid.
Crow stared at Odin’s retreating form, then trudged along after him, waiting at the door for me to walk through so he could set the alarm and locks. He patted the doorframe gently, like he was saying good-bye to an old friend.
Well, he wasn’t saying good-bye yet, but he would be. Losing the powers meant not only putting himself in jeopardy with the other gods, it meant putting the rules of Ordinary in jeopardy.
When the rules were broken, I was the one who had to answer for it. And I would.
As soon as we found his powers.
I gave him his moment at the door and dashed over to the Jeep.
I opened the Jeep and slid in, Odin taking the passenger side. He didn’t buckle the seat belt or look at me. He just scowled at the rain, lost in his own thoughts.
“Just so you know,” I said, as rain rattled against the metal roof and Crow jogged across the parking lot toward us, the umbrella hat a bright crazy blob in the gray light, “I appreciate what you said in there. I’ll be careful.”
“And will you call on me?” He still didn’t look my way, didn’t take his gaze off the gray and wet.
“Yes,” I said, not knowing exactly what I was agreeing to. I wasn’t close to Odin, not in a familial way, but the man here in my Jeep was steady, serious, and seemed to know things I wanted to understand.
“We need to talk. About Dad.”
Odin grunted, but the line of his massive shoulders relax minutely.
“You know where I’ll be.”
Then the back door opened and Crow bulleted into the seat, slamming the door behind him. “Can we stop for food? I’m starving.”
“No,” Odin and I said at the same time.
Crow gave an offended sound, and caught my gaze in the rearview mirror.
“I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.”
“If you behave yourself, I’ll stop for coffee before we head in to the station.”
“Fine.” He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned out the window like a petulant child. With a parasol on his head. Those things were never going to catch on.
“Suck it up, Crow,” Odin growled.
One grouchy god.
Check.
One pouty god.
Check.
Silver lining? Starting a Monday out this bad meant it couldn’t get worse.
~~~
It got worse.
I’d dropped Odin off at his property, and Crow had claimed the passenger seat. He spent the next twenty minutes complaining about the rain, the gods accusing him of losing their powers on purpose, and having skipped dinner and breakfast.
“You’re going to complain about how hard things are for you today, when you are the one who has made every god in town angry, lost their powers—lost, Crow—which is something no one has ever done in the history of Ordinary, and doubled my workload? Not to mention that you broke the contract with Ordinary by picking your power back up and then not leaving town for a year. I can not start to explain just how angry I am at you for that.”
And even more, for making me think that his trickster power should be allowed to do that. I should not have trusted him.
He chewed on his bottom lip while I navigated the rain and traffic. “Buy you an Egg McMuffin with extra cheese?” he said quietly.
I sighed, trying to rein in my anger and worry. It had taken three months before anything bad had happened from him breaking the rules. Maybe we could fix it before anything else bad happened.
“Why didn’t you eat dinner?”
“I was busy.”
“Doing what?”
“I...was out of town. Picking up some things for my shop.”
“You going to come up with a receipt for these things with a date stamp on them?”
He rubbed at the bridge of his nose again. “I was out of town at a movie. I have the ticket for that.”
That seemed a little more likely. We had a three-plex here in town, but it didn’t always get the newest blockbusters. Driving into the valley to Salem or even Dallas, where they had bigger movie theaters, was pretty common. So was taking an extra hour to drive up to Portland and catch a show at the Imax big screens.
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 why 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?”