Chapter 20
Two hours of phone calls, no new leads, no news from either vampires or werewolves. The case for finding Ben or Jake was getting nowhere.
I’d already drunk a week’s worth of coffee and was on the way to the Cake and Skate. Yes, Ben was missing and we needed to find him. But the fundraiser was an immediate all-hands-on-deck situation. I had to be there for crowd control and general police presence, especially since Myra was participating instead of wearing a uniform.
The vampires and werewolves were some of the best hunters Ordinary had to offer and they were all out looking for Ben. If anyone could find him, it would be the Rossis or Wolfes.
The best thing I could do right now was get through the fundraiser, then get back to work.
An open lot next to the Puffin Muffin bakery was set up in bright Saturday Market style with tents and tables, streamers and balloons. The radio station was sheltered under a bright awning, playing tunes, giving out bumper stickers, and waiting for the big event.
For eight o’clock on a cloudy (but not rainy) morning, there were a lot of people gathered already, most of them walking, but a good portion were on bicycles too.
Dozens of umbrella hats bobbed along in the crowd, and I shook my head. I didn’t know if people were wearing them because they were comfortable and (wrongly) thought they were fashionable, or if Crow was right and had blazed a new Northwest fashion craze to go with our flannel, craft brews, and mushroom hunting.
I parked my Jeep and strolled over toward the bakery. I scanned faces, looking for kidnappers, looking for enemies. While I saw strangers, I didn’t see anyone who seemed out of place.
I also didn’t see any vampires or werewolves, which felt weird.
Death stood near the entrance to the open lot, wearing a bright yellow umbrella hat, a pink jacket with HAPPY KILLS scribbled across it, handing out balloons to children.
Okay, so that was weird plus one.
“You made it,” Jean fell into step beside me and handed me a cup.
I lifted it and took a sniff my coffee-sour stomach clenching. Cocoa, not coffee. Perfect.
“How’s Myra doing?”
“You have to see this for yourself.” Even though Jean hadn’t gotten much more sleep than I had, she was grinning, her pink and orange-streaked hair pulled back in two high ponytails over her ears, her step light.
I couldn’t help but smile. I envied her ability to see the humor in the world, to always find something to smile about even when things looked grim. Not for the first time I was happy my parents had tried one more time for a boy, and instead given me a baby sister.
She led me around the crowd to the bakery parking lot.
Two pickup trucks were parked side-by-side at what appeared to be an impromptu starting line. In front of each truck five people stretched and waited. They all wore helmets, roller skates, elbow and knee pads. Myra was easy to spot by the blue truck, the swing of her hair curved a dark slash beneath her helmet. BLUE OWLS was boldly written in grease paint down both of her arms. The whole team wore blue tank tops, shorts, and high blue socks, with owls on the socks. Looked like the diner was sponsoring the team. Piper and the three Furies were among the skaters.
We hadn’t brought Piper in on burglary charges. Since the powers being stolen was more a god-feud thing, it didn’t fall squarely under mortal laws. Piper had not only admitted to her part in the theft, but she had also ratted out Mithra, which allowed us to recover the powers. Without Crow or any of the other gods wanting to press charges, Piper was going to get off with a warning. A stern warning, and we’d be keeping a close eye on her from now on, but not jail time.
Plus, I still needed to do some research on what place a demigod had in this town. There was no reason to send her away, since she was following all the other rules of Ordinary that we require of the gods and creatures: mainly that she hold down a job and contribute to the community. And she didn’t have a power that needed to be stashed with the other god powers.
Maybe I’d make her take the volunteer hours Jean had promised I’d serve for Bertie for the rest of the year. That would be stern penance.
The other truck was red, the team decked out in gear, all red, with RED WEEDS scrawled down their arms. Took me a minute, but I finally saw the logo for Aaron’s garden center on the tank top.
Of course the god of war wanted a piece of this action.
Rebecca was on Team Red, slender and cool and sleek as a weasel. She sipped her designer water bottle without smudging her perfect scarlet lipstick, and stood just far enough apart from her team mates—a couple humans and two dryads—that it was clear they were not friends.
Myra had grease paint under her eyes, bruises on her arms, and corpse-blue lipstick that was probably borrowed from Jean’s makeup stash. She looked focused and determined.
“She’s going for blood,” I said.
“Myra? Yeah, she’s gonna to mop the street with Rebecca.”
“All the money goes to charity?”
“Elementary school and children’s hospital. Chunk goes to the food bank too.”
I briefly wondered why Rebecca was involved in those charities, and had a shocking moment of thinking the woman might actually have a heart under her belittling, judgmental exterior.
Naw, she probably got roped into it like everyone else. Conscription-via-Valkyrie.
“Are there rules?” I’d never heard of Cake and Skate until Bertie had decided to throw one. I hadn’t paid much attention to the details at the time. It was possible she had made this whole thing up.
“The teams load up the delivery orders into the backs of the trucks, then the truck takes them to the neighborhood drop points where skaters have to get the right breakfast bundles to the right people. Whoever delivers their bundles fastest and gets back to the bakery first, wins.”
“So we follow along?”
“We can, although there will be a judge in the front and back of each truck. Even better, there’s a live stream.”
She pointed at two motorcycles near the trucks, each with a driver and camera person, then over at a screen set at the far end of the lot.
The radio station crew took over, introducing the teams, breakdown of rules, and threw in enough jokes and jabs to get the crowd laughing.
I fell into the familiar mode of friendly vigilance that these kinds of events required.
There was a countdown, then an air horn blast got the games going. The lot was part asphalt, part gravel, and all of it still wet from recent rains.
The crowd cheered as the skaters scrambled to get to the side of the bakery where tables were set up with crisp white bags and boxes, all carrying the Puffin’s logo.
Shouting, shoving, laughing. One box tumbled to the ground, but landed without breaking open and was snatched up by Piper who seemed to know she’d need to catch it before a team mate accidentally ran it over.
A man on Red Weeds team stole a Blue Owl bag, and was hot-skating it back to the red truck. Myra dashed out after him and hip-checked him for his trouble. She took the blue bag quickly back to the correct truck while Red Weeds’ driver gestured and pointed to get the judges to call a foul.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s...intense.” This might be for charity, but it was no-holds-barred.
Jean hooted, then stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Go, Myra!”
Red Weeds got their truck loaded first and all the skaters hopped into the back of the bed. Two Blue Owls stood in front of the truck, blocking it and trying to keep it from pulling out of the lot. They got honked at, the engine revved, and the judge from the back of the Blue Owls’s truck yelled out a foul, at which the crowd laughed and booed.
That delay gave the Blue Owls just enough time to finish loading their deliveries. The two truck-blockers quickly got out of the way and hopped into the back of their own truck.
Red Weeds was the first out of the parking lot, with Team Blue right behind. One lane of the main road had been orange-coned off for the event, and both trucks rolled out at about five miles over speed limit, the motorcycles and bicycles following behind them like a school of bright, honking, bell-ringing fish.
“This is insane,” I said with a laugh.
Jean bumped her shoulder into mine. “It’s good to see you smile.”
“I smile.”
“Not since the Mithra thing you haven’t.”
We were walking with the crowd, watching for ordinary trouble in our ordinary town, and keeping an eye on the screen, which showed the trucks currently stopped at a red light. The skaters were either yelling insults, or laying down the most recent pop dance moves.
Bicyclists got into it, and it suddenly looked like the least coordinated flash mob in history, gyrating randomly and spastically throwing hands in the air.
Myra was laughing, her blue eyes curved in crescents. She waved at one of the cameras and curled her arm to show off seriously impressive biceps.
It was good to see her having fun.
“I guess we’ve all had a pretty hard go of it lately. We’ll get through it.” I said.
Jean shrugged.
“Hey. We will. There’s nothing we Reeds can’t do.”
That made her smile. She sipped her cocoa. “Hogan wants to move in with me.”
“That’s great,” I said. Then at her silence: “That’s not great?”
“I’m not sure it makes sense. With my job.”
“Because you work late and he works early? We can get someone in to handle the switchboard. Or just forward calls. I’d be happy to swap a few days with you so you had evenings with him.”
“Thanks, but it’s not the hours.”
“Then what?” I didn’t think Jean wanted to quit the force. Though I hadn’t asked her. Ever since she was small she’d been putting on Dad’s shoes, wearing his hat and coat any time she got a chance. But maybe now that she was an officer, she had discovered she didn’t like the work.
If she wanted to change careers, I would support her wholeheartedly. But selfishly, I hoped she wouldn’t leave. One of the best things about my job was working with my sisters.
“I don’t know if I want to lie to him all the time.”
We stopped near the front of the line of tents where there was currently less traffic.
“About Ordinary?”
She nodded, the morning light softening her features so that for a moment, I could imagine she was painted in watercolor.
“You know if you want to tell him, that’s your call. I’ll back you up. Myra and I both will back you up.”
“I know. Thanks.” She fell silent for a minute. “Are you happy Ryder knows?”
“He doesn’t know. Not all of it.”
“But he will.”
“He’s on the force. He’s serving a god. He’s a part of a government agency that I’ve never heard of, which totally freaks me out. But yes. He will.”
“Good.” She bumped my shoulder again. “I’ve always thought he should know. I’m glad he’s a part of all this now.”
“Even the god thing?”
“Maybe not the god thing. He’s not really going to start bossing us around about rules is he?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“So where is the man?”
“Bertie has him doing something around here.”
We walked down between tents, keeping one eye on the big screen and the skaters. The trucks had split up and stopped at their first neighborhoods. The split screen showed blues and reds skating up to front doors navigating stairs, grass lawns, dogs, kids, toys, and steep inclines.
The crowd cheered every time a delivery was successfully completed, and laughed when skaters tumbled or managed to miraculously get where they were going without falling down.
I held my breath as Myra worked her way up a rickety three-story stairway at one of the hotels to the crow’s nest apartment at the top. She handed over the bag of goodies then methodically walked down the stairs, one hand tightly gripping the banister.
“Well done,” I whispered as her teammates gave her high fives, then hopped into the truck for the run to the next delivery spot.
I glanced at the red team and they seemed to be making good progress too, most of their bags and boxes already delivered. It wouldn’t be long before they were headed back to the finish line.
We’d made it to the end of the row of tents and turned the corner to walk up the next row.
I stopped short, and Jean let out an “Awww....”
Ryder sat bent forward, painting a little girl’s face. Her back was toward us, but I had a good view of Ryder.
He’d brushed his hair back, and applied some kind of product that kept it out of his face but didn’t look heavy with gel. He was talking with the girl, smiling, his hands steady as he delicately applied paint to her face with a brush that looked like it was something a professional artist would use for oil painting.
His face was caught in a shower of colors. Flowers, butterflies, and a little winged fairy with a sword created a mask across one side of his face. Frogs, superhero shields, and a robot created the other side of the mask. Lightning, storm clouds, and a flying saucer peeked out on the edges of the mask, as did ocean waves, a message in a bottle, and a listing pirate ship.
It was an amazing paint job, and should be overwhelming and cheesy. Instead, it looked like an homage to Ordinary, as if he knew all its secrets and had found the beauty in them.
He straightened, tipped his head slightly to consider the painting on the girl’s face, then grinned and handed her a mirror.
She shrieked in delight. Her parents gave suitable “oohs” and “ahhs” when she turned to reveal the sparkling unicorn with a Supergirl cape painted across her chubby cheek and forehead.
The unicorn was wearing an umbrella hat.
Of course.
The girl and her parents ambled off. Ryder saw us and stood.
“Can I interest you in a new look?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Think I’d make a good superhero?”
“Nope. I already know you would.”
Jean stuck her fingers in her mouth and made gagging sounds. “Get a room you two. I don’t want to watch while you draw her like one of your French girls.”
He smiled, his eyes lit with glee. “Don’t know that it’s appropriate to talk the chief of police out of her uniform before noon.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s noon somewhere in the world.”
“Well, then.” His voice dropped into a sexy drawl, and he wiggled the paintbrush between his fingers. “Maybe you and I should go somewhere...”
A tumble of little kids ran toward us laughing and shouting. They washed up like a wave of chattering pebbles, all pointing at the designs sketched on poster board behind Ryder.
“...or maybe we should back burner that idea until later,” he finished with a laugh.
“Later sounds good.”
Jean elbowed me and coughed, though it sounded like “dinner.”
I rolled my eyes. “Want to get dinner tonight?”
“Love to. Jump Off’s?”
“Seven?”
“Seven.”
That was all the time we had because the radio announcers and the crowd all went wild.
I glanced up at the screen.
The split screen was still split, one camera filming the back of a red and blue skater, one camera filming the front.
Myra and Rebecca.
The skaters were neck and neck, speeding down the middle of the highway, orange cones zooming past as they powered toward the bakery. Whoever made it to the bakery first, won.
Rebecca was lean and fast, her smooth strides eating up the distance.
Myra skated in a deeper crouch, arms pumping, legs digging into each stroke. If body language could make a sound, she’d be a snarl.
“Go, go, go,” Jean whispered.
I crossed my fingers, my heart pounding in beat to Jean’s chant.
Do this, I thought. Take that woman down a notch and show her what Reed blood is made of.
They were closing in fast, Myra catching up to Rebecca’s lead inch by inch. The rumble of motorcycle engines was almost drowned out by the cheering crowd.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.
Myra pulled up beside Rebecca. For a moment that would have been captured in slow motion if this had been a movie instead of real life, they were in perfect rhythm, perfect stride, perfect unity.
They were on the last stretch.
This could be a tie.
Neck and neck. Step and step.
Then Myra winked at the camera.
Winked.
She dug in hard, put on a burst of speed, and left Rebecca in the dust.
If the crowd had been wild before, it went absolutely bonkers now.
Jean screamed, punched the air, and threw herself in my arms. I screamed, and patted Jean’s back. Holding her tight.
“Nothing we can’t do,” she said fiercely.
“Damn straight,” I said.
I looped my arm over her shoulder, and walked with her to gather up our sister for a proper celebration.