Chapter 6
“Can I shoot him yet?” Jean sat on the edge of my desk, her foot swinging, her bubble gum pink hair pulled up into two tight buns above her ears.
“Who?”
She widened her eyes like she couldn’t believe I’d ask her that. “Our new, annoying mascot.”
“I heard that!” Crow slumped in a chair in the lobby. He’d somehow gotten hold of a stapler and a wastebasket and was shooting staples at the wastebasket from about five feet away.
“One more staple, and you’re paying for a year’s supply.”
I heard the quiet snick-click of the stapler shooting. “Bill him,” I said to Jean.
She grinned. “Bill him and make him take over our volunteer shifts for Bertie?”
Crow snapped out of his slouch and approached the empty front desk. “I object. That’s cruel and unusual punishment. I thought you needed my help to find the powers.”
I took a sip of coffee and studied him. He looked worried, which wasn’t an emotion I’d ever seen last with him. But then, I didn’t think he’d ever screwed up on this massive of a scale before.
“I brought you into custody to try and keep you out of trouble and also to try to keep you alive. You made a lot of enemies among the deities.”
He made a derogatory sound. “None of them like me anyway. I’m not afraid of them. They don’t even have their powers.” He waggled his eyebrows.
I rolled my eyes. “You know they don’t need their powers to kill you, right? Mortals have been offing mortals since the dawn of mortals.”
He didn’t look concerned. “What’s with the secret envelope you haven’t opened?”
“Secret envelope?” Jean asked.
I narrowed my eyes. He’d done that on purpose to divert the conversation. Brat.
I hadn’t opened it yet because I didn’t want to deal with whatever was inside it in front of Jean. I wasn’t sure if it was instinct or just because I was sometimes an over-protective big sister, but I wanted a look at the contents before I got her or Myra or anyone else involved.
“It’s not a secret.”
Crow raised his eyebrows. “So open it.”
I glared at him extra hard, which only made him smile extra wide.
“What envelope?” Jean asked again. “Where did you get it? Where is it?”
I sat back and put my cup down. “Death gave it to me. He found it on my doorstep this morning.”
“Death was on your doorstep?”
“He wanted to make sure I was making the finding of the powers a priority.”
“Okay, so why haven’t you opened the envelope?”
“It slipped my mind.”
She sat there and gave me a look that was so much like our mother that I almost laughed. “Fine, it didn’t slip my mind. I wanted to deal with it in private.”
“Why?”
“It was left on my doorstep, unmarked.” I tugged at my coat on the back of my chair and pulled the envelope out. “I wanted to make sure it was something we could handle before I shared it with you and Myra—and yes, I would have shared it with you.”
To demonstrate, I handed her the envelope. She took it at the edges, just like I did, and after a moment glancing at the front and back, held it up to the light. “A letter?”
“I think so.”
“Open it,” Crow said. “Seriously, I’ve never seen anyone take this long to open their mail.”
Jean pointed a finger at him. “You don’t get a vote.” She handed the envelope back to me. “Open it.”
I pulled out my pocket knife and used the sharp blade along the seam. There seemed to be just a piece of paper inside. In case I was wrong, I made a shooing motion to get Jean off my desk, then stood and tapped the open end of the envelope onto the desk. No powder or other substance fell out.
Paranoid? Maybe. We were a little town several decades behind bigger, more modern towns, and hadn’t had anything deadly mailed to any of the inhabitants. Still, we hadn’t had a vampire killed in town before either.
Progress wasn’t always a good thing.
I tugged at the paper inside, and unfolded it.
It was plain, white, unlined. The handwriting in black ink was neat, sharp, and slanted hard to the right.
Police Chief,
Do not let anyone read this letter. Not your sisters, not the gods, nor any creature. Meet me behind the Blue Owl diner at midnight. I know who took the power.
The letter wasn’t signed, dated, or otherwise marked.
“Well?” Jean leaned toward me. I folded the letter and tucked it back in the envelope.
“I’m not going to lie to you, but I can’t tell you what the letter says.”
“Like hell you can’t.”
“Tell me instead,” Crow suggested.
“No.”
The silence in the room would have been comical if I didn’t know just how annoyed I had made Jean.
“Is it about the murder?” she asked, no more humor in her voice.
“I’m not going to do twenty questions with you too.”
“Is it?”
“No. And that’s all I’ll say.”
“Is it from your boyfriend?” Crow asked.
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
That, apparently, was top-quality comedy right there and Crow laughed himself silly. When he finally got done and focused on me again, his mirth turned to surprise. “Oh, come on. Have you forgotten Ryder Bailey? Your boyfriend?”
“We’re not dating and we’re not going to date.” That sounded firm. Sounded sure. It didn’t matter if I secretly wasn’t so sure it was the truth.
“You two have been dating since eighth grade.” He held up one hand to stop me from arguing. “Walking each other to class, showing up at the same birthday parties, helping each other with school projects, and let’s not forget those long looks when you didn’t think the other was looking.” He made a kissy face while batting his eyes.
“We weren’t dating. We were kids.”
“You joined the volley ball team just so you could see him outside the locker room when he was warming up for baseball practice.”
My eyes went wide. I’d never told anyone that. There was no chance that I’d been that obvious about Ryder. “I joined volleyball because I liked the game.”
“Because the games gave you a chance to see Ryder sweaty without his shirt on.”
“Who told you that?”
Jean snorted.
“Like anyone had to tell me?” Crow smiled again, but this time it was more the smile of an uncle who had known me since I was born. “Delaney, you’ve always loved him. Maybe as a friend for a while. But as you got older, it was a different kind of love.”
I gave him what I hoped was a piercing glare. “What do you know about love?”
“So very many things,” he said in a way that carried the years of his life that were far from mortal. “Enough to know he loves you too.”
“If you think he loves me, why haven’t you ever told me that before?”
“Hello? Trickster god. It’s a lot more fun to watch you two crazy kids bumble around and try to figure it out on your own.”
This time Jean laughed. “Just when I thought I couldn’t stand you for a second longer, umbrella head, I change my mind.”
“So is the note from Ryder?” Crow asked.
“No. And before you ask: it’s not dangerous, it’s not signed, it’s not anything that will be a problem.”
Jean shook her head. “Not good enough for me. Let me see it.”
“No.”
“Delaney, you’re going to let me see it.”
“Do you have a bad feeling about this thing? A doom-twinge?” Jean could usually feel when something bad was about to happen. It was her special skill.
I held up the envelope. Her expressive blue eyes ticked to the envelope. I could almost feel her trying to see what was on the paper inside.
“No,” she finally said after a full minute.
“Then you know this isn’t something that will endanger my life.”
She didn’t really know that. None of us had that power. But if it were truly dangerous, Jean would at least have a bad feeling about it.
“I have a bad feeling about it,” she said.
“Really?”
She dropped her eyes. “No. But I don’t like that you’re not telling me what’s in that letter.”
“I’ll tell you tonight,” I promised. “You’re working graveyard, right?”
She nodded, and stifled a yawn. “Should have been out of here an hour ago. Have you seen Myra?”
Just then, Myra walked through the door. Showing up exactly when she was needed was Myra’s special skill.
“Morning.” She looked a little tired, but had a bag of pastries in her hand that smelled like apples and cinnamon.
“Morning,” I said as she hung up her coat that was wet, but not dripping. Looked like we might be finally getting a break in Thor’s temper tantrum. Her shirt was untucked, and lifted a bit. Just enough to show me a little bit of skin that was bruised green.
“You’re in late. Something come up this morning? Fall in the shower?”
She shook her head, but wasn’t making eye contact. If I knew her, and I did, I’d suspect she was keeping something from me. Which meant she was.
I didn’t like the idea that whatever it was, it involved bruises.
Maybe for once it was something good? Myra deserved some happiness. She had always been the most serious of us Reed girls, but since Dad had died, that subtle joy inside of her had seemed to falter and fade.
Maybe she had a boyfriend. She hadn’t dated since Tristan left for Europe. It had been a quiet sort of love affair—which is the only kind of love affair Myra had ever had—and Myra never really spoke of him except to say that they had parted as friends.
Or it was possible I was just projecting my hopes and issues on my sister. Just because I wished I had figured out where I really stood with Ryder and had done something about it, didn’t mean all of my sisters wanted to be dating.
“You still seeing Hogan?” I asked Jean.
She gave me a look that told me just how random that question seemed.
I waited. It might have come out of the blue, but I was still curious.
“It’s complicated?” she finally said. Well, sort of asked.
“Is he bothering you?” Myra used that protective tone she’d had ever since I’d been shot. “Do I need to go talk to him?”
“Delaney got an anonymous letter on her doorstep this morning!” Jean blurted.
Total diversionary tactic, the rat.
It worked. Myra’s cool blue gaze shifted to me with laser-like focus. “Show me the letter.”
I held up the envelope, flipped it so she could see front and back and then shoved it into the pocket of my coat.
“Not funny.” Myra advanced. I noticed Crow made himself busy staring at the uninteresting notices and tsunami evacuation routes that covered one of the lobby walls. “Give it to me.”
She wasn’t usually this bossy. Well, no, that’s not true. She was always a bit firm about the things she wanted to happen. But the last year and a half had put a grimness in her I wanted to take away.
So I stood up and gave her a hug. “I’m fine. It’s a letter. Nothing dangerous, Jean isn’t getting any vibes off of it, and it’s a private note—but not from Ryder. I’m going to tell you what it says tomorrow morning because the person who wrote it wants it to be private for a little bit. But I won’t do anything dangerous, and I won’t let anyone hurt me, and I’ll be smart and careful, Mymy.”
I hadn’t meant to say so much, but it all came pouring out of me in the quiet seconds while our cheeks were pressed into each other’s hair.
She finally switched her stiff one-palm-only hug to something with a more familiar squeeze, then stepped away. “You aren’t supposed to be more annoying than Jean.” Her words were light, but the fear in her eyes that she quickly tucked away wasn’t.
“We decided to put annoying on rotation. I pulled the short straw today.”
She nodded, her eyes asking me not to do anything stupid that would make her regret her decision to not read the letter.
I hoped my eyes were asking her to tell me why she was hiding bruises.
“I will be safe.”
She still didn’t believe me, but knew I wasn’t going to back down.
“Donuts?” I glanced down at the bag in her hand.
“Um...yes. New health food bakery is finally open. They’re giving away free samples today. I picked some up to...try.”
Jean snatched the bag out of her hand and opened it, peeking inside. “They smell okay.”
They smelled wonderful. And she would have said so if she weren’t in a “complicated” relationship with Hogan, who owned the best bakery in town.
She pulled out a little glazed apple fritter with a dab of what looked like vanilla cream in the center.
“Apple fritter ala mode,” Myra said. “All organic ingredients.”
Jean raised one eyebrow, took a bite and chewed. “Damn it,” she said.
I held out a hand and she gave me a fritter, then passed one on to Myra. We both took a bite. That little confection was full-on delicious, flaky, rich, and the vanilla must have used sour cream for just the right amount of tart to balance the sweetness of the apple.
It was the best apple fritter I’d ever tasted.
Jean was frowning at her fritter.
“Too sweet,” I said.
“Terrible texture,” Myra added.
Jean flashed us both a smile. Hey, if she was dating Hogan, then that was the only baker who got the Reed sister support.
She handed a fritter to Crow, who wonder of wonders didn’t tell her it was the most delicious thing he’d ever eaten.
“So, I’m outs,” Jean snuck another fritter and tucked it into her cheek as she walked over to the coffee table. She held the bag of pastries over the trash can. “Should probably just toss these out, right?”
“Or,” Myra said quickly, “we could put them on the counter in case anyone else comes by today.”
“Like Roy,” I said. “He’ll be in to work the front soon. He should probably try one just to keep in the know on the new businesses in town. It’s community support and all that.”
The scowl she gave us might have been more convincing if she weren’t busy swallowing her second fritter. “But just this once, right? We allow these in the station for the good of the town. After that, if we eat donuts, we get them from the Puffin Muffin. Because we want to support our long-term businesses too.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Of course,” Myra agreed. “We will love all donuts equally, but the Puffin Muffin’s most of all.”
Jean rolled her eyes and placed the bag next to the coffee pot. “Don’t get into trouble.” She pointed at me. Then she pointed at Crow. “If you do anything, or don’t do anything to make her get into trouble, I will handcuff you to Odin. Without your silly hat.”
“Clever hat, you mean? The umbrella hat that keeps me dry? The hat that is a fashion statement that is totally trending? That hat?”
Jean pulled on her coat, flipped up the hood and pointed at it, like she was reminding him there were, indeed non-silly hats in the world. Then she strolled out into the light drizzle.
As soon as the door clicked shut, Myra and I were elbowing each other in a race to the bag of fritters.
She threw some sweet elbow blocking moves I’d never seen her use before and got there before me. She held the bag in her fist like a war prize. “Tell me what’s in the letter.”
“Not happening. Not even for those donuts.”
“Plus,” Crow said, “they are giving out free samples today. Delaney could just go get more for herself.”
Myra shot him a death glare. Crow smiled. “See how helpful I am?”
Trickster. Always trying to stir up trouble. We Reed girls got into enough of it on our own.
I knew how to solve the donut dilemma. Blackmail. “I’ll tell Jean you ate them all.”
“Seriously? You’d tattle?”
“Or, we could split the remaining donuts and never speak of it again.” I held out my hand. She looked at it for a moment, then took it in a firm handshake.
“Deal.”
“What about me?” Crow whined.
“They’re free. Get your own samples.”