Chapter 31
“YOU WANT us to hunt down your ex-boyfriend,” Odin said matter-of-factly. “And kill him.”
“No!” I said for the third time. “Not kill him. Yes, find him.”
We had gathered at the station. Roy was here to hold down the fort, and Ryder had been given the day off. Until further notice. I was surprised Myra had been that gentle on him.
We’d gone down the list, crossed out a few people we knew weren’t really “team players,” and had settled on calling in an even ten.
Out of those ten, eight people had showed up: Ben Rossi and Jame Wolfe, who both still looked like firefighters even though they were in jeans and T-shirts, the twins Senta and Page Rossi, and the gods Odin, Thorne, Crow, and Herri.
The fact that the gods were there meant a lot to me. What I was asking of them—to pick up their god powers and help me—didn’t come at a small price.
Once a god picked up their power, they were off vacation and had to leave Ordinary for a year, just enough time for this old world to circle the sun from point A to point A. It wasn’t a part of the contract the gods signed to get into Ordinary; it was just the way god power worked.
I’d asked Dad about it once and he’d shrugged. There were things about god power even we Reeds couldn’t understand.
Crow had agreed to unlock the three gods’ powers, and his, as soon as we made a plan for how to find Cooper. I didn’t think any god had ever given up their vacation time for a Reed. Or at least Dad had never spoken of it.
Which meant this was a really, really big favor. One I didn’t know how I’d repay.
“No killing,” I repeated.
“You don’t have to worry about them, Delaney,” Jame said with a predatory flash of his teeth. “The day a god can out-hunt a Wolfe is the day I give it up and move to Cabo.”
“Better tell your boyfriend to pack his sunscreen, then,” Thorne said.
Thorne wasn’t actually Odin’s son, or maybe in a way he actually was. Thorne had picked up Thor’s god power about eighty years ago, and he and Odin had come rumbling into town and taken their first vacation together. Thorne had taken to Thor’s power with an instant delight, as happened with most people newly godded. He even looked every inch the tall, powerful, yellow-haired Norse warrior, and always called Odin father.
His day job was owning and running the music and record store in town.
Ben sucked on the back of one fang, staring at Thorne like he was considering a Merlot to go with dinner. “Want to put some money on who’s going to bring Cooper down?”
“Nobody’s going to bring Cooper down,” I said. “He comes back alive.”
“Yes,” Thorne said, “of course. We shall bring the quarry in without a scratch. How much money do you have, Firefang? Enough to make this interesting?”
“No,” I said, “we will not make anything interesting while we hunt for my ex-boyfriend.”
“Make what interesting?” Crow, who could sense a bad bet going down a mile away, had to join in.
“Just a friendly little bet,” Ben said with a smile that would freeze a mortal in place. Unfortunately, neither Crow nor Thorne were mortal.
“Between friends,” Thorne agreed. “My father and I against you and your boyfriend.”
“Gentlemen, please,” Crow scolded. “Money makes for a boring bet.”
“Shoulder devil.” I scowled at Crow.
Crow winked and gave me a big grin.
“Doesn’t have to be money.” Ben licked his lips, his eyes flicking to the side of Thorne’s neck as if he were imagining sinking his fangs in all the way to bone. The other Rossis in the room chuckled and Jame shifted to press his wide hand on Ben’s lower back, maybe reminding him that if there was going to be someone getting bit, it was going to be his lover, not some random thunder god.
“You don’t have the stomach for it, bloodboy,” Thorne scoffed.
Jame growled. Ben glowered.
Crow snickered.
“You’re the one who needs daddy at his side,” Ben said.
Odin snorted and shook his head, his arms crossed over his chest. “Thorne doesn’t need me to win his fights.”
“If we don’t believe you?” Crow mocked.
“Boys,” Herri said, sighing, “reel it in. You can cheat each other blind or bite each other bloody, or beat each other boneless after we find Cooper.”
“No biting,” Jame growled, his hand fisting in the back of Ben’s shirt. “That’s off the table.”
Both Ben and Thorne huffed like little kids who’d just been told to clean their rooms.
“Name your price—” Thorne started.
“What’s the plan, Delaney?” Herri asked.
I threw her a grateful look.
Myra spoke up. “The last person who saw Cooper said he was hitching north out of town. That was a day ago. He could be in Canada by now.”
“How long have you got before boom?” Sage tipped her blonde head my way.
I didn’t point out that she made it sound like it was a death sentence. I didn’t point it out because she was not wrong.
“Today. The power needs to be in a new vessel by midnight tonight.”
“Plenty of time,” she said. “We’ll find him, Delaney.” She smiled, showing a lot less fang than Ben, a dimple popping in her cheek.
“Do you have a successor in place?” Odin asked casually.
That was the other big consequence I’d been avoiding. I hadn’t trained anyone else in how to be a bridge for god power. Myra and Jean hadn’t shown any signs of being someone who could pick up those duties. Though the ability always passed down the Reed bloodline, we were the only Reeds in Ordinary.
That didn’t mean we were the only Reeds in the world, though.
“If I go down, someone will show up on Ordinary’s doorstep, confused, and needing some guidance for how to re-vessel a power gone rogue. I expect you all to be very helpful to him or her.”
“Not gonna happen,” Crow said. “We might gain a new Reed—maybe even one with a sense of humor—but we’d lose our police chief. Then who would we make pity-judge the rhubarb contest?”
I reached out and slapped him on the back of the head.
He laughed and rubbed at his head, backing out of my reach.
“Do we split up?” Jame asked.
“Yes,” everyone in the room answered almost simultaneously.
“Except for Thorne and his daddy, of course,” Jame added.
Odin sighed.
“Okay,” I said, trying to head off a fistfight. “Stay in contact. Use cell phones.” I nodded to the gods. “And thank you all for giving up your final day at the Rhubarb Rally to help me with this.”
That was met by a room full of confused looks.
“Why would we stay for the rally?” Odin grumbled. “Someone already won the sculpture contest with that ridiculous Rhu-ban the Barb-barian atrocity.”
Jame and Ben laughed. “Yes, we did, didn’t we?” Ben’s grin was smug. “You’re getting old, god.”
Odin glared at him, storm and fury and wrath—every inch the god he was. Then a very small smile curved the corner of his lips. “You have no idea. Are you sure there’s no killing?” he said to me.
“No killing at all.”
Odin shook his head, then slapped Thorne on his beefy shoulder. “Not hardly worth my time if there isn’t going to be blood. Delaney, I’ll sit this one out.”
He gave Thorne a pointed look, which he then turned on Jame and Ben. “I’m sure you can handle this just fine without me.”
Great. I’d already lost one god to a petty squabble.
“All right,” I said.
“You go on without me, son,” Odin said to Thorne.
Thorne grinned, his eyes glinting with some kind of shared joke between them. “I’ll see you in a year, Father.”
Odin grinned back. “Say hello to the old world for me.”
Crow flattened his hand over his chest. “Such a touching farewell. Can we just get on with it already?”
~~~
MYRA REFUSED to let me go alone anywhere, much less north toward Tillamook, and it would have been a waste of time to argue with her, since she was driving. The gods and creatures had scattered, promising to be thorough and non-deadly in their search.
“Think Odin really only wanted to come if there was bloodshed?” Myra asked.
I stared out through the Douglas fir, hemlock, and sword ferns that crowded the side of the road.
“I think he and Thorne had some agreement about who gave up their vacation first. Probably some bet he won.”
“Poker?”
“Or that croquet game they started up a couple months ago.”
“Croquet.” Her voice held a level of disbelief we Reeds really should be done with by now. “Thor and Odin. Wickets and tiny mallets?”
“Tiny hammers,” I corrected with mock gravity. “They play it on the beach over at the cove. Apparently you can hear the swearing and insults for miles. A few of the other gods have joined in. I heard rumblings about starting a league. It’s serious business.”
“As long as no one dies,” she said.
That brought on a heavy silence.
“If we don’t find Cooper in time…” I said as Myra kept her eyes on the twisting road that rolled through cow farms and forested hills.
“We’ll find him.”
“If we don’t,” I said, a little more firmly, “I don’t want you or Jean trying to pick up the power.”
She was quiet. After another mile or so, she took in a short breath. “Do you really think Jean and I could stand on the sidelines while our home and the people we care for are being eaten by a god power that our family has vowed to guard?”
“No,” I said quietly. “But I think you could leave. Get out of the blast zone.”
“You aren’t paying attention, Delaney. You know we’d never walk away in a disaster.”
“I know.” I rubbed my eyes. The headache had gotten much worse with the song of power and exhausting pressure.
“We would never walk away from you,” she said.
The truth of that made my chest tight.
“Idiot. We love you. We are not going to lose you.”
The pressure in my chest eased, and I closed my eyes against the overwhelming prickling of tears I refused to give in to. I sniffed and nodded. I was pretty sure I was the worst keeper of power in the history of the keepers of powers, but having Myra and Jean—my sisters, my family—at my back meant everything to me.
I rubbed at my eyes again, drawing away the wetness, and leaned my head against the window, hand propped over my eyebrows to shield the bright light. “Thanks.”
“You hurting?” she asked after another mile of silence.
“Some. Headache.”
“Sunglasses in the glove box.”
I reached forward and pulled out a spare pair of Aviators. I slipped them on, sighing a little at the relief. It wasn’t a lot, but any little bit helped.
“Take your pills?”
“I did. I think this is more Heimdall’s power being pissy than my injury being sore.”
“Too bad we don’t have something for that,” she said.
“Power Vicodin?”
She shrugged. “Or someone in the family who can ease pain.”
“Like that’s a real thing.”
“There have been people in the Reed line who were healers.”
“Dad tell you that?”
She nodded. “He left me a lot of family history books.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking about how that made me feel. Good, I decided. Out of the three of us girls, Myra was serious and patient enough to actually sift through old records. “I’m glad,” I finally said.
“I know it’s usually passed down to the eldest…”
“I’m glad,” I said again, patting her leg. “Dad had good instincts. He knew when to break the rules.”
“Good news,” Crow said from the back seat.
Myra swerved. I yelped and half turned, while I grabbed for a gun I didn’t have on me.
“What the hell, Crow?”
He sat in the back seat where he’d just appeared, a canary-eating grin on his face. “God power. You should try it sometime, Delaney. It’s just all sorts of fun.”
Myra cussed quietly through clenched teeth. She had gotten the car back into our lane, which was good, because there were only two lanes on this part of the old highway.
“If you ever do that again,” Myra said, “I will kill you, Crow.”
He chuckled. “Don’t you want to hear my good news?”
I planted my hand over my side. I was pretty sure I’d ripped a stitch or two. It was bleeding again.
“It better be that you found Cooper and he’s waiting for us in a nice, quiet room, ready to take on the god power,” I said.
He threw his hands up in the air. “Yes! That’s it exactly. How did you guess?”
“Really?” I searched his face.
Crow smiled, and some of the mischief faded under a warmth I’d seen many times since I was a kid. “Really.”
A dizzy wash of relief rolled through me, and I grinned. “Holy shit. You’re amazing! Where is he?”
“The casino.”
“Which casino?” Myra asked.
“Our casino. Just outside of town.”
Myra immediately flicked on the blinker, pulled onto the narrow shoulder, and did a U-turn to get us heading south.
“Is someone there with him? Someone who can make sure he won’t run?” I asked.
“Hera, Jame, and Ben all stayed.”
“Good. Have you told Jean?”
“Thor said he’d mention it to her.”
I glanced at the clock in the console. “So we’re, what? About an hour away?”
“Or a second,” Crow said.
I glanced at him again. He had his arms crossed over his chest, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“You’d do that for us?”
He nodded. “It’s been a while since I’ve stretched my wings and used power, you know.” He somehow made it sound dirty. “It feels real good. Makes me want to do all sorts of things to you innocent mortals.”
He winked at me, and the light that flickered in his eyes was not the warmth and humor I usually saw from my friend. The man in the back seat of the cruiser wasn’t Crow. Or at least he wasn’t just Crow. This was Raven, the trickster, the god.
And if there was one thing I knew, it was that gods in the wild were dangerous, temperamental creatures.
“Do I need to draw up a contract with you first?” I asked. “To make sure that you will only do the things that I actually want you to do?”
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling of the car and sighed. When his gaze ticked back down to me, the odd god power light was a little dimmer and the eyes of my friend were brighter.
“While it’s very, very tempting to say yes and spend some time bargaining you into a contract, I think you should just trust me on this one.”
“Like a stupid, innocent mortal?”
He leaned forward, fighting back a smirk. “Or a brave one. Trust me, Delaney. You know you want to.”
I glanced at Myra. She studied Raven in the rearview mirror, then looked away to catch my gaze. “Go.”
“Okay. Take me to Cooper.”
“My pleasure.” He winked.
We were standing in a carpeted hallway of the casino, the sound of piped music and games rattling in the background.
I’d never been manhandled by god power before. It wasn’t settling well.
“Delaney?” Raven tipped his head to make eye contact.
I leaned against the wall, one palm flat against it to keep me standing, the other cupped around my ribs. “Don’t come any closer. I might yark on you.”
He sucked in a breath. “Right. The Reed family immunity. I forgot. Probably shouldn’t let a god power do anything drastic with you for the next few hours.”
I straightened and took better stock of my surroundings. No one else was in the hall, and there was a closed door right next to me. “No problem. It’s going to take me that long to talk Cooper into this.”
I reached for the door just as it swung inward.
Jame Wolfe stood in front of me, his head tipped to the side like a puppy that had heard a strange noise. His warm eyes flicked over to Raven, and he tipped his head the other way.
“Hey, Jame,” I said. “Gonna let me in there?”
“Sure.” He stood aside, his eyes following Raven, his shoulder hunched up like he was ready to fight. I thought this might be the first time he’d ever seen Crow carrying power.
The conference room had a bank of windows with the blinds closed, a dark wood table down the center of it, and a vampire, a goddess, and my ex-boyfriend seated in the comfortable swivel chairs around it.
The power in me rang out with a shout, a chorus, reaching.
Hera nodded as I walked in. She looked different carrying her power too. A sort of regal air clung to her, even though she was still wearing her jeans and leather jacket. Ben stared at Raven and licked his bottom lip, a quick flash of fang pressing there, his eyes flickering with a hungry glow before he looked away.
Okay, we were all a little tense. A little off our normal footing.
Especially Cooper, who not only had a hell of a black eye, but was also glowering at me.
“What the hell is this all about, Delaney?” he demanded. “You send out your…your hitmen to kidnap me? This is taking crazy ex-girlfriend to the next level, don’t you think?”
“Kidnap? Where did Crow find you?”
“We found him,” Ben corrected. “Here, at the casino, rehearsing for the show.”
“Escorting you down to a conference room isn’t kidnapping,” Jame rumbled.
“Keeping me here is,” Cooper said. “There’s a band. For me to be in that band, I have to rehearse with it, not sit in a conference room with people who won’t answer my questions.”
“Give me a minute with him alone, please,” I said.
Hera’s voice was smooth and alluring. “I would rather we stay with you.”
I held open the door, not falling for the bedazzlement she was oozing. The Reed family immunity was good for that. “I’ll call you all back after we talk, and he has a chance to make his decision.”
They all filed out past me. I pointed at Raven. “No eavesdropping.”
He pressed his fingertips to his chest and made an offended sound.
I shut the door in his face and heard his muffled cackle.
The song of power was louder, a chorus of voices clashing and shattering into breathtaking harmonies.
If Cooper wasn’t the right person to take Heim’s power, he sure did have a way of stirring it up. I could barely hear myself think through it.
“What is going on, Delaney?” Cooper asked again.
I sat in the chair next to him, swiveling it to face him.
“Okay, I need you to hear me out on this, Coop.”
He shut his mouth and blinked hard a couple times. It had been a long time since I’d called him by his nickname.
“There are things about Ordinary that you don’t know. You might have suspected them when you were little, or in those odd moments when there wasn’t an easy logical explanation for weird things that you saw or heard.”
This was the speech my Dad had given more than once. But my nerves were wired so tight, I thought maybe Cooper could hear the blood rushing through my head, the song leaking out my ears. I’d never had to explain this to other people.
I’d never had the lives of all the people in town hanging on if I was able to convince someone of the impossible.
“Ordinary was founded many hundreds of years ago. Before America was called by that name. This little stretch of beach was chosen as a vacation place for people, for beings, who carry power. Those people set aside their powers while they vacationed here. Their idea of a vacation was to be mortal and live a normal, ordinary life.
“Some of those people have come back every year, or just stayed on in Ordinary and lived a long…very long time. You know them. You grew up with them. Crow, Herri, Odin, Frigg. They carry great power, except for when they’re inside Ordinary’s boundaries. Outside of Ordinary, they are gods.”
I swallowed and wiped my hands on my jeans, waiting to see how he would react to that.
“That’s…impossible,” he said quietly.
“Almost impossible.” I patted the air in front of me, begging for his patience. “These people—these gods—are vulnerable when they vacation in Ordinary. They not only live a mortal life, they are also actually mortal. Which means they can catch colds, break legs, fall in love. And they can be killed.
“But their power cannot be killed. When a god dies, that power must be picked up by a new person. A mortal person. Someone with the strength, endurance, and dedication to carry that power and all the burdens and joys that come with it.”
His lips were pressed together in a tight line. He was scowling, his eyes intense. “It can’t be true.”
“It is.”
Time ticked out between us.
“Remember junior year?” I said. “Spring? The Barnacles were playing the Smelts and weather was supposed to be a downpour?”
He nodded. He played second base for the Barnacles. I knew he’d remember.
“We got three inches of rain that day. The entire town flooded. But not the baseball field. It hardly sprinkled there.”
“Wha—”
“Thor. He had a bet riding on the outcome, picked up his power, and influenced the weather.”
“That was just a freak storm.”
“That was a god. The bus crash?” I said before he could argue. “Elementary school kids going on a field trip to the zoo. That eighteen-wheeler smashed head-on into the bus at sixty miles an hour. Should have killed them all. Everyone walked away without a scratch, including both drivers.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Bast. She was driving to a hair appointment and saw it coming. Drew on her power. Saved those children.”
“But… Jesus.”
“Hasn’t come by as far as I know. The mudslide that should have wiped out half the town, but somehow missed every house, did no damage to the roads, and instead left behind a rather nice waterfall and hiking trail? Nilus wanted a new park. The lighthouse—”
“Okay. There’s been some weird stuff.”
I nodded.
“But gods? In Ordinary? In this crummy town?”
“In this crummy town.”
“Crow and Herri?” he asked.
“And others. Aaron, Kim. Um…Zeus and Odin, obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “Heim,” I added, a little more softly.
“But Heim’s dead.”
“I know. His power isn’t. That’s why I’m here. It’s my job to make sure his power is picked up by a mortal worthy of it. A mortal who will become a god.”
“That comes with the badge?” he asked.
“Nope. That comes with being a Reed. I think you came back to this crummy town for this. For power.”
“I came back because I thought I left something behind.”
“I think you’re right.”
He rocked back in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face. When he dropped his palms, his smile was still confused. “I’d be crazy to believe you.”
My stomach dropped and all the butterflies turned into razor blades. There wasn’t much time left. What could I say to make him believe me? I opened my mouth, not ready to give up. He spoke before I could.
“But I’ve always been a little crazy, right?” He grinned.
I exhaled a shaky breath. “Yeah, you have, Coop. It’s one of the things I like about you.” My hand trembled as I dragged it back through my hair. “So what do you think about becoming a god?”
I could practically see the gears in his head working through hope, fear, lust, doubt, and a chaos of other emotions.
“Me?” he finally said.
“You.”
“What…what kind of god?”
“Heimdall’s power is one of protection. He is the watcher of the gods, the sentinel with his eyes on the horizon, the one who will warn the other gods of war, of the end of times, of Ragnarok.”
“He’s the amber alert god?”
I grinned. “He’s whatever it is you make the power become. He has a magical horn. And he was in that superhero movie.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“You should. Heimdall was badass. Hot.”
“Yeah?” His grin was back.
I resisted rolling my eyes at him again. “You know this isn’t a movie, though. You will have responsibilities you can’t ignore. For all of your life, which might be very, very long. It’s a big commitment and one you have to step into willingly. It will change everything.”
He shifted in his chair, fingers gripping his knees as he leaned forward. “Tell me honestly that you’re not bullshitting me, Delaney.”
“God power is real. I think you’re strong enough to take one on. I think…I think that’s what you came back into town for. What you were really looking for. Not me. You were looking for the power that belongs to you. I am not bullshitting you. All you have to do is say yes, and the power will be yours and then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”
He held his breath, his eyes searching my gaze, no longer lingering on my mouth.
I tipped my head. “Breathe, Cooper,” I said gently, reaching over toward him. “You’ve still got a little time to decide. To think this through.”
I pressed my palm against his hand on his knees, and the shock of that connection rocked through me.
A small moan escaped his lips, and I had to catch my breath at what that sound stirred in me. Not an emotional need—or not my emotional need. That sound, that desire I could feel rolling off Cooper stirred the power.
And the power was hungry, singing, calling.
For him.
“Do you feel that, Cooper?”
His eyes were glazed with heat. With desire.
“That’s the power. Your power, if you’ll take it.” I kept my hand firmly over his, the contact of our hands strengthening the connection.
All the worries, all the butterflies, all the tension in me was wiped away. Just asking that question, offering the power to someone as my family had done throughout the generations, seemed to settle something in me. It was like climbing a rope and finally reaching a knot I hadn’t ever made it to before.
“If I say yes?”
The power’s song shifted again. Harmony and trill.
“If you say yes, then you’ll need to come back with me to Ordinary. I’ll give you the power, and then…” I shrugged.
“And then?” He leaned forward, rolling his hand beneath mine to slot our fingers together.
“And then you’re a god,” I said.
He stared at my mouth a moment before his gaze lifted to my eyes. “Yes.”
The song roared to a stunning single note that swelled with joy. It was so loud I didn’t know how everyone in a three-mile radius wasn’t hearing it.
I grinned. “Good choice.”