Devils and Details (Ordinary Magic #2)
Devon Monk
Dedication
To the dreamers and mischief makers. And to my family, who are often both.
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.