Jame turned on the alpha-smolder and Ben laughed. Apparently, it didn’t work on vampires either.
“I’m serious, Ben,” I said. “If you have anything that will help me catch the killer, I want to see it. But not at a risk to your life, understand? And if you do anything—anything—to mess up this case or compromise my investigation, I’ll bring you in on charges.”
Ben tucked his smile away, though I still saw laughter in his eyes. “Understood. I promise not to jeopardize myself or the case.”
He pushed the plate of fries away with a sort of regretful frown, then turned toward his boyfriend. “You done eating? Because I’m in the mood for a night cap. Something...hot and strong.” He watched the smile pull the corner of Jame’s mouth and there was a new hunger that passed between them.
I started calculating the melting point of Linoleum and vinyl.
“Good-night, Chief,” the werewolf said without taking his eyes off Ben.
“Night, boys. Have a good couple of days off. Remember to stretch before and hydrate after.”
Ben chuckled. They stood, Ben sliding his arm around Jame’s wide back, long fingers plunging down into Jame’s back pocket. They talked quietly to each other and grinned as they walked out of the diner, oblivious to the people around them, and oh, so obviously in love.
I sighed. They made it look easy, even though they had so many factors working against them.
Why couldn’t I figure out my dating life? It wasn’t like the questions were hard to solve. I either loved or didn’t love Ryder, and would either give him a chance to prove he was innocent or not.
And I either forgave him for dumping me or I didn’t.
Easy.
Why did it all seem so much harder than that?
My half-eaten turkey sandwich and quickly cooling soup didn’t have any answers for me, so I finished my meal, and checked in with Myra and Jean one more time to see if they’d made any progress on the video.
It was easy to stay busy with work while I drank my way through a pot of coffee. The Blue Owl had that sort of outside-of-time effect. People came and went, first the families, then the late night diners, then the college kids and singles loading up on good, cheap food between hitting the bars.
Through it all, Piper was cheerful, friendly, and prompt. But I never once heard so much as a peep of power.
What I did hear was a text from Jean, who had gotten a clear view of the ring on the hand across Sven’s mouth. She was looking into any identifying marks that would lead to its owner.
She sent me a picture of it. All I could see on my phone was the band, and that it was clearly a man’s fingers, so I wasn’t much help.
But at least it was something we could go on.
By the time eleven-thirty finally rolled around, I’d given up coffee and was sipping a cup of tea. The last bunch of twenty-somethings laughed their way out of the diner, waving at Piper and each other.
Three of them put umbrella hats over their beanies and made silly faces and high-fives.
Oh, for Pete’s sake.
It had stopped raining. Even though clouds still crowded the edges of the moon, light shone through.
There were no other customers in the diner. No cars in the parking lot. I hadn’t seen anyone walk around outside, didn’t see anyone loitering now. But in a half hour, I was supposed to meet someone out there.
It was time to go.
I stood and Piper stopped by the table. She set down two slices of pie and an extra pot of tea. The plate in front of me had blueberry crumble, her plate was the chocolate mousse I’d seen so many diners rave about tonight.
“I know it’s not midnight,” she said, “but since you’re here, and I’m here, and no one else is, how about if we just do the meeting now?”
“Meeting?” But then it hit me. She was the anonymous letter writer.
Chapter 11
“Sure.” I gestured to the chair across the table.
Piper sat with a sigh, tired from her long shift at the diner. I moved some of the paperwork out of the way while she poured tea for herself and for me, and took a sniff or two to see if I could smell anything god-like about her.
She smelled like fried foods and something sweet like honey and cinnamon. She took a sip of her tea and I watched her, listening for the song of power within her.
There was no song. Maybe it was because she was off her shift and therefore wasn’t keeping up the waitress face, but there was something sort of...glowy about her. Something that reminded me of the sea, or of a sunset on it.
“Why did you write the letter?” I asked. “You know you could have come to me or any of my sisters and we would have listened to you. Kept you safe.”
“I don’t know that. I don’t know any of you. Didn’t even really know your father.” She picked up her fork and started on her pie, eating it from the wider back edge of the crust first.
I followed suit and took a bite of the blueberry crumble, starting tip first. “I can promise you, you can trust us. My sisters and I are here for every man, woman, god and creature in town.”
Her lack of reaction to that made it clear that she knew about god powers, gods, and creatures in town.
“Why didn’t you come to us?”
“You’re the police. The law was broken. I didn’t think you’d be happy with the things I had to say.”
“If you know who took the god powers, I can assure you, I am very happy with what you have to say.”
She paused, watching me with eyes much older than they had been just moments before.
“Powers?”
“Powers. And before you act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, I know you are more than mortal. What are you, Piper?”
“What do you think I am?”
“At first? Maybe a witch. Or a precog.”
She laughed, a light, happy sound. “Really? You thought I could see the future?”
“You know every order before anyone tells you what they want to eat. You know how many people are coming through that door before they’re out of their car. You know where people want to sit before they make up their mind.”
“I’m—that’s just being observant.”
“You knew I wanted the number five with a half turkey on sourdough. I’ve never ordered that here and you had already written it down before I asked for it. Don’t kid a kidder. Can you see the future?”
She exhaled and went back to eating pie, not looking at me. “Not really see it, no. I just get certain flashes of things. Like I saw that I had written the order on my pad, so I wrote it. Turned out it was right. And I saw a flash of showing you to the table, of getting the highchair for that family earlier, all those things. I’ve always thought of it as an overactive intuition. Lots of people have strong intuition.”
“It’s more than that. Trust me, Piper. Tell me.”
She put her fork down even though there was only a small triangle of chocolate pie left just begging to be eaten.
“This isn’t something I’ve ever shared.” Her eyes darted up to me, then down to her pie again. “I need to know you will give me amnesty.”