“What threads?”
“Ryder life threads with Reed life threads.” Crow rubbed icing off his lips with his palm, then wiped his palm on the thigh of his jeans. Something on my face must have clued him in that I wasn’t following his logic, and was also hating him for eating my cupcake.
“All the places where your paths have connected: his blood on the corpse you’re investigating,” he started around a bite of the donut he was now eating, “him part of a secret government creature outreach agency, freelance on top of it. You working for the government of your own free will. Monster hunters he knows who you might want to get rid of. And the fact that he probably loves you and you definitely love him. Childhood sweethearts.”
“We were never sweethearts.”
“You should have been,” Crow said, not unkindly. Then he walked into the kitchen and put the box with the remaining donuts on the table. “So. How do we do this? Come clean, or wipe his brain clean?”
Everyone looked to me.
No pressure.
I opened my mouth.
There was the rap of knuckles on the unlocked front door. The door that pushed open, Ryder leaning into the wedge of space.
“Uh, Delaney?” he said.
“Yeah?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “You have a mob here to see you.”
Chapter 14
“Delaney,” Death said as if we hadn’t seen each other for months and months and were just now bumping into each other unexpectedly in the fresh flower aisle of the market over a bouquet of limp carnations.
“Than.” I scanned the gods, all of them shoved into my living room, taking up so much space, we’d left the door open with the hope oxygen could squeeze in between us all.
I had ended up in the middle of the god mob, the coffee table pressed into the back of my calves. “What brings you all by?”
“You know why we’re here.” Odin leaned against the door frame, his untamed hair haloed by the grey light of our not-summer.
“Our powers?” Aaron, the god of war, said. “Our lost powers. That Crow lost. They are no longer in town as of yesterday afternoon. Outside of Ordinary, Delaney. You said you’d find them.”
Ryder was half in and half out of the bathroom watching all of us. He seemed to be taking this pretty well. The influx of gods in my house. The idea of gods in our town. The reality of vampires.
His eyes, hazel, calm, caught me. That slight smile, like he couldn’t believe any of this was real, but maybe he really wanted to, hooked deep in my chest and made me want to see it all the time. Want to see him smile. Want to be the one and only he shared these kinds of secrets with.
Maybe Rossi was right, maybe Crow was right. Ryder and I were tangled in knots, the threads of this town, of our days and years and lives, tied together in ways I’d never be able to untangle.
I could cut the threads, but that was the only way Ryder wouldn’t be a part of this town, these creatures, deities, and my life.
Holy crap I was going to tell Ryder gods were real.
He was going to know Ordinary, the real Ordinary.
He was going to know these people, the real people.
He was going to know me.
Everything went hot and the rushing thrum of blood in my ears drowned out the argument Myra and Jean were having with the gods. It was something about giving us more time to secure the powers. It was about being calm and letting the professionals handle the case.
I thought someone, maybe Frigg touched my arm, maybe tried to ask me if I was okay, but I didn’t answer.
I squeezed my way between bodies, my eyes on Ryder and only Ryder. He saw me coming, saw I wasn’t stopping, and opened the bathroom door behind him without question, stepping backwards while I stepped in.
He shut the door behind us, my back to it, him leaning over me.
My house is small. My bathroom is tiny. The shower bathtub is tucked on one wall, the sink on the other wall and the toilet on the third. You could touch all three by standing in the middle of the room.
There is a window about the size of a cereal box on the shower wall, and through it the wooly grey light unraveled into the room.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen,” I whispered.
Ryder shifted closer, lowering his head beside mine so he could hear me.
I had pressed back up against the door, my hands on the doorknob as if my grip could keep anyone on the other side from opening it.
“Delaney,” Ryder said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Tell me what you need. I’ll do it. Anything.”
A shiver ran uncontrolled down my body. Everything in me ached to reach out, to pull the heat of him, the strength of him, the weight of him against me until the world, the heat of it, the strength of it, the weight of it were erased by him.
“Don’t think I’m crazy.”
“Okay.”
“All those people out there are gods. On vacation. But their powers were stolen. The god who stole them wants you to go with me to get them back.”
“They’re gods.”
“Yes.”
“All of them.”
“Yes.”
“But they don’t have their powers. Someone stole them?”
“Yes.”
He paused for ten heartbeats. I knew because I counted them.
“All right. Where do we need to go?”
“The casino.”
“The casino. This is...okay, I can go with it. When?”
“Today. We have to be there today. I know you don’t believe me. Just...don’t think I’m crazy.”
“Why would I think you’re crazy? We’re just going to go get the stolen god powers being held hostage by a god. At a casino. Do I have that right?”
He was so close I could see the lines at the edges of his eyes, smell his cologne, deep and a little sweet, and something that would always remind me of him. So close, I could see the freckles under the tan of his forehead and nose, could smell the coffee and sugar donuts on his breath.
I wanted him to kiss me. I thought he might want to kiss me too.
“Yes?” I said.
“What about all the gods in your living room?”
I swallowed and the tension drained away. He might not believe me, or maybe he did. But he was going to go with me. To see Mithra. So we could bring the powers back to Ordinary where they belonged.
“I’ve got it under control,” I said.
~~~
I didn’t have it under control.
“You know who took the powers?” Aaron asked again. “And you’re not going to tell us? They are our powers. You understand that, don’t you, Delaney? Those powers belong to us.” He waved in a circle to include all the gods. He included the vampire too, but I didn’t point that out to him.
“You promised you’d get them back. You also promised they’d be safe.”
I was beginning to think Aaron was being a jerk to start a fight.
Oh, right. Aaron was always looking to start a fight.
“Don’t be an ass,” Jean said. “We had nothing to do with the powers being stolen. Pick on Crow.”
“Hey!” Crow yelped. All eyes in the room turned to him.
I felt the tension build.
Nope. There was not going to be a brawl in my living room.
“I know where the powers are and I’m going to get them back right now.”