Two pickup trucks were parked side-by-side at what appeared to be an impromptu starting line. In front of each truck five people stretched and waited. They all wore helmets, roller skates, elbow and knee pads. Myra was easy to spot by the blue truck, the swing of her hair curved a dark slash beneath her helmet. BLUE OWLS was boldly written in grease paint down both of her arms. The whole team wore blue tank tops, shorts, and high blue socks, with owls on the socks. Looked like the diner was sponsoring the team. Piper and the three Furies were among the skaters.
We hadn’t brought Piper in on burglary charges. Since the powers being stolen was more a god-feud thing, it didn’t fall squarely under mortal laws. Piper had not only admitted to her part in the theft, but she had also ratted out Mithra, which allowed us to recover the powers. Without Crow or any of the other gods wanting to press charges, Piper was going to get off with a warning. A stern warning, and we’d be keeping a close eye on her from now on, but not jail time.
Plus, I still needed to do some research on what place a demigod had in this town. There was no reason to send her away, since she was following all the other rules of Ordinary that we require of the gods and creatures: mainly that she hold down a job and contribute to the community. And she didn’t have a power that needed to be stashed with the other god powers.
Maybe I’d make her take the volunteer hours Jean had promised I’d serve for Bertie for the rest of the year. That would be stern penance.
The other truck was red, the team decked out in gear, all red, with RED WEEDS scrawled down their arms. Took me a minute, but I finally saw the logo for Aaron’s garden center on the tank top.
Of course the god of war wanted a piece of this action.
Rebecca was on Team Red, slender and cool and sleek as a weasel. She sipped her designer water bottle without smudging her perfect scarlet lipstick, and stood just far enough apart from her team mates—a couple humans and two dryads—that it was clear they were not friends.
Myra had grease paint under her eyes, bruises on her arms, and corpse-blue lipstick that was probably borrowed from Jean’s makeup stash. She looked focused and determined.
“She’s going for blood,” I said.
“Myra? Yeah, she’s gonna to mop the street with Rebecca.”
“All the money goes to charity?”
“Elementary school and children’s hospital. Chunk goes to the food bank too.”
I briefly wondered why Rebecca was involved in those charities, and had a shocking moment of thinking the woman might actually have a heart under her belittling, judgmental exterior.
Naw, she probably got roped into it like everyone else. Conscription-via-Valkyrie.
“Are there rules?” I’d never heard of Cake and Skate until Bertie had decided to throw one. I hadn’t paid much attention to the details at the time. It was possible she had made this whole thing up.
“The teams load up the delivery orders into the backs of the trucks, then the truck takes them to the neighborhood drop points where skaters have to get the right breakfast bundles to the right people. Whoever delivers their bundles fastest and gets back to the bakery first, wins.”
“So we follow along?”
“We can, although there will be a judge in the front and back of each truck. Even better, there’s a live stream.”
She pointed at two motorcycles near the trucks, each with a driver and camera person, then over at a screen set at the far end of the lot.
The radio station crew took over, introducing the teams, breakdown of rules, and threw in enough jokes and jabs to get the crowd laughing.
I fell into the familiar mode of friendly vigilance that these kinds of events required.
There was a countdown, then an air horn blast got the games going. The lot was part asphalt, part gravel, and all of it still wet from recent rains.
The crowd cheered as the skaters scrambled to get to the side of the bakery where tables were set up with crisp white bags and boxes, all carrying the Puffin’s logo.
Shouting, shoving, laughing. One box tumbled to the ground, but landed without breaking open and was snatched up by Piper who seemed to know she’d need to catch it before a team mate accidentally ran it over.
A man on Red Weeds team stole a Blue Owl bag, and was hot-skating it back to the red truck. Myra dashed out after him and hip-checked him for his trouble. She took the blue bag quickly back to the correct truck while Red Weeds’ driver gestured and pointed to get the judges to call a foul.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s...intense.” This might be for charity, but it was no-holds-barred.
Jean hooted, then stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Go, Myra!”
Red Weeds got their truck loaded first and all the skaters hopped into the back of the bed. Two Blue Owls stood in front of the truck, blocking it and trying to keep it from pulling out of the lot. They got honked at, the engine revved, and the judge from the back of the Blue Owls’s truck yelled out a foul, at which the crowd laughed and booed.
That delay gave the Blue Owls just enough time to finish loading their deliveries. The two truck-blockers quickly got out of the way and hopped into the back of their own truck.
Red Weeds was the first out of the parking lot, with Team Blue right behind. One lane of the main road had been orange-coned off for the event, and both trucks rolled out at about five miles over speed limit, the motorcycles and bicycles following behind them like a school of bright, honking, bell-ringing fish.
“This is insane,” I said with a laugh.
Jean bumped her shoulder into mine. “It’s good to see you smile.”
“I smile.”
“Not since the Mithra thing you haven’t.”
We were walking with the crowd, watching for ordinary trouble in our ordinary town, and keeping an eye on the screen, which showed the trucks currently stopped at a red light. The skaters were either yelling insults, or laying down the most recent pop dance moves.
Bicyclists got into it, and it suddenly looked like the least coordinated flash mob in history, gyrating randomly and spastically throwing hands in the air.
Myra was laughing, her blue eyes curved in crescents. She waved at one of the cameras and curled her arm to show off seriously impressive biceps.
It was good to see her having fun.
“I guess we’ve all had a pretty hard go of it lately. We’ll get through it.” I said.
Jean shrugged.
“Hey. We will. There’s nothing we Reeds can’t do.”
That made her smile. She sipped her cocoa. “Hogan wants to move in with me.”
“That’s great,” I said. Then at her silence: “That’s not great?”
“I’m not sure it makes sense. With my job.”
“Because you work late and he works early? We can get someone in to handle the switchboard. Or just forward calls. I’d be happy to swap a few days with you so you had evenings with him.”
“Thanks, but it’s not the hours.”
“Then what?” I didn’t think Jean wanted to quit the force. Though I hadn’t asked her. Ever since she was small she’d been putting on Dad’s shoes, wearing his hat and coat any time she got a chance. But maybe now that she was an officer, she had discovered she didn’t like the work.
If she wanted to change careers, I would support her wholeheartedly. But selfishly, I hoped she wouldn’t leave. One of the best things about my job was working with my sisters.
“I don’t know if I want to lie to him all the time.”
We stopped near the front of the line of tents where there was currently less traffic.