I’d dropped Odin off at his property, and Crow had claimed the passenger seat. He spent the next twenty minutes complaining about the rain, the gods accusing him of losing their powers on purpose, and having skipped dinner and breakfast.
“You’re going to complain about how hard things are for you today, when you are the one who has made every god in town angry, lost their powers—lost, Crow—which is something no one has ever done in the history of Ordinary, and doubled my workload? Not to mention that you broke the contract with Ordinary by picking your power back up and then not leaving town for a year. I can not start to explain just how angry I am at you for that.”
And even more, for making me think that his trickster power should be allowed to do that. I should not have trusted him.
He chewed on his bottom lip while I navigated the rain and traffic. “Buy you an Egg McMuffin with extra cheese?” he said quietly.
I sighed, trying to rein in my anger and worry. It had taken three months before anything bad had happened from him breaking the rules. Maybe we could fix it before anything else bad happened.
“Why didn’t you eat dinner?”
“I was busy.”
“Doing what?”
“I...was out of town. Picking up some things for my shop.”
“You going to come up with a receipt for these things with a date stamp on them?”
He rubbed at the bridge of his nose again. “I was out of town at a movie. I have the ticket for that.”
That seemed a little more likely. We had a three-plex here in town, but it didn’t always get the newest blockbusters. Driving into the valley to Salem or even Dallas, where they had bigger movie theaters, was pretty common. So was taking an extra hour to drive up to Portland and catch a show at the Imax big screens.
A mortal god leaving town wasn’t outside the rules, though it was expected that the trips would be short, and that the majority of a god’s vacation time was spent firmly inside Ordinary’s boundaries.
“Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“I don’t...I don’t know.” He groaned, his hand falling away from his face. When I glanced over, I could see the tremble in his hands. “I lost the powers, Delaney. I’m not an idiot. I’m not forgetful. I’m not careless. But I lost them. How does that even happen?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me. Was there any sign of a break in?”
“No. I went to the movie, got home late. I didn’t know they were gone until this morning.”
“And how could you tell they were gone?”
“Just...something didn’t feel right about the shop. I thought I smelled something, like cinnamon? I have some potpourri in the shop, but don’t really like the smell of cinnamon. So I thought maybe a customer had left something behind—a coat, a hat. You know how some people go heavy with the perfume. I’d had some people in to watch me make orbs the previous morning.
“So I walked around, checked the shelves and displays. Checked the work benches, under them. And when I walked in front of the old furnace—the one holding the powers—all I felt was cold.”
“The furnace door was closed?”
“Yes. I grabbed it and opened it, so if there were fingerprints, I ruined them.” He winced. “I guess I should have called you. But I didn’t think they were gone. Not really. Hell, I stood in front of that cold furnace for fifteen minutes before it really sank in.”
“What time was this?”
“Early. I went in early to catch up with stuff left over from leaving early the afternoon before.”
“Rough estimate?”
“Six-thirty?”
“Did you see any signs of break in?”
“The back door was open. I went in through the front, which was locked. My security alarm has been acting weird the last couple weeks, so I didn’t have it activated on the back door—only on the front. But there was still a lock and a deadbolt.”
“Broken?”
“No. Opened.”
“Someone had the keys.”
“No one has keys to the shop. Not back door keys.”
“What about Apocalypse Pablo?” Okay, that wasn’t really his name. His real name was Pablo Fernandez, but everyone in town called him Apocalypse Pablo. Since he liked it, the nickname had stuck. “He comes in to clean for you, right?”
“Yeah. Works the rest of the time at the gas station on the north end of town. He’s...well, you know how he is. Nice enough for a mortal, even if he’s a little...intense. Good with glass, though. Not bad with customers—he’s covered a couple times. I had to tell him to lay off the apocalypse thing after he made a little kid cry. But he only has the front door key. Back door is mine.”
“Do you have copies of the key?”
“No.”
“Would you have left your keys out where someone could make copies of them?”
He frowned and bit on his lip a little longer. “I don’t know. Maybe? I’ve never worried that much about it. Who would go through the trouble to steal my keys, copy only the back door set, then break into my shop? Sure, I carry a lot of inventory, but the glass pieces won’t sell for that much on the open market, and most of them have artist marks and serial numbers.”
“Well, it wasn’t the glass our thief was interested in, was it?”
“No,” he said dejectedly. “It wasn’t. But there aren’t that many in town who even know about god powers, much less where they’re being stored.”
“More than you think. All of the creatures know about you gods. A few mortals. Who did you have in the shop for that last class?”
“Mortals. Tourists.”
“Are you sure they were mortal?”
He frowned and shifted to look at me. “We don’t have a lot of visiting immortals.”
“Sure we do,” I said. “Vamps, shifters, dryads, trolls, you name it, they’ve strolled through Ordinary.”
“I would have noticed a troll in my shop.”
“Even without your power?”
“Yes.”
“Even if your power was angry with you?”
“What?”
“You picked it up, then you put it down a couple hours later instead of keeping it for a year as is required. Ever think maybe your power didn’t like that?”
“The power isn’t alive, Delaney. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t feel.”
I flicked on the blinker and turned into the only McDonald’s in town. There were four cars in front of us, so I put the car in park while we waited our turn in the drive-thru.
“I’ve never been a god. Never will be.” The windshield wiper scraped across the window and I turned it off, letting the patter of rain take up all extra sound beyond the engine. “So I don’t know what it’s like to really be connected to a power. But I’ve held god power. And I can hear it, hear everything that it’s made of. It might not be alive, but it has sentience, it has...needs.”
Crow thought that over, finally nodded. “I suppose, yeah. I don’t like to think of it as something that’s separate. More like a costume I put on to play a part. A very powerful part. Fun too. When I carry my power, my full power, there is no beginning of it and ending of me. I am. Raven is.”