Death and Relaxation (23 page)

“I’m a disaster warning system. How is gaining god power a disaster?”

“Poseidon.”

She tipped her head side to side. “Okay, yes. That’s always a disaster. But I can’t narrow down why I get those bad feelings until after the bad thing has happened. I know bad is on the way, but only recognize it after it hits. It’s a useless gift.” She laughed, but it didn’t cover just how uncomfortable and disappointed she was.

“It’s not useless,” I said. “You just need more practice to figure it out. I still don’t have a handle on how I’m supposed to deal with the power transfer.”

“Yeah, but you’ve only had that job for the last year and this is your first time. I’ve lived with this all my life. Plenty of time to practice.” She finally bit into the maple bar, chewing slowly, her eyes unfocussed, though from the pleasure of the donut or displeasure at her abilities, I wasn’t sure.

“Don’t get some idea in your head that you can ignore it,” I said. “I’m relying on you to let me know when you get those gut feelings.”

“All the help it will do. But yes. I’ll let you know if I get the doom twinges.”

I chuckled. “Is that what you’re calling it?”

She smiled, and this time I could tell she meant it. “Dunno. Sounds ominous, right? So let’s hear it. Apologize.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Fine. Sorry it took me so long to get to work today.”

“Forgiven. Why so late?”

I picked up my coffee cup. Stared at it. Empty. Right, I hadn’t brought my coffee. I stood, ambled over to the coffee pot.

“There was a penguin about to get blown out of a cannon, and by the time we jimmied it free and restored it to its natural habitat, I wanted coffee and deep-fried sugar. Just my luck, half of Ordinary had the same idea. I would have been here sooner if Cooper and Ryder hadn’t shown up.”

I poured the last of the coffee into my mug and shoveled sugar into it without measuring. I added flavored cream, figuring a double blast of sugar would count for breakfast and lunch and might keep me awake for an hour or two.

“Cooper
and
Ryder?” she asked. “Where? When?”

I took a drink. My molars hurt.

Ryder strode through the door. He hesitated a second, then strode across the waiting room. He still had that wicked light in his eyes, that one-corner smile, like he was up to no good and wanted me to know it. Broad shoulders were square in the jacket he wore over flannel, and his heavy boots came down with audible thuds.

He was sexy as hell. My heart raced. My breath caught in my throat. I felt stretched taut, against the power of him, of his gaze.

He pushed past the front counter and stopped right in front of me, so close, I could feel the heat rolling off him, could smell the soap and spice of cologne on his skin mixed deliciously with the cold salt air he’d pulled into the station.

“You wanted to see me, chief?”

Forget coffee. Ryder Bailey was what I craved.

For all my life
, my heart said. I opened my mouth to say that and caught myself. How stupid would I sound? He was just here reporting for work. That was all.

“Uh,” I replied, brilliantly.

He exhaled and smiled, and everything in him went loose and relaxed. A dimple appeared by his mouth and I wanted to draw my fingertips over it, over his lips, over the dark stubble on his jaw, down the hard planes of his chest and stomach, and anywhere else that would make him kiss me.

He was just standing too close to me. I couldn’t think.

I took a step back. “Why do you smell like fir trees?”

Okay. Maybe I still couldn’t think.

He rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I helped Mr. Tippin stack a cord of wood he had delivered yesterday.”

Mr. Tippin lived a few houses down from Ryder. He was also a jinn with a slight case of pyromania.

“Good,” I said. “That was good.”

“Just being neighborly,” he said. “Did you have anything you wanted me to take care of for you today?”

Wild images of him kissing me, tumbling me down onto my bed so I could tear his clothes off, flew through my mind.

“If not,” he went on, “I thought I’d take care of the filing in the record room.”

“Filing,” I repeated, heat creeping up my face as the memory of him standing naked in his living room chose just that moment to come back to me.

Why did he have to be such a good-looking man? And kind? And funny? And the love that I’d never dared ask for?

Jean cleared her throat. Or maybe she was just trying not to laugh at me.

“Filing,” I said. “Sure. Yes. That would be good.”

“Good.” His eyes crinkled in the corners. He was holding back laughter too.

Don’t bite your bottom lip, don’t bite your bottom lip, don’t bite—

He bit his bottom lip, tugged, let it go.

All my bones went a little rubbery.

“Maybe Ryder should go on a ride-along with Myra again,” Jean suggested.

“No.” I walked back to my desk, needing the space between me and that man and his smile and his eyes and his bottom lip. “Filing needs to be done. That’s a good job for the morning.”

“And tonight?” he said.

“Tonight?”

“We’re still on for dessert?”

“Oh. Uh…no. I can’t make it.”

The pleasant man in a pleasant mood disappeared. “Really.”

“Bertie just sent my itinerary. I have to judge tonight.”

“Right,” he said. “Judging. I forgot.”

“Another time?” I suggested.

“Sure.” He didn’t look happy about it. “I’ll get to those files now. Holler if you need anything.” He walked back to our file and evidence room.

I rubbed at my eyes and groaned.

“That was some serious public display of affection you had in your eyes,” Jean said.

“Aren’t you supposed to be going home now?”

“And miss all the fireworks? The scintillating conversation? Good,” she mimicked. “That was good.”

I groaned again. “Did I sound like that much of an idiot?”

“Maybe a little more.”

I dropped my hands in my lap. Jean sat at her desk, looking smug.

“Fine. Ryder makes an idiot out of me.”

“I know. You let him in the records room.”

Huh. I tried to remember if there was anything in there that would betray the secrets of Ordinary. Maybe not right out in the open, but if he went digging far enough.

“Well, hell,” I said quietly.

“You stay here,” Jean said. “My brain works fine when I’m around him. I’ll give him something else to do. Check in with Bertie to see if she needs extra help with the rally, maybe.”

I rested my elbows on the desk and lowered my face into my palms. “God,” I said through the muffle of my hands. I was such an idiot.

I didn’t know how long I sat there listening to the screech and bang of the song in my head. Long enough that eventually I heard Jean and Ryder’s footsteps as they walked through the office, Jean keeping up a conversation that I pretended not to hear.

Long enough for them both to leave and shut the door behind them.

“Reed Daughter,” a soft voice said from right next to me.

I jerked, looked up.

Death stood next to my desk. He wore a novelty T-shirt that said O
RDINARY
TOWN
,
EXTRAORDINARY
FUN
, over which he had thrown a Hawaiian shirt featuring palm tree fronds and tiki heads. He was also wearing a slick pair of dark gray slacks and shiny black shoes.

His dark hair was cropped short, making his deep eyes seem even wider, his heavy lids languid. Even though he wasn’t smiling, I got the distinct impression he was laughing at me.

“Hey,” I said, straightening. I glanced around the station. No one else was here.

“How is your health?” he asked.

“My what?” I didn’t like the idea of Death asking me if I was sick.

“Ah, I may not have stated that clearly. How are you?” His eyes glinted with something I was pretty sure was humor.

“Very funny. I’m good. What can I do for you?”

“I am here to inquire on the methods for acquiring a license to do business.”

“All right. You want to see Bertie over at City Hall for that. She’ll have the forms you need to fill out. I’m glad you’ve chosen a job so soon.”

“Is it not in the contract that I must do so?”

“Sure, but sometimes it takes time for a deity to decide on an occupation.”

He raised one eyebrow. “I am not a creature of doubt or indecision, Reed Daughter.”

“Delaney,” I corrected absently.

“Of course.” He paused. For a creature who didn’t doubt, it looked like he was weighing a decision.

“He wasn’t frightened,” he finally said.

“Who?” I belatedly realized he must be talking about Heim.

“Your father.”

His words hit me like a falling building. He must have taken my silence as a tacit invitation to continue.

“I waited for him, gathered his soul. He had questions. Several.”

I swallowed and nodded, a hundred questions of my own crowding out my words.

“What did he ask?”

“That I look after you.”

Okay, forget the shock over him talking about my dad’s death. This was a bigger shock.

“Why? Why would he ask you to do that? Is that why you’re here? Did you agree to do it? Why me? He has two other daughters, you know. Wasn’t he worried about them? Was he worried about us?”

He waited a moment longer, probably to see if I had anything else to say. I did, but I needed a few answers before I tore off into a pile of new questions.

“I assumed it was out of love.”

I waited. He didn’t say anything more. “Which question were you answering?”

“The first.”

“Okay.” I sighed. I hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. I was tired. “Is that why you came to Ordinary?”

“I came for a vacation, Reed Daughter.” He pointed one finger at his T-shirt, as if that made it obvious.

“Which is why you’re telling me about my father’s death?”

He frowned, looking confused. “Is that not what you wished to ask me?”

I opened my mouth to tell him no, but that was a lie. “I did. But I didn’t expect you to talk about it. Not really.”

“Ah, then.” He gave me a stiff nod. “I must be away to secure my business license.”

I had a hundred other questions besides the half a dozen I’d already asked that he hadn’t answered. But he was already walking back to the door, gliding silently in his shiny shoes. “Is he a ghost?” I asked.

Death paused, his hand on the door latch. “Perhaps you should ask him if you see him again.”

And then he pushed out into the daylight, a colorful, unexpected shadow.

Chapter 19

“DON’T BE such a baby.” Myra shoved my shoulder as we walked to the building, rain spattering us with tiny, halfhearted drops. “It won’t kill you.”

“I hate rhubarb.”

“Which should make judging even easier. If you can stand it, it’s a good recipe.”

“Or it’s a terrible recipe because it tastes the least like rhubarb in a rhubarb recipe contest.”

“Just give your honest opinion.”

“I honestly don’t want to do this.”

“A little less honest than that.”

She opened the door to the great hall, which was in truth the only hall on our festival ground, great or not. Built of brick and shingled with cedar, it was plenty big enough for the exhibits that couldn’t stand the mercurial moods of coastal weather.

Quilts started at the right and lined two walls, all of them having something to do with rhubarb. The art was on that side of the building too, hung on pegboard stands that created aisles.

Food things such as canning, dried herbs, smoked meats, and drinks took up the left side of the building. The middle space carried an odd variety of art, from chainsaw statues and dream catchers to a ten-foot beast welded out of spare parts and gears that looked like a caveman in a porcupine hat carrying a battle-axe and a Colt .45.

“That’s…”

“Rhu-ban the Barb-barian,” Myra said with a straight face.

I laughed. “You are kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“Who made that big hunk of metal pun?”

“Ben and Jame, and the rest of the fire department.”

“I want to see it.” I started toward the thing, but before I got more than six steps a hand landed on my arm, sharp fingers squeezing.

“Delaney,” Bertie chirped happily. “I am so pleased you’ve made it. Come with me.”

There was no arguing with a valkyrie when she had it in her mind to get a person somewhere. So I let her pull me along, and took in the rest of the show as best I could.

A lot of entries this year. Maybe almost double from last year. The outreach of adding in more judging categories had really helped boost participation.

About halfway across the building I realized there were a lot more people at this end of the room than needed to be there for judging.

A crowd of about sixty people milled around the metal chairs set in straight rows in front of a long table with white table cloth and a skirt of blue. The long table was for the judges, twelve empty chairs behind it so that the judges were facing the audience.

“Why are there so many people here?” I asked Bertie. “The rally hasn’t even started.”

“People like to watch judges when they’re eating.”

“Watch judges?” I repeated. “Watch us eat?” I bit back a groan. I was going to have to clench my teeth in my best courtroom smile to keep from sticking my tongue out and gagging in front of these people.

“Maybe I should be an art judge. I could judge art.” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. “I’m good at art. Just ask Mrs. Heather.”

“Your first-grade teacher?”

“Best thumbprint turkey artist of the class right here.” I lifted the thumb on my free hand.

“Nonsense,” Bertie said. “All these people are here before the rally even begins because of
your
schedule, Delaney. I knew you’d be working crowd control and being very busy over the next three days with your police work, so I decided to move up the judging date of the edibles. Luckily, everyone was able to modify their schedules to be here. I do love a town that pulls together in times of crisis.”

“Crisis? How many edibles?” I was totally panicking. “Which categories am I judging? How many categories?”