Death and Relaxation (37 page)

His day job was owning and running the music and record store in town.

Ben sucked on the back of one fang, staring at Thorne like he was considering a Merlot to go with dinner. “Want to put some money on who’s going to bring Cooper down?”

“Nobody’s going to bring Cooper down,” I said. “He comes back alive.”

“Yes,” Thorne said, “of course. We shall bring the quarry in without a scratch. How much money do you have, Firefang? Enough to make this interesting?”

“No,” I said, “we will not make anything interesting while we hunt for my ex-boyfriend.”

“Make what interesting?” Crow, who could sense a bad bet going down a mile away, had to join in.

“Just a friendly little bet,” Ben said with a smile that would freeze a mortal in place.  Unfortunately, neither Crow nor Thorne were mortal.

“Between friends,” Thorne agreed. “My father and I against you and your boyfriend.”

“Gentlemen, please,” Crow scolded. “Money makes for a boring bet.”

“Shoulder devil.” I scowled at Crow.

Crow winked and gave me a big grin.

“Doesn’t have to be money.” Ben licked his lips, his eyes flicking to the side of Thorne’s neck as if he were imagining sinking his fangs in all the way to bone. The other Rossis in the room chuckled and Jame shifted to press his wide hand on Ben’s lower back, maybe reminding him that if there was going to be someone getting bit, it was going to be his lover, not some random thunder god.

“You don’t have the stomach for it, bloodboy,” Thorne scoffed.

Jame growled. Ben glowered.

Crow snickered.

“You’re the one who needs daddy at his side,” Ben said.

Odin snorted and shook his head, his arms crossed over his chest. “Thorne doesn’t need me to win his fights.”

“If we don’t believe you?” Crow mocked.

“Boys,” Herri said, sighing, “reel it in. You can cheat each other blind or bite each other bloody, or beat each other boneless after we find Cooper.”

“No biting,” Jame growled, his hand fisting in the back of Ben’s shirt. “That’s off the table.”

Both Ben and Thorne huffed like little kids who’d just been told to clean their rooms.

“Name your price—” Thorne started.

“What’s the plan, Delaney?” Herri asked.

I threw her a grateful look.

Myra spoke up. “The last person who saw Cooper said he was hitching north out of town. That was a day ago. He could be in Canada by now.”

“How long have you got before
boom
?” Sage tipped her blonde head my way.

I didn’t point out that she made it sound like it was a death sentence. I didn’t point it out because she was not wrong.

“Today. The power needs to be in a new vessel by midnight tonight.”

“Plenty of time,” she said. “We’ll find him, Delaney.” She smiled, showing a lot less fang than Ben, a dimple popping in her cheek.

“Do you have a successor in place?” Odin asked casually.

That was the other big consequence I’d been avoiding. I hadn’t trained anyone else in how to be a bridge for god power. Myra and Jean hadn’t shown any signs of being someone who could pick up those duties. Though the ability always passed down the Reed bloodline, we were the only Reeds in Ordinary.

That didn’t mean we were the only Reeds in the world, though.

“If I go down, someone will show up on Ordinary’s doorstep, confused, and needing some guidance for how to re-vessel a power gone rogue. I expect you all to be very helpful to him or her.”

“Not gonna happen,” Crow said. “We might gain a new Reed—maybe even one with a sense of humor—but we’d lose our police chief. Then who would we make pity-judge the rhubarb contest?”

I reached out and slapped him on the back of the head.

He laughed and rubbed at his head, backing out of my reach.

“Do we split up?” Jame asked.

“Yes,” everyone in the room answered almost simultaneously.

“Except for Thorne and his daddy, of course,” Jame added.

Odin sighed.

“Okay,” I said, trying to head off a fistfight. “Stay in contact. Use cell phones.” I nodded to the gods. “And thank you all for giving up your final day at the Rhubarb Rally to help me with this.”

That was met by a room full of confused looks.

“Why would we stay for the rally?” Odin grumbled. “Someone already won the sculpture contest with that ridiculous Rhu-ban the Barb-barian atrocity.”

Jame and Ben laughed. “Yes, we did, didn’t we?” Ben’s grin was smug. “You’re getting old, god.”

Odin glared at him, storm and fury and wrath—every inch the god he was. Then a very small smile curved the corner of his lips. “You have no idea. Are you sure there’s no killing?” he said to me.

“No killing at all.”

Odin shook his head, then slapped Thorne on his beefy shoulder. “Not hardly worth my time if there isn’t going to be blood. Delaney, I’ll sit this one out.”

He gave Thorne a pointed look, which he then turned on Jame and Ben. “I’m sure you can handle this just fine without me.”

Great. I’d already lost one god to a petty squabble.

“All right,” I said.

“You go on without me, son,” Odin said to Thorne.

Thorne grinned, his eyes glinting with some kind of shared joke between them. “I’ll see you in a year, Father.”

Odin grinned back. “Say hello to the old world for me.”

Crow flattened his hand over his chest. “Such a touching farewell. Can we just get on with it already?”

~~~

MYRA REFUSED to let me go alone anywhere, much less north toward Tillamook, and it would have been a waste of time to argue with her, since she was driving. The gods and creatures had scattered, promising to be thorough and non-deadly in their search.

“Think Odin really only wanted to come if there was bloodshed?” Myra asked.

I stared out through the Douglas fir, hemlock, and sword ferns that crowded the side of the road.

“I think he and Thorne had some agreement about who gave up their vacation first. Probably some bet he won.”

“Poker?”

“Or that croquet game they started up a couple months ago.”

“Croquet.” Her voice held a level of disbelief we Reeds really should be done with by now. “Thor and Odin. Wickets and tiny mallets?”

“Tiny hammers,” I corrected with mock gravity. “They play it on the beach over at the cove. Apparently you can hear the swearing and insults for miles. A few of the other gods have joined in. I heard rumblings about starting a league. It’s serious business.”

“As long as no one dies,” she said.

That brought on a heavy silence.

“If we don’t find Cooper in time…” I said as Myra kept her eyes on the twisting road that rolled through cow farms and forested hills.

“We’ll find him.”

“If we don’t,” I said, a little more firmly, “I don’t want you or Jean trying to pick up the power.”

She was quiet. After another mile or so, she took in a short breath. “Do you really think Jean and I could stand on the sidelines while our home and the people we care for are being eaten by a god power that our family has vowed to guard?”

“No,” I said quietly. “But I think you could leave. Get out of the blast zone.”

“You aren’t paying attention, Delaney. You know we’d never walk away in a disaster.”

“I know.” I rubbed my eyes. The headache had gotten much worse with the song of power and exhausting pressure.

“We would never walk away from you,” she said.

The truth of that made my chest tight.

“Idiot. We love you. We are not going to lose you.”

The pressure in my chest eased, and I closed my eyes against the overwhelming prickling of tears I refused to give in to. I sniffed and nodded. I was pretty sure I was the worst keeper of power in the history of the keepers of powers, but having Myra and Jean—my sisters, my family—at my back meant everything to me.

I rubbed at my eyes again, drawing away the wetness, and leaned my head against the window, hand propped over my eyebrows to shield the bright light. “Thanks.”

“You hurting?” she asked after another mile of silence.

“Some. Headache.”

“Sunglasses in the glove box.”

I reached forward and pulled out a spare pair of Aviators. I slipped them on, sighing a little at the relief. It wasn’t a lot, but any little bit helped.

“Take your pills?”

“I did. I think this is more Heimdall’s power being pissy than my injury being sore.”

“Too bad we don’t have something for that,” she said.

“Power Vicodin?”

She shrugged. “Or someone in the family who can ease pain.”

“Like that’s a real thing.”

“There have been people in the Reed line who were healers.”

“Dad tell you that?”

She nodded. “He left me a lot of family history books.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking about how that made me feel. Good, I decided. Out of the three of us girls, Myra was serious and patient enough to actually sift through old records. “I’m glad,” I finally said.

“I know it’s usually passed down to the eldest…”

“I’m glad,” I said again, patting her leg. “Dad had good instincts. He knew when to break the rules.”

“Good news,” Crow said from the back seat.

Myra swerved. I yelped and half turned, while I grabbed for a gun I didn’t have on me.

“What the hell, Crow?”

He sat in the back seat where he’d just appeared, a canary-eating grin on his face. “God power. You should try it sometime, Delaney. It’s just all sorts of fun.”

Myra cussed quietly through clenched teeth. She had gotten the car back into our lane, which was good, because there were only two lanes on this part of the old highway.

“If you ever do that again,” Myra said, “I will kill you, Crow.”

He chuckled. “Don’t you want to hear my good news?”

I planted my hand over my side. I was pretty sure I’d ripped a stitch or two. It was bleeding again.

“It better be that you found Cooper and he’s waiting for us in a nice, quiet room, ready to take on the god power,” I said.

He threw his hands up in the air. “Yes! That’s it exactly. How did you guess?”

“Really?” I searched his face.

Crow smiled, and some of the mischief faded under a warmth I’d seen many times since I was a kid. “Really.”

A dizzy wash of relief rolled through me, and I grinned. “Holy shit. You’re amazing! Where is he?”

“The casino.”

“Which casino?” Myra asked.

“Our casino. Just outside of town.”

Myra immediately flicked on the blinker, pulled onto the narrow shoulder, and did a U-turn to get us heading south.

“Is someone there with him? Someone who can make sure he won’t run?” I asked.

“Hera, Jame, and Ben all stayed.”

“Good. Have you told Jean?”

“Thor said he’d mention it to her.”

I glanced at the clock in the console. “So we’re, what? About an hour away?”

“Or a second,” Crow said.

I glanced at him again. He had his arms crossed over his chest, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“You’d do that for us?”

He nodded. “It’s been a while since I’ve stretched my wings and used power, you know.” He somehow made it sound dirty. “It feels real good. Makes me want to do all sorts of things to you innocent mortals.”

He winked at me, and the light that flickered in his eyes was not the warmth and humor I usually saw from my friend. The man in the back seat of the cruiser wasn’t Crow. Or at least he wasn’t just Crow. This was Raven, the trickster, the god.

And if there was one thing I knew, it was that gods in the wild were dangerous, temperamental creatures.

“Do I need to draw up a contract with you first?” I asked. “To make sure that you will only do the things that I actually want you to do?”

He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling of the car and sighed. When his gaze ticked back down to me, the odd god power light was a little dimmer and the eyes of my friend were brighter.

“While it’s very,
very
tempting to say yes and spend some time bargaining you into a contract, I think you should just trust me on this one.”

“Like a stupid, innocent mortal?”

He leaned forward, fighting back a smirk. “Or a brave one. Trust me, Delaney. You know you want to.”

I glanced at Myra. She studied Raven in the rearview mirror, then looked away to catch my gaze. “Go.”

“Okay. Take me to Cooper.”

“My pleasure.” He winked.

We were standing in a carpeted hallway of the casino, the sound of piped music and games rattling in the background.

I’d never been manhandled by god power before. It wasn’t settling well.

“Delaney?” Raven tipped his head to make eye contact.

I leaned against the wall, one palm flat against it to keep me standing, the other cupped around my ribs. “Don’t come any closer. I might yark on you.”

He sucked in a breath. “Right. The Reed family immunity. I forgot. Probably shouldn’t let a god power do anything drastic with you for the next few hours.”

I straightened and took better stock of my surroundings. No one else was in the hall, and there was a closed door right next to me. “No problem. It’s going to take me that long to talk Cooper into this.”

I reached for the door just as it swung inward.

Jame Wolfe stood in front of me, his head tipped to the side like a puppy that had heard a strange noise. His warm eyes flicked over to Raven, and he tipped his head the other way.

“Hey, Jame,” I said. “Gonna let me in there?”

“Sure.” He stood aside, his eyes following Raven, his shoulder hunched up like he was ready to fight. I thought this might be the first time he’d ever seen Crow carrying power.

The conference room had a bank of windows with the blinds closed, a dark wood table down the center of it, and a vampire, a goddess, and my ex-boyfriend seated in the comfortable swivel chairs around it.

The power in me rang out with a shout, a chorus, reaching.

Hera nodded as I walked in. She looked different carrying her power too. A sort of regal air clung to her, even though she was still wearing her jeans and leather jacket. Ben stared at Raven and licked his bottom lip, a quick flash of fang pressing there, his eyes flickering with a hungry glow before he looked away.