“I talked to Dad about a lot of things. Each of our gifts, yours in particular. I wanted to be prepared.”
“Why mine in particular?”
“Because I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. And I knew it would be me and Jean who made sure you got through it.”
It was sweet. And a little annoying that she thought I couldn’t handle it.
“I can handle this. It just caught me off guard.”
The lights of a pickup truck swung past us, and the truck parked on the side of the road behind us.
“Company?” I tried to get a good look through the rain-stained window.
“Boyfriend.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“No. You do.”
And sure enough, that was Ryder’s truck. He got out and, with a drink carrier balanced in one hand, walked around the back of the cruiser to rap his knuckles on Myra’s window.
She rolled down the window.
“Didn’t I make myself clear, Mr. Bailey?” She was in full cop-mode. “This is a police matter. I need you to evacuate the area.”
“Since I’m not sworn in yet, I’m bringing coffee in a non-official capacity.” He smiled and lifted the cups. “I thought you and Delaney could use it. Is she okay?”
I opened the door and stepped out. “I’m fine.” My teeth chattered as cold rain hit my bare skin.
He held out one of the coffees and jiggled it.
I couldn’t help but smile.
“Thanks.” I wrapped my fingers around the paper cup and took a gulp. “This is police business, Ryder. You’re not on the clock.”
“I’m here as a concerned citizen, nothing more. I heard it’s about Heim? Is he okay?”
Myra got out of the car and snagged up the other coffee on her way to the trunk.
“Who have you been talking to?” I asked. Myra handed me a jacket and I practically crawled into it. It was too big for me, but the flannel interior felt wonderful on my bare arms and shoulders.
“I’ve got a scanner,” he said. “Heard Jean talking to the EMTs she sent out here. Also heard the bay master. They’re bringing in the
Gulltoppr
.”
The
Gulltoppr
was Heimdall’s boat.
“When we need an amateur detective,” Myra said, “we’ll call you.”
“I wouldn’t say no to that,” he said amiably. “If it comes with a cool hat and magnifying glass. Although a badge and gun sounds like a lot more fun.”
Myra squared off to him. “If you get in my way, Ryder Bailey, I will lock you up for obstruction.”
He held up both hands and took three steps back. “I’ll stay at a distance. I’ll even keep other people at a distance if they show up. I know how to stay out of the way.”
“Really?” she asked.
He tucked his hands into his coat pockets. “Most of the time, yes. Although, now that you mention it, I wouldn’t say it’s a strength of mine.”
I snorted a chuckle into my coffee cup.
His eyes flicked over to me, laughter and worry filled them in equal measures.
I sighed. “Once again—I’m fine. And you aren’t fooling anyone, Ryder.”
“Wasn’t trying to. Just concerned about you. That’s not a crime, is it?”
No
, my heart said. Caring about someone—me—enough that he’d go through the trouble to track down the call, and meet us here with coffee, wasn’t a crime at all.
It was really nice.
“Not yet,” Myra said.
“Good, then. We’re good.”
Myra looped her arm through mine and we started down the trail that cut through the tough sea grass, the rise of the shore hunched up on either side of us.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why he’s suddenly so worried about me.”
“I do.”
I waited.
“I’ve never seen you go so cold and unresponsive, Delaney. When you passed out in front of Jump Off Jack’s, I thought you’d stopped breathing.”
She said it in a matter-of-fact tone, but I knew her. She had, maybe only for a moment, thought I’d died. It could happen to someone who bridged god power, though usually the deadliest part of that transfer was when a new mortal had to pick up the power. If the mortal panicked, changed their mind at all, the bridge was left holding the power.
Which was usually fatal.
Dear gods, she thought I’d died.
“Never like that.” I squeezed her arm still draped through mine. “Never going out that easy, that quick.”
“Good.” She squeezed back for a second, then we both let go.
“How far out did they find him?” I asked.
“Just down the beach about a quarter mile.” She pointed.
I pulled up the hood on the jacket and we started off that way. The wind was steady, strong, and sent rain and sand spattering across the back of my jacket and jeans. I was glad I’d decided on boots tonight. There was no way I’d be tromping through the sand in strappy sandals.
Even in the rain and wind and darkness, it didn’t take us all that long to reach the body.
The EMTs were already on the scene. They’d set up portable lights and had driven the ambulance down from the beach access just north of here.
The tide was on its way out. It hissed and crashed a good thirty feet from the ambulance.
Five people were at the scene, two tourists texting on their phones, and three responders—all of them vampires. Mykal, a short, dark-haired Rossi, drove the ambulance. He finished pounding a stake rather effortlessly into the sand so he could string bright orange webbing in a ring to close off the area. The other two Rossis were the twins, Page and Senta. Though not identical, both were ice-blonde beauties. Page wore her hair long and Senta kept hers trimmed in a short swing.
Senta was photographing the sand outside the fence, looking for footprints or evidence that would tell us if there had been any foul play. Page was inside the fence, photographing the body.
“Hey-a, chief,” Mykal called out. “Myra. Cold night for it.”
Since he was a vampire and couldn’t feel the cold, it was nice of him to sympathize with us mortals.
“Are these our witnesses?” I asked Page.
She glanced up, her eyes doing that bio-luminous glitter of her kind when they were in the dark and around fresh blood. “Couple from Eugene in for the Rhubarb Rally,” she said. “They’re staying at the Sand Garden and were out for a late walk.”
“I’ll go talk to them,” Myra said.
I watched her approach them. Their body language changed to one of relief. I was sure they would be happy to give statements so they could get out of the rain.
Another movement caught my eye.
Ryder stopped near the ambulance, hands tucked in coat pockets, knit beanie on his head. He stared down at Heim, his face lined with something sharp and dark. Concern. Maybe anger.
I tried to remember how well they’d known each other. Not extremely well, I thought.
He looked up, but not at me. Instead, his eyes scanned the cliffs and the hint of road weaving along it as if he were putting together a puzzle of his own.
I took another gulp of coffee, then set my cup in the sand, twisting it to dig in a little. I ducked under the fencing and paused before moving farther. “We got shots of all this?”
“In triplicate,” Page said.
I crossed the short distance to where Heim lay on his back, one arm thrown up over his head, the other by his side. He wore a flannel shirt, thermal under it, Carhartts, and waders.
In the harsh glare of the lights, I could make out no blood. His face was peaceful and relaxed into something that was almost relief. Not what I expected from a corpse.
“Head trauma?” I asked as I knelt.
Sage nodded and crouched on the other side of the body. “A couple hours old, I think.”
“Think? I thought Rossis were better pinning down these kinds of things.”
She flashed me a grin with a little fang. “We are. But I don’t think it was the head wound that killed him.”
“No?”
“I think he drowned.”
I took a moment to study her face. She was not lying.
“Yeah?”
“We’ll run labs, of course.”
“Good. Any other wounds?”
“A few nicks on his hands—hooks, wood slivers, that kind of thing.”
“His only large injury is the head wound?”
“Yes. And water in his lungs. The scrapes on his hands are common for a fisherman.”
“Have you heard anything about the
Gulltoppr
?”
“It was adrift, all in one piece, unmanned, just north of here.”
“Distress signal?”
She shook her head, moonlight hair swinging.
“Who found it?”
“Coast guard. They brought it in. Not sure where it is right now—in the bay, I’d guess. I heard Jean tell them to close it off and to not allow anyone to touch it until we determine the cause of death.”
“All right. Do you have a flashlight on you?”
“Hold on.” She stood. Without saying anything or making any kind of signal that I could see, she caught the flashlight Senta tossed to her.
Vampires and their intra-species mind-reading tricks.
Never play Pictionary with them.
She handed me the light. I blocked out the rain, the cold, the wind. I blocked out the sound of the ocean, the rumble of the ambulance engine and generator running the lights.
I opened my senses—eyes, ears, nose, touch—to the dead man in front of me, trying to understand his story. Trying to understand how his life had ended.
Shirt wasn’t torn; still had on the boots he always wore on the deck. No rope burns on his palms, no deep gouges to indicate he got caught in a winch line, dragged. The scratches and nicks Page mentioned really were just that.
I didn’t move his hair to inspect the wound, since I didn’t have gloves in this borrowed jacket, but I took the time to pass the flashlight slowly over every inch of his body, trusting that if there was a detail the Rossis had missed, I’d see it.
Nothing.
If I had to file my final report right now, I’d say he hit his head, fell overboard, and drowned.
“Can you smell alcohol on him?”
Page leaned in, holding her satiny white hair out of the way. Sniffed.
“I don’t think so. But other things are in the way of knowing. His heritage is bright.” Her eyes flashed blue with light again.
By heritage, she meant god power.
Yeah, that was the wild card in this. God power leaving a body could do all sorts of things to mess up the evidence and cause of death.
I’d need to handle that—handle my part in dealing with the god power that no longer had a mortal vessel to inhabit.
“Take him in,” I said. “Let me know what labs say as soon as we know. I want a full autopsy.”
“Will do, chief. If there’s anything I can do. To help with…you”—she nodded—“say the word.”
This was the first time I would have to bridge a god power. And since uncontrolled, unclaimed god power was more than happy to kill mortals and creatures alike—even the undead, like vampires—it was as much her unlife resting in my very inexperienced hands as it was the life of the mortals in the town.
“I got this.”
She patted my shoulder. “If you need the Rossis, we’re here for you.”
“You might want to check with Old Rossi before you go promising a pact between me and your entire clan.”
“He likes you.”
“That’s not what he said last month when I told him jogging nude wasn’t allowed in the neighborhood.
“I didn’t say he always likes you.”
“How does he do that, by the way? All of you? The skin-in-sunlight thing?”
It was a well-kept secret even my dad hadn’t gotten out of the local vamps. Sunlight didn’t seem to give them much trouble.
“Ask Old Rossi.”
Myra ducked under the orange fence webbing.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Head wound. Page suspects drowning.”
“We’ll want to run full labs,” she said.
“Yep.” I straightened into the gusting wind to face my sister. “What did the city folk say?”
“Nothing new. Out walking. Thought he was sleeping at first. The woman has a flashlight app on her phone. She was worried he wasn’t breathing. The man checked for a pulse while she called it in.”
“Did he find one?”
“No. Cold to the touch.”
“Okay.” The wind chopped across the sand, cold and biting. My gaze wandered over Myra’s shoulder to where Ryder stood, one hip leaned against the front bumper of the ambulance.
He wasn’t watching the cliffs any more. He was watching me.
A warmth that had nothing to do with the thick jacket, wrapped around me.
“Delaney,” Myra said, “I think you should go home for the night. Take a nice hot bath. Get some sleep.”
Honestly, nothing sounded better right now. I hadn’t slept in a day, and the blast of god power had made me much too alert, and jittery tired.
But I was the chief of police and there was a dead god to deal with.
“I’ll come into the station,” I said. “Write up my report.”
“You’re beat.”
“Nothing a dozen cups of coffee won’t fix.”
She pressed her lips together and twisted to glance at Ryder.
“Nope,” I said. “Do not drag him into this. I’ll do my job, then go home after.” I picked up my coffee, which had gone cold. Swallowed some along with the grit of sand caught on the edge of the lid.
“Dad told me the power was exhausting,” she said. “That the first time nearly knocked him out for days.”
“Good thing I’m not Dad,” I said with false cheer. I tugged her arm as I walked past her. “You coming?”
It took a minute, but she finally caught up to me.
“What’s it like?” she asked.
I kept my head down against the wind, my boots sinking in the soft, wet sand. How could I put this in words? “It’s like a sound, a lot of sounds, all clashing together in my head. Voices, string, drum banging around under my skin. It’s loud and…uncomfortable. Like a crappy apartment neighbor who won’t keep the stereo down.”
She huffed, not quite a laugh, then was silent as we walked. I wondered how hard it was for her to resist checking my forehead for a fever and maybe shining one of those little stick lights in my eyes. She tried to keep a cool exterior, but Myra was more maternal than any of us Reed girls.
“What did Dad tell you it was like?” I asked.
“Hell.”
Great. Thanks, Dad.
By the time we made it back to the car, I was breathing too hard and shaking from the cold and sweat. I was also considering the benefits of throwing up.