“You’re going to harm me.”
His eyebrows lifted up into his cropped hair. “Am I?”
“Yes. Jean knew something bad was going to happen, and here you are.”
He tutted and looked like he was having a hard time keeping a smile off his face. “Your sister may be correct in her gift, but she is incorrect in assuming I would cause you harm.”
“You’re not here to kill me?”
He pursed his lips as if considering his answer. “Dear Delaney. I am on vacation. Therefore, I am here to kill no one. If I intended to kill you, or do you
harm
”—he made the last word sound like a filthy insult—“I would first tell you so.”
“Thanks?”
He nodded, as if promising to let someone know you were going to kill them was the height of propriety. “Would you open the door so that we could speak in a more civilized manner?”
I holstered my gun and put my hand on the doorknob. The door hadn’t been locked during any of this exchange. He could have opened it any time he wanted to.
I opened the door. “What?”
“Good morning, Reed Daughter.”
I leaned in the doorway. “Good morning, Than. What’s up?”
“Although I have secured my business license, I have been informed that you will be among the persons of authority who must approve of my trade.”
It wasn’t usual for the chief of police to have a say in such things, but I’d found it was easier to head off the more disastrous career choices of new gods in town if I was in the loop from the beginning.
“Yes. I’ll have a say in okaying your business. What kind of business do you intend to go into?”
“Aerials.”
“Excuse me?”
“String and paper and wind.”
I waited for him to continue. He didn’t, instead just stood there looking at me expectantly.
“What are you going to do with string and paper and wind?”
He looked surprised that I hadn’t guessed yet. “Kites, Reed Daughter. I will sail kites.”
“Have you ever flown a kite?”
“No.”
“You understand you’ll have to make money from this. From selling kites. Pretty, bright, whimsical things for children and the young at heart.”
“Yes.”
“Do you really think a job in sales is playing to your strengths?”
“I thought the purpose of vacation was to relax. To be, for a time, not strong.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that a little. It was how the gods looked at it. Being a god meant a lot of responsibilities, a power constantly coursing through everything they did, everything they touched.
It could mean years and years of seeing that the one thing they had the power over was completely and thoroughly enacted.
For Death, I could see how getting a break from having to harvest souls might be seen as no longer being strong.
“Maybe,” I said. “Okay. Yes. I approve of you running a kite shop. Have you chosen the location?” I grabbed my coat off the chair where it had landed last night, then stepped outside, shrugging into it.
He moved primly to one side so that I could walk past him onto the porch. It didn’t matter that he was in a casual tropical shirt. He still moved like he was in a top hat and tails.
“I had expected to revive the current shop.”
“The Tailwind?” It was a broken-down A-frame shack on the southern end of town that had once been a thriving kite business before the casinos, internet, and whale-watching trips became the normal for Ordinary. “Have you spoken to Bill Downing?”
“The owner from California? Yes.”
“He agreed to sell it to you?”
“He agreed I could have the building and the name if I drew up a fair contract and paid him a portion of my profits for the next five years.”
“Think you can follow through on that?”
“I assure you I am more than capable of sealing a contract for a dilapidated shack.”
I had to grin a little. He sounded put out that I had doubted Death could close a deal. I started down the stairs and he followed behind me, his footsteps silent on the steep concrete steps.
“Good.” A car was coming, tires grinding gravel at the lower end of the dead end road. Jean was here quicker than I’d expected. “I’d like to see more kites out in the sky.”
I had reached the bottom of the staircase and turned to face him. That put the opening of the dead-end driveway and the sound of approaching tires at my back.
But it was the motion at the head of the driveway, a man stepping out from the bushes, that caught my eye.
“You were wrong,” Dan Perkin said. He was in a dark gray coat, a silhouette in the deep of the early morning fog and darkness.
“Dan? What are you doing here?”
He raised his gun. “My root beer is a winner! I’m a winner!”
I raised my hands, palm forward. “It’s okay, Dan. I agree. You’re a winner.”
“You should have given me ten out of ten!” His voice was high and ragged.
Sweat broke out on my lip, the cold of fog whisking it away. Dan was trembling with rage.
“We can fix this, Dan,” I said. “I can fix this and you can win.”
“Yeah, Delaney?” he scoffed. “Well, I can fix it too!”
The pain and force of the bullet ripping into my chest knocked me off my feet. I heard the gunshot a second after I fell, which seemed wrong to me. I landed on my ass in the sharp gravel, catching myself with one hand and trying to draw my gun with the other. I hoped to hell the car coming up the road wasn’t Jean, and if it was, that she wouldn’t put herself in the line of fire.
I was having a hard time getting a breath. My lungs burned as if someone had stuck a torch into them. Everything around me had gone freezing cold, my movements slow and stiff, the darkness shifting to an almost purple haze that was fuzzing up my eyesight.
I had to get on my feet. I had to get to my gun. I had to stop Dan before he shot anyone else—or before he shot me again. But I couldn’t seem to get a grip on the world that was slipping, slipping. Someone had taken all the air along with the light.
Distantly, I heard Dan’s yell of fury and anguish. “No! No! There are no bullets. There are no bullets!”
Then the screech of brakes and slide of blue and red lights bruised up the darkness.
I thought I heard Myra’s voice, blinked hard to warn her, to tell her that Dan had a gun. But the only thing I could see was Death’s face, hovering above me so close that I could see the shattering of silver lightning in his endless black eyes, the collar of his tacky Hawaiian shirt burning like a fire in the night.
“Reed Daughter,” he said softly, an intimate voice that swept my fears away, even though I still couldn’t breathe and I was thinking that was something I might want to be afraid of. “You cannot try to die. I am on vacation, after all.”
That ridiculous statement and the amount of sincerity he delivered it with made me want to laugh, but I didn’t have any air for that either.
Death put his cold hand on my chest, applying firm pressure to my wound as he shook his head disapprovingly. Then the world funneled down to a single speck of light that winked out.
Chapter 23
THE OCEAN was too loud. Waves rising and falling in a steady drone that filled my head.
I wished someone would just turn the darn thing off.
Rise, fall. Roar, roar, roar.
I didn’t know how long it took, but I finally realized the ocean sound was my own breathing thrumming in my ears. I was lying down somewhere warm, maybe under a blanket? I couldn’t feel most of my body, which seemed like a really good thing.
I wanted to slip back into sleep, or coma, or whatever soft oblivion I’d just accidentally slipped out of, but my breathing was way too loud.
“Time to wake up, Delaney,” Myra said from next to me. “We’re here. Come back to us.”
Fingers brushed my cheek gently, then stroked back over my hair. Myra, I thought. Maybe Jean too—petting the top of my head like I was a nervous cat she was trying to comfort.
“Hey, Delaney.” Jean sounded like she was trying to talk a cat out from under the car or refrigerator. “Wake up, sister.”
I pushed at my eyelids. It took a lot of effort to crack them open. I thought I might be heavily medicated. Finally got my eyes to track.
A bright pink glob bounced somewhere near a white ceiling. Maybe a creature or ghost come to get a look at me?
I blinked a couple of times and the cheerful pink glob came into focus. It was a big bright balloon, swaying gently on a string. I rolled my eyes down, following the string that blurred in and out of focus. Myra and Jean were saying something. Maybe to me. I couldn’t seem to follow their words. My head echoed.
The string ended with a pale, bony hand.
Death.
He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t look angry, either. He had on a T-shirt that said: W
E
MIGHT
BE
O
RDINARY
,
BUT
AT
LEAST
WE
’
RE
NOT
B
ORING
.
I snuffled a laugh. It was one of the T-shirts we printed up for tourists, much to the dismay of the little town of Boring, Oregon just southeast of Portland.
“There now,” he said, and I wondered why I could hear his voice so well when everything else sounded like I had a metal bucket on my head. “It is about time you woke. I do have other matters to attend.”
I was going to tell him I was so sorry to interrupt his busy schedule with my gunshot wound, but by the time I blinked, he stood next to me.
Death lifted my pinkie, which seemed like a really weird thing to do, and then patted my hand as if he were some kind of concerned uncle instead of the last face before the grave.
“Get well soon,” he said slowly with just a little hint of delight, as if he were reading off a cue card. I had a feeling he’d never said those words before.
I wanted to respond, but I was tired and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, he was gone and Myra was sitting in the chair next to me. I thought maybe a little time had passed.
“How about a drink of water?” she suggested.
“Sure.” The word came out breathy, but it felt good to be able to think again.
I was in a hospital room, the bed bent so I was almost sitting, a thin but warm blanket tucked around me from my chest to my feet. Both my arms were free, and there was an IV in the left one.
I took a sip of water through the straw Myra tipped my way. The water was cool and somehow tasted rich and clean. “What happened?”
“You got shot,” Jean said from the other side of the bed.
I glanced over at her. She looked worried, her green and blue hair making her eyes dark and glittery. “I told you to lock your damn door.”
Okay. Not worried. Angry. “He wasn’t at my door.”
She sighed. “I know, Delaney. You didn’t stay inside.”
“I didn’t think…” I tried to come up with something more to say. “I didn’t think.”
“Damn right you didn’t.” She sat forward and caught my hand, turning it without messing up the IV line. “You were shot. When we drove up and saw you there on the ground…” Her eyes welled up and she shook her head, unable to speak. “Jesus, Delaney. Jesus.”
“Here I thought the rhubarb would kill me.”
“Not funny,” she said, but at least she wasn’t crying.
“What happened to Dan?”
“We arrested him,” Myra said. “He’s claiming he didn’t know the gun was loaded. Says he’s innocent.”
“Horse shit,” Jean said.
Everything in Myra’s expression agreed with that statement. “His lawyer wants the trial moved out of Ordinary. Says he’d never get a fair trial here.”
She was probably right. Dan had made a nuisance of himself to so many people that I didn’t think we’d be able to scrape together an unbiased jury.
“Where are they thinking of transferring him?”
“Polk County.”
That was east, in the valley. Far enough away from Ordinary no one could have heard of Dan, and a small enough town that he might be able to bargain down the charges.
“You put him up on assault with a deadly weapon?”
Myra’s cool blue eyes held mine. “I put him up on everything I could think of.”
I inhaled
then stopped because it pulled somewhere deep in me, and I thought it might hurt a lot more if I weren’t on meds.
“How long until I bribe my way out of here?”
“Uh, that would be never,” Jean said.
“So a few hours?”
“You can’t bribe your way out of here,” Myra said.
“Why not? I did when I had to have my tonsils out. Everyone has a stack of parking tickets in their closet.”
“No,” Myra said. “I already told Alister I’d take care of his tickets and his library overdue fines if he promised me he wouldn’t let you bribe your way out.”
“Traitor,” I grumbled.
She patted my upper arm, her clear eyes seeking out mine. “You were shot, Delaney. Shot. Through and through. Broke ribs. You were shot.”
A weird chill ran down my spine at hearing those words. I was still pretty firmly in denial of the reality of the whole thing.
Dan Perkin had shot me.
Over rhubarb.
I giggled. Who got shot over a vegetable?
“Oh, great,” Myra said. “Now you’re going crazy.”
I tried not to laugh, but laughter pushed up my chest and into my throat as if it were filled with helium. I snorted. It had to be the drugs. Getting shot wasn’t funny, was it?
“No.” I raised my hands to reason with her. A pink blob bobbed with that movement, making a little
tink-tink
sound. I looked up to see the balloon swaying gently on the string tied to my pinkie.
Death had brought me a pink balloon. I couldn’t stop myself. I snickered then giggled again.
“Really?” Jean sounded exasperated.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, trying to keep the laughter in. “It’s the drugs. Just the drugs.”
When I tried to think through what Dan had done, the whole thing just seemed so out of character. I mean, Dan was a blowhard and a pain in the butt, but he had never before shot anyone. Especially not a police officer in broad daylight in front of a witness. Even he wasn’t that bold and stupid.
“Are we sure it was Dan?” I asked.