“If you are going to haunt me, I’m going to expect some helpful poltergeist action around here. Fold the laundry. Start the coffee.”
I knew Dad wasn’t listening. It was probably just a dream that had brought me awake so fast. But now that I was living alone in the old family home—both sisters moved out, no boyfriend moved in, both Dad and Mom gone—I’d fallen into my childhood habit of talking to myself.
“They say talking to yourself is a sign of genius,” I said around a yawn.
Or loneliness.
Yeah, that too.
I pressed the button on the coffee pot I’d pre-loaded only a few hours ago and pulled a Chewbacca mug out of the cupboard.
I bit back another yawn and scooped sugar into where Chewbacca’s brains should be.
I felt like I hadn’t slept in a year. Taking over as Chief of Police in Ordinary, Oregon, on the heels of Dad’s death had been hard, even with my sisters Myra and Jean right beside me. It might have been easier if Cooper, my oh-so-ex-boyfriend, hadn’t also decided to run off to “find himself” a week after the funeral.
But then, maybe it was better to have my heart broken by both Dad’s death and my boyfriend’s restless urges in such a short span of time. Breaking, that hard that fast, made the rebuilding easier.
Right?
“Sweet-talking Cooper Clark, the heartbreak hit-and-run I should have seen coming a mile away, you did me a favor by leaving. Life is so much easier without love.”
Liar, my heart said.
I ignored it, just like I’d been doing for the past year, instead throwing all my energy into my job as peacekeeper, guardian, and law for all the mortals, creatures, and deities who made Ordinary their home.
My job also included dealing with the Rhubarb Rally, Ordinary’s biggest spring tourist draw.
The normally quiet, if abnormally quirky, town would be transformed into a bustling little city over the next week or so.
If I got more than three hours of sleep between now and Friday when the Rhubarb Regatta sailed to shore for the festival blessing, it’d be a miracle.
I believed in a lot of things. I had to. Not only to keep the peace between the mortals and creatures who lived here full time, but also to deal with the gods, goddess, and deities who used the town as their official getaway vacation destination.
Growing up here, I had played spin-the-bottle with werewolves, crabbed the bay with Poseidon, and smoked my first (and last) cigar with Shiva.
But I had yet to see a true miracle.
I poured coffee and took it to the little kitchen table in the nook by the window that looked out over the Pacific Ocean. It was hours from dawn, the landscape bathed in ink. But sitting at this table with coffee was one of my favorite quiet places. And I’d need all the quiet I could get if I were going to survive this week.
A wash of ice prickled up the back of my t-shirt.
I held my breath, my body taut, instinct clamoring. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
A flash of orange cut through the darkness, burning my vision. Thunder blasted so hard, so close, so loud, it rattled the windows and set off car alarms.
“Holy crap.”
I ran to the bedroom, shoved on jeans, boots, and police jacket, my mind spinning through possibilities.
It wasn’t a god thing. Those powers were carefully locked away while the gods vacationed here. It wasn’t a creature thing either. No creature in town could light up half the sky.
Gas main break? Bomb? Aliens?
I grabbed for my phone and keys. My cell rang.
“Delaney?” It was my sister, Jean. “Explosion. Southeast.”
“Got it.” I jogged out the door, not bothering to lock it. “Injuries?” I ran down the thirty steps to my Jeep at the bottom of the hill.
“Calls coming in. Hold on.”
I ducked into the Jeep. Started the engine.
The lights flashed on at the other three occupied houses tucked against the hill on this dead end overlooking the Pacific.
No one could have slept through that.
“Delaney?”
“Here.” I thumbed on the speaker and dropped my phone in the coffee holder.
“It’s Dan Perkin’s place. Every neighbor within four blocks says the explosion went off in the field behind his shed.”
“Fire? Anyone hurt?”
“Fire’s on the way. Pearl said Dan is fine. Angry as a snake in a knot, but uninjured. No other injuries reported.”
“Copy.”
“Delaney? I have a bad feeling about this.” Jean didn’t bring it up much, but her gut instincts were usually dead on. “Be careful.”
“Copy that, Sister.” I flipped on the Jeep’s light bar, followed the gravel road down to the cross street, and gunned it out to Highway 101 which cut the town into North/South.
“Just don’t anyone be dead,” I muttered as I sped down the mostly empty road. “Everybody stays breathing in my town. On my watch, in the middle of the night.”
I got to the Perkin’s place in under a minute and took half a second more to wrap my long brown hair back in a slick ponytail as I stepped out of the Jeep. Not exactly the most professional look, since I was still wearing the Grateful Dead T-shirt and jeans, but it wasn’t the clothes that made me an authority on this scene.
I crossed the gravel road to the small crowd of mortal neighbors gathered at the edge of Dan’s front yard.
One of the Rossi boys was there, because one of the Rossi boys was always first to arrive at the scene of disasters. This time it was Sven, the blond, blue-eyed poker cheat who didn’t look a day over twenty-one in his light gray hoodie, jeans and Converse.
“Chief Reed,” Sven said with a nod of his very pale face. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, hands tucked under his armpits. He’d only been in town for a few years, arriving as the newest “cousin” of the Rossi clan which was a wide and varied melting pot.
Old Rossi, the patriarch of the vampire clan, never turned away a new family member looking for a better life.
Not all of the Rossis stayed in town, of course. There were rules, strict rules, and those who broke them were never seen or heard from again.
Old Rossi made sure of that.
Sven was built like he might have been a fisherman, or maybe someone who worked a farm a hundred years ago. Here, he worked the night shift at Your Mother’s Bar and Grill, which was more bar than it was grill.
He must have just gotten off work.
“Sven,” I said. “You here when it happened?”
He squinted and tipped his head the way his sort did when they were scenting for blood, fear, and sometimes other things they hungered for.
“Nope. I got here right after the blast. Perkin’s furious.” His smile pulled up on one side, revealing a flash of his sharp canine. “Thinks someone wants him dead.” His eyes widened. “Imagine that.”
“Yeah, well, you let me know if you hear anything.”
Dan Perkin’s voice cut through the night air. “Throw him in jail! Throw that dirty, lying, cowardly, thieving scrap of garbage in jail!”
“Sounds like he’s singing your song, Chief,” Sven said.
“I mean it. You hear anything...”
He nodded. “We’ll bring it to you. Rossi word.”
“Good.”
Fire, but not ambulance—Jean must have called them off—took the corner, lights flashing but sirens off.
I strode past Sven, across the yard, alongside the house to the back yard.
Looked like someone had used dynamite to start a bonfire. The fire wasn’t spreading—early May was still too wet, too often for anything to do much more than smolder—but the hole had blown the heck out of the burn pile and a couple of nearby tire planters.
Dan Perkin stood in front of the fire, cussing.
“Hello, Chief,”
Pearl said from the porch at my right. “Everyone’s all right here.”
Pearl was in her early seventies–mortal–and a retired nurse out of Portland. She wore her hair back in a long braid and always carried her emergency kit backpack wherever she went.
Dan Perkin was lucky to have her as a neighbor.
“Thanks for coming over, Pearl.”
“Couldn’t sleep through this excitement, could I?” she said with a smile.
“Hey-up, Chief,” a male voice called out behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. Ben Rossi, the angel-faced, pale-haired, slender but incredibly strong chief of the volunteer fire department grinned as he hauled a hose out across the lawn. A lot of the Rossis held jobs in the first-responder and emergency departments.
It might seem weird to have a fire department full of vampires, but they were cheerfully immune to human suffering, and their strength and un-aliveness made them solid allies in times of disaster.
Building burning down? Send in the guys who don’t need to breathe and can’t die by fire. Stuck in a ditch? A vampire was one of the fastest, surest climbers around. Kitten stuck in a tree? You’ve never seen a scary fanger go gooey and sweet so fast. Turns out vampires love cats.
I wasn’t sure if that was a Rossi thing or a fanger thing, but it was adorable.
Jame Wolfe, Ben’s partner both at work and home, strode along behind him, the hose over his shoulder. Built like a wrestler, he had the Wolfe family’s dark good looks and swagger that pretty much made sure he never went to bed alone.
“Boys,” I said.
“Chief Reed,” Jame replied.
Jame wasn’t a vampire—he was a werewolf. Big family of them owned the rock quarry south of town.
It had been quite the gossip—well, among those who knew about the supernatural inhabitants of the place—when Ben and Jame had moved in together. There had been more than a little speculation as to how the cross-species relationship would be handled. So far, they seemed to be dealing with it just fine—both the gossip and the relationship.
“About time you got here!” Dan Perkin yelled at the firefighters. “My whole house could have burned down by the time you showed up.”
“He’s not very happy,” Pearl noted.
Right about then, Dan zeroed in on me. “Chief!”
Dan Perkin was a small man—mortal—in his sixties, thin as a plucked feather. He was wearing a baseball hat, dirt-stained jeans, and John Deere jacket. He was also scorched, angry, and pacing the dirt in front of the burn pile.
He stopped pacing and stomped right up to me instead.
“Cuff him to the wreck at the bottom of the lake and throw away the keys!” he yelled.
“Mr. Perkin.” I put one hand on his upper arm and guided him to the overhang of his back porch. I tried to get him to sit, but he was having none of it.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.
“Canoe dummy wet napkin?” he yelled. “What are you talking about?”
“Blast blew his ears,” Pearl said. “You’ll need to speak up.”
I raised my voice. “What happened?”
“I almost died, is what happened! Worse than that, my patch—all of it—it’s gone! Blown to bits.”
“Patch?”
“My garden. My rhubarb .” He pointed his finger at the sky. “As God is my witness, I’m telling you it was Chris Lagon.”
I was pretty sure that the gods really couldn’t be bothered to stand witness to most of anything Dan claimed to be true. He was always mad at someone, always convinced he’d been cheated, walked over, victimized.
Still, someone had just blown up his brush pile.
“Chris Lagon blew up your rhubarb?” I asked. “Did you see him?”
“No. But he knew I was going to enter the contest this year. Knew I was going to beat him in the drink category. Rhubarb root beer. It’s extraordinary.”
It was terrible, but I just nodded and pulled out the notepad I kept in my pocket. I clicked the pen and jotted down Chris’s name.
“He threatened me!”
“When? What exactly did he say?”
“Yesterday. At his place.”
“House or business?”
“Brewery. Bum sleeps there in the boat. Did you know that? That must be a health violation.”
I knew exactly where Chris slept. And why.
“He threatened you at the brewery?” I said in an attempt to derail his next rant.
“Yes! He said, this is what he said. He said, ‘Bring it on, old man.’” Dan stabbed a finger down with each word as if he’d just hammered the last nails into Chris Lagon’s coffin. “He wants me out of the picture. He wants the rhubarb trophy.”
I doubted Chris wanted anything other than to get Dan out of his hair.
“Can you tell me what time this happened?”
He might be angry and bitter, but I was the Chief of Police. It was possible he had information that would lead me to who in town felt the need to interrupt my morning coffee with an explosion.
“Six o’clock.”
“Were there witnesses?”
“Yes. Yes, there was. Ryder Baily was there. You can ask him. He saw it all.”
My heart skipped at the mention of his name.
I’d had a...what did one call a crush that started when one was eight and that one still hadn’t been able to shake? Obsession? Longing? Sickness?
Love, my treacherous heart whispered.
I ignored it.
Whatever it was, I’d had it for Ryder for years.
It had just never worked out for me to ask him if he wanted to date. Either he’d be in the middle of a relationship, or I would, or we’d both be too busy with school, jobs, family—or in my case, monsters, gods, and exploding rhubarb—to ever make a step forward.
It was probably better that way. Less complicated.
“Anyone else?” I asked, keeping it cool. Keeping it professional.
“No, but he was there. He knows Chris Lagon blew up my rhubarb in cold blood, and tried to kill me along the way. I demand you arrest him.”
“I’ll stop by Ryder’s place after I’m done here. Now, why don’t you tell me where you were when the explosion went off?”
Ben and Jame had the fire under control, and I was just about to call my other sister, Myra, for some help with the crime scene when she showed up.
Myra always showed up when she was most needed. It was her thing.
“Hey, there, Chief,” Myra said. “Brought you some coffee.”
I gave her an appreciative nod and took the paper cup.
If someone lined up us three Reed sisters, one might think we all came from different parents. But if one paid attention to our eyes, one would realize we were most definitely our father and mother’s girls.
I took after Dad the most: straight brown hair, square cheekbones, athletic build, and a mostly easy-going, responsible nature. I was in shape from the job and my jogging habit, and never went out of my way to wear makeup or heels. The one time Myra had forced me into a push up bra, she’d whistled and told me I should wear it during interrogations because people would lose their minds faced with the dangerously sexy cleavage it gave me.
I’d slapped her phone away before she took blackmail pictures, and gave her back the damn bra.
Myra was the middle sister. Her hair was dark, almost black, and the blunt bangs over her eyebrows only accented the light blue of her eyes. Her face had softer edges, and a more generous mouth. Even without a bra, her figure was curvy perfection that the square-cut uniform she was wearing couldn’t hide.
She had also inherited a lot more of Mom’s practical thinking, to the point that some people might say she was cool or clinical, though I never saw her that way.
Jean, the youngest, had deep blue eyes and was always dying her hair with color
s not found in nature. She was the most petite of the three of us, had a wicked sense of humor, and swore like a sailor.
“Where do you need me?” she asked.
“Get some pictures of the scene and the blast area. I’m almost done with Dan’s statement, then I’ll talk to the neighbors.”
“No problem.” Myra pulled a camera out of the bag on her shoulder and got busy with that.
There probably wouldn’t be any chance of finding actual footprints in the dirt. Dan and everyone else who had been out here before I showed up would have tromped right over them. Still, Myra had a hell of an eye with that camera.
If there was something that could be seen, she’d see it.
It didn’t take long to interview Pearl and the other neighbors. None of them had seen or heard anyone coming or going. They heard the blast, saw the light, and even the quickest to respond—Pearl—had only seen Dan out by the burn pile, spitting mad.
Ben and Jame both waved to me as they packed it up. They stopped at the back of the truck and argued over who got to drive. Ben flashed fang, Jame snarled, and then they just stood there staring into each other’s eyes, neither willing to back down.
I held my breath and watched them, wondering if I was going to have to break up what could be a very messy, very bloody fight, or a very hot make-out session.
The sexual tension rolling off of those two could have starched thin air.
At some unseen signal, they leaned away from each other just enough to make room for their clenched fists.
Rock, paper, scissors.
Ben threw paper, Jame rock. Ben jeered. Jame tossed his hands up in utter frustration and then growled and pointed at Ben like he was going to kick his ass, before he stomped to the passenger side.
Ben’s head lifted and his gaze crossed the distance from the road to me. Under that intense stare, I could see a fire burning in him. Something more than lust.
Love , I thought. And a hollow need stretched out in me. Not a need for Ben or for a vampire like him. Just the very human need to see that light, that passion like he had for Jame, in someone’s eyes for me alone.