Devon Monk - [Ordinary Magic 02] - Devils and Details Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Devils and Details

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  MORE ORDINARY MAGIC? YOU BET!

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Books by Devon Monk

  Devils and Details

  Ordinary Magic – Book Two

  Devon Monk

  Copyright © 2016 by Devon Monk

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-939853-03-5

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-939853-04-2

  Published by: Odd House Press

  Art by: Lou Harper

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea...

  Police Chief Delaney Reed is good at keeping secrets for the beach town of Ordinary Oregon–just ask the vacationing gods or supernatural creatures who live there.

  But with the first annual Cake and Skate fundraiser coming up, the only secret Delaney really wants to know is how to stop the unseasonable rain storms. When all the god powers are stolen, a vampire is murdered, and her childhood crush turns out to be keeping deadly secrets of his own, rainy days are the least of her worries.

  Hunting a murderer, outsmarting a know-it-all god, and uncovering an ancient vampire’s terrifying past isn’t how she planned to spend her summer. But then again, neither is falling back in love with the one man she should never trust.

  Dedication

  To the dreamers and mischief makers. And to my family, who are often both.

  Chapter 1

  Old road out in the middle of nowhere?

  Check.

  All by myself with no cell signal?

  Check.

  Chainsaw-wielding maniac glaring at me through his one good eye?

  Check.

  Hello, Monday morning.

  Chainsaw maniac was also dripping wet in the middle of a truly violent thunder storm and pointing the growling three-foot bar of rotating teeth toward me threateningly.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Gods could be such drama queens.

  “Shut it down,” I yelled over the buzz of the machine in Odin’s gnarled hands. “Now.” Just for good measure, I dragged fingers across my throat in a “kill it” gesture.

  He yelled something which I couldn’t hear over the blast of thunder that knuckled across the clouds. I was pretty good at reading lips, especially when the lips were using four-letter words.

  I put one hand on my hip, the other dug the citation book out of my light jacket. It was August and the little town of Ordinary, Oregon, should have been sunny and dry. Instead, it’d been raining pretty much non-stop since July.

  Our daily thunder storm sieges were courtesy of Thor, who was upset he wasn’t on vacation here with the other gods.

  “I will write you up.” Odin couldn’t hear me, but it turned out he was pretty good at guessing at a message too. Didn’t hurt that I clicked the pen and poised it over the citation pad, giving him one last warning look.

  He killed the motor on the saw.

  Good choice.

  “I’m busy, Delaney.” He waved one beefy hand at the stacks of timber—maple, oak, cedar, and a smaller pile of myrtle—surrounding him. Most of the logs were covered in bark, moss, and various fungi, but a few were cut down into butter-brown lengths and chunks. Wet piles of sawdust humped across the area to the side of his little house in the forest. More wood debris pillowed up against the poles of the tarp he’d been working under, and a thin coating of dust sprayed over the round of oak he’d been cutting through.

  “This can’t wait,” I said. “If you need me to pull out my badge and drag you into town, I will. Or you can get out of the rain and get this meeting over with.”

  “Meeting,” he scoffed.

  “You think it’s a joke?”

  “Crow called for it, didn’t he? Of course it’s a joke. Waste of time.”

  “Crow has your power—has all the gods’ powers,” I reminded him. “He said it’s important.”

  “Never trust a trickster, Chief Reed.”

  “It won’t take long. Your soggy logs will be here. Sooner we leave, the sooner you’ll get back.”

  I eyed the massive chainsaw that he held as if it were no more than a steak knife. “Crow’s allowed to call an emergency meeting of deities.”

  “Pranks and parties,” Odin growled. “What does he know about emergencies?”

  “Well, since I’m sure he’s caused quite a few in his time, I expect he can identify one correctly.”

  Odin grumbled and snarled. The thunderstorm grumbled and snarled back, flashes of lightning blinking away the mid-day gloom.

  “I have a lot of work to do.” He waved again at the pile of wood behind him. “It’s been a slow year. This art isn’t going to make itself.”

  Odin made his living selling chainsaw art. He was great with the chainsaw part of chainsaw art, but he wasn’t all that good with the art part.

  “Odin.” I waited out a crack of thunder. “Come with me. We’ll deal with Crow’s emergency, then I’ll go home and get dry, and you’ll come back and make bigger piles of sawdust. Deal?”

  He curled his lip.

  “I have a thermos of hot coffee in the Jeep. All yours.”

  His snarl disappeared as the reality of a nice hot cup of coffee soaked into his chainsaw-rattled brain.

  The rain, which had been steady and cold, turned hard and freezing. It was like some god up there was pelting us with frozen marbles.

  “Fine,” he said. “Fine. This better not take all day.”

  He stowed the saw under the tarp, took one lazy swipe at the sawdust and wood chips covering his face and short beard, then stomped over to the Jeep. The Jeep bent under his weight as he crammed his huge shoulders, muscles, and girth into the front seat. He didn’t bother with the seatbelt.

  Thunder cracked again, rain going liquid and gloopy, drenching me even beneath my rainproof jacket.

  Thanks a lot, Thor.

  As if in answer to my thought, thunder chuckled across the hills.

  ~~~

  Ordinary stretched along the Oregon coast, a small vacation town where gods kicked off their powers like a pair of old shoes and went about living a normal life among the creatures and mortals who lived here year round.

  A Reed such as myself had always been in Ordinary. I’d grown up here with my two younger sisters, Myra and Jean. After our dad’s death a year ago, I had taken over his place as Chief of Police. Myra and Jean worked with me, keeping the peace in the sleepy little tourist town.

  We Reeds were mortal, with a twist. Our family line had been chosen by the gods for one important thing: to uphold the rule
s and laws of Ordinary by making sure god powers were guarded and the secrets of gods and creatures who resided in Ordinary remained just that.

  I loved my job, loved taking care of Ordinary and all the creatures, deities, and mortals within its boundaries. Even with all the trouble that came with those responsibilities, I still managed to live a pretty normal life.

  Why just a couple months ago, my heart had been broken by Ryder Bailey, the man I’d been infatuated with for most of my life. I pushed the thoughts of Ryder way, way to the back of my brain where there were so many pushed-away thoughts of him it was standing room only.

  Still, it was better to keep my mind on my job instead of on things I couldn’t change.

  When gods vacationed in Ordinary, they became mortal. That meant they could get sick, hurt, or killed just like any other mortal. Like the fisherman Heim, who was also the Norse god, Heimdall, who had washed ashore dead. I’d not only tracked down the killer, I had also found a mortal to take on his god power before it tore apart the town.

  That mortal was my ex-boyfriend, Cooper Clark.

  Like that hadn’t been awkward. Hey, I know you and I used to date, and you dumped me at my father’s funeral, but would you like to be a god?

  Okay, maybe my life wasn’t exactly normal.

  “What?” Odin snapped. His beefy arms strained to cross over his chest like twisted tree trunks.

  “What?” I flicked the windshield wipers up a notch and slowed for the puddle that spread across one-and-a-half lanes of the main road through town. If Thor didn’t get over his temper tantrum and give us a break, we were going to have to close roads and issue flood warnings.

  “You look worried.” He shrugged as if uncomfortable admitting he was paying that much attention to me.

  “It hasn’t stopped raining for five weeks, tourist dollars are way down, we’ve got a fundraiser coming up this week, one month of summer left, and our resident trickster is calling an emergency meeting. A little concern isn’t out of place here.”

  “Think he’s leaving?”

  “Crow?” He’d been in town all my life. I’d grown up thinking of him as an uncle. It would be a different town without him. “I don’t know.”

  “It’d be better without him.”

  “Right. Because unleashing the trickster god upon the living world would make our lives any easier. Gods leave here and the first thing they do is remind us that they have their full powers back.”

  Thunder broke the sky in half and set off several car alarms. “Point proven,” I said.

  “You like him.”

  “Crow? The annoying not-my-uncle?”

  Odin wore an eyepatch over his left eye. So he had to lean forward and twist to make eye contact with me. “He’s one of your favorites.”

  “And you think of Thor as a son.”

  “I know Thor,” he said as if that answered everything. “So should you.”

  “I know the mortal Thorne Jameson.” I slowed for the light, then turned into the parking lot outside Crow’s glassblowing shop. “Decent voice, good taste in vinyls. Collects rubber duckies. But once he picked up that power and went full god of thunder? I don’t know that guy hardly at all.”

  “You know the god power doesn’t completely swallow our personality, nor does the lack erase it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Crow is a trickster whether he’s carrying the power of Raven or just blowing balls for tourists.”

  I put the Jeep in park, biting back my smile. “You know how that sounds, right?”

  He plucked at the dusty sleeve of his flannel shirt. “I meant it how it sounds. Crow isn’t your uncle. He is just very patient.”

  “Patient?”

  “He knows what he wants, Delaney Reed. And, like a spider, he will wait for his moment to strike.”

  I studied his face. No bluff and bluster there. Odin was very serious.

  But Odin didn’t exactly get along with the other gods in Ordinary. The rivalry between Zeus and him was on a constant simmer. The petty shots they took at each other’s businesses and life choices kept Aaron, who was Ares the god of war, in a constant state of entertainment.

  Other than Thor, who had picked up his power and was therefore unable to return to Ordinary for a year, Odin wasn’t really buddies with the other deities.

  “You think Crow’s pulling a long con?”

  Odin’s deep blue eye shadowed down darker. A chill washed up my wet, cold skin. Just because gods put down their power didn’t mean there wasn’t an echo, a coal of it caught somewhere deep within them. They were mortal, but they were still the vessels of god power. It made them uncannily charismatic. It made them the flame mortal moths were all too tempted to fly into. And even that tiny spark was enough to make a regular gal like me sit up and take notice.

  “Only Crow would know. But he has spent many years becoming your friend, Delaney. Your lifetime. Have you ever asked yourself why?”

  “Because he likes me?” I gave him an innocent blink.

  He grunted.

  “Because I’m likable?” I fluttered my eyelashes. “Possibly even adorable?”

  “You are not in the least.” He tried to scowl, but the smile won out.

  “Because Crow and all the rest of the gods in town are happy that the family job of keeping this town safe fell into my adorable, capable, likable hands?”

  “We’ve had better police chiefs.”

  “Since when?”

  He shrugged one mountainous shoulder. “I’m sure you weren’t born yet.”

  “Well, then I’m the best you’ve had in ages.”

  He grunted. “I promised your father I’d keep my eye on you. Since I only have the one, I trust you won’t make me strain it.”

  Oh. This was what he was getting at.

  My dad had driven off a cliff. Crashed down and died right off a road he’d driven all his life. It had come as a shock to everyone in town: gods, mortals, creatures, and most of all, his daughters.

  But I guess sometime before that, he had asked the gods to look after me, to help me as I took on his position as not only the police chief but also as the only person who could transfer god powers to a new mortal if a god died.

  I might not be a friend to all the gods in town, but my father...my father had been respected by them. As far as I could tell, the gods had promised to help me if I needed it.

  It was annoying. And kind of nice.

  “If I need help, I’ll ask.”

  He studied me, and I was caught again by that magnetic pull of power echoing in him. Good thing my Reed blood was immune to such things. We Reeds were fire-proof little moths.

  “Good.” He nodded once. “Your father was too stubborn. He should have asked for help much sooner. Maybe things would have gone better for him.”

  “What does that mean? What things? What better?”

  But he was already barging out of the Jeep, the door swinging wide so rain and wind could flip through the paper clipboard in the backseat and rattle the sack of groceries on the floor. The door slammed shut.

  I took a deep breath to calm myself. Odin might not have meant anything by that comment except that my dad was stubborn and didn’t know when to ask for help.

  Another family trait.

  Still, it had seemed like there was something Odin regretted. Some decision my father had made that Odin thought should have been vetted through the gods.

  And while it was interesting that Odin was hinting about it, more interesting was that he was telling me about it now.

  I wondered if it had something to do with Crow’s emergency.

  I flipped up the collar on my coat and stepped out of the Jeep. A fistful of rain slapped at my face and more trickled down the back of my neck as I crossed the parking lot to the shop’s door.

  Not even a little bit funny, Thor.

  Lightning cracked like a wink. Thunder ho-ho’d on the horizon.

  Jackass.

  The parking lot was full of cars
and the shop windows glowed a soft yellow. The neon CLOSED sign burned blue, keeping away waterlogged tourists who were probably disappointed they’d packed bug spray instead of waterproofing.

  “How about you lay off the water works for the rest of summer?” I muttered to the sky, knowing Thor wouldn’t listen to me. “We got nothing but wet to look forward to until next June. Can’t you give us a break before you drown us?”

  My phone rang. I curled my hand around it but didn’t pull it out of my coat pocket yet. Odin stood in the doorway, bracing the door open with one big arm. He wasn’t looking at me. He was scowling at the interior of the shop.

  “Thanks.” I checked the number on my phone. Ryder.

  My heart stuttered into tiny beats and the world did that fade-away thing. All the Ryder thoughts I’d pushed off spilled out of my brain closet and started a party, front and center.

  Ryder Bailey had been my childhood obsession, my pre-teen dream, my teen angst. I’d been in love with the man before I even understood that love might add up to something more than holding hands and swapping sandwiches at lunch.

  After an eight-year absence, he’d come back to Ordinary, set up his own architecture business and, wonder of wonders, dated me.

  Once.

  Apparently, me taking a bullet was the deal-breaker for our relationship. He’d had his fun, we’d tumbled into bed for exactly one night, then just slightly slower-than-a-speeding-bullet, he was over me.

  I still wasn’t over him being over me.

  Stupid heart.

  “Hey,” I answered, out of breath, even though it wasn’t physical exertion that made my lungs malfunction.

  Three months. We’d been working together off and on, me the Police Chief him our only Reserve Officer, for three months. I’d done my best not to be anywhere near him.

  My sisters had wanted to kick him off the force completely, but we needed the manpower. Since they couldn’t kick him out, they’d resorted to giving him the crap jobs, scheduling him opposite me, and occasionally making him ride along with them and their silent disapproval.