I think almost every person in town made time to come by and see me, either at Ryder’s cabin where I rested in a chair out by the lake reveling in the last gasps of sunshine days as the cool of autumn crept into the night, or at the station where I snuck in with Jean to get some work done while Myra told both Jean and I that we shouldn’t be there until we were healed.
I was practically buried in a landslide of casseroles, cakes, cookies, fruit baskets, coffee cards, get well cards and various bubble baths and weirdly colored stuffed animals.
It was nice. More than nice, it was really, really sweet, even if I would be eating casseroles until the end of time.
Shoe and Hatter had done more than stick around while we were short-handed. They’d asked to be transferred.
We were still waiting for all the approvals and paperwork to clear, but Tillamook was looking to reduce the force due to budget cuts, and Ordinary had enough room to take on two officers, especially once Bertie heard about it and got a bond passed through so quickly, there wasn’t even time for the volunteers who had gone door-to-door to get signatures, then manned the phones for vote reminders, to organize a victory party.
Chris Lagon had thrown an impromptu bonfire on the beach and supplied the beer, so it all worked out.
The budget budged, thanks to the willing taxpayers of the town, and we were all set for an increased police presence.
With the decrease of deities, I didn’t really think we needed the extra help. Then Roy reminded me that he was going to be retiring soon, and that even with my sisters and I working full-time, there still was too much work to do.
He’d also reminded me that it was only the gods who had been vacationing in Ordinary who couldn’t come back for a year. Any other deity out there could at any time decide to take a vacation.
And then he’d told me to take my antibiotics and threatened to make me watch the two-hour video of his golf swing practice he was supposed to review before his next class if I stayed at work with him.
So, yeah. We were going to get new people on the force.
Yay, us.
But in the constant stream of well-wishers, I had not once seen Rossi. I asked Myra about it, and she told me he’d gone back to his house after the fight and she hadn’t seen or heard from him since.
He was probably licking his wounds. Dealing with the knowledge that Lavius was gone now. The brother he had once been, the enemy he had become. Gone.
The loss of a contemporary when one was many hundred years old, must be an odd thing. I’m sure I couldn’t comprehend the vastness or complexity of it.
But turning away from the world wasn’t going to make anything better.
On a morning that finally felt crisp around the edges with the promise of fall, I had one of my well-wishers drop me off at Rossi’s house. Ryder was already on duty and had been called out to deal with Mrs. Yates’s penguin. Someone had not only knitted, or maybe crocheted, it a full ballerina fairy ensemble, they’d also strung it with lights and suspended it over one of the intersections with a traffic light.
The incoming high school tricksters were thinking outside the box with that one, and I made a note to have Ryder shake down the younger members of the K.I.N.K.s and C.O.C.K.s to get a couple names, confessions, and if possible, a couple fines.
I mean, yes, it was funny and also adorable because those kids could knit and crochet. But that penguin was concrete. If it had fallen on a car or worse, pedestrian, someone could have really gotten hurt.
So Ryder didn’t know about my visit to Rossi, but it wasn’t like I was going to see Rossi just to stir up trouble. This visit fell squarely beneath the don’t-do-anything-stupid-without-telling-me-first deal I had going with Ryder and Myra and Jean.
That deal came with a clause that somehow dealt with actual police-business type dangers. Ryder had explained it to me, at length in bed, and I think he just did it so he could bore me to sleep.
Mission accomplished.
I shifted the gift under my arm–never say I was an inconsiderate caller—and rang the doorbell.
Leon answered the door, looked me over from toe to face, his eyes only catching briefly on the thing beneath my arm, and gave me a short nod. “He’s in his office. He knows you’re here.”
Vampires. They could spot the uniqueness of a beating heart within a mile radius.
“Thanks.” I took my time walking back to the room where I’d last talked to Rossi about the threat of Lavius over the murdered Sven’s body.
Even though I knew there was a high chance there were no dead bodies behind the door, I hesitated on the outside and got my emotions in order. I was still jumping at shadows. Ryder held me tight and woke me gently each night (room of my own did not mean I wanted a bed of my own) and still the nightmares were inescapable.
This, though. This was daylight, a friend of mine. Someone who might be hurting in ways I couldn’t understand.
I knocked softly on the door.
“It’s open, Delaney.”
