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.
