“Did he say why he wanted to see Delaney and Ryder?” Good ol’ Myra. Nothing knocked her off her footing.
“He said it was Delaney’s job to make sure the rules of Ordinary aren’t broken. And he said he has questions he wants Ryder to answer.”
“Ryder doesn’t even know about the gods,” I said. “Or god power. He wouldn’t believe Mithra is a god. He is so not coming with me. No. No way.”
“I promised he would,” Piper said.
I groaned. “Why?”
“I thought he knew! He’s on the police force, and Myra and Jean and Roy know. Why wouldn’t he know about the gods?”
“Because we don’t share that kind of information easily,” Myra said.
“This is officially worse,” I muttered.
We were all silent.
“Has this ever happened before?” Piper asked in a small voice. “Has anyone ever screwed up as badly as this?”
“Oh, honey.” I gave her a firm pat on her hand. “You have no idea.”
“Right. Now. We’ll need a few more details.” Myra pulled out her tablet and tapped it to life. “About everything.”
“Then what?” Piper asked.
“Then we fix this,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt.
Chapter 12
We went over the details of the water-bottle power heist for two hours. When she did it, who she talked to, how long she carried the power around like the most dangerous energy drink in the universe.
Piper insisted she went to meet with Mithra at the casino this afternoon and handed over the powers. I believed her. Myra took notes. We asked her every question in different ways about a dozen times. Got the same answers.
So when Myra wanted to follow me to my house so we could go over “just a few more details,” I told her no. I also suggested she go home, get some sleep, and that we’d worry about it in the morning.
I may have mentioned I spilled some of Ordinary’s secrets to Ryder. Not the god secrets. Or the creature secrets. But definitely the vampire secrets. Well, some of them.
Myra may have read me the riot act about our duty as Reeds and how keeping secrets was a huge part of those duties. And reminded me of Ryder’s possible involvement in murder, and my possible inability to think he was a suspect because of my heart’s definite involvement with him.
It was almost four o’clock in the morning by the time she was done going through all the reasons I shouldn’t have told Ryder there were vampires in town. She also wasn’t happy that I’d told him he’d have to get through me if he and his vampire-hunter buddies, or his vampire-friendly buddies, wanted near any kind of creature in this town.
I’d told her I thought it was worth the risk for him to know if it got us closer to Sven’s killer. She wasn’t mollified.
She had ended the conversation with, “I wish you didn’t love him, Delaney.”
“Because it puts Ordinary in danger?” I asked, rubbing my fingertips over my scalp and yawning. I was too tired to argue over the “love” part of her statement. Maybe even too tired to kid myself about that any more.
I loved him.
Stupid heart.
“No, you idiot. Because it putsyouin danger.” Then she’d reached over and given me a quick, tight hug. “Sleep. I’ll see you later. Let’s think this over. Maybe we’ll both make better decisions in the morning. Or afternoon.”
Which was why I was surprised to be stumbling out of my bed and into my living room to answer the door at seven a.m.
The door wasn’t locked—I still wasn’t convinced I needed that kind of security in this town. I yanked it open. “This isn’t later. This is still way too earlier.”
“All right then,” Ryder said as his eyes took a quick detour to check out what I was wearing. “Huffing the hand-sanitizer a little early, aren’t we?”
