“You’d have to ask me.”
“Did my father ask you for it?”
“Your father never asked anyone for it. Then that choice was taken from him, and it was too late.”
“Was he killed? Was that accident not an accident?”
Odin picked up his coffee, took a drink. There was something else in his gaze this time. I thought it might be regret.
“That is a question I can’t answer.”
“You mean won’t answer. You could know, could find out if you wanted to.”
He turned the cup in his hand. Balanced it on the arm of his chair. “I’m a god. Well, not right now, but...” he shrugged. “There is very little that can be hidden from our kind.”
“If I wanted to know if his death was an accident, would you tell me?”
“Maybe. Or not.” He ran a hand over his bushy hair, causing it to spring up even higher. “Until you decide to ask me that when I am a god, the possibilities are fluid. Every second, every breath, every action and inaction affects the future. If you ask me, if I decide to tell you, when you ask, when I decide...it all muddles the outcome.”
He’d have to pick up his god power to answer me. I wasn’t sure I was ready for him to have to walk out of Ordinary for a year. After all, I’d come here to ask him to look after the powers for the next year.
“Okay, new question. If I accept immortality from a god, then I’d be bound to that god, wouldn’t I? Just as if I had accepted the warden position, I’d be bound to Mithra.”
“That’s how it works, yes.”
Poor Ryder had no idea what he’d just gotten himself into.
“I wouldn’t have ever accepted the position as a warden.”
“I know. Your father never said yes to Mithra either.”
“He said it would change what we stood for as Reeds. What we did to help keep Ordinary ordinary.”
“Your father was a wise man.”
I was silent for a bit, drinking my coffee out of the tree stump not because I needed more caffeine, but because I needed a moment to swallow the emotions that rose with Odin’s quiet assessment of my dad.
For all that Odin was mostly a cranky old chainsaw artist, he was also a god of wisdom. It meant something when he said things like that. Nice things.
“Was he right?” I asked, my voice a little smaller than I’d expected. “There’s a cost to it, isn’t there? Some huge horrible price to pay for being judge and jury over the town.”
“Probably. But the warden isn’t exactly judge and jury over Ordinary.”
“Devotee to Mithra, the god of contracts. How is that not a judge and jury position?”
“Warden is an overseer. A supervisor of contracts, deals, and agreements. Doesn’t mean warden gets to lay the law down on everything. That’s what that badge of yours is for. He just gets to point out who’s cheating.”
“Great. So I’m the strong arm and he’s my boss?”
He gave me a brief scowl. “Why are you in my living room complaining about things I have absolutely nothing to do with? Another god’s minion is of no matter to me.”
Like I said, cranky.
“I need you to look after the powers for a year and a few months.”
“Crow finally got himself kicked out of the place.”
“He should have left three months ago. I’m correcting that mistake now.”
