“Mistake?” Hehrumphed. “Might be just as well to have him out there for the year.”
“So he’s out of your hair?”
A clever edge slipped into his eyes. “He’s a trickster. Don’t you think this might be exactly what he wanted to happen?”
“No?”
“How many stories of tricksters have ended with the trickster not getting what they wanted?”
Exactly zero came to mind.
“This isn’t a story,” I said. “This is real life.”
“And the tricksters of the stories are based on whom, exactly?”
“He probably wrote all those stories and just made sure he was always the winner. As a matter of fact, some stories say you’re a devious, inscrutable trickster yourself.”
“Your point is?”
That maybe I shouldn’t really trust you either.
Yeah, well if I started thinking that about Odin, I might as well think that about all the gods. Stories were stories. What the gods did as gods wasn’t necessarily what the gods did on vacation.
“My point is I need these powers hidden, locked away, and safe. It’s your turn to keep them.”
The sound of cars arriving interrupted us.
“You invited all the gods out here to witness this, didn’t you?”
“Only the ones who wanted to make sure their powers are going to be taken care of.”
He sighed a particularly put-upon sigh. “Fine.”
Engines quieted as cars parked, the creak and slam of doors opening and closing.
“Hera wasn’t wrong,” Odin said, his eye owl-bright, burning blue, watching me.
“That there’s a war coming to Ordinary?”
“It’s already begun.”
It didn’t exactly come as a shock to me, though it wasn’t the cheeriest news I’d ever gotten.
“Sven murdered, four dead vampire hunters, Ben missing, and Jame left beaten and broken? Yeah, I didn’t think it was the start of parade season. Rossi and Granny are about to throw down.”
“The vampires and werewolves have never really been at peace. More like a cease-fire. That is not the war you should fear.”
“What war should I fear?”
“The war for dark magic.”
Okay. That was new.
“Dark magic? That’s a thing?” As far as I knew whatever magic there was in the world was just that: magic. Not light, not dark, not good or bad, or any of the other defining characteristics we humans applied to such things.
“I want you to give me your word on something, Delaney.”
So much for getting the confirmation on dark magic.
