He grunted. “I promised your father I’d keep my eye on you. Since I only have the one, I trust you won’t make me strain it.”
Oh. This was what he was getting at.
My dad had driven off a cliff. Crashed down and died right off a road he’d driven all his life. It had come as a shock to everyone in town: gods, mortals, creatures, and most of all, his daughters.
But I guess sometime before that, he had asked the gods to look after me, to help me as I took on his position as not only the police chief but also as the only person who could transfer god powers to a new mortal if a god died.
I might not be a friend to all the gods in town, but my father...my father had been respected by them. As far as I could tell, the gods had promised to help me if I needed it.
It was annoying. And kind of nice.
“If I need help, I’ll ask.”
He studied me, and I was caught again by that magnetic pull of power echoing in him. Good thing my Reed blood was immune to such things. We Reeds were fire-proof little moths.
“Good.” He nodded once. “Your father was too stubborn. He should have asked for help much sooner. Maybe things would have gone better for him.”
“What does that mean? What things? What better?”
But he was already barging out of the Jeep, the door swinging wide so rain and wind could flip through the paper clipboard in the backseat and rattle the sack of groceries on the floor. The door slammed shut.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. Odin might not have meant anything by that comment except that my dad was stubborn and didn’t know when to ask for help.
Another family trait.
Still, it had seemed like there was something Odin regretted. Some decision my father had made that Odin thought should have been vetted through the gods.
And while it was interesting that Odin was hinting about it, more interesting was that he was telling me about it now.
I wondered if it had something to do with Crow’s emergency.
I flipped up the collar on my coat and stepped out of the Jeep. A fistful of rain slapped at my face and more trickled down the back of my neck as I crossed the parking lot to the shop’s door.
Not even a little bit funny, Thor.
Lightning cracked like a wink. Thunderho-ho’d on the horizon.
Jackass.
The parking lot was full of cars and the shop windows glowed a soft yellow. The neon CLOSED sign burned blue, keeping away waterlogged tourists who were probably disappointed they’d packed bug spray instead of waterproofing.
“How about you lay off the water works for the rest of summer?” I muttered to the sky, knowing Thor wouldn’t listen to me. “We got nothing but wet to look forward to until next June. Can’t you give us a break before you drown us?”
My phone rang. I curled my hand around it but didn’t pull it out of my coat pocket yet. Odin stood in the doorway, bracing the door open with one big arm. He wasn’t looking at me. He was scowling at the interior of the shop.
“Thanks.” I checked the number on my phone. Ryder.
My heart stuttered into tiny beats and the world did that fade-away thing. All the Ryder thoughts I’d pushed off spilled out of my brain closet and started a party, front and center.
Ryder Bailey had been my childhood obsession, my pre-teen dream, my teen angst. I’d been in love with the man before I even understood that love might add up to something more than holding hands and swapping sandwiches at lunch.
After an eight-year absence, he’d come back to Ordinary, set up his own architecture business and, wonder of wonders, dated me.
Once.
Apparently, me taking a bullet was the deal-breaker for our relationship. He’d had his fun, we’d tumbled into bed for exactly one night, then just slightly slower-than-a-speeding-bullet, he was over me.
I still wasn’t over him being over me.
