“I brought you into custody to try and keep you out of trouble and also to try to keep you alive. You made a lot of enemies among the deities.”
He made a derogatory sound. “None of them like me anyway. I’m not afraid of them. They don’t even have their powers.” He waggled his eyebrows.
I rolled my eyes. “You know they don’t need their powers to kill you, right? Mortals have been offing mortals since the dawn of mortals.”
He didn’t look concerned. “What’s with the secret envelope you haven’t opened?”
“Secret envelope?” Jean asked.
I narrowed my eyes. He’d done that on purpose to divert the conversation. Brat.
I hadn’t opened it yet because I didn’t want to deal with whatever was inside it in front of Jean. I wasn’t sure if it was instinct or just because I was sometimes an over-protective big sister, but I wanted a look at the contents before I got her or Myra or anyone else involved.
“It’s not a secret.”
Crow raised his eyebrows. “So open it.”
I glared at him extra hard, which only made him smile extra wide.
“What envelope?” Jean asked again. “Where did you get it? Where is it?”
I sat back and put my cup down. “Death gave it to me. He found it on my doorstep this morning.”
“Death was on your doorstep?”
“He wanted to make sure I was making the finding of the powers a priority.”
“Okay, so why haven’t you opened the envelope?”
“It slipped my mind.”
She sat there and gave me a look that was so much like our mother that I almost laughed. “Fine, it didn’t slip my mind. I wanted to deal with it in private.”
“Why?”
“It was left on my doorstep, unmarked.” I tugged at my coat on the back of my chair and pulled the envelope out. “I wanted to make sure it was something we could handle before I shared it with you and Myra—and yes, I would have shared it with you.”
To demonstrate, I handed her the envelope. She took it at the edges, just like I did, and after a moment glancing at the front and back, held it up to the light. “A letter?”
“I think so.”
“Open it,” Crow said. “Seriously, I’ve never seen anyone take this long to open their mail.”
Jean pointed a finger at him. “You don’t get a vote.” She handed the envelope back to me. “Open it.”
I pulled out my pocket knife and used the sharp blade along the seam. There seemed to be just a piece of paper inside. In case I was wrong, I made a shooing motion to get Jean off my desk, then stood and tapped the open end of the envelope onto the desk. No powder or other substance fell out.
Paranoid? Maybe. We were a little town several decades behind bigger, more modern towns, and hadn’t had anything deadly mailed to any of the inhabitants. Still, we hadn’t had a vampire killed in town before either.
Progress wasn’t always a good thing.
I tugged at the paper inside, and unfolded it.
It was plain, white, unlined. The handwriting in black ink was neat, sharp, and slanted hard to the right.
Police Chief,
Do not let anyone read this letter. Not your sisters, not the gods, nor any creature. Meet me behind the Blue Owl diner at midnight. I know who took the power.
