Chapter Five
Delaney rolledinto the station before sunrise. I was at my desk, having already written up my reports. Hatter had left about an hour ago to get somesleep.
Hogan and I had been trading dirty texts since 4:00 am. Owning a bakery made Hogan an early riser. I hadn’t been willing to give up the night shift for a couple reasons. One was that it gave me time to deal with my nightmares if they popped up. Another was that I liked Ordinary at night. Most of the time it was quiet as a cottonball.
Every once in a while the nocturnal members of our town would be out and about causing trouble. I loved to see what the vamps, weres, ghouls, and other people got up to atnight.
I’d been known to join in if it was a bit offun.
I’d been known to tell them to knock it off, if it was illegal,too.
This morning I’d been trying to talk Hogan into bringing me donuts. It was the middle of the morning rush and he couldn’t get away since it was only him and Billy manning the place now that all the barely legal high school labor had gone back toschool.
“Morning.” Delaney hung up her coat and headed straight for the coffee pot. “Anything I shouldknow?”
“Headless Abner is missing. Dead or disposed of. The gnomes in Mr. and Mrs. Denver’s yard tried to riot, and the Higgins’s cow got out, ate a box of apples, and got stuck in their neighbor’spool.”
She glanced atme.
“Emptypool.”
She nodded. “So, just a normalnight.”
I threw the pencil I had been drumming on the desk edge at her. It missed because she knew how tododge.
“The gnomes have no leader. It’s a problem. No, wait, I got this.” I spread my hands like I was envisioning a marquee in lights. “Missing Headless Abner Leaves Gnomes HeadLess.”
“Boo.”
“You likeit.”
“Maybe it’s time for the gnomes to get a new leader. You’ll need to gather them up and walk them through theprocess.”
“Right. Sure. Happy to. Except I don’t know what the process is because there is noprocess.”
She grinned at me and took a sip of coffee. “Like that’s going to stopyou.”
I groaned and let my head fall back between my shoulders, eyes locked on the ceiling. “Why? Why me? Myra would be better at this. You would be better at this. I’m the worst choice for thisjob.”
“Oh?”
I held up my hands and ticked off points on my fingers even though I didn’t look away from the ceiling. “I’m impatient. Impulsive. Easily distracted. Blunt. Not the kind of person you want to guide a tiny terra cotta culture through a big politicaladjustment.”
“You forgot something,” she saidgently.
I tipped my head down and met her sparkling gaze. She pointed at her own finger. “Dramatic.”
“You suck and I don’t like youanymore.”
She laughed and leaned against my desk. “I’ll let Myra know you need some suggestions on how to get a new leader in place. You’ll need to get it donesoon.”
I covered my eyes, imagining the horrors of Halloween rolling out with a bunch of murderous gnomes roaming thestreets.
“We could round them up. Lock them up, just for the month. It’s not like they would remember what was happening from one day to the next.” I knew, as soon as it was out of my mouth, that it was a bad idea. We didn’t lock up a person, creature, or god simply because they were an inconvenience. There were laws in Ordinary.Rules.
And we Reeds followedthem.
“What’s going on?” Delaney asked. I was glad she didn’t call me out on the gnome incarceration idea. But I wasn’t sure where this washeaded.
