“Candy ring thing.”
“Anything else I should know?” she asked.
“Other than demon boy is freaking out? No.”
I thumbed through the massive library of data I carried around in my head. “I’ve never heard of evil unicorns. The old records don’t say unicorns are evil. Or pink, for that matter. Or tiny. They have also never mentioned unicorns guarding portals to Hell, so…”
“Right. We’re going in blind.” She grinned. “Let’s go figure this out.”
Delaney, Ryder, and I strode up to the playground, shoulder to shoulder, to figure this out.
Chapter 4
There was no wind,no matter how close we got to the unicorn. And yet its mane still waved, backlit by the swirling vortex on the ground radiating moonlight in the middle of the day. The moonlight made the vortex look like a clear puddle in the grass fraught with the same fractured rainbows, deep steel shadows, and star-sharpened brightness as the unicorn’s horn.
The scent hit me next. Apple pie. It wasn’t a fake apple smell like a candle or spray. It was the full, buttery, crusty combination of apples and spices and sugar and pie crust, melting and crisping together in an oven.
That delicious scent wafted up from the vortex. I felt a need to walk forward, to get closer, like a hungry kid spotting a candy-covered house. But the tug in my chest was a stone, stopping me, anchoring me right where I stood.
“You smell apple pie?” I asked Delaney.
“No.”
“You feel the pull?”
“No?”
We stopped a good six yards away from the unicorn who still hadn’t broken out of its pose, which was probably supposed to be majestic, but was starting to look a little staged.
I glanced at our surroundings, checking to make sure nothing was using this as a blind or a decoy.
We were out of the line of sight if a car approached, blocked by the bulk of the wooden castle structure. A set of monkey rings stood on our right, a swing set behind us, and a metal slide corkscrewed down from a stair stack of the castle’s decks in front of us.
The park was empty except for three humans, a demon, and a unicorn.
“My name is Delaney Reed,” she said. “This is Ordinary, Oregon. We welcome all kinds of supernaturals, humans, and gods here. But we do not allow portals to Hell. Do you want to explain why you’re breaking Ordinary’s law before I ask you to pack up that portal and leave?”
Reasonable, confident. Friendly even, considering she was staring at a hell mouth, and the unicorn it had spit out.
The unicorn didn’t move. Ryder stood on Delaney’s right, his body tense, as if he were having a hard time not walking forward, straight into the apple-pie-scented hell hole.
“Is that apple pie?” he whispered. “I smell apple pie.”
“Ryder,” Delaney warned.
“I just…I’ll just take a quick look, all right?” He got exactly two strides forward before Delaney gripped his wrist and held him still.
“Not another step.”
Delaney did not have the power of voice. She couldn’t order someone to stop and make it stick, except…
…except she was the bridge of Ordinary. The earth of it. Her roots dug deep into this soil, into the stones beneath. She was a part of it in a way none of the rest of us could ever be.
And she used that, was using that right this moment. The whole of Ordinary, the dirt and trees and sand and sky, holding Ryder still, anchored there by her hand.
That urge to move forward hit me again—not my gift—and I cocked my head, considering the vortex shining moonlight reflections onto the metal slide.
It wanted my soul—the vortex, not the slide. But I was a Reed, so most supernatural things didn’t affect me as much as they would a human.
