“I haven’t even finished my coffee. Delaney, tell your ugly sister she’s being rude. Why is your eye twitching like that? Are you unwell? I hope you’ve washed your hands recently. I don’t want to spend my first visit to Ordinary ailing for weeks on end.”
“Out,” Myra said. “Now.”
The pony glanced at me, and the calculations on her part were obvious. She held out the cup, right over the rug in front of the couch and poured the sticky sugary mess left in it onto the floor.
“Oops,” she said, letting the cup drop out of her hand. It landed with a clunk. The handle chipped off and skittered to a stop against the leg of a side chair.
Myra was there, right there between me and her, and that was good because I was about to get all up in a unicorn’s face.
“This isn’t like last time,” Myra said to her. “We can throw you out any time we want. Delaney can throw you out. You might want to make some smarter decisions.” While she was talking, she was also giving Xtelle the bum’s rush, one hand in her mane, one around her neck, pushing her out the door.
Xtelle was making little “Help! Help! I’m being mishandled!” noises, but she didn’t sound distressed. Not really. She sounded like she was choking back a laugh.
Myra let go of the unicorn enough to open the door, then shoved Xtelle out and slammed it closed.
“Rude!” Xtelle yelled, but it was ruined by the laugh she couldn’t quite cover.
Demons were annoying as hell.
“Okay, we’ll all wait here for the dragon pig,” Myra said.
“I don’t think a dragon is necessary,” Amy said.
“Oh, it is.” Bathin shut him down before Amy could even oil the conversational wheels. “You’ve seen it, I assume, while you’ve been stalking Delaney?”
“Observing is not the same as stalking, my Prince.”
“That shit doesn’t float here, Uncle. You know the Reeds are god chosen. Gods have never been your concern, but it’s hard not to see their connection to the Reeds, isn’t it?”
“Vacationing gods are powerless.”
“Oh, sure,” Myra said. “A god on vacation, who wants to get a little break from the demands of his or her power, is a walking, talking weakling.”
He sipped coffee, and gave no argument.
She raised one eyebrow. “Tell me stupidity doesn’t run in the family.”
“It’s on his mother’s side,” Amy said quietly.
“Hey!” Xtelle shouted through the door. It sounded like she had her horse lips pressed right up against the door latch.
Bathin coughed to cover a laugh.
“I’ll consider what you’ve said, Myra. There are gods in Ordinary, and they may not be as helpless as they appear.”
That was interesting. Foolish, but interesting. I might see the gods as lazy or eccentric or frustrating, but I would never, not even once, think that any of them were helpless.
While they could actually get sunburned, break a limb, or be killed once they had laid their power down to live a mortal life, they were only a thought away from that power. To underestimate their reach, to underestimate their strength, and frankly, to underestimate their tempers, if their vacation was interrupted, was a fool’s game.
Underestimating gods. There was some leverage.
“The dragon’s non-negotiable,” I said. “You want me alone, you get me alone with the dragon.”
He shrugged like it wasn’t worth the air to argue.
Good enough. Because the one thing I had learned from Bathin possessing my soul was that connections and bindings worked both ways. Amy might have gotten his hooks into me, but that meant I had access to him too.
He was about to find out just how far I would go to keep my family and town safe.
