“I—”
I held up a finger and fixed her with a look in the rearview mirror. “Thirty miles, Xtelle.”
Her eyes welled up with tears, and her big horsey lips quivered.
I didn’t blink.
“Oh, fine,” she said, the tears instantly dry. She threw her head back in a position I didn’t think a real pony could have managed and wriggled down into the seats, crossing her stubby arms over her chest.
“I’ll just sit here silently and suffer the presence of that…that…thing, even though there are no seat warmers.”
The dragon pig was paying zero attention to the drama queen in the back seat. I thought I should take a cue from it.
“You good?” I asked it.
It grunted once and propped front feet up on the door handle so it could see out the window. Itoinked again and wagged its tiny curly tail.
“All right then. Let’s get this pig and pony show on the road.”
The dragon pig squeaked, the demon pony scoffed.
“Fine. Let’s get this dragon and demon show on the road.” They both made agreeable sounds. I rolled my eyes and headed back to Ordinary.
Chapter Five
Jean was not at work.
“Is there a reason you have another pony in the back of your Jeep?” Hatter, a cop we’d poached from Tillamook, had that long and lean cowboy thing going for him. He liked to talk with a bit of an accent that moseyed between Texas and Kentucky. I was pretty sure it was completely fake.
He held the station door open for me while I walked through and bent, putting the dragon pig down on the floor.
“It’s Xtelle.”
The dragon pig trotted adorably to my desk where it rooted around in my trash can, looking for tasty metal.
From the little squeak it gave, I figured it had found the coffee can I’d tossed in there for just this very thing. I grinned.
“The demon again?” Hatter glanced over his shoulder. “I thought we threw her out for good last month.”
“She just threw herself back in. Signed the contract and everything.”
“Oh-kay,” he said, the word stretching like molasses. “So our demon population just doubled. How do you want us to handle that?”
“First, we find someone to foster her. She’s a pony. She can’t just wander through town ordering fancy cocktails and buying knock-off designer bags without drawing attention.”
“Plus that would break the rules. Ponies don’t do that in the outside world, so ‘ponies’ don’t do that inside Ordinary,” he said.
He strolled behind the counter, scanned the phone system, which was quiet, then sat in Roy’s chair and put his feet up on the desk.
It was still strange for Roy not to be at the desk. His big, steady presence had left a hole in the department, though Shoe, Hatter, and our newest reserve officers, Kelby and Than, had done a lot to fill his place in their own way.
“Yep, but she gets the three-strikes we give to every other supernatural who tries living among mortals and gods for the first time.” I walked back to the little table in the hall where we kept our coffee and poured myself a cup that looked like it’d been on the burner since Christmas.
“You know she’s going to be trouble,” he said.
I blew across the coffee then took a small sip. Tar. Tar would be thinner. And tastier. I took a second sip anyway, because I had the feeling it was going to be a long day.
“Sure,” I said. “But she’s not going to bemytrouble. At least not until she has to be.”
