Jame looked a little uncomfortable, but his voice was easy. “Yours is the only outside scent we found in the office from that day. And you…” Here he inhaled, his nostrils flaring, his chest expanding. “…still smell…something. Close. As if you’ve been close to it.”
He turned his face into the breeze, his eyes following the even inhale and exhale of his lungs. Then his eyes landed on my Jeep.
I stared at it too. It looked like it always looked, except it was parked half on the sidewalk.
“What?” I glanced at the shops beyond the vehicle. The statue could be anywhere, among the driftwood knickknacks in the shops, among the second-hand treasures, cast-off memories ready to be discovered again.
It didn’t make any sense for someone to steal the Heartwood then drop it off at a second-hand shop, but stranger things had happened. Especially in this town.
“Where have you been?” Jame asked. The breeze had changed. He tore his gaze away from the Jeep.
“I’ve been in the casino. A lot of people there, but not many of them from Ordinary. Myra was there, and Xtelle.”
“Burned strawberries.” Jame snapped his fingers. “Xtelle.”
“Yeah, and you’ll smell her around a lot more. She’s here to stay.”
He twisted his lips. “If she can follow the rules.”
“True. Also I met with the goddess Tala.”
Jame nodded, still sniffing, but watching me.
“Came back to town and went into the station. Saw Shoe and Hatter, then Jean and Hogan. Oh, and Stina and Panny. At the candy shop.”
He nodded again.
“I also ran into Crow, Ryder, Frigg, Odin, and Than yesterday. Today I was around Mrs. Yates and about half of Ordinary because Crow penguin-bombed her yard. I saw Bertie at the community center and those ladies starting the produce stand?”
Jame shook his head.
“Dana and Joan,” Ben said.
“Right. I passed them in the hall, then I grabbed coffee from the drive through and spent the rest of the afternoon in the middle of the street sucking exhaust fumes.”
“That’s it?” Jame asked.
I ran back through the last two days. “That’s it. Other than that, I’ve been around Spud and the dragon pig and random people walking through the stores and at Hogan’s bakery.”
“You’ve come into contact with a lot of people.”
“It’s a social kind of job.”
He inhaled one last time, exhaled, and rubbed his face with the hand that was not around Ben.
“If it doesn’t turn up soon, we’d still like to look around your house. We know it’s not outside of Ordinary. We don’t…none of us think it has been taken that far. But if it has, and if it ends up in the wrong hands…”
This was new territory for me. I didn’t know exactly what would happen if it ended up outside of Ordinary.
“What happens if your clan symbol ends up in someone else’s hands?”
He grinned, and it was hard and cold and showed just a little fang. “We get it back.”
“War?” I asked.
“War’s one way.”
That wasn’t unheard of outside our borders. Inside Ordinary, we had rules against that kind of violence. The supernaturals could hold grudges if they wanted, but peace had to be maintained.
