He pointed a blunt finger our way. “Did you do this?”
We leaned back from each other, and Myra was on her feet, slow, but easy.
“Do what?” she asked.
We’d known Odin since we were kids running out in the forest around his cabin, trying to pick out which tree he should use for his next work. Grumpy uncle on the outside, kindest, fiercest heart on the inside.
“This.” He pulled out the box he had tucked under his arm. It was just a regular plain cardboard box. Long. More like a document tube than a box.
“I didn’t give you a box,” Myra said. “Did you give him a box?”
I shook my head. “Someone sending you presents in the mail?” I teased.
He strode to the counter that separated our desks from the tiny lobby/waiting room, slammed the box down and flipped up the lid. “This,” he said, “should not be here.”
Both Myra and I were on our feet now. She got to the box before me, and I saw her whole body stiffen. I peered down at the contents.
“It’s a spear,” Myra said.
“I know it’s a spear,” Odin growled. “I didn’t come here for you to tell me it’s a spear.”
“Why are you angry about someone mailing you a spear?” I asked. “Is this a threat of some kind? Do you think you’re being threatened?” I could hear the excitement in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. Things had been really quiet around here.
“Of course I’m being threatened, all the powers help whoever’s behind this,” he said. “That’s my spear.”
He crossed his huge arms over his wide chest and that condescending look belonged on a prosecutor who had just produced the bloody fingerprints, damning documents, and gotten a confession to nail shut the big murder case.
And yeah, I could feel the power just pouring off of it.
“When did you receive it?” Myra asked.
“This morning.”
“In the regular mail?” I asked.
“It was left on my front step.”
“Who did you leave it with?” I asked.
“I don’t loan out my weapons, Delaney.”
“This is a part of your godhood, a part of your power which means it can’t just be picked up and passed around by everyone in the world. Who had access to it?”
“No one.”
“Has it been in town?” Myra asked.
“No.”
I was starting to catch on. “This was left…behind? In Valhalla or wherever you hang out when you’re godding instead of vacationing?”
“Yes. None of us bring our weapons to Ordinary. We never have. Look at it again—really look at it.”
The spear was too short to be a functioning weapon, although the longer I looked at it, the more I knew I wasn’t seeing all of it. The head was black heart stone of an ancient universe, razor-sharp and silver-shot. The shaft was jade and umber, twisting with golden runes that burned and flared, pulsing in and out of existence as if a cosmic breeze slowly blew across the eternal fire kindled there.
I was sensitive to god power—it came with my family gift of being the Bridge, the one who allowed gods to put down their power and vacation here. My dad had been able to see god power when he’d held the job, but now that I was the Bridge, I heard it too.
And oh, the power in this weapon. It sang out in a clarion of exaltation, a soul-aching call of something beyond, something deep and hot and thirsty. This was brotherhood, sisterhood, shoulder to shoulder and step to step; heartbeat to heartbeat. This was a rush of raven wings, a howl of wolves, a roar of hope.
