“What kind of complications?” she asked.
“Each god and goddess bears their power differently. But setting it down does create possible vulnerabilities.”
“Like the fact that you becoming almost mortal while you’re here,” I said.
He nodded. “It is possible I underestimated the vulnerabilities of my realm. No living creature should be able to breach my protections.”
Crow didn’t say anything. Not a jibe, not a tease. It was a rather amazing display of self-control I wasn’t used to him possessing.
“But there are things in this universe even a god cannot control,” Zeus said.
“Is there an impression left on it?” Crow asked.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Crow, still standing there in the shadows of branches and leaves, shrugged. “Sometimes gods leave behind…well, not fingerprints, but power prints. One power brushing another can leave behind a scent, or taste, or impression of that power.”
We all turned our attention to Zeus. He still hadn’t taken the lightning bolt out of the box, but his hand was near it, close enough I could see the radiance flaring toward his fingers, as if it were asking to be picked up, as if inviting him to battle.
His gaze was in some middle distance, cast north over the sea. The wind lifted, warm from the sun-heated sand, then cold and damp from the ocean spray. It tasted of sunlight, and salt, and the promise of summer.
“Magic,” he said. “Though I cannot discern what.”
Which was fair. He couldn’t use his power, not here in Ordinary. Asking him to do godly stuff—any godly stuff—was pushing that boundary pretty hard.
If a god used their power in Ordinary, they were required to pick their power back up and leave town for a year. So any god who enjoyed their vacation, or say, buying, importing, and selling furnishings in a quiet little beach town while they lorded over their very private slice of sand from both a fancy garden and also a humble wooden deck, would be wise not to so much as touch their power while here.
Maybe that was all it was. A test. A dare. Maybe whoever was behind the thefts and mailings was just trying to tempt the gods into picking up their power and leaving town.
Who would want Ordinary godless? A chill ran down my spine at that question. I could think of a few people. Mithra, the god of contracts didn’t like that he couldn’t rule Ordinary. He’d been fostering a grudge against my family for generations.
Demons were taking more notice of our town. Particularly the King of the Underworld who, if the demons who had escaped to and now lived in Ordinary were to be believed, might be very unhappy with our little sanctuary.
Monster hunters. That was more of a stretch, but the Department of Paranormal Protection had recruited Ryder to search Ordinary for signs of supernatural beings to hunt and study.
Ordinary was stuffed with all sorts of magical beings: vampires, werewolves, shifters, bigfoots, and more.
There were books out there too. Ancient, magical, powerful things. Someone could have found an old journal, a magic book, an ancient tablet that contained a spell to steal god weapons, although I didn’t know what kind of magic would be strong enough to break the locks on a god’s realm.
“Okay,” I said. “We need to deal with the weapon. How would you like us to handle this?” I asked him.
“I could send it to a safer location,” he suggested. “Better locks.”
“You’d have to use your god power to do that.”
He held his breath a moment, then nodded, just the slightest dip of his chin.
“Then you’d have to leave town for a year, which you don’t really want to do.” It was a guess. But the balcony, comfy pillows and blanket, the stack of books all showed he wasn’t planning to leave Ordinary any time soon.
“True.”
“Would you entrust it to us?”
“Who is ’us‘?” His gaze ticked over to Crow again. Crow just lifted his bottle of beer and took a drink.
“The Reed family. Well, Myra specifically. She can keep it with the other powerful items in the Reed library.”
“Which I have no access to,” he said.
