I straightened and held up the cardboard scrap. “Does this remind you of anything?”
“The delivery boxes?”
“Ding ding ding.”
“We already looked through the car.Ilooked through it,” she said. “How did I miss it?”
“It was wadded up pretty small and shoved in the corner. It looked like a clump of sand.”
“Damn it,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
“Okay, so what do we have? The car fell out of the sky, and it contained the god weapons and the ghoul? Which we all missed, even though you and Myra were both watching the car?”
“We were thinking the ghoul turned into a crab that almost got eaten by seagulls this morning,” she said. “How did it turn into something that could carry the weapons away?”
“Did you keep your eye on the car while you waited for Frigg to tow it?”
“Yes. I might have missed the cardboard, but it’s pretty hard to overlook an entire car.”
“Was it ever out of everyone’s sight?”
Jean nodded. “When it was stored in the garage, I suppose, before Hatter and Shoe got here. So now are we thinking the ghoul was the crab, and after it hid from the seagulls, it snuck back into the car?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“It snuck back into the car and rode here to the garage, then got out and somehow pulled the weapons out of the trunk—which was empty when I looked at it on the beach, by the way—and with all those weapons in its tiny claws, it skittered around town dropping off packages like a jolly ol’ Santa Claus.
I sighed. “It sounds outrageous.”
She shrugged. “It sounds like Ordinary. Maybe it happened that way, maybe there’s more we don’t know. So what do you want me to do next, boss?”
“Take this into evidence.” I pulled a bag out of my pocket and dropped the cardboard into it. “See if Jules or one of the other witches has some time to do a scrying on it tomorrow. Then we’ll run it through the labs.”
“Got it.” She plucked the bag out of my fingers and started off. “Promise me you’re not going to screw up the wedding of your dreams.”
“Can I not hear about the wedding for ten frickin’ minutes? You do know there are other more important things happening around here.”
I slammed the trunk and there was this moment of silence, like someone had punched all the air out of the world.
Jean cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Oh, hey, Ryder. Um…yeah. That was. All on me. I was just giving her a hard time, you know. And now I’m gonna go get this to evidence because police work is so important and I am so police-working right now.”
I closed my eyes and groaned.
Jean disappeared into the sunlight and Ryder stepped into the open bay, his thumbs tucked in his back pockets. He looked like everything I’d ever wanted in my world. Strength, patience, humor, love.
He looked like summer when the days drifted golden and endless. He looked like the boy I’d crushed on so hard, I thought my heart would break, and the man I’d fallen for so hard, it knocked the stars out of my sky.
“Hey,” I said, and it came out soft, barely enough to move the dust in the air. A fox sparrow called out its sweet trilling chorus, once, twice. In the distance, an answer echoed.
Ryder watched me. I wondered if he was doing as much mental gymnastics as I was—a whole dang Olympic floor routine, twists, saltos, hard landings.
“Did you get a break in the case?” he asked.
Triple flip sailing right over what he’d heard me say.
I started toward him, and he waited there for me.
For a moment I wondered how long he would wait. If I asked for an extension on the wedding date, would he be okay with that? Autumn? Winter? Next summer?
