That got one bark of a laugh out of Senta. She gave me a thumbs-up while crunching through a chip.
“It could have been,” he said, pitching his voice to the others in the room. “But no. I was a hypnotist.”
“Holy crap, I bet you blew them away.”
“I would have. If your grandmother hadn’t stepped in. She drew the line at my suggestions that each person drop off a few bucks every month to the Rossi Family Farm.”
“I forgot you were into farming back then. Why did you even get into farming?”
He grinned. “Life is change. I wanted to try something different.”
“I am never shoveling cow shit again, Rossi,” Leon said. “Or yak shit.”
Rossi waggled his eyebrows, then whispered to me, “We’ll see.”
“Nowewill not see,” Leon sang out. “Ifyouwant cows, find some that shovel their own shit.” Dice hit the table with a little more force, and I bit the inside of my lip to keep from laughing.
It was good to see Rossi giving them a hard time and them dishing it right back. If there was one thing I could count on from each and every supernatural in Ordinary, it was that they liked being here. They liked living a quiet, ordinary life and they didn’t want that to change.
The other thing I could count on with my friends, who were more like family, really, was that they’d rise up to any challenger who came at this town and the people in it.
“Okay, so maybe it’s not the worst possible time. Not circus time,” I said, “but not great either. You heard about the god weapons?”
“Of course.” Most of the Rossis held down full-time jobs. While not being blood related, they were all beneath the protection and laws of Old Rossi himself. They were close knit, and if I were honest, a little gossipy.
“And the ghoul?”
His relaxed posture changed instantly. He straightened and lifted his head, his nostrils flaring like he could smell danger in the air.
“Ghoul?”
“Yes. Hogan said he smelled one. Wait, let me back up. A car fell out of the sky this morning. Did you hear about that?”
“Landed on the beach off 50th. A muscle car. Was there anything in it? Were there injuries?”
“No injuries. We thought it was empty, but a crab crawled out of it.”
“We have a crab ghoul on the loose?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.”
“Well, that clears it up.”
“We took the car to Frigg’s so we could go over it. Odin and Zeus were there too, but only Hogan smelled ghoul on it.”
“Ghouls don’t have a smell.”
“Hogan says they do, and he said they stink.”
“That’s…” Rossi stared off over my shoulder, and I wondered how much information he had stored away in that head of his. “It’s possible. His father was a Jinn and his mother always seemed to have something…” He drifted off again, remembering people I’d never met.
I didn’t even know Rossi knew them, since they hadn’t come to live in Ordinary with Hogan, preferring warmer oceans. “Somethingmmmabout her,” he said.
“Ismmmmagic?”
“I never found out. Are you sure Hogan wasn’t the ghoul?”
“No, but Jean was there, and she would have known.”
