“Rude. I can handle god power. That’s literally the other half of my job.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s a lie. Yes, you can carry our power, for a short amount of time. But Delaney,” now his serious voice, “this is a weapon. My weapon. It isn’t made for a mortal to carry.”
“Something carried it out of your realm.”
“A demon,” he said. “Or something demon supported. And I hope whatever touched this suffered damage.”
I rubbed a knuckle at the corner of one eye. “All right. New plan. I’ll go see Bigfoot. You meet Myra and lock that up with the other god weapons.”
“I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to do that.”
“Good. Don’t tell me.”
“There…” he paused, and I could tell he changed his angle of attack. “You’ve heard, over the years, that there is a war coming to Ordinary, haven’t you?”
A chill traced down my back and arms. “Yes. Several people have said it was coming. Rossi, Odin, Bathin’s brother Goap. I thought the war was Lavius.”
“That was…yeah, that wasawar. A really old battle finally coming to an end between that vampire and Death. But I don’t think that’sthewar we’ve all known was brewing.”
“What do you know about it?”
Crow stretched his finger toward the dashboard again, but didn’t touch it, didn’t wipe away imaginary dust. “The future is…can beso many things. The power to see the one actual true outcome of all the colliding possibilities is rare.”
“There are people in town who can see the future. Yancy at the Community College,” I said.”
“They see a likely future, but even that isn’t set in stone,” Crow said. “Every word we say, every thought we think, certainly every action we take and inaction we allow, changes the world.
“Changes all the worlds.” He gave me a small, wry smile. “So knowing what war is coming, who is bringing it, why, and when it will happen is not a sure thing.”
“Must be sure enough that lots of people have been talking about it,” I said.
“True, but on some levels, all of those visions, all of those guesses are just that: guesses.”
“So is this you giving me your best guess?”
The smile again. “One of them.”
“Lay it on me.”
“I think the weapons were stolen by a demon. I think they might have been stolen from that demon by something not human.”
“Because a human can’t carry a god weapon?”
“Not for the length of time it would take to package them all up and drop them off on doorsteps.”
“Yours was in a cardboard box too. Was it torn?”
He tipped his head, studying me with a side eye just like an actual crow. “Yes. There was a little rip at the circle part. Why?”
“We found a scrap of cardboard with ink in the trunk of the car.”
“Huh. The car that smelled like ghoul.”
“All right. So you think a demon stole the weapons,” I said.
“A royal demon.”
“And there are what? Hundreds of minor royals in the demon realms?”
