Myra just rolled her eyes. “Books.”
I tried the cookie. “These are fantastic.”
“He found the recipe on the internet.” She grinned. “He’s determined to find the best version of every kind of cookie, no matter where he has to go to get the recipe.”
“Good man.” I washed the chocolate down with a gulp of coffee. “Light post.”
“Well, there’s Bigfoot,” she said. “He loves light bulbs.”
“I thought about that. Has he ever escalated to this level before?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“So we can talk to him, but it’s not really his M.O.”
“Is it possible we have another dragon loose in town? It could have taken the shape of anything it wanted to be. Now it’s eating metal?”
“Possible. I’ll ask dragon pig to look for it. But both items are big public lights. If a dragon wanted to eat metal, there is more easily accessed metal objects in town. Park benches, garbage cans…”
“… fire hydrants,” she added.
“Yep. Not to mention cars and sheds and fencing. And since nothing else metal has been reported missing, I’m thinking dragon number two isn’t our suspect.”
“Worth asking about.”
“I will.”
She finished off her cookie and pulled her coffee mug into her hands. “It’s not like they’re easily sold or shipped. Can’t strip them down for anything valuable.”
“Copper wire?”
“Not enough to make it worth the effort. That shadow you saw out by Than’s shop. How big was it?”
“Hard to say. Bigger than a human, I think.”
The problem with that was we had leshiye and giants and all manners of larger supernaturals in town. To live among the non-magic humans, many of the big supernaturals carried a spell to change their appearance, or otherwise used their powers and abilities to make people see them as something that fit in with the common world.
“It’s early to rule out humans, but let’s do it for a moment and think through who would want a light pole so bad they’d steal it in the middle of a storm,” she said.
“All right. Any of the gods could be behind it.”
“They can’t use their powers.”
“Sure, but there’s still magic, and any one of them can use magic.”
“You think one of the gods, here in town, on vacation, is going to be dumb enough to steal traffic lights just for kicks?”
“Well, Crow, maybe.”
She grinned. “Did you stop by his garage sale?”
“That tent,” I said. “You?”
“Yeah. Didn’t see traffic lights.”
“Was anything else…strange about his sale?” I asked. “Other than the lurid pink whale?”
“Spill it,” she said. “Whatever you just thought of.”
