“Wait!”
I didn’t release the door but threw him a look over my shoulder.
The smile was gone. The teasing was gone. He’d set his coffee cup on the kitchen island, and now he shoved both his hands, stiff-fingered, into the front pockets of his jeans.
“I just found out. I need you to remember that, because I know you, Delaney, and I know you are going to lose your mind. But I just found out. This morning. And that is the full truth.”
I turned the handle.
“All right. Hold it. I know.” He licked his lips, shrugged one shoulder up like his neck was cramping, then mumbled: “I know who the storage unit belonged to.”
“What?” I asked. “Louder. I don’t have ears on the floor.”
He lifted his gaze to mine. “The storage unit. You asked me where I got most of that stuff?”
“The whale sale?”
“Yeah.”
“Storage units, right?”
He nodded. “Three, but most of it, the good stuff, the stuff that really sold well, was from one unit.”
“Whose unit?”
“Pandora’s.”
This time I did let go of the handle so I could smash my hand over my face. It was better than grabbing my uncle and shaking the feathers out of him.
“Uh, Delaney. Boo Boo. Did you hear me?”
I inhaled, exhaled, counted down from ten, no, twenty, no, one hundred.
“All that stuff I sold used to be owned by Pandora.”
Ninety…
“Which pretty much makes her storage unit a box, doesn’t it?” he mused.
Eighty…
“Most of the stuff came in a box, too, now that I think of it.”
Seventy…
“So that’s gonna be a problem if the myths are to be believed.”
“Of course the myths are to be believed!” I waved my hands around. “This is Ordinary.”
“I know where we live, Delaney,” he said. “Which is why as soon as I found out who the items used to belong to, I insisted I would come over here and fill you in. See? I’m doing my part to keep everyone safe.”
I just stared at him, and the stupid twinkle in his eye that said he rather liked the way things were turning out so far.
Trickster gods were just the worse, but Crow was the worst of them all.
“So is the weather and flooding and destruction of property because Pandora’s stuff was sold?” Ryder asked.
It was good he’d said something. What I needed right now was focus and a clear head. And Crow just looked so strangle-able.
