“Are you all right there, Boo Boo?” Crow bent to catch my gaze.
I felt like a wrung-out mop, my muscles noodles, like I’d really gone overboard in the gym for a week straight.
“That sucked,” I said.
“Little guy carried a kick.” Crow frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I wiped my arm over my forehead to wick away the sweat. “Peachy.”
Everyone else in the room was rousing too. The people who’d fallen asleep on their plates wiped a mix of confusion and breakfast foods off their faces with napkins, looking around like they’d just woken from a quick, refreshing nap.
Piper, a force of energy, was already moving, working her way between the tables with quick efficiency. She seemed to know just what everyone needed whether it was fresh coffee, orange juice, or nice warm, damp towels for cleaning up faces and hands. She assured the sleepers replacement meals were already underway, and conversations rose up again, people chuckling, and chatting.
As if nothing had happened.
As if they hadn’t all been cursed with so much sorrow it had almost sent them into comas.
As if magic had never been here.
Ordinary, the land blessed by hundreds of gods, the air fresh with life and mingled with the power of hundreds of supernatural creatures and people, had a way of sort of smoothing over minor magical moments.
I counted my lucky stars that the unusual nature of this event was whisked away and made to feel like something to chuckle about in the space of just a few moments. Something to maybe tell friends, but nothing to truly frighten or cause undo suspicion.
“Let’s get that to the station where we can lock it away until we figure out how to break the curse.”
“Look who put on her voice of authority one leg at a time today,” Crow said. “I like it. Does this mean you’re going to deputize me?”
“Not on your life.” I started across the room, moving easier now, breathing easier as time erased the roughest edges of the experience.
Crow laughed, and that made something else lift in me. We’d survived our first curse. I was proud of us.
“You good?” Ryder asked, as I stepped after him out into the cool, wet air.
“Cabin in the mountain, right?” I asked.
“That’s the plan.”
“Hot tub. Just us. Solitude?”
“Yep.”
“Let’s get this done and get the hell outta town.”
Ryder’s smiled and, yeah, I smiled in return.
Chapter Nine
“You knowwhat doesn’t make sense?” I paused at the makeshift four-way stop, Ryder in the passenger seat.
“That Pandora left all this stuff behind in the first place and never told anyone the things were all cursed bombs waiting to go off?” he said.
“Well, that. But what set off the curse in the first place?”
“Opening the box?” he suggested.
“Naw,” Crow said from the back seat. He had insisted he needed to ride with us because I’d told him it was his job to clean up the mess. I thought he was enjoying the whole thing.
“If unboxing triggered the curse,” Crow went on, “my whale sale would have been a hell of a lot more fun.”
