His body wash, which was also wrong. The label faced eleven o'clock instead of twelve.
His skates were out of alignment. And someone had uncoiled his second set of spare laces and left it in a sloppy figure-eight that made his eye twitch just looking at it.
"Everything okay, Cap?"
Fenrick, the youngest member of the team and resident chaos demon, peered around the edge of his own locker with anexpression of exaggerated concern. His pointed ears twitched with barely contained glee.
"Someone," Tarmek said slowly, "has been in my locker."
"No way." Fen's eyes widened with exaggerated shock. "Who would do such a thing?"
Tarmek turned to look at him. Just looked. The younger orc held his gaze for approximately three seconds before cackling and retreating to his own space.
"Wasn't me, I swear on my grandmother's grave. But I wish I'd thought of it."
"Your grandmother isn't dead."
"Details." Fen waved a dismissive hand. "Point is, someone's finally gotten under your skin. It's beautiful. I might cry."
Tarmek turned back to his locker and began the painstaking process of restoring order. Deodorant: three inches from the left edge, label forward. Body wash positioned by height next to the shampoo with the label at exactly twelve o'clock. He uncoiled the spare laces, smoothed them flat, recoiled them into identical circles, and hung on their designated pegs.
His hands moved automatically, but his mind was elsewhere.
Edie.
He didn't have proof. He hadn't caught her anywhere near the locker room. But he knew. The same way he knew when an opposing player was about to try a dirty hit, the same way he knew when the ice was running slow, the same way he knew exactly how many seconds remained on the clock withoutlooking. The deep orc awareness that had kept his ancestors alive in mountain caves and battle camps for thousands of years.
Someone had invaded his space, disrupted his order, and left chaos in their wake. Only one person fit that description.
Edie.
I just need to stay away from her,he decided.
The problem was, she was everywhere. Over the following week, he couldn't escape her. Not because she sought him out. If anything she seemed to avoid direct contact with him. But her presence still seeped into every corner of the arena like watercolor bleeding across wet paper.
Her music came first. Not loud or intrusive, but there - a constant undercurrent of indie folk and vintage rock drifting from whatever corner of the building she'd claimed for the day. He'd hear it during his morning conditioning sessions, the faint strains of guitar and warm vocals floating down the corridors. He'd catch it during film review, when someone left a door open and suddenly he couldn't concentrate on defensive formations because someone was singing about wildflowers and wandering souls.
Then there were the coffee cups.
Half-empty cups with lipstick prints on the rims, left on window ledges and equipment carts and once, memorably, balanced on the edge of the Zamboni's control panel. Sam had nearly had a heart attack over that one. The cups always had names scrawled on them in Sharpie, but never her name. Instead: "World's Okayest Artist." "Professional Paint Sniffer." "If found, please return to the nearest chaos dimension."
And the scarves. God, the scarves.
Bright silk and soft wool and chunky knit monstrosities in every color imaginable, draped over chairs in the break room, forgotten on benches outside the weight room, tied around the handrails of staircases like tiny flags of surrender. He'd found one in the meditation room wrapped around the base of a decorative plant like the plant had gotten cold and she had taken pity on it.
He had folded that scarf with military precision and left it on Sam's desk without comment. Sam had laughed for five straight minutes and then framed a photo of it.
But the worst part—the absolute worst part—was that he couldn't stop looking for her.
He'd walk into the arena each morning and find his eyes scanning the lobby before his brain caught up. He'd hear music and strain to identify which room it was coming from. He'd see a flash of red hair in his peripheral vision and his head would snap around before he could stop himself.
She'd infected him, gotten under his skin like splinters of paint and chaos. And she'd charmed his entire goddamn team.
"Edie said I should try positive visualization before face-offs," Rognar announced during Thursday's practice, as if this were perfectly normal advice to receive from a mural artist. "She says athletes underestimate the power of imagination."
"Edie's not a sports psychologist," he said flatly.
"No, but she painted a mural for a minor league team in Arizona and their goalie said his save percentage went up twelve percentafter she taught him to visualize the puck as a bird he was setting free." Rognar nodded sagely. "A bird, Cap. Set free."
