Page 77 of A Seer and Present Danger

“But many other people with your kind of powers don’t believe that. They have power and they use it to keep themselves in power. To stay in power, they will harm others.

“Detective Vandre might be a detective, but he is a creature of power first. So is Aggie for that matter.

“They can break any law they want. Ignore any rule. They can kill someone—especially if they are merely a mortal—because they want something they have.”

“He wants Pandora’s box,” I said. “But if he has it, why does he keep showing up at the diner saying he’s looking for it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with Aggie.”

“Aggie wants the bear.”

“Maybe it has something to do with you.”

“Me?”

“You’re a demigod, too, Piper. There might be something Vandre or Aggie want you to do for them. Or something they want to do to you.”

I breathed out and chuckled, shaking off my nerves. “That sounds dangerous.”

“It might be.”

“It might be,” I agreed. “Right. Guess I’ll have to deal with Detective Dangerous and Angry Aggie later.”

“Not alone.”

“Of course not alone. Don’t worry. If I’m going to get into trouble, I’m going to drag you and Jules into it with me.”

She smiled, and I liked seeing it, because it made her look so much softer and happier, and because she didn’t do it very often.

I opened another box. “Now let’s find that cursed bear.”

CHAPTER 16

There was no cursed bear.

It had taken us a couple hours to check each box then re-pack and re-stack them. In the end we admitted defeat.

To match my gloomy mood, the weather had taken a turn. From how swiftly the black clouds were booking it overhead, there was a storm headed our way.

A big storm.

I drove home and changed into my uniform for my shift. By the time I’d smooched and fed Smuckleberry, it was pouring rain and the wind was really whipping.

I jogged to my car, my phone buzzing. I checked. It was a text from Detective Vandre.

“How does he have my phone number?” I wondered, wiping rain off my face.

The text said: Can we talk. Important. Blue Owl? There now.

I hesitated. If he was at all the way Dusi painted him—a power hungry rule breaker—I should not meet with him alone.

But he already knew I worked at the diner, and I couldn’t skip my shift. There would be too many people around for him to do anything dangerous.

My thumb hovered over the thumbs up emoji, but I put my phone down instead.

“I’ll decide when I get there.”

I drove, taking it slowly and carefully. Coastal pines whipped in the wind and the late afternoon was that strange darkness that made me think of tornadoes. (Which we really didn’t get around here. Often.)