Chapter 12

I shook my head."It smells like ghoul? What does ghoul smell like?"

"Rotted flesh and melted vinyl," Hogan said. "You really don't smell that?"

I tried again, but the only thing I smelled was musty concrete, motor oil, and the salty green of the coastal wind.

I glanced at Odin. "Don't look at me," he complained. "I'm not half Jinn. I don't smell the undead."

"Are you sure it's a ghoul?" I asked Hogan.

He nodded. "I met one once. Before I moved here. Same smell. Exactly."

"What do we know about ghouls?" I said, wishing Myra and her encyclopedic knowledge of all things magical were here.

"They stink." Jean flashed me a grin. I rolled my eyes.

"They eat flesh?" I said, sorting through the differences between ghouls, undead, and zombies.

"Lure people into graveyards," Odin added. "Nibble on the living or the dead, and walk out looking like whoever they ate."

I swallowed back a little bit of revulsion.

"Gross," Jean said. "If you can smell one, does that mean one of us is a ghoul?"

Hogan blinked. "Uh…maybe?"

Jean waggled her eyebrows. "You're gonna have to sniff us to make sure."

"We are all who we say we are," Odin grumbled. "This is a waste of time, and I have things to do."

"No," I said. "You stay. We all stay. Let's all take a step backward so we don't muddy up each other's scents.

Odin muttered something that sounded like "bullshit" but stepped back with Jean and me. Hogan sniffed Jean first, pulling his T-shirt down away from his nose and nuzzling her neck.

She giggled, her face stained pink. "Stop it. I hate that. Anything?" she asked, holding perfectly still.

"You smell amazing," he said. "I love that perfume. I also love that you're ticklish right here." He sniffed again, and she leaned back.

"I am not."

He moved in for another sniff. She tucked her chin down to stop him and pushed his shoulder. She was smiling wide. "Go smell my sister."

"Now who's the weirdo?" he asked. He turned to me and came in close, his body carefully not touching mine, his face lowering toward my neck.

"You smell like you. Did you change your shampoo?"

"Got lazy. I'm using Ryder's."

"Smells nice on you."

"I like it."

Odin grumbled something under his breath, and we all turned to face him.

"I'm not a ghoul," he said.

"That's pretty much what a ghoul would say," Jean noted.

Odin glared at her then crooked his finger at Hogan. "Get it done with."

Hogan stepped over to him, squared off, and took a big sniff.

"You smell like Doritos."

"I was hungry. I had a snack."

"You also smell like wood shavings and moss and motor oil."

"Unlike some other people around here, I work for a living," he griped.

"You don't smell ghoul on any of us?" I double checked. "Where is the smell the strongest?"

Hogan lifted his chin, sniffed again then winced. "It's the car."

We all turned to stare at the car.

"The car's a ghoul?" Jean asked with a mix of excitement and horror.

"That's mechanical," Odin said. "Ghouls are the unliving."

"But they take on the shape of stuff they eat," Jean said. "What if it ate a carburetor and turned into the car?"

"I just told you it ate flesh," Odin said.

"Living flesh?" I asked.

Odin opened his mouth, then scratched at his beard. "Mostly, yes, but not always. I've known ghouls who got a strand of hair and could take on the form of the person it came from. Same with fingernail clippings, spit, tears. Really anything that carries DNA."

That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.

"So if we have a ghoul," I said.

"We do," Hogan said through his T-shirt.

"It's been in this car, or around this car. It can take on the shape of anyone in town."

It all clicked in my head, like a stack of thick dominos toppling.

"The crab claw." I turned to Jean. "It ate the crab."

"The ghoul is the crab?"

"Maybe. Probably. It was chewing on that crab claw. I think the ghoul turned into a crab and scuttled to safety right in front of our noses."

"Well, hell," Jean said.

Odin clapped, and the sound ricocheted like thunder in the metal building. "I'll leave you two capable Reeds to it. Find my thief. I'd very much like to meet them."

The way he said ‘meet them' sounded more like ‘punch them in the face repeatedly.'

"We'll keep you in the loop."

He walked out of the building.

"I'll wait for you out there," Hogan told Jean, and followed Odin into the fresh air.

"Want me to call Myra and tell her about the ghoul situation?" Jean asked.

"I'll tell her." I walked around the car, looking in the windows. "Pop the trunk, will you?"

Jean reached under the dash to pull the trunk release lever. I pulled up the trunk lid and stared into the empty cavity. Nothing in there except clean black carpet. Not even a spare tire or jack.

"It's normal, you know," she said.

"What's normal?" I tipped my head side to side to relieve the tension in my neck.

"Ryder getting cold feet about the wedding."

I sighed and wondered if I came back in another life, if could request a sister who didn't stick her nose in my love life.

"Ryder's not getting cold feet about the wedding."

She turned and thumped against the car, her arms crossed over her chest. "Well, I know it can't be you," she said. "You're not actually screwing up your wedding to the man you love. That's not what you're doing, Delaney? Right?"

I flipped back the corners of the carpet, then folded it in half toward the middle. Nothing but metal. I flipped that back down and folded the carpet the other way.

"It's not that I don't…" I leaned into the trunk. Something was caught in the back corner. Just a small brown strip of…cardboard?

"Because I have not waited practically my whole life for the two of you to finally get married just to have you chicken out…"

I ignored her and carefully tugged on the cardboard. It came loose in one piece. I turned it to the other side.

Half of a red ink circle was stamped on it.

"Jean."

"…like I'm expecting a niece or nephew one of these days, but at least do yourself a favor..."

"Jean," I said a little louder.

"…he's been waiting a long time for you too, you know…"

"Jean."

"What?"

I straightened and held up the cardboard scrap. "Does this remind you of anything?"

"The delivery boxes?"

"Ding ding ding."

"We already looked through the car. I looked through it," she said. "How did I miss it?"

"It was wadded up pretty small and shoved in the corner. It looked like a clump of sand."

"Damn it," she said. "Sorry about that."

"Okay, so what do we have? The car fell out of the sky, and it contained the god weapons and the ghoul? Which we all missed, even though you and Myra were both watching the car?"

"We were thinking the ghoul turned into a crab that almost got eaten by seagulls this morning," she said. "How did it turn into something that could carry the weapons away?"

"Did you keep your eye on the car while you waited for Frigg to tow it?"

"Yes. I might have missed the cardboard, but it's pretty hard to overlook an entire car."

"Was it ever out of everyone's sight?"

Jean nodded. "When it was stored in the garage, I suppose, before Hatter and Shoe got here. So now are we thinking the ghoul was the crab, and after it hid from the seagulls, it snuck back into the car?"

"Maybe," I said.

"It snuck back into the car and rode here to the garage, then got out and somehow pulled the weapons out of the trunk—which was empty when I looked at it on the beach, by the way—and with all those weapons in its tiny claws, it skittered around town dropping off packages like a jolly ol' Santa Claus.

I sighed. "It sounds outrageous."

She shrugged. "It sounds like Ordinary. Maybe it happened that way, maybe there's more we don't know. So what do you want me to do next, boss?"

"Take this into evidence." I pulled a bag out of my pocket and dropped the cardboard into it. "See if Jules or one of the other witches has some time to do a scrying on it tomorrow. Then we'll run it through the labs."

"Got it." She plucked the bag out of my fingers and started off. "Promise me you're not going to screw up the wedding of your dreams."

"Can I not hear about the wedding for ten frickin' minutes? You do know there are other more important things happening around here."

I slammed the trunk and there was this moment of silence, like someone had punched all the air out of the world.

Jean cleared her throat and raised her voice. "Oh, hey, Ryder. Um…yeah. That was. All on me. I was just giving her a hard time, you know. And now I'm gonna go get this to evidence because police work is so important and I am so police-working right now."

I closed my eyes and groaned.

Jean disappeared into the sunlight and Ryder stepped into the open bay, his thumbs tucked in his back pockets. He looked like everything I'd ever wanted in my world. Strength, patience, humor, love.

He looked like summer when the days drifted golden and endless. He looked like the boy I'd crushed on so hard, I thought my heart would break, and the man I'd fallen for so hard, it knocked the stars out of my sky.

"Hey," I said, and it came out soft, barely enough to move the dust in the air. A fox sparrow called out its sweet trilling chorus, once, twice. In the distance, an answer echoed.

Ryder watched me. I wondered if he was doing as much mental gymnastics as I was—a whole dang Olympic floor routine, twists, saltos, hard landings.

"Did you get a break in the case?" he asked.

Triple flip sailing right over what he'd heard me say.

I started toward him, and he waited there for me.

For a moment I wondered how long he would wait. If I asked for an extension on the wedding date, would he be okay with that? Autumn? Winter? Next summer?

But Jean's words came back to me, distant as the fox sparrow echo. "He's been waiting a long time for you too, you know."

I walked a little faster, wanting to erase this space between us. Wanting to level out my flips and spins so I was on the same trajectory as him. So we were flying across that mat, step-in-step, launching and landing at the same place at the same time.

"The wedding is important to me," I said, and even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew that was the wrong thing, the wrong move.

He looked over my shoulder like the garage walls were the most interesting thing in the world.

"Okay," he said.

"What I said, what you heard. Jean was poking and poking."

"Okay."

"Everyone has been asking," I said. "And I'm all…I don't even know what I am, but then it just feels like a lot and then there's Jean: poke, poke, poke."

"Okay."

"I wanted her to drop it because this is ours, this is between us and we're the only ones who get to decide what we are and what we want and…"

His hands stretched out, caught both my wrists and closed around them. The heat of his palms was a pressure, a brand, grounding me.

"Okay," he said again. This time I nodded. "Breathe."

I did that too, until I could hear the world around me again, the soft hum of traffic, the squawk of jays, the sweet distant sparrows.

"Little worked up, aren't you?" he asked.

"I don't think…" then, at his look, "I guess."

"But I'm dealing with the event, right? All the details and decisions?"

"Right. But I should…"

"I don't need you to. Whatever you're thinking, I got it. All of it."

He was smiling, yes. But the tightness at the corners of his eyes told another story.

"I hate this." The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I watched as they hit, the slow-motion flicker of confusion, then realization, and then anger that spread across his face.

His whole body leaned back from me. "Okay."

It was hard. Flat. A bad landing. The kind of landing that broke an ankle.

"I hate that it's so…we aren't doing this together. Aren't on the same page."

He took a couple steps backward, and did a fair job of patching the smile back on his face. "Well, when you decide what page you think we should be on, will you tell me, Delaney? Instead of going around to everyone else complaining about how much you hate that I'm going forward with our plans. Our plans."

"Don't," I said, my face hot, my heart pounding hard.

"Don't what? Ask you to be honest and tell me what you really feel?"

"And what do you think I really feel?" My voice shook. With anger, yes. And with pain. "How can you know? You just tell me not to worry. To just…do nothing. But that's not right."

He wiped one hand over his mouth, then scratched at the back of his neck. "Look," he said, his eyes coming to my face, then sliding sideways before flicking back again. "Look," he repeated to the ground. "I know it's…stressful. And right now…maybe we should…let's just let it go for a while."

"Okay," I said, swallowing. "Thank you. We can push it out a bit. Maybe winter. Or next year. Do a summer wedding but give us enough time…"

The look on his face told me I'd blown it. Botched the landing. It wasn't just a broken ankle, it was a snapped spine. A busted neck.

He wasn't talking about letting it go that long. He had just meant a day or two. A week or two. Just until we cooled down.

"Ryder—"

"I'm hungry," he said, his voice not quite steady, but getting there. "Are you hungry?"

I was. But I was also very aware he was changing the subject. Trying to stay out of a fight. And maybe that was good. Maybe that was the right way to deal with this. But I couldn't leave this here. Couldn't remain in the hurt we'd caused.

"It's not the wedding," I said.

"I'm thinking tacos."

"It's not just the wedding." I was striding along with him now, out of the garage, the wind gone cooler with the setting sun, heat and dust still drifting up from the gravel around us.

"Or we have chicken in the fridge. Grill it? We might have mushrooms."

"I feel shitty that I'm not doing more for it. It's like I'm not even a part of it."

"Then do more!" he snapped. "Be a part of it. Make a decision. Pick a color. But if you say you're going to do it, do it."

"This is what I'm talking about. Everything is so serious. You have seventeen notebooks on flowers. Just on flowers!"

He spun and glared at me over the open back of his truck. "Now I'm the bad guy because I was trying to do my research?"

"Do I need to mention the cheese? The award-winning cheese that isn't good enough for you? Or how about the twenty-four venues we've looked at that all had something wrong with them?"

"Mold is a health hazard. So is a leak in the roof. But if you want to get married on a leaky houseboat crawling with black death, then by all means, bring the hip waders!"

"Maybe I want to wear hip waders! Maybe that would be fun! Maybe it would be spontaneous. Hip waders for everyone."

He tipped his head skyward, and I watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed down a scream. "Do you want to wear hip waders?" he asked the sky.

"No," I said. "That wasn't the point I was trying to make. I got a little off track."

"So what is the point?" He tipped his chin down again, gave me a carefully neutral look. He was trying to listen. I knew he was. This was my chance to sort through the jumble of feelings and make everything better. Make everything right.

"I don't…I don't know."

"Hello there?" a voice called out. "Hello? Might I ask you a question?"

Ryder frowned, and I'm sure my expression mirrored his.

Than, the god of Death, stood on the sidewalk, one hand lifted shoulder high like he was in class and uncertain if he should draw attention to himself.

"A question?" he repeated.

Ryder looked back at me. "See you at home."

"I have to stop by Myra's to tell her about the ghoul stuff."

"What ghoul stuff?"

I nodded toward the garage. "Hogan smelled a ghoul on or in the car. Ghouls can eat flesh and take on the appearance of the thing they ate."

"That's disturbing."

"Fingernails and hair works, too, I guess. So we might have a ghoul in town. Who might look like anyone. Except me. You know I'm me."

"I do," he said, "because no one drives me batty like you." He must have heard how that sounded, and pulled up a smile, soft and genuine. "I'll throw kebabs on the grill."

"That sounds amazing. Need me to bring anything?" This was good. This was a way back to the neutral zone, toward solid non-yelling ground. I was breathing a little fast, my pulse thrumming in my ears.

"Beer. Any kind you choose is fine. It doesn't have to be…special."

"Right. Yeah. Yes."

Ryder swung up into the truck. My heart hammered away in my chest, still running through the routine, bruised, aching, but stretching for that final flip. I raised my hand in a wave.

Ryder didn't look back.