Paper Stars

by Devon Monk

  “He’s sleeping. I’ll call someone to keep an eye on him while I’m out. It’s your day off.”

  I always worked Christmas Eve.

  Now that Ryder was home safe and the storm had blown through, I wanted to get eyes on the town.

  I needed to see if there was any damage, and make sure everyone had a warm place to celebrate the holiday.

  “Just let me get dressed,” I said.

  “Prefer you didn’t.” That voice, low with a burr of sleepiness, had me turning quickly.

  Ryder stood in the doorway to the bedroom. Well, leaned there.

  The comforter was wrapped around his shoulders, held closed at the front. His hair was sticking up at all angles.

  There was a crease down the side of his face from how hard he’d slept on one side, and his beard was thicker than he usually kept it.

  But his smile made his eyes light with green fire, and set butterflies loose in my heart. He’d never looked more amazing.

  “Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. A little foolish. Happy to be home. Happier to see you.”

  He’d moved while he spoke, and stopped right in front of me. “I thought I told you not to make deals with demons.”

  “You did. And I didn’t. Myra made the deal.”

  “Thought you knew better, Myra.” He pitched his voice so she could hear him, but didn’t look away from me for one second.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you too.”

  He opened the comforter, welcoming me into his warmth.

  I went willingly, thankfully, wrapping my arms around his ribs, pressing my cheek against the healthy heat of his skin, inhaling the scents of love and trust and home and him.

  “Maybe you should stay.” He shifted so we were slotted together even closer.

  I took one last deep breath and rubbed my hand down his back. I could feel him wince a little when my fingers ghosted over his bruises.

  “I need to work. I’ll be home in time to change for Christmas Eve over at Myra’s house.”

  “Or you could stay in, if you want,” Myra offered because she was a pretty awesome sister most of the time. Okay, all of the time.

  “No.” I stepped out of the comforter, every inch of distance between Ryder and me making me wish I’d let Myra take my shift so I could stay wrapped up in him all day.

  “Delaney,” Myra said.

  I took one look at her bloodshot eyes, the tired lines across her forehead, and her wrinkled clothes. She’d stayed all night here on the couch, keeping an eye on us.

  “You’re officially off duty, Officer,” I said.

  She scowled. “Do not pull the boss card.”

  “Shuffled, cut, and dealt. Go home. Take a nap. Get the feast cooking. Ryder’s gonna be fine here, and we’ll be by around eight for drinks and dinner.”

  “Are you bringing the demon?” she asked.

  I couldn’t tell from the carefully blank look on her face if she wanted a yes or no answer.

  “He doesn’t really listen to me,” I said. “Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t stay here bothering us all night.”

  “I told him to leave us alone.”

  “And he listened to you.”

  She shrugged. “There was also the dragon issue.”

  “The dragon was sleeping with us. Mymy, Bathin doesn’t listen to anyone…”

  “Not this again,” she muttered.

  “...except you.”

  “Yeah, well, he knows I have all of Dad’s old journals and can banish him from Ordinary if I want.”

  “Can you?” Last I heard she hadn’t found a way to be permanently rid of the pest.

  “Not yet.” Then she gave me a dazzling smile. “Getting there though.”

  She waved and headed toward the door. “See you tonight. Don’t worry if you’re late. Ryder, call if you need anything.”

  I heard the door open, then shut behind her.

  There was a commotion of four-footed things running out of the bedroom behind us, the dragon in the lead, carrying a pillow in its mouth with Spud quick on his heels.

  They disappeared into the living room and we were silent a moment.

  “So we have a pig?” Ryder asked.

  “Dragon.”

  Spud barked, the dragon oinked then growled, a very dragony-sound. Spud barked again as if excited he’d made the piggy do a dragon thing.

  “Dragon. Okay. What does it eat?” Ryder asked.

  “Whatever it wants.” I smiled sweetly at his raised eyebrows. And yes, he looked excited to have a dragon in the house.

  “Is there some way it communicates? Telepathy? Song? Riddle?”

  The man loved finding out what kind of creatures we had in town, and I loved his enthusiasm, even though he was trying to play it cool.

  “One oink means yes, two means no.”

  His eyebrows dropped and he frowned. “That’s no fun.”

  I laughed and pressed a kiss on his mouth. A quick kiss, a gentle kiss, a kiss that was not supposed to linger. But his hands shot out, caught both of my arms.

  He held me to him, stepping into me as he did so, angling his thigh between mine. I was walked backward until my back bumped into the wall.

  We never stopped kissing, couldn’t stop kissing. I swept my tongue along his bottom lip and he opened, his tongue licking into my mouth as we tasted, hungered, devoured.

  I never wanted it to stop.

  Never wanted to know a day when his hands wouldn’t be warm on my body, when his mouth wouldn’t be pressing secret words into mine.

  Finally, we came up for air and we hung there, heads tipped, both of us staring at the other’s mouth.

  I wanted to say it again. To ask him if he had heard me last night. To know if he understood that I loved him. Loved his laughter, his strength, his steady calm.

  But I had already told him once, in the dark, in the relief that he was alive and with me. Maybe that would be enough.

  Maybe that was all we were supposed to have. Maybe we didn’t need the words. Maybe we just needed this. Us.

  I shifted, sliding my leg down off from his hip where I had somehow put it, and settling all my weight on my feet.

  I pressed his chest, and he stepped back.

  “Go to the doctor and make sure you don’t have a concussion,” I said.

  “I don’t have a concussion.”

  “Go anyway.”

  He sighed. “So you’ll be home before eight?” His voice was sex, and it took everything I had not to just strip right there and drag him off to bed.

  “I promise.”

  He searched my gaze for some other meaning behind those words, the same words he’d told me before he’d gotten stranded.

  “Are you going to be okay alone?” I asked.

  “Yeah. If I need anything, I’ll call. Delaney? Thank you for being on the phone with me. For keeping me awake. For getting me home.”

  “Like I’d let you miss our first Christmas together.”

  I waited for the words. They were there, in his gaze, in the soft pause of breath when he studied my mouth, my face, my eyes.

  “I–”

  A muted thump in the living room was followed by a crash then the sound of Spud running for his hiding corner.

  Moment destroyed.

  “I should check on the dragon?” he said.

  “You should.”

  His hands fell away. “But tonight?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, Ryder. It’s going to be a good night.”

  I smiled, then moved past him and into the bedroom to change into my uniform.

  Chapter Eight

  One good thing about living on the coast of Oregon: we knew how to weather the storms.

  Things didn’t usually get sketchy in our sturdy little town until the winds reached somewhere above an hundred-mile-an-hour.

  But there were always little damages from high wind gusts. A fence, a store sign, garbage cans in
the wrong yard.

  Mrs. Yates’s penguin getting stolen.

  Not that the wind had taken it, but apparently a storm was the perfect cover for the pranksters who liked to abscond with her concrete yard penguin.

  “It’s Christmas for goodness sakes,” Mrs. Yates said for the tenth time as I stood there on her twinkling light-draped porch taking her complaint. “I always decorate the yard.”

  “It looks nice.”

  “And the house.”

  “That looks nice too.”

  “And the penguin. Really, he’s the star of the whole thing.”

  “I understand.”

  “He has a blog, you know.”

  I did know. The penguin’s frequent kidnappings, creative hiding places, and hostage photos had taken a small corner of the internet by storm.

  That penguin was pretty much our most famous citizen. And Mrs. Yates ate up the stardom-by-proxy with a spoon.

  I’d always suspected that most of the kidnappings had been orchestrated by the high school kids, but lately, the kidnappings and photos seemed more professional.

  Almost as if the kidnappers were a well-oiled, well-coordinated machine.

  It wasn’t just Mrs. Yates who liked the limelight. Most of the town was totally into our adorable concrete claim to fame.

  “He deserves to be home for Christmas,” she said. “We all need him home for Christmas, Delaney. It would mean so much to the town.”

  And that’s when I knew I wasn’t going to get out of penguin search and rescue duty.

  “I’ll do what I can to find him before the night’s over.”

  “Yes,” she said, finally happy. “People drive by to take pictures of him in the yard, you know. Tourists too. Especially tourists. We wouldn’t want to disappoint them.”

  She fluffed her hair and stared past me at the road, looking for drive-by photo ops.

  “No,” I said. “I’m sure we wouldn’t.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Where?” Jean asked.

  I took another drink of the Tom and Jerry Myra had made from scratch from the family recipe. It had just a splash of bourbon in it to cut the thick, sweet warm milk and nutmeg, and it warmed me all the way down.

  The music was playing softly in the background, Ryder’s arm was draped over my shoulder, the house was decorated in that cozy but classy way that only Myra seemed to be able to pull off.

  If I decorated like her, it would end up looking like I was living in a garage sale.

  “Aaron’s patio at the back of his nursery,” I said.

  Aaron was the owner of the garden shop. He was also the god of war, Ares, who up until a few months ago, was vacationing here.

  Since he was gone, we kept an eye on his property for him.

  “Doesn’t seem like much of a hiding place,” Hogan, Jean’s boyfriend, said.

  The baker had had a drink or two, and he and Jean were cuddled up on the loveseat, both wearing hideous holiday sweaters. Hogan had accessorized with a pair of felt reindeer horns that flashed red and green.

  Jean wore a hat shaped like a Christmas tree, lights and all. Apparently, it also sang.

  Apparently, Myra had yanked the batteries out of the “obnoxious thing” after hearing Oh, Christmas Tree on repeat for an hour straight.

  Apparently, Myra was “no fun” but since she “made a boss Tom and Jerry” the Christmas tree hat had remained silent.

  “They weren’t trying to hide it, not really.” I shifted and Ryder tucked me in a little closer to his chest.

  He was quiet, relaxed, and looked right at home with his stockinged feet propped up on Myra’s coffee table.

  His bruises were just bruises, and the knock on the head was not a concussion.

  As accidents went, he had been very, very lucky.

  “They wanted the pictures on the blog for Christmas?” Myra asked.

  “I think that’s what they were going for. This had to have taken some time and more than one person. They set up a whole holiday scene, using a bunch of the other statues on his lot complete with Christmas tree, a menorah, and a kinara and corn. Here.”

  I leaned forward and Ryder sighed at the loss of contact, his fingers drifting down my back as I pulled my phone off the table.

  I hadn’t gone home to change, since the penguin hunt had taken so long. They’d waited on me for dinner, which was nice of them.

  Dinner was delicious and perfect because Myra had inherited almost all the cooking genes in our family.

  I leaned back into Ryder. He grunted softly in contentment.

  I scrolled through my photos to the pictures I’d taken of the concrete gathering, held it up for Ryder. He chuckled.

  “They went all out,” he agreed.

  “Lemme see.” Jean made grabby hands, and I relinquished my phone.

  She made big fake wide eyes in big fake surprise. “Look at that Hogan. All those statues doing all those holiday things. How cute is that? They even remembered Kwanza.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” He planted a kiss somewhere below the boughs of her hat and then grinned at her over her shoulder. “Kwanza doesn’t get nearly enough representation here in Ordinary.”

  Okay, they were being totally suspicious.

  “Here, Myra. Look at what those awful vandals did.” Jean waggled my phone toward Myra who was giving Jean and Hogan a narrow-eyed glare.

  “Was the lock broken?” Myra asked me even though she wasn’t looking away from Jean.

  I wasn’t looking away from Jean either.

  “No. Whoever did it had a key to the gate.”Jean had a key to the gate. We all kept keys to the businesses the no-longer-vacationing gods had left behind.

  “Probably just some high school kids finding some other way into the place.” Jean waved, then dropped back against Hogan.

  She threaded her fingers between his hands where they were clasped on her waist.

  I studied their fingers. Dark against creamy white. Their knuckles looked a little abraded. Like maybe they’d been moving heavy concrete statues around in the middle of the night.

  “Oh, for real?” I groaned. “Jean, tell me you were not involved in theft, breaking and entering, and trespassing last night.”

  “I plead the Fifth.”

  “Why?” I moaned. “I spent hours looking for that penguin. In the rain. In the cold. On Christmas Eve!”

  She shrugged. “They were already there doing their thing. And, no, I’m not going to rat them out. So we just helped them get it all set up.”

  “We, babe?” Hogan asked. “I guess it’s the Fifth for me too, Reed ladies.”

  I shook my head in disappointment.

  “They were supposed to take pictures and get the penguin home before dark,” Jean said. “Probably the storm got in the way.”

  “I can not believe this. Haven’t you had enough with yard statues? Remember the gnome debacle? Two month ago. Involving zombies?”

  Jean wrinkled her nose at me. “Do not mention the gnome-zombie debacle. Hogan still has Abner’s head on the dash of his car.”

  “Ew,” Myra said.

  Hogan ran his fingers through Jean’s red and green hair. “He won’t be alive again until next October. Why not let him see things around town until then?”

  “Nice,” Ryder said.

  I opened my mouth to get us back on the subject of Jean and Hogan being any part of the penguin kidnapping, but Jean talked right over whatever I was about to say.

  “You know Mrs. Yates loves that penguin being a star, no matter what she says. It makes her feel young and special. All that attention. All those tourists coming by to catch a glimpse of the famous penguin in her yard with the flower beds she likes to fuss over. If someone hadn’t stolen it for a big Christmas photo-op, she would have been disappointed.”

  “Rule breaker,” Ryder noted with a yawn.

  “Settle down, Mr. Warden. I didn’t break any actual contracts.”

  “Theft is illegal,” Myra pointed out.

 
“One, I didn’t steal it, I just found the people who did. Two, Are you going to arrest your sister on Christmas Eve for being a part of a community building exercise?”

  From the look on Myra’s face, she was thinking pretty seriously about it.

  “You’ll tell me who did it,” I said. “All the people involved in this little ‘community building exercise’.”

  Jean sighed noisily. “Fine. Yes, boss.”

  “We’re going to talk to them and their parents, if necessary. Make them apologize to Mrs. Yates and pay any damages she asks for. We can’t let something like this slide. That was private property, Jean.”

  She made a rude noise. “I was very stern with them as we were arranging the photo shoot. Told them I disapproved of their shenanigans, but that I’d let it pass this once, because it was Christmas and it was going to make an awesome picture. They really did promise to get the penguin home safely.”

  Ryder’s fingers had shifted so that he could brush the side of my shoulder. I didn’t know if he realized he was petting me, but it felt so good, I didn’t tell him to stop.

  “Please tell me you’re not going to make me call them on Christmas Eve,” Jean said. “Can’t we just put it off a bit?”

  “I think we can address it after the holidays,” I said.

  Jean lit up like a string of lights.

  “Is the picture on the blog yet?” Ryder asked.

  I nudged him. My sister did not need any encouragement.

  Jean grinned. “Wanna see?” She bounded out of Hogan’s arms to find her tablet before any of us could answer.

  “I thought you’d be a better influence on her,” I groused at Hogan.

  He just spread his hands wide and smiled. “Come now, Delaney. I thought you knew me better.”

  The twinkle of wicked mischief in his eyes was irresistible.

  I chuckled. “At least try to rein in her worst tendencies.”

  “I do,” he said with mock seriousness. “You should have seen the hat she wanted to buy you.”

  Ryder snorted at that, then Jean showed up with the pictures and excitedly read us the blog post.

  I had to admit it, that little penguin wearing a baggy Santa hat that drooped over one eye, surrounded by concrete Buddha, frogs, fairies, elephants, Bigfoot, and an octopus doing yoga, looked pretty darn cute.