by Jax Garren
She glanced into the room, where Rafael was settling into the front corner, with Mia blocking access to his free side. Was there a polite way to ask him if it was a new direction the band was going in and suggest they don’t?
No. There was zero way. She’d just be grateful for what he’d created before. She turned back to Rawan, expression deadly serious. “The way he writes, it’s like he knows me. In here.” She patted her heart. “He saved my life.”
“Yeah, you said that before. I think you were sixteen and a little dramatic.” Rawan threw an arm around her and hauled her into government. “Now try to pay attention to the teacher this time so we can compare notes, ’kay?”
She rolled her eyes. “You mean so you can copy my notes.”
“Dyslexia’s a curse, man,” Rawan said with a melodramatic sigh and a twinkle in her eyes. “I’m just thrilled I have the world’s best roommate to help me out.” Rawan made a beeline for the row behind Rafael. Giselle nearly grabbed her to steer them in a new direction, but then Rawan’s face twisted into a worried moue as she said, “Speaking of helping me out, uh...”
As of yet her roommate hadn’t hesitated about anything, so Giselle took the seat Rawan indicated and focused on her with an encouraging, “Yeah?”
“Would you mind—and if you do, that’s totally fine, you don’t have to say yes—but would you mind if Malik came over on Friday? His roommate is a real—” Her face darkened like her mind was full of the curse words she never said.
“Racist? Misogynist? General asshole?”
“Yes,” she said decisively. “And I don’t like going over there.” Her tone conveyed something like a preference for swimming in acid. Then her face turned hopeful. “But we just want to watch a movie or something, we won’t, ah...”
Giselle laughed. She’d met Malik, Rawan’s not-a-boyfriend. “Our parents would have a heart attack!” they’d explained at move-in when he’d helped them rearrange the furniture. He seemed like a pretty nice guy, and they’d been super cute as they worked hard to not seem ecstatic about not having parents around watching their every move. “I have something to do on Friday, so you’ve got the room to yourself for”—she leaned in conspiratorially—“whatever you want.” A wink. “Just not on my bed.”
“No! We wouldn’t... Really? Are you sure?”
“Of course!” She huffed in amusement. “I’ve been in a group home for most of the last few years. Believe me when I say you can’t shock or embarrass me.”
“What’s a group home?”
Giselle had mentioned being a foster kid to her roommate but hadn’t gone into much detail yet. She couldn’t help glancing at Rafael to make sure he wasn’t listening. Of course, he wasn’t; he didn’t give a crap about her silly life. Well, good for now. She leaned in to Rawan anyway. “It’s a facility where a bunch of bad teens nobody wants to adopt all live together.”
Rawan looked really confused. “You lived at one of those? Why?”
Giselle shrugged, trying to look like she didn’t give a shit. “Because I’m a bad teen nobody wanted to adopt, duh.”
“But you’re not bad.”
“I don’t think so, either, but my paperwork would disagree with us.”
“But who was that woman who helped you move in?”
“Ande?” How to describe her... “An old friend of my mother’s who fostered me my senior year.” Because she found out I have a godstone, not because she gives a crap about me.
To Giselle’s surprise, Rawan’s arms went around her in a squishing hug. She froze up, unsure what to do with the affection. “We can do something together on Friday instead.”
Weirdly, it sounded like her roommate meant it. Rawan, who, from what Giselle could tell, had lived in dating lockdown her whole life and finally could spend alone time with her long-term boyfriend, was willing to give that up so they could hang out. She relaxed, and Rawan disentangled herself.
“We can watch a movie. I have a bag of buknu—it’s this awesome spice mix that my cousin sends me from Lucknow.” She must’ve seen Giselle’s complete lack of geography knowledge on her face because she continued with, “That’s in India. Zahra went to grad school there, got married to a local, and stayed. And buknu tastes fantastic on popcorn.”
It sounded interesting and lovely and made Giselle smile. “I look forward to trying it. But I do have something to do on Friday, and you have a date with your boyfriend—can I call him that if your parents aren’t around?”
Rawan blushed. “Sure.”
“So you and Malik watch a movie with, uh, buckoo popcorn.”
“Buknu.”
“Yeah. And we’ll have a movie date with buknu popcorn another night, okay?”
Rawan blushed as she pulled out her supplies. “Another night. Thanks for being a good roommate. I’m lucky to have you.”
Giselle wasn’t used to reaching out to other people, but Rawan had given her a hug. So she took a risk and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Same here.”
WHEN DID “THIEF” BECOME my main job description? Rawan was hopefully having way too much fun with her boyfriend, and Giselle was, once again, about to break the law. Buknu popcorn was sounding better and better.
The apartment she had parked her bike in front of was in an exclusive complex. Not Rafael Marquez exclusive, maybe, but the kind of gated place where people had the money needed to collect ancient tomes. It was also where Shawn Hudson lived, a name Ande had dropped more than a few times when she was talking about people who knew things. If anyone Giselle had heard about had the book, it was most likely him.
She touched the godstone in her pocket, wondering if she should go ahead and transform and use her power to get in, or if she could get inside as herself. It was a balance—she certainly didn’t want to get caught as herself, but she also didn’t want to run out of power mid-work.
Stalking Shawn on social media had revealed that he did happy hour every Friday with some coworkers at the architecture firm where he worked. If he didn’t have an alarm—locks weren’t a problem, but disarming alarms was a different thing—and if the book wasn’t too cleverly hidden, she should be in and out before he got home.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than a dark blue Lexus that looked an awful lot like the one registered to her target pulled up beside her. The driver’s window slid down, and to her confusion, the man she was about to steal from leaned out.
Clearly thieving was not her first calling, because this was her second fail in less than a week. She stiffened, ready to run. As powerful as Freyja was, without the godstone turned on, she was as vulnerable as anyone else, and she had no idea why he was rolling down his window.
Shawn smiled at her, his face lighting up in friendliness, and she was surprised to see he wasn’t that much older than she was. Maybe mid-to-late twenties? His twisted curls were a bit longer, and he sported retro-hip, thick-framed glasses, but otherwise he looked the same as the well-pressed man in a patterned button-down from his architecture firm’s photo.
“Are you Giselle Ryder? Andromeda’s, uh...”
She relaxed a bit at his fluster. No one knew what to call foster relations. “Yes. How’d you know that?”
His grin grew wider, revealing bright and perfectly even teeth. She closed her lips over her own teeth, which weren’t bad enough to qualify for state-funded braces but weren’t straight by anyone’s standards. “She showed me your picture once. She’s really proud of you.”
Giselle snorted. Not anymore—if she ever actually had been. Their relationship had always been about Giselle’s inheritance, with no feelings to get in the way. But if he knew who she was, this changed everything. She took a step toward the car, into closer proximity.
“I’m—” he started.
“Shawn Hudson, I know. I’m actually here to see you.”
He glanced at her bike—her primary form of transportation—and then his back seat. “You’re in luck. Usually I’m at work. I’m not sure if that’ll fit in
the back.”
“It’s cool. I’ll just follow you. Promise, I can keep up with a car in a parking lot.”
That made him chuckle, and he nodded as he pressed a button, opening the gate.
Five minutes later, he showed her into his apartment. Shawn’s place looked more like a library than a home. The entry room was, top to bottom, crammed with artifacts. Bookshelves filled with more than just books lined all four walls of the living space, leaving room for a loveseat, chair, and side table floating in the room’s center. The table was piled with more books, thick ones in leather bindings, thin ones in paper, and a title she couldn’t translate because it was in French.
Clearly he was a dumbass. Not.
The whole chaotic effect, though, was so overwhelming she longed for a computer to start cataloging the whole mess. How did he find anything in here?
Shawn strolled through an archway into what looked like a kitchen area with, somehow, even more books. The table itself had what almost looked like a fort of paperwork built around a single clear area about the size of a small desk. He dropped his bag—not a laptop case—onto an empty chair and set a teakettle on to boil.
“Not a technology fan, eh?”
That got a smile. “Technology has its place. But it has a tendency to take over our lives.” He came back into the living area and waved his hand around the beautiful disaster of a space. “Why would I want that when I could have this?”
She figured the question was best left unanswered, so she just smiled with her mouth closed.
“Can I get you something to eat? Tea? I brought back some gyokuro from a plantation in Fukuoka when I was there last year.”
Feeling every bit the street rat she was, Giselle laughed uncomfortably. “I have no idea what you just said.”
He blushed ever so slightly in a way that made her feel less self-conscious. “Sorry. Green tea from southern Japan.”
“Oh. Uh, sure. I like trying new things.” Was she really going to drink this guy’s tea, then steal his book? Could she even steal it now that he’d seen her? Crap. Thieving was really not her forte. Not that she’d ever wanted it to be.
He motioned at the loveseat, a slim piece with leather cushions and a modular look. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
She sat as directed and gazed at the books, wondering how many of them he’d actually read and how many were for show or in a wishful-thinking, to-be-read pile. Again she noticed titles not in English—not in French, either. Dude must be really smart. Going to college apparently meant she was going to spend four years surrounded by brilliant, rich people who’d been all over the world. Laissez les bons temps rouler.
See? She spoke French.
Behind her, the clap of Shawn’s hands startled her, and she spun to look over the chairback.
“I’m sorry,” Shawn said, rubbing his hands somewhat frantically before determinedly placing them behind his back. “This is about the trade, right? Did she find Osoosi?” The light in his eyes brightened with so much hope.
Was that a god’s name? It had that old, unpronounceable thing so many of them had in common. “Osoosi’s godstone?” She tried to copy his pronunciation—Oh-show-see—and was happy when Shawn nodded. She’d never heard of him or her, but she was getting the idea there were a freaking lot of gods. Maybe she should, like, get a book about them or something. “We’re trading Osoosi’s godstone for the book.” She tried to state her guess with confidence, and based on the eager way he stepped toward her, she must’ve succeeded.
He wiped his palms on his jeans and sat in the chair, leaning forward. “Yeah.”
“Not a drum-playing Aztec god, huh?”
A lot of his hope crashed into disappointment as he deflated back into the chair. “Aren’t they, the Aztecs... crazy? Human sacrifices in appalling numbers and such?” He shook his head. “I’ve seen Pope Maui’s series. I don’t want a violent god like Ishtar.”
She would not shrink into herself at the mention of that video. Stay strong. “Uh... Nah, Huehuecoyotl’s not so bad. He just likes transforming into random beasties and playing drums.” Rather poorly, too. “At least, I hope that’s all he likes.” So far Coyote—her version anyway—hadn’t shown any homicidal tendencies. And she should know homicidal, being the daughter of an executed murderess.
That wasn’t a funny joke.
“But if you don’t want that one, that’s okay because, uh...” She rubbed her forehead and collapsed back into the chair. Intrigue was not working for her on any level. “Okay, so I—we—got Huehuecoyotl’s godstone, but it literally rolled itself to someone else’s feet. The stone picked an owner. I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it.”
“Oh. Wow.” He looked to the side, hands still rubbing with nervous energy. The teakettle whistled, and he got up. “They can pick, huh? She never said that.”
“Andromeda fails to mention things every so often,” she muttered, but at Shawn’s chuckle, she knew he’d heard.
A couple minutes later he was back with two cups of tea in floral china and a plate of Oreos. “Sorry I don’t have anything nicer. I wasn’t expecting company.”
Feeling suddenly a lot more comfortable, she scooped up a cookie and cracked it open to lick the inside. “I love these.” Tucking her feet under her, she smiled sympathetically at him as she swallowed the sugary center. “So you’ve got a god in mind, huh? I didn’t know that.”
Shawn tipped his head to the side. “You work with Andromeda?”
“I...” She didn’t want to flat out lie, but her connection to Ande was all she had going for her here. And she wasn’t entirely sure it was severed completely. Maybe there was a reason, a compelling reason, why her mentor had tried to drug and seduce Coyote and then shoot him... even if the whole scenario twisted her up inside. The idea of Coyote and Ande going at it on the living room couch while she was forced to listen from the bedroom had kept her up way too late last night wanting to scream.
The conduit was too cute for his own good. Or for her own good, anyway.
Shawn’s brow rose at her hesitation. “Do tell.”
He seemed like a genuinely good guy. Maybe someone she didn’t have to steal the book from. She decided to risk a little more truth. “I have been working for her. But we had a bit of a falling out over this. I said that if the stone chose its conduit, that person should keep it. But she wanted it back to”—she took a calculated risk—“trade with you for the book. I didn’t know she’d offered you a different god.”
He swallowed and shook his head. “She hadn’t offered me someone specific. I just said that if she could find Osoosi—he’s been missing for nearly a century...” He sighed, hesitating, then hopped up and brought a book back from the dining room table. He flipped to the first of two bookmarked pages. “This is Osoosi.”
The book. The one she needed. Giselle looked where he was pointing as she cogitated on how to convince him to give it up.
A lean man in loose, colorful pants with skin even darker than Shawn’s deep umber posed with a bow and arrow, as if tracking an animal, in a compelling display of strong but thoughtful masculinity. What looked like starbursts or tiny globes of light encircled him, and a leopard walked beside him. Next to the image, swirling text in some other alphabet probably said something about the picture, but hell if she knew what. Despite the unintelligibility of it all, she was impressed.
“I can see why you’d want that more than Huehuecoyotl.” She started to reach for the book, then realized she had Oreo dust all over her hands and refrained. “This is the conduit book?” Because if it was, the lack of English was going to be a problem. Why she’d assumed it would be in English was a different question, best answered with “Because I’m an idiot.”
“Huehue...” Shawn trailed off as he flipped pages until he found another page, with a raven-haired man in something resembling the white skirt and feathered headdress Coyote sported, just with a little more length to the skirt. This one also wore a boxy shirt th
at seemed out of place. The picture’s style tried to look like Mesoamerican art without actually getting it, as if the same artist had done all the illustrations and he wasn’t from Mexico.
“Can you read this?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. I mean, a little. With a dictionary.” He shrugged. “I haven’t even tried with this entry. Frankly, Aztec gods never really interested me.”
She nodded, running with that. “So that never would’ve been a good match for you to begin with.”
He shook his head and sat back, leaving the book on the table as he idly grabbed a cookie. “No. Not really.” He looked down as he thoughtfully chewed, then swallowed. “Although I guess it’s better than nothing, right?”
She thought about it for a moment. If she couldn’t be Freyja, would she be someone else? The question had never occurred to her. Freyja was her legacy, the only thing she had of Bryn, her real mother—the one who’d taken care of her for the first few years of her life before the woman had been murdered. Some other goddess wouldn’t be the same. But maybe if her godstone wasn’t tied up in family history, it wouldn’t matter to her so much.
Would she even want one if it hadn’t been forced on her?
Yes. She would. And she’d want Freyja. Even though it was dangerous, Freyja was the best part of her life.
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, if I understand correctly, you have an intimate connection to a god. Having a connection to the wrong one or even to one that you had no feelings for, I think that would be a mistake.”
He swished his mouth thoughtfully at her. “You have a point.”
Feeling more confident, or at least more able to fake confidence, she pointed at the book. “If you feel like you have a connection to this African hunter guy, maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe he’s choosing you.”