by R. J. Blain
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Hey,” he whispered back.
I put my hand on his thigh, and he immediately dropped his palm over mine. Our fingers laced together, and his thumb found the inside of my wrist, stroking gently there.
A chill washed over me, and I leaned my shoulder into his, enjoying his weight as he leaned back.
“What’d I miss?” he whispered.
I handed him the paper. He read through it, and his eyebrows knitted. “Huh.”
Bertie hadn’t missed a beat or stopped talking. She was still spinning the details of how she was going to merge the Slammin’ Salmon parade with something that involved a town-wide, cosplay-treasure hunt, and I was listening. Really, I was.
But only with a part of me, the police officer part of me that was calculating how we’d handle traffic, lost kids, and shoplifting.
The rest of me, the most of me, was zeroed in on the pad of Ryder’s thumb. The soft stroke across my wrist, over and over, bringing me out of my mind, out of my worries, back again and again to my body. To sitting right here, in this moment, with him.
I felt my shoulders relax, my breathing settle. A soft tingle radiated deep in my belly. This, now, was familiar. A part of my life that I never wanted to change. Both of us together, holding on no matter what ridiculous events were headed our way. Both of us connected, alive.
“Sign-up sheets are here to the right,” Bertie called out, “and I strongly encourage each of you to sign up for at least one event. When we all work together, we can make great things happen. Also,” she went on before anyone could bolt for the door, “suggestions, comments, and ideas are vital to the success of these events.
“Please do not be shy. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you need or expect from these events, and I will take it into consideration. If anyone would like to discuss something in more depth, I will be here for another hour.”
The room filled with conversation, and Ryder turned toward me. “Wanna sign up now, or after everyone’s picked the good stuff?”
“You forget there is no good stuff,” Jean said, leaning around me. “What’s the latest idea, almost-bro?”
“Cabin in the mountains. Solitude. Quiet. Just the two of us. Snow, fir trees, and a hot tub. Heaven.”
“Nice,” she said. “Don’t you think that’s nice, Delaney? Super nice?”
“Super nice,” I agreed, meaning it. “Let’s sign up. We don’t want to miss out on that bowling-league-burger-and-balloon-ride thing.”
Jean laughed. “Do you think she’ll let us bowl from the hot air balloons? Because I am in for it, like a million.”
“I think there’s a rule about dropping bowling balls out of the sky,” I said. “And if there’s not, I’m making one.”
I was already on my feet, but Ryder stayed sitting for a moment, our hands still clasped.
I glanced down at him. “What?”
A small smile curved his lips, but he just shook his head. “Nothing.” He tugged on my hand, once, then made to let go. Suddenly I didn’t want that.
“Hey,” I said. I leaned down, and he narrowed his eyes.
“What are you up to, future Mrs. Bailey?”
“This.” I kissed him, and knew he hadn’t expected it, because he tensed up for just a second before his mouth softened and he kissed me back.
This was where I belonged. This was us, together. And my world, spinning on the axis of us, set everything right, made everything good.
When I pulled away, his eyes were soft. “What was that for?”
“I love you,” I said, still not straightening fully, wanting to keep this moment just for us. “You know that, don’t you?”
If I hadn’t known him for all my life, I wouldn’t have noticed the slight hitch in his breathing, wouldn’t have noticed the tightening of the skin at the corners of his eyes.
“I do. And I love you too,” he said.
I nodded, but that hitch had made my world wobble again. The fear of not being able to get out of town fast enough collided with the fear of not doing my job to keep Ordinary safe. My stomach turned.
“Hey,” he said, seeing me as well as I had seen him. “We’ll figure it out. It’s a vacation, Laney. That’s supposed to be a fun thing, remember? No stress.”
I nodded, but everything in me tossed and turned, as restless as the January rain.
He stood, keeping our hands together, as unwilling as I to release this connection. “What were you talking to Than about?” he asked, as we joined the line at the sign-up sheets.
“Frigg’s ready to pass the baton.” Since we were among humans who didn’t know about the supernatural people in their town, discretion was necessary.
“Who’s next?” he asked. That was something else I loved about Ryder. He had only found out about the magical, godly, supernatural side of Ordinary a couple years ago. But he’d immediately become both wildly curious about it and also wildly protective.
I gave his hand a squeeze. “Than.”
“Ah,” he said, catching on. “First time, right?”
“Yep.”
“Expecting trouble?”
“I don’t think so, but well. First time.”
“Mmmm,” he said. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“All right. Any plans after that?”
“Some things have been stolen and there’s something weird about some storage units…”
He raised an eyebrow and just looked at me. It was devastating.
An apology almost escaped my mouth, but I wasn’t even sure what I was apologizing for. I couldn’t help that I was a required part of the powers being transferred to a new resting place. I couldn’t help the thefts or the general town weirdness.
“Dinner?” I asked, holding tight.
“Yes?”
“Did you have something planned?”
“I put something in the oven,” he hedged.
“Will it hold?”
“It will. Why?”
“How about you and I do a little romantic stakeout together?”
“You think stakeouts are romantic?”
“If you’re with me they are.”
For a minute, I thought I’d overstepped. That even mentioning my work—his work, too, since he was a reserve officer—was too much when we’d been trying to ditch this town and flee.
But then a smile brightened his face and put a wicked little gleam in his eye. “Sounds like fun. You going to tell me who we’re spying on?”
“It’s reconnaissance, not spying. And I think it would be better for you to see it with your own eyes.”
Chapter Six
“Trench coat?” Ryder, next to me in the Jeep, asked.
“Bad weather. A trench coat doesn’t really stand out.”
“With the fedora and black gloves and sunglasses?”
I picked up my binoculars and zoomed in on the suspect who was tromping into the grocery store.
“Okay, yeah. It’s a little noticeable.”
“I expected more hair,” Ryder said, his own binoculars trained on the store.
We both watched as Bigfoot sneezed into the crook of his elbow violently enough to knock his hat off.
“He’s wearing the spell necklace,” I said.
“What’s the spell?”
“Makes him look human to other humans.”
Ryder adjusted the focus. “Okay. A very hairy guy, but yeah, I guess I can see it.”
“You’re more than just human. God-touched,” I said. “So you see more than most.”
“I see a really tall hairy guy in a trench coat having an allergy attack.”
“Yeah, that’s the drawback.”
“What?”
“He’s allergic to magic.”
There was a pause while he digested that. “Bigfoot’s allergic to magic?”
“Yeah, and Bigfoot’s a family name. His personal name is Flip.”
Another, longer pause. “Bigfoot’s name is Fli
p.”
“But since he’s the only Bigfoot in town, he just goes by the family name.”
“So there are more?” Ryder asked. “Bigfoots. Bigfeet?”
“Foots. Yeah. They do a family reunion thing every so many years. Not in Ordinary. This year is the reunion year.”
“When?”
“Soon, I think. It’s a complicated thing involving moon cycles and hair growth.”
He grunted.
“Right around the beginning of the year anyway.” I shrugged. “We’re in the ballpark.”
“All right. And you think he might have taken the streetlight?”
“Honestly, no. It’s not like him. Light bulbs, yes. Traffic signals? He’s never stolen anything other than bulbs. Why would he start stealing such large, obvious, and expensive things now?”
“For the family reunion? Maybe that’s how the Bigfoots show they’re successful? Whoever can steal the biggest light wins?”
I chuckled. “He’s never said anything about that kind of thing, and Myra’s looked through all the records. Stealing traffic signals—for any reason—isn’t in them.”
“Yeah, well, people can surprise you. The kinds of things they don’t want to talk about.”
I held my breath for a minute, then lowered my binoculars. “I… should apologize. For avoiding you and avoiding talking about our vacation.”
He rested his binoculars on the dashboard. “You’ve talked about it. I seem to recall a lot of ‘Later,’ and ‘I don’t like that one,’ and ‘It’s so busy this time of year.’”
I winced. “Yeah, that’s basically what I need to talk about. All my excuses.”
I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jeans and licked my lips. I wanted to get this right. I wanted him to know this wasn’t about us. Well, it was, but it wasn’t about me loving him, because that was solid. I was solid with that. Unshakable.
It was more about me trying to figure out how to let go of my responsibilities. Just for a few days.
“Hey.” Ryder’s hand landed on the back of my neck, sliding under my long ponytail and gently squeezing the tight muscles there and sending a trickle of heat down my spine. “I love you, you know that, right?” he asked.
I blew out a breath. “I know. I love you too.” It came out wooden, like I’d never said it before, like someone else was using my mouth without my consent.
I groaned. “This is not going how I wanted it to go.”
His hand stilled. After a heartbeat, two, his palm flexed again, kneading muscle. “Us?” he asked.
I twisted so quickly, his hand dislodged. “No! Not us. We—” I pointed between us, “—we’re good. We’re going where we want us to go. Right?” I asked, trying and failing to hold his steady gaze. “We’re still good?”
His fingertips were back, stroking across my neck, calloused from the build he’d just completed. He’d remodeled a little Tudor-style home that had suffered through a parade of owners who all thought bigger and more modern was better. They had ‘trend-chased the original design right off a cliff.’
He was an architect, yes, but here in Ordinary, hands-on builds were the bread and butter of his business. Plus, he couldn’t keep his mitts off a tool belt if he tried.
“We’re good,” he said soft and low, enough burr in his voice for me to feel it under my skin, warming me. “But you’re still not telling me where you want to go on vacation.”
This was it, my chance to tell him how I was really feeling. We were going to be married. I needed to be up front with how I felt and what I needed from him. Just like I expected him to be up front with me.
“I want to go on vacation tomorrow,” I said, as evenly as I could. “But I don’t know if I can.”
He drew his fingertips away. I immediately missed their warmth. “Okay.”
I waited for him to say more, for him to ask why. Instead, he just picked up his binoculars and trained them back on the store.
I was sitting right next to him. There couldn’t be more than a foot between us. The darkness of night—hastened by the storm, but always early at this time of year—closed us in. Gave us this intimate space.
And yet, I had never felt farther away from him. I hesitated, then picked up my binoculars and pointed them in Bigfoot’s general direction.
“So what’s our play?” Ryder asked.
“I think we need to sneak out in the middle of the night before anyone can find me and try to give me some new situation only I can handle.”
“With Bigfoot,” Ryder said. “What’s our play with Bigfoot? He’s checking out.”
I felt the blood rise to heat my cheeks and adjusted the binoculars. “Okay,” I said. “It just looks like groceries in his cart.”
“You expected something else?”
“Not really, but then again, I didn’t expect to be trailing Bigfoot with my fiancé in the middle of a storm.”
“It’s an exciting life you live, Delaney Reed.”
“Maybe… maybe too exciting,” I said quietly.
Instead of answering, his hand slid across the console to rest, warm and heavy, on my thigh.
“No. Exciting’s good. What do we do with our possible suspect, Chief?”
“I say we just go ask him if he stole the lights. Flip has a bit of a language barrier with English, but he is honest and tends to interpret things literally. So we should get a straight answer out of him.”
The wind shoveled rain across the parking lot. Huge, fat drops bounced off concrete like a million glass marbles.
We were going to have flooding for sure. The rivers couldn’t take this much rain all at one go this late into the rainy season. I made a mental checklist to be sure we had eyes on the main highway and people ready to respond to downed trees, mud slides, and flooded roads.
“You think he’ll tell you the truth?” Ryder asked.
I popped my hood up and latched the neck closure into place. “Let’s find out.”
Ryder had his hood up too. We got out and made quick work of intercepting Flip at his truck.
Bigfoot drove a beat-up Ford that blended right in with the cars in town. He’d parked under a tree where the streetlamp above threw more shadows than light. I scanned the open truck bed. Other than a toolbox bungeed down in the corner, it was empty.
Flip pushed the cart across the parking lot at speed, those long legs giving his lumbering gait a kind of grace one wouldn’t expect from a cryptid his size.
Somehow his hat stayed jammed on his head despite the wind, but his trench coat was absolutely soaked by the time he reached us.
“Oh, hello,” he said, his voice always a surprisingly soft singsong. As if he were more used to conversing with the sky or the wind or the small growing things below the trees than with people. With how reclusive he was, that was a pretty fair assessment.
“Hi, Flip,” I said. “Let me introduce you to Ryder Bailey.” I lined up my thoughts, wanting to get the order right for Flip: outward from the heart. “He is my love, my fiancé, a builder, and a reserve officer.”
“Hi there, Ryder,” Flip said.
“Nice to meet you,” Ryder said. I could hear the excitement in his voice. For all that Ryder liked to play it cool about the magic and supernaturals in town, he was still new enough to it to be surprised and delighted when he met a new supernatural.
And let’s face it, what person in the Pacific Northwest wouldn’t want to meet the real Bigfoot?
Or at least one of them.
“This is business,” I said, framing the conversation for Flip. My family had learned early on that details and, sometimes even subjects, got lost between Bigfoot’s language and English.
“Business, is this?” he asked.
I nodded. “Someone stole a traffic light. Red, yellow, green.” I held my hands so I could show him the approximate size of the thing. “Did you steal the traffic light?”
Flip frowned, which was a weird mashing of the spell-created human face, and his natural features which I could see
beneath the spell.
“Steal the light, is that right?” he asked.
“That is right. Did you steal it?”
He shook his head slowly, then a little firmer. “Not I, no lie.” He pressed his fingertips to his lips to further let me know he was telling the truth.
Then his eyes went big and watery. He turned his head just in time to heave a mighty sneeze, knocking his hat sideways.
“Okay, we don’t want you to stay under that spell for any longer,” I said. “I know you’re allergic to it.”
“Witches itches,” he sputtered between two more huge sneezes.
“Just one quick thing,” I said. “Someone took a light pole too. Did you steal a light pole?”
He shook his head, pressed fingers to his lips, his nostrils quivering, before he went off on another sneezing jag.
“Here,” Ryder said. “Let’s get your stuff in the truck.”
We quickly helped him unload his cart into the cab. There was hot cocoa in there and marshmallows. A lot of marshmallows. Flip slid into the driver’s side and pawed off the spell necklace, placing it carefully on the seat but as far away as he could.
Then he shook, a full body shiver from the ankles up to his head, and he was in his natural state. Bigfoot, in a busted-down old Ford truck, wearing a trench coat and a fedora.
Good thing he’d parked under the shadow of the tree.
Good thing a rainstorm was raging.
Good thing there weren’t a lot of shoppers out.
Good thing I was standing close to Ryder, because I got to hear his little delighted gasp.
I smiled and mimed rolling down the window. Flip nodded and did so.
“If you see anyone taking the light structures in town, please let me know as soon as you can.”
“I will, but still. It is our gathering we will be… havering… having.” He frowned again, and worked his mouth, thinking through the translations in his head.
I made a note to myself that I should really learn his language, but I just wasn’t that good with whistles, purrs, and grunts.
“The moon is soon.” He pointed at the roof of his truck, to where the moon might be if there weren’t so many clouds in the sky. “I am off to our glen, where it will begin. The gathering we ’Foots will be… havering?” He frowned and tipped his head slightly.