Dead Letter Day (32 page)

“In the car accident with her husband,” I said. “Yeah. I know.”

“Tragic, right? Totally devastating.”

I agreed. Who wouldn’t?

“So Inge kept going to the spot where the accident happened, up on State Route 89. She’d go there after the two older boys went to school and she’d sit there and cry. It was awful.” Jenny made a face. “I mean, I couldn’t blame her, but it’s not something you want to hear day in and day out, and that kind of grief echoes through the woods around here like you would not believe.”

I did believe. I knew how it echoed through me anytime I was near her, and she was trying to hold it in then.

“So one day, I guess it was all too much for her and she decided she was going to end it all.”

“Commit suicide?”

Jenny nodded. “Yep. She had a gun. She had a note. She was going to shuffle off this mortal coil.”

“What about the other children? The other two boys?”

“I’m not sure. I guess there are relatives she thought would take them and she thought that living with her in this state would be worse for them than not having her at all.”

I recoiled, physically from recoiled Jenny. My hand went protectively to my ever-so-slight bump that was forming right below my belly button. I couldn’t imagine it. I hadn’t even met this little person yet and the idea of leaving him or her without a parent in a world this crazy and unpredictable made me shudder.

Jenny looked down at my stomach and then back up at me. “Are you…?”

So much for keeping my own counsel. “Yeah. Is it starting to show?”

“Only when you stare at it like it’s sending you messages.” She smirked.

It sort of was. I looked back at Jenny.

“Seriously? Messages?” She leaned back and stared at me openly now.

“Sort of.” I took a chance. “Have you ever heard of anything like that before?”

She crinkled her brow. “Yeah. I have. It’s not, like, talking to you, is it? Because I’ve found that that doesn’t come to much good.”

“Not talking. There’s been some zapping, though.”

She snorted. “Nice. Already kicking butt and taking names while in the womb.” She reached over and patted my stomach. “Nice work, little one.”

There was a flutter of response. Jenny felt it, too. I saw her eyes widen.

“See?” I said.

“I do. You want to know the rest of the Inge story, though?”

I blew out a breath. “I do. What stopped her?”

“Frigga stopped her.”

That surprised me. A lot. The days of gods and goddesses meddling in the lives of mere mortals tended to be things of the past. “Wow. How’d that happen?” Not just any goddess either. Frigga, wife of Odin. That was some pretty big goddess cheese.

“I guess Frigga had heard her in the woods and been moved by her grief. It is her blood, after all. Plus, Frigga lost a son, too. She knows how much that hurts,” Jenny pointed out.

I was a little rusty on my Norse mythology. “Which son did she lose?”

“Baldur. Loki killed him with a mistletoe arrow and it was, in a way, Frigga’s fault. She didn’t get a promise from the mistletoe not to harm Baldur and she told Loki about it, too.” Jenny shook her head.

It was coming back to me. Frigga saw that in the future Baldur would be killed so she tried to change his fate. She ran around getting promises from everything not to harm him, but somehow missed the mistletoe. Loki, the sneaky bastard, made a dart of it and tricked someone else yet into using it to kill Baldur. Seriously, why did they keep that Loki guy around? He caused nothing but trouble. “So Frigga stopped Inge. How?”

“It was pretty cool. There was this huge crack of thunder and then she was there in the woods. She took the gun from
Inge and gathered her up in her arms and just held her for a while.”

“Then what?”

Jenny shrugged. “What do you mean? That was it. Inge didn’t off herself.”

I’d worked as a clerk in the emergency department long enough to know that if someone was serious about killing herself, stopping her one time was not going to do the trick. We’ve had more than our share of frequent flyers in the self-harming department and I’m pretty sure that’s true of every emergency room in the country. Stopping someone once would be like buying a hamburger for someone who is starving. You gotta show up with another hamburger tomorrow, too. “How did you hear about all this?”

Jenny waved a long, narrow hand in the air vaguely. “Word gets around.”

I heard the sound of voices come from behind the house.

Jenny’s face lit up. “That’ll be Willow and the others. You can say hello.”

Jenny ducked into the cabin and came out a few minutes later followed by a radiant Willow. Seriously radiant. It was as if there was an actual light inside her that was beaming out at me. “Melina,” she cried and ran over and hugged me.

“Hey, Willow,” I said, my arms reaching up to pat her on the back. That was the right way to do that, wasn’t it? The pat thing?

“Jenny says you’re expecting.” She held me out at arm’s length. “Let me see. Oh, you’re not showing at all.”

“I’m sure that’ll change soon.” I wasn’t completely looking forward to that part. I’d become pretty accustomed to my own personal center of gravity. I wasn’t excited about it shifting.

“You’ll have to come back and see us again when it does. I can’t wait to see you all fat and swollen.” She giggled.

“You look pretty amazing,” I said, changing the subject.

“It’s a reflection of how I feel. I can’t even begin to tell you what this has been like. I feel more at home in my own skin than I have ever felt in my life. Ever. It’s fantastic. I’m so grateful to you for helping Jenny get that message to me.”

“It’s my job, Willow. It’s no big deal.”

She hugged me again. “I know better. I know you checked on me. That’s not your job. That’s kindness and I appreciate it. If you ever need a favor that I can do, I hope you’ll ask.”

I assured her I would. I have to admit, I don’t mind having a few chits owed to me out there. It tends to work in my favor. I said good-bye and left, chewing over what Jenny had told me about Inge.

An actual descendant of the Norse gods, living in our midst and running a yarn shop of all things. Although I suppose for a daughter of Frigga, weaver of clouds, that was only appropriate. Maybe that was where Inge got her facility with yarn. Some skills gets passed down.

Frigga had to have done something besides stop Inge from killing herself, but what? I knew what I would have asked for in Inge’s place. I would want some assurance I would never have to feel like that again. I would want protection for my two remaining children and I’d want it as fast as I could get it.

I HEADED BACK TO SACRAMENTO TO WORK MY SHIFT AT the hospital. It was a surprisingly quiet night. I even managed to take a little nap in one of the waiting rooms halfway through the night. I could use a few more like this one.

After my shift, I made my way up to where my car was
parked, as always, on the top of the garage, open to the sky. My heart fell a little when I saw a box sitting on the hood of the Buick.

It had an address and a time written on it. I sighed. Generally, no one gave me a specific time that something had to be delivered. This was new and, honestly, kind of irritating. I mean, it was bad enough that I had to take time out of my schedule to deliver whatever was in that little box, but to be told exactly when I had to be there was particularly irksome. Good thing that whoever wanted it delivered had picked a time that I didn’t have to be at the dojo or the hospital.

I squinted at the address. It rang a bell, but I couldn’t remember why. I supposed it didn’t matter anyway. It’s not like I wasn’t going to deliver it.

I pulled out my cell phone and texted Ted: “Have delivery 2 make. Home by 8.”

I got in the car and started the engine. My phone dinged. Ted had answered: “Gr8. C u l8r.” I checked my watch. I should just go make the delivery. At the most, I’d be five minutes early. Surely whatever goblin or ghoul required their package to be delivered at a specific time wouldn’t be upset with me being early.

I needn’t have worried. Traffic snarled up on I-5 the second I merged onto it. There are worse roads to be on than I-5. You could be stuck on the causeway between Davis and Sacramento. You could be crawling up Highway 50 to Lake Tahoe on the Friday afternoon of a three-day weekend. That’s really about it, though. Five can totally suck.

I finally exited off onto Sutterville Road and headed east. I’m not entirely unfamiliar with this neighborhood. A lot of denizens of the dark choose to live in kind of questionable areas, and this one definitely fit that definition. It’s not like I had a choice or like I hadn’t had to go to worse places.
I mean, it was still California. The grass in the yards was still green and the streets were wide and clean, but there was no escaping the difference between this ’hood and the one where I grew up in the Pocket. For one thing, there weren’t any gang tags sprayed on the walls in the Pocket.

I checked the address again. I had to be getting close. I started feeling an extra layer of unease. I knew why the street was extra familiar. I was getting close to the park where I’d first seen the
kiang shi
, the Chinese vampires that had been unleashed on a Latino gang in an effort to start a gang war in Sacramento.

They’d darn near succeeded, too.

The
kiang shi
were no longer a threat, though. They hadn’t been for a while. Their arrival in Sacramento had turned my life upside down and given it a good hard teeth-rattling shake. In fact, without the
kiang shi
, I wouldn’t be contemplating unwed motherhood now. Stupid Chinese vampires.

I checked the numbers on the businesses I was driving past. I should be at the address in a block or two. What or who on earth could have wanted me to make a delivery down here and why why why did it have to be at precisely 7:30
A.M.
?

Okay. Here it was. Good bats in the belfry. It was a 7-Eleven. I pulled into a parking place. At least I could get a cold bottle of water while I waited. I got out of the car and noticed a trail of red rose petals leading around the side of the store. Did I smell cookies, too?

A trail of bloodred flower petals almost certainly had to be a message to me. It was weird, though. I wasn’t getting a tingle. I had gotten a weird stomach flip-flop, but maybe that was the baby. I hadn’t exactly been experiencing the rock-solid digestion I was used to having. Was I delivering
this completely unmagical package to an unmagical being? It would be way too much to bear if I suddenly had to start making deliveries to ’Danes as well as ’Canes. Way too much. If I had a union rep, I would be on the phone to him or her right this very second and I would be making a complaint.

I didn’t have a union rep, though, so instead I trudged around the corner on the trail of rose petals.

Ted was standing by the pay phone.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around. Something was waiting here for me to make a delivery and it had wanted it right now. It wouldn’t be good for Ted to get in the way.

“I’m here to take the box you’re carrying,” he said. I looked him up and down and noticed he was standing in a puddle of rose petals.

“The delivery is for you?” I stared more. Was this some kind of shapeshifter taking the form of my boyfriend? No way. I would totally have been getting some kind of tingle. Instead I was getting the distinct smell of vanilla that always seemed to surround Ted.

“Yes.” He smiled. He reached out his hand. “Could I have the box?”

I handed it over. “What’s going on?”

He held up one finger and unwrapped the box. Inside was another box. A little velvety box. The kind of little velvety box that jewelers give you a ring in. He dropped down to one knee. “Melina Markowitz, you have driven me crazier than any person has ever dared and that is saying something. You have challenged me. You have thwarted me. You have made me want to tear my hair out. I have never been happier than I am with you. Will you marry me?”

I stared at him. “Now? Now you’re proposing?”

He stared back at me. “What’s wrong with now?”

I stared at him. “Now? Now you finally do this?”

He blinked a few times. “It takes a little while to get a ring, Melina. I wanted to do it right.”

“So all this time that you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder and shutting me out while I felt more alone than I’ve ever felt in my life, you were planning this?”

“I wasn’t shutting you out. I was trying to keep a secret. You’re hard to keep secrets from. Maybe because you keep so many of your own.” His eyes were starting to narrow, but he was still down there on one knee.

“You’re doing this here? Why here?” I gestured to the dirty parking lot and the gang tags on the walls of the 7-Eleven. It wasn’t exactly romantic.

“It was the first place I ever saw you. You made your anonymous call to 911 from this pay phone.” He was still on his knee.

“You were looking at me on a surveillance tape. Creepy, much?” I asked.

“Are you seriously calling me creepy? You were calling 911 to report that Chinese vampires were ripping apart gang members like one of your mother’s briskets.”