Silver and Salt(29)
“Nope, for the stealing. Trying to steal our money.” For the annoying, too, but annoying wasn’t officially punishable by death in any religion. I’d asked Trixa, because that would be a convenient loophole. As a trickster, Trixa knew everything there was to know about loopholes. It was irritating that not one single religion included something as widespread as annoying, but I still had the stealing to go with. Stealing, lying, murder. Mr. Census had a ton of sin covered. It didn’t matter which one I punished him for. I picked stealing, as that was a sin against me, but if he’d only stolen, I wouldn’t have gone for the death penalty. Griffin had finally gotten that one through my head after a few years, but this asswipe had done the other things, and dead is dead. I didn’t think the corpse cared which road it took to get to the mortician, but I’d be a little more satisfied. Everything worked out that way. It feels better smiting and shit when it’s personal.
Getting to say “smiting” was the only good thing about being an ex-angel.
“Good plan, right?” I grinned at Griffin, forgetting for the moment about the look and Mrs. Pepperhorn and that somehow, someway, I’d screwed up.
The smile disappeared and became something else. It was a twitch. Then it was two twitches and, damn, a third. I saw it on his face and heard his thought behind it in my mind. I sighed, echoing that thought. “Not right?”
No, it was not right, plan-wise or any other-wise.
That sunk in fast when Griffin waved the garbage truck past us while reaching for his phone to call Trixa and Leo. It didn’t stop me from grumbling under my breath and giving the garbage can a kick now and again as we waited. None of our neighbors, at least none of them awake from an alcoholic or drug stupor, came out to investigate the increasingly hoarse and aggravating wails of “Don’t kill me! Please, don’t kill me!” Our neighbors knew better than to get involved in anyone else’s business around here. Especially ours.
I didn’t care what Trixa said. There had to be a religion where annoying was punished by stoning or something. Had to be.
Finally, she and Leo showed up in his pickup truck. Trixa called it his penis extension. I liked it. The truck, not Leo’s penis. I’d never seen his dick, but I knew I liked big trucks, big guns, pretty much big anything. Trixa had told me that was a problem I’d have to work out between Griffin and me. I still hadn’t figured out what that problem was supposed to be. Big things are cool. What’s wrong with that? Although if Leo was somehow strapping his truck to his penis, there might be something weird with that whole thing. I’d have to Google it later.
Griffin gave me both a pointed glare and thought to go with it that had me stepping to help Leo pick up the garbage can and the garbage in it to toss in the back of the truck. Leo, once known as Loki, usually gave me a semi-hard time about some of my “social problems,” but on this, he flashed me an amused grin. “I like this one. It has its own poetic trickery to it. I could’ve used you at Ragnarok.”
I rubbed the dust from the can onto my jeans, remembering the one time he’d called in a favor from his particular pantheon. “I don’t know. Thor’s bleach fumes made my eyes water. It put off my aim.” The stench of his spray-on orange tan hadn’t been much better.
Leo liked that. He really despised his relatives, foster or not. I hadn’t liked Thor either, if you could dislike an unconscious lump. With the god of thunder, disliking an unconscious lump was easy.
But the hard pinch to my ribs said somebody didn’t like anything about this at all. Trixa pinched again, avoiding my swatting hand. “Kit, you have done it now. A census taker? Honestly?”
“And an adulterer, a murderer, a child abuser, and a cat kicker,” Griffin added quickly, all for my sake.
Trixa waved her hand in dismissal, scattering all that like scarlet butterflies. Huh. In a way, that’s what she was—a bright red-and-gold butterfly but with a lethal bite. That made me think. I dug in my pocket. I’d worn these jeans yesterday and they’d still passed the sniff test this morning—it should be there. Triumphant, I pulled out a crumpled paper butterfly from Chinatown. Forget that in Vegas it was a strip mall, Chinatown was still Chinatown. The butterfly was a bright shade of red with gold foil around the edges of the bent wings. I handed it to her. “I know you like red.” I scuffed my sneaker against the concrete. “And things that fly.”
She looked at the small bit of paper in her palm, shook her head and gently took a handful of my own red hair, bending my head to place a kiss on my forehead. “All is forgiven. But no more government workers, Kit. That’s attention you don’t want, okay? Remember that. Be sneaky like the fox you are. We’ll pay this guy off. He can’t disappear. His supervisor has his schedule. The police would know this was the last place he didn’t make it into or out of, so to speak. And I like you guys in Vegas where I can keep an eye on you. I don’t want you on the run.”
“Pay him off?” I growled. “Griffin said: murderer, adulterer, child abuser, cat kicker, and nosy *. He’s the one who has to pay.”
She cupped a hand and whispered in my ear, “He will, Kit. His name is on my list, and in a few months when this is mostly forgotten and he’s burning through the money, I’ll pay him a visit. I’ll show him the error of his ways, teach him the lesson he deserves.”