Death and Relaxation (Ordinary Magic #1)(50)

Even more interestingly, we found him in the company of both Lila Carson and her sister Margot Lapointe.

They sat in the corner booth, mostly out of sight of the rest of the diners, though I noted the bartender, Nick, a mortal, was keeping a close eye on them.

I gave Nick a nod as Jean and I walked over to Chris and company.

“Delaney Reed,” Chris said, drawing out my name with more Louisiana than I’d heard out of him in a while. “Have yourself a seat. Have yourself a drink.”

Chris wore a black shirt with a black band tied around his upper arm. A petrified shark’s tooth centered his chest, hanging from a chain I knew was very old, and pure gold. It was an ancient talisman. I knew he wore it whenever a god died.

He’d once told me it was a symbol for life and death, a reminder that there was always something out there bigger than you that could, and likely would, kill you and eat you.

“I need to talk to you, Chris. Business.”

“Do you need us to go?” Margot asked.

Margot and Lila looked like sisters if you compared their pointed chins, petite noses, and the shape of their eyes. But while Margot was blonde with loopy curls held that way by lots of product, Lila’s hair was brunette and worn straight. They must have had a girls’ day out and both gotten multicolored feather extensions scattered in their hair.

Chris’s arm was draped over the back of the booth seat behind Margot, his hand absently stroking her curls and feathers. Lila sat just out of his reach, head down.

Lila was the elder sister, I decided. Any makeup she might have been wearing had been scrubbed off hard enough to leave her eyes and cheeks spotty and pink. When she looked up from the nearly disintegrated wadded napkin in her hands, her eyes were bloodshot and red-lined, her nose pink. She hadn’t scrubbed off her makeup. She’d cried it off.

“I’m so sorry about Heim, Lila,” I began, gently.

Her eyes filled with a wrenching mix of emotions, as if her heart strained for a shred of hope, even though her mind knew he was dead.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Margot snapped. She looked…angry. Annoyed. Probably mad that her sister’s ex-boyfriend had made Lila cry again. “Heim was a selfish, cheating bastard. He deserved what he got.”

“No,” Lila said quietly, her voice softened by tears. “He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t. He was…he was so young.”

Several hundred years old, but I couldn’t tell her that. She’d loved the man he’d been when they dated for two years. I knew that man was most often kind and good, even if he did love the ocean and his ship more than he loved Lila Carson.

Gods and mortals never lasted.

Margot was still scowling at us, but she wrapped her arm over her sister’s shoulders and pulled her tight. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Is there something you wanted?” she asked.

“Just some basic information about the last time you saw Heim,” Jean said evenly. “Would you ladies mind if I sat with you for a bit?” Apparently, she was going to take the sisters, which meant I was on gill-man duty.

“Chris?” I said. “Can we talk in private?”

“Sure.” He lifted his arm and slid out of the booth.

Margot looked a little startled that he was leaving her. “It will be fine.” He leaned down and placed a kiss on her temple. “I’ll be right back. You’re in good hands with Jean.”

Margot nodded and Lila wiped the tattered napkin over her nose as Jean sat next to her.

“This way, then.” Chris walked with a little less of his distinctive grace. Not that he was unsteady on his feet, but he had been drinking, and it showed in his almost overly loose joint movements. I was pretty sure he had a skeleton of bone, but right now he appeared to be held together by sinew and cartilage.

I followed him to the other side of the room, and up a flight of stairs to a door that opened on his office.

The two large windows ate up the back wall behind the desk and looked out over the ships, the bay, and the opposite shore, with lights from houses twinkling in the low haze that covered the hill. The office was smothered in label designs, awards, and certificates of excellence, along with a few signed photos of Chris posing with celebrities, musicians, and a smattering of other famous people.

He walked straight to a dented mini-fridge that looked like it might have once been painted red, and pulled out two beers. He popped them open, offered me one.

“Can’t. This really is business.”

“I know.” Chris took a drink of his beer, and still held the other bottle out at arm’s length for me. “It’s about Heim. He was Asgardian. He would have wanted you to at least take one drink in his memory.”

I sighed. “I know.” I took the beer, glanced at the label. It was a dark porter Twin Rocks, one of the ones that had made Chris, and Jump Off Jack’s, so famous. I lifted it a little, and Chris lifted his.

“To Heimdall,” Chris said. “Long may he live.”

“To Heimdall.” I took a gulp, holding a memory of Heim in my mind. A time when he and I and Chris took the chairs out on the dock to cast lines for rockfish. Heim and Chris sang a song I thought had been incredibly raunchy. I’d been twelve, and by the end of the afternoon, I’d learned every word and been sworn never to tell my father where I’d heard it.