Death and Relaxation (Ordinary Magic #1)(82)

I gasped in pain as everything in my body caught on fire, and then I punched him in the face with everything I had.

The screaming of the song in my head went to white noise, and for a moment, I was lost, floating on pain and an unhoused god power that seemed intent on getting free of me.

No, no, no! I couldn’t lose grip on it now.

A part of me knew I was standing in a bar. But the rest of me was somewhere else, somewhere in my mind, fighting against a power that would not be denied.

The wave of power and song dragged me under, and the bar faded from my sight. All around me was song and thrum and a need to possess, to control.

I had to contain the power. Had to shovel it back into me, somehow, hold it in the imperfect vessel of my body. A vessel it would no longer tolerate.

And if I lost? This power, Heim’s power, would devour my body and pour free like a wave over jetty walls, roaring into Ordinary to tear it apart.

How was I supposed to fight it?



Delaney. My father’s voice, near, urgent. Was I dying? Fight.

That was the plan. I just didn’t know how. I pushed upward with imaginary fists, pushed out with imaginary arms, scrabbling and kicking to find purchase against the song that swallowed me whole and sent me spinning. Power slammed me around, churned until I couldn’t find the way up. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

A memory flashed:



The kitchen light shone in my eyes through the crack of my bedroom door. I couldn’t sleep, even though Mom had tucked me in hours ago. It wasn’t Myra’s soft snores from the other side of the room that kept me awake.

It was the music.

A shadow crossed the light, throwing me into darkness, then light shone on me again. Dad was pacing in the kitchen. He did that sometimes.

I tucked my stuffed crab, Polly, under my arm. I was probably too old for a stuffed toy—I was almost nine, after all—but tonight I clutched her close.

Dad leaned both hands on the edge of the kitchen table, arms locked, back toward me, his head hanging down. He was still except for muscles in his forearms that flexed and flexed, bunching and lengthening as he squeezed the table’s edge like he was trying to hang on to something for dear life.

A bunch of papers were scattered across the table and the floor. Dad had been furiously drawing again. Drawing a lot. He did that sometimes too.

One paper by my foot held an image of a woman’s face I’d never seen before, but it was scribbled out with big, looping lines, like the pencil had traced her face so many times it had completely lost the details it was trying to define. As if he were looking for that person and had no way to find her.

These pictures scared me, even though I didn’t know why.

“Daddy?”

He turned. It was not my father standing there. It was his body, his Grateful Dead T-shirt, his sweatpants. But everything inside him wasn’t him. It was the song in my head. Too loud. Consuming me. Consuming my dad.

I cried out and pressed my hands over my ears, smashing Polly against one side of my face.

And then something broke and washed away. The song was gone.

It was just my daddy standing there. Just my daddy, who blinked hard, as if struggling to see me in the bright light of the kitchen lamp.

“Delaney?” he said. “Baby?”

I nodded, crying, scared of what had just happened, even though the song was gone now.

“Oh, baby,” he breathed. He was across the room in two strides, gathering me up into his strong arms and holding me tight as he carried me out of the room. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I had one arm wrapped around his neck, Polly still smooshed on my other ear.

Pretty soon we were sitting in the living room in his big chair that rocked.

His arms around me felt safe. We rocked for a long time. Long enough I stopped crying.

“What did you see?” he finally asked, his cheek tipped against the top of my head. “Did you see lights and colors?”

I shook my head, the scratch of his unshaved chin rubbing in my hair. “It was the music,” I whispered. “I heard all the music. All the voices. And the music was inside you and it was too loud and you weren’t you anymore.”

Daddy’s body had gone a little stiff. He’d stopped rocking, and then started again, exhaling.

“You hear it.” He nodded. “Okay, honey. It’s okay. Is it loud? The voices and music. Did it hurt you?”

“No.” I thought I might be acting like a baby, so I leaned back enough to show him I was okay. I was brave. “What was it?”

His blue eyes were sad, but when he smiled, laugh lines crinkled at the corners. “It’s a very special thing. A treasure that our family has the honor to protect. It’s power. God power.”

“Like Mr. Odin and Mr. Crow sometimes have?”

“Yes. And looking after it is an important duty, but sometimes it can be hard too.”

“Like being a police officer.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to be a police officer,” I said, snuggling back down against his wide chest.

“What happened to firefighter?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not a vampire, Dad.”

“It’s not just vampires who can fight fires,” he said with a chuckle.

I pulled back again. “I want to be a police officer.” I was very, very serious. “And I want to help you protect the god power song.”