Page 3 of Midlife Demigod Unexpected

I nodded as he stood up. I reached out my hand and he pulled me to my feet. I almost fell against him sobbing. It was hardly the boss-employee relationship I wanted to develop with him, though. It might be the personal relationship I wanted with him, but we’d been colleagues for way too long. I wasn’t going to mess it up now. Especially since he was only in his early thirties.

Cougar Creek didn’t have an ambulance, so we went to the back of the fire department’s pickup truck and sat on the tailgate they had lowered for us. A blanket was placed around my shoulders while they took my temperature and tested my oxygen levels. The new deputy sheriff in town came over to ask questions.

“Helen Davis,” the deputy said, holding out her hand. “I’m Chloe Preston.”

I shook her hand firmly. We had met briefly when she had done her initial investigations into the murder of those coast kids, the harpies. She’d been caught up with some other activities since she’d been here and hadn’t made coming to O’Halloran’s a steady part of her social life.

I didn’t mind. I couldn’t hold it against people where they drank. Some people were going to take the Waldorf and some people were going to take O’Halloran’s. The truth was, the majority of them were staying home and drinking there, which was fine with me too. I didn’t need a lot of money. I needed to sell a few drinks every day. When I inherited the pub, it came with a stipend, a safety load of cash. I didn’t spend any of it, but it always gave me confidence that I didn’t have to try to make a fortune selling drinks. I could make a simple living. I glanced over the deputy’s shoulder, looking at the burning shell of my building. Whoever was in charge of this universe, I thanked them I had fire insurance.

“Do you know what happened?” Chloe asked me.

“This vagrant kid came in and set the place on fire,” I said. “I thought he wanted to play some music, but he started a fire while I was talking to my cook, Jag.” I pointed out Jag where he was hovering in the background. “Thank God the place was empty. It was just Jag and me there.”

“Did you get his name? Do you have cameras in the bar?”

“I do,” I said. “But…”

“Oh, right. A lot of good that’s going to do me.”

“Exactly,” I said. “He was angry because I told him to quit playing. It was late and the place was empty. There was him on the dais playing his fiddle. Something happened and it was like time stood still. Then he started firing flames out of his fiddle.”

The deputy cocked her head sideways at me. “Did I hear you correctly?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but Jag can verify exactly what I’m telling you. The flames came out of the fiddle,” I said.

“Jag’s your chef.” Chloe stated the reminder to herself.

“Yes. He’s been my chef for years.” I looked around the street for him. “Where did he go?”

Jag was gone. I looked over to the parking lot across the street where we all parked our cars, and his Mustang was missing.

He’d left the scene.

Chapter 3

It was about three in the morning when I finally tore myself away from the embers of my building and walked to my car with nothing more than what I had on and the wooden box I’d rescued from the office.

With nowhere else to go, I only had one choice: my mother’s house. I could go to the hotel, but it would be more trouble than it was worth. I wasn’t keen on seeing my mom in the dark of night, but it wasn’t worth avoiding her. She was sure to hear about this. Everybody in Cougar Creek would hear about this. If I didn’t go to her house in my time of need, we’d both look bad. That’s how small towns worked.

Mom lived a small way out of town by the hot springs. There were some low-lying pastures down by the river. My mom had a nursery set up there. I had grown up in her nursery, running around in the aisles of plants. I still loved it. I loved the smell of the plants and walking through the nursery with a hot cup of tea early on a Saturday morning. I didn’t like everything that could come along with it.

I knocked on the door, clutching my box to my chest. At least we were on speaking terms, even if it was only on Mother’s Day and Christmas. There was no answer, so I knocked again, harder this time.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” my mother’s voice called out across her sprawling ranch house. Mom had inherited the house from her parents, who had bought it from one of the first settlers. Her parents had renovated sections of it and then mom had added her eccentric touches like a room above the garage with all plate glass windows, floor to ceiling, on all four sides. She loved the view from up there. She could see across her nursery, the pastures and the river. Now the house looked like a mishmash of confused architecture. Easily recognizable by all my school friends as the house where the crazy lady lived.

They never took into account the fact I lived there too.

My mom opened the door, her tie-dyed cotton nightgown shining brightly even in the damn darkness. It radiated from the single, dusty bulb glow of the porch light.

“Mom,” I said, almost choking on the word. I had called her Hilda for years, trying to create some level of separation between me and the woman who had birthed me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her, I just didn’t want to be caught up in her world. I didn’t want to be a witch in a coven. I didn’t want to defend Cougar Creek cemetery. I wanted to serve drinks.

“The pub,” I said, still in shock as I walked past the unused living room and straight into the kitchen. I sat down at the breakfast nook clutching the box to my chest still. “It burnt down.”

“Completely or almost?” She said the words softly as if wishing they would go away quickly.

I nodded my head dumbly, remembering watching the roof cave in and the upper story fall down on the bottom story. It was a reverberation I had felt deep in my bones and would remember for the rest of my life, my world caving in on itself and disappearing. “Completely,” I murmured.

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