The Gifts of Mortality

Chapter 2, part two

Rachel is in the middle of jotting down all the rituals she's read about and their countries of origin when her unwanted accomplice's phone chimes. It's a different noise than what his game had been emitting.

She watches him through her eyelashes as he switches his phone from horizontal to vertical. After a few moments, he starts gesticulating wildly at her.

She glances up but doesn't remove her silent headphones from her ears. She wants to let him think she can't hear him.

"Hey!" he says, louder than he needs to. "There's someone on the first floor."

"Okay."

"Can you hear me?"

She nods with some reluctance.

He repeats himself.

"Yes. I suspect there are many people on the first floor."

"This guy is saying he's a god."

"Who?" Lots of people pretend to be gods. Lots of grifters. They tend to all pretend to be the same few big names among the immortal canon.

"I don't know. It's a guy saying he's a god," the officer again repeats, getting as irritated with her as she is with him.

"Which god?"

"They didn't say," he says, waving his phone vaguely.

"How do they know he's a god?"

"Because he's glowing."

Rachel bolts from behind her desk and past the officer without a word on her way to the stairs.

...

The god is midway through a proclamation when Rachel slips behind a few officers near the back wall. He's comfortably sitting on the corner of one of the desks on the police department's open floor. Officers and detectives gather around him. Everyone, except the grinning god, wears a serious expression. The department's chief beside the new arrival has an open-mouthed look that's a mixture of disbelief and displeasure on her face.

Rachel focuses on the god's words and sees where the officers' alarm is coming from. The god is saying a whole lot of nothing. Whenever the chief or someone else interrupts him with a meaningful query, the god pivots and distracts.

She lets him continue his peacocking and takes the opportunity to get a good look at him. He's no longer glowing, but she recognizes him as the god Samil all the same. He's one of the most popular gods depicted across cultures. Rachel tightens her jaw.

Samil is a tall, thin man with dark hair and tan skin. He's wearing the baggiest suit she's ever seen. It's fashioned from billowing tan striped cloth that balloons out at the arms and legs before tapering in at the wrists and ankles. The pant's waistband sits midway up his stomach over a maroon dress shirt. Above his wide shoulder pads, Samil wears a hat with a comically wide brim.

He's speaking a whole lot of words at the assembly of law enforcement. Currently, he's waxing poetically about an especially tall building he saw outside and what he thinks that says about humankind's remarkable recent advances.

Rachel steps forward ahead of the line of officers.

"Samil," she calls.

His head whips toward his name and he temporarily stalls in his speech. He raises one hand to lift the brim of his hat and get a better look at her.

"Samil," she says again, "what are you doing here?"

For a brief moment, the god's face falls and he looks dejected. When the moment ends, the grin is plastered back on his face and he beams at her. "Well, you clearly know my name, but I seem to be ignorant of yours. What should I call you?"