The God Wheel Read online

  The God Wheel

  © 2019 Brian Clopper

  Published by Behemoth Books

  on June 19, 2019

  Cover by Brian Clopper

  No part of this book may be reproduced without permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

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  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1. So Much Winning

  2. Not-All-There Houseguest

  3. Wheel Time

  4. As the Crows Fly

  5. Forging Ahead

  6. Of Nuggets and Meet Cutes

  7. Forced Entry

  8. Under a Cloud of Suspicion

  9. Naming Names

  10. Spin Happy

  11. Relative Safety

  12. Sit-Rep Misstep

  13. A Deal Made Broken

  14. Stakeout Flake Out

  15. Disgruntled Deities

  16. A Spin and a Miss

  17. A Parent Problem

  18. Future Troubles

  19. Temple Twister

  20. Elder God Banter

  21. Time Marches Backward

  22. The Eyes Have It

  23. Dark Cloud Rising

  24. The Elventh Hour

  25. Contract Magic

  26. Loose Ends

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Building a Brian Bookshelf

  Author's Website

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to my beta readers, Keith and Arantza. Once again, you’ve proven invaluable in writing another novel.

  Chapter 1

  So Much Winning

  Lorna Wesson squeezed my hand even tighter and kissed me hard. I did my best not to swoon. I needed to stay in control. If I showed her I was downright smitten, that each time we touched every part of me sang the body electric, she’d likely lose interest.

  Beautiful women just didn’t throw themselves at me. I didn’t rate as a catch. Being ignored by the girls in high school and throughout most of college had made that clear. No one actively sought me out, and certainly not someone as gorgeous as Lorna.

  She pulled away and grinned.

  Lorna was the whole package. Only three dates in, and I knew I was outclassed. She was funny, smart, confident, and stunning.

  Her curly red hair, that fell down past her shoulders by quite a few inches, was my kryptonite, especially when she wrapped and unwrapped it around a finger. A lesser man could drown in her big brown eyes. Oh, who am I fooling? I got lost in them quite often. Four times in just the last hour alone. And if I were one to write sonnets about the perfection of her full, pouty lips, I would. Not that I knew my iambic pentameters from my haikus.

  I fought a chill running down my spine. If I shuddered, she’d spot my unbridled joy. Heck, I didn’t think she should even see my bridled joy. No way would I let on just how wobbly my knees were threatening to become either. I tensed up, begging every part of me not to expose my bliss.

  Unfortunately, my lips and cheek muscles hadn’t gotten the memo to play it cool or were simply ignoring the directive. I felt a smile tug itself into place.

  Lorna darted closer, allowing a tendril of her red hair to brush my forehead and tickle my nose. “You look giddy, Felix.”

  I wiped my joy from existence, replacing it with an expression I hoped radiated cool aloofness with a dash of upper-handedness, whatever that looked like. I really wished I had practiced in front of a mirror more.

  Lorna slid a hand under my chin and nuzzled my right cheek. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Hide how much you like me.” She dropped her hands to my hips and pulled me closer.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I did my best to sound gruff and rugged.

  She placed her forehead against mine and closed her eyes, brushing her long eyelashes through my own sparse lashes.

  Good lord, woman! How is it you know exactly what to do to make me putty in your hands? I pictured my entire body collapsing into a glob of Silly Putty. Did they even make that dime-store novelty anymore?

  “You try so hard to hold back how you’re feeling, but it always manages to come through. I like that.”

  “You like that I hold back?”

  She snickered. “No, that you let me see your true reaction. This time it was your goofy smile. Last time it was how you forgot to take in air and had to gulp in an exaggerated breath or two when you thought I wasn’t looking.”

  “You saw that?”

  That had been my reaction to her hugging me from behind and spinning me around and planting a long kiss when we’d exited the Taco Bell on Lamont Avenue. It had been on our second date, two and a half days ago.

  She danced her fingers in the air slightly overhead as if she were about to unleash a spell. She spoke with a wavering tone, dragging out each word. “I see all.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I feared my eyes would betray me next, that she’d look deep into them and see just how profoundly I’d fallen for her. It was too soon. It would spook her. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched up.

  She laughed. “Someone really did a number on you. It’s okay to show me your true feelings. Don’t be all stone cold and detached. That’s not how you win the girl, Felix.”

  Tell that to the media at large. Didn’t women go for men who were the bad boys and expressed indifference at every turn? Didn’t that spur them to want the fellow even more? I ought to be standoffish and far more sculpted than I was.

  I opened my eyes and kissed her. She giggled and kissed back. I indulged myself and allowed the wave of emotion to wash over me. It was a multi-pronged attack, threatening sensory overload. It originated simultaneously from her warm lips, her arms resting on my shoulders, and all her fingers combing playfully through my brown hair. I imagined the neurons from those areas sending electrical impulses not to my head but straight to my heart. I drew in a long breath, expanding my chest. I hoped she wouldn’t interpret that move as too macho and accuse me of overcompensating.

  She sighed and sequestered my bottom lip between both of hers.

  Part of me thought she could hear the thunderous rush of my blood racing through what felt like every single blood vessel. I chose not to worry about it and stay in the moment. At least I knew my circulatory system was working at peak efficiency.

  We eventually disengaged. I resisted the urge to lock lips again. With my heart doing its best impression of a jackhammer, I wasn’t sure I could weather another kiss.

  Lorna didn’t hide that her cheeks were flushed. She took in a short breath and smiled as she fished her keys from her purse and opened her apartment door. She put a hand to my chest and held me back as she stepped inside her apartment. “Let’s call that progress.”

  I laughed.

  She patted my chest and then slipped inside, drawing the door closed so I could only see part of her face looking back at me. “Be Felix Martin. It’s a good look on you. It’s real.” She winked. “See you tomorrow for lunch.”

  I gave her a cheesy thumbs-up. “I’m there. I never turn down food truck tacos.”

  She blew me a kiss and closed the door.

  I didn’t linger. I wanted to stand there and soak up the scene of the crime, absorb every detail of the place where she’d stolen my heart.

  Ugh, Felix. Good thing your girlfriend isn’t a telepath. That treacly sentiment would’ve sent her running for the hills. It would’ve spurred her to hunker down in a fallout shelter and never leave for fear of running into someone so sappy. Heck, it might even drive her to sign up to colonize Mars, a one-way ticket that would keep any and all hang-dog suitors at an astronomically fitting
distance.

  Despite being rough on myself, I couldn’t deny the genuine success of the date.

  I walked down the stairs, failing to hide the spring in my step.

  Unfortunately, that led to me stumbling and landing hard on my right knee. I clamped a hand over my mouth to squelch my howl of pain. I shook it off and limped downward for another flight before the throbbing went away.

  That’ll teach me to cut loose.

  ****

  At the gas station, I quickly topped off my tank. As I disposed of the trash from our fast food dinner, I spotted a scratcher on the blacktop. I sauntered over and stared down at the instant-win ticket, picturing the purchaser of the lost potential windfall. Likely an older person. They had the time and whimsy to indulge in state-sanctioned gambling. I imagined a grandmother with a cane. She made it out twice a week to this station’s Stop-and-Shop to buy a handful of the instant-win scratch-offs. As she had returned to her car, one had slipped free. Going unnoticed, she had probably headed home unaware her chances for a spontaneous fortune were now one shy. I pictured her arranging her lottery plunder and spotting she was down a ticket. Would she race back to the gas station and search for her missing chance at big winnings?

  I looked around, expecting to see a late model sedan tear into the lot and screech to a halt, its front bumper only inches from my knees. The woman would hop out and wave her cane at me as she swiped the scratcher from my hands. Maybe she’d even cross-check me with her cane for good measure before slipping back into her car and disappearing into the night.

  I stood there for a few minutes, anticipating the old woman’s return.

  A man in a green Mazda Miata pulled alongside the other pump island. He got out and waved at me before filling his own tank.

  I dashed to my car and slid into the front seat, crouching low in an effort to keep my ill-gotten gains out of sight from prying eyes.

  I stared at the scratcher. Five pudgy piggy banks sat in a row. Each had a lumpy Oink! sound effect written overhead. The name of the card itself made me chuckle. Live High On the Hog. I never gambled, but something told me I was supposed to scratch away at this one. If I won more than a few bucks, I’d try to track down the owner. How I’d manage that, I didn’t have a clue.

  Emboldened by my altruistic resolution, I retrieved a penny from the slotted compartment under the radio and scratched away, making the cute pink farm animals disappear in rapid-fire succession. Make me some bacon, piggies. I mean, make someone else who is totally deserving some bacon.

  I gasped as I brushed away the scraggly scratch-off detritus. I blinked and groaned. I checked the rules of the game four times before I let it settle in. The scratcher was a $10,000 winner.

  I kicked at the floor, overjoyed. While I knew these were not my winnings, it was still a rush to hold a winning ticket.

  I shoved the scratcher into my front pocket and turned on my car. I pulled away from the gas pump and parked in the farthest of the five spots in front of the convenience mart.

  I hopped out of my car and walked toward the entrance. Two teenage girls carrying a six-pack of Coke and several small bags of munchies exited the store, the second one holding the door for me and snickering to her friend about something. My old high-school self would’ve thought their shared laughter conspiratorial and somehow directed at me, but it didn’t give current-day me pause.

  “Thank you.” I grabbed the door so she wouldn’t have to hold onto it any longer.

  She nodded and said, “You’re welcome, sir.”

  Any other day, being called sir when I was clearly not quite thirty would’ve annoyed me. But thanks to the adrenaline rush from a perfect date with Lorna and then scratching off such prodigious winnings, it only delivered a minor blow to my ego. I scoffed. It was a whole lot of nothing.

  The cashier, an older bald man with a white goatee, greeted me as I approached the counter.

  I held up the scratcher. “I found this outside on the ground. Did anyone come in earlier this evening and buy some?”

  “Not since I’ve been here. I started four hours ago. You have a winner there?”

  I nodded. “But it’s not mine. I really wanted to find who bought it.”

  He held a hand out. “Let me see.”

  I handed over the scratcher.

  His eyes widened. “Whoa, big winner here.”

  He frowned and held the ticket closer. He fished his glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. He peered intently at the ticket. “Never seen this kind before. Piggy banks?” He pointed at the cache of lottery scratchers secured in a clear plastic dispensing box. “Don’t sell any like this.”

  “How’d it end up in your parking lot?”

  He shrugged and handed back the ticket. “Search me. It’s over $600, so you can’t redeem it here. You can either go to the nearest regional office, the lottery headquarters in Atlanta, or go online and download a winner claim form to fill out. If it were me, it would be worth a face-to-face with that kind of money.”

  I nodded.

  He smiled. “Congrats, young man. Be sure to cash it quick. You only have 180 days to claim your prize.”

  I waved and thanked him. I left the store and hopped back into my car. Something felt odd about the ticket. What did he mean they didn’t sell it here? Was it a bogus ticket? Left behind by who? I glanced out the windows, surveying every square inch of the well-lit parking lot and fueling area. Was it all a gag? Had someone been filming me? Just my luck, they’d upload it to some sort of prankster site and my reaction to the scratcher would go viral.

  At the same time, I didn’t think that was anything more than my paranoia gumming up the works. I took in a deep breath, tucked the scratch-off into my pocket, and pulled out. Something told me the ticket was legit, that I’d won. I didn’t feel good about cashing in the winnings until I got to the bottom of who’d lost the scratcher. Not that I would scour the earth until my dying days to find the deserving individual. After all, I only had 180 days to work with, 179 if you counted this day as finito.

  ****

  I normally slept in on Sundays but was startled awake by intense knocking. I stumbled out of bed, put on a shirt, cinched my pajama pants tighter, and raced downstairs.

  Marty, my three-year-old golden retriever and world’s worst guard dog, pawed at the door, barking in excitement at our impending guest. Even if the person on the other side wore a hockey mask and brandished a chainsaw, not that I lived in that kind of neighborhood, my pooch would be more likely to drool all over them than go for the jugular.

  I gently pushed him down onto all fours. “Easy, buddy. Maybe just a delivery.” I couldn’t think of anything I had on order. I peered through the peephole to spy my dad gearing up for another round of knocking.

  I opened the door.

  He smiled and held up a McDonald’s bag. “Brought you an Egg McMuffin.”

  I let him in.

  He handed me my breakfast sandwich as he rubbed Marty’s belly. “Looks like Mr. McFly is happy to see me.”

  He then sat himself up on a kitchen barstool and looked expectantly at the fridge.

  I shuffled over and snagged orange juice for us, pouring more into his glass. It would save me the inevitable refill later.

  “Thought you had a getaway planned with that Jessica lady,” I said, knowing I sounded miffed.

  Dad took two impressive bites of his own Egg McMuffin and held up a finger as he chewed, cuing me in to the fact that he’d answer as soon as he swallowed.

  My mom had passed two years ago from breast cancer. Dad had spent well over a year grieving before being coaxed back into the dating game, thanks to my nosy cousin Liz guiding him into taking a stab at online dating. That first pairing hadn’t worked out, but it had enlightened my dad into just how easy it was to trawl for women his age online. In the last three months, I’d lost track of how many dates he’d either brought by for a pop-in visit with me or talked up over the phone. His motive was pretty transparent. It wasn�
��t to gloat at how much success he was having. No, he wanted to nudge me into getting out there and experiencing romance. He worried about how I closed myself off. I hadn’t told him about Lorna yet, but he’d be impressed. For one, he never failed to talk up how much he liked redheads. But I didn’t feel pressured to reveal her existence just to gain his respect. Part of it was that my good fortune with Lorna didn’t feel real and, the more I brought her into my world, the more it felt like it would all fall apart.

  “That’s next weekend. I spent a nice evening in with someone new last night. She’s a nurse, recently divorced. Makes a yummy peach cobbler. We watched—”

  I took a bite of my sandwich and held up my hand. “Gonna stop you there. No further details needed.”

  His directness about his love life was cringeworthy, but it was weirdly comforting. It was the only way he’d ever really opened up to me. Throughout my childhood and teen years he’d been distant. I had a vague memory of us having proper father/son talks atop a large rock we’d used when fishing, but I couldn’t recall the specifics of much of that, other than we always threw any and all fish back. And not from any kindness to the fish population on my father’s part; I suspected he just didn’t want it exposed that he didn’t know the first thing about cleaning our catches, much less preparing and grilling the fillets. I’d never pressed him on the issue. It was enough that we had our rock and some quiet time together in those early years.

  When Mom had died, the gulf between us had grown even worse. It wasn’t his fault entirely. I found emotions slippery and hard to hold onto. I certainly didn’t share like I should. I’d learned from the best how to put up walls. My emotional masonry skills were ironclad.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Imagine I share too much sometimes. Sorry.”

  My dad wasn’t an outright catch, but he displayed much more confidence than me. He came off as being in charge and assured, even though I was the one with the full head of brown hair. I had inherited his blue eyes, but his always radiated a calculated air of authority, while I tended to let mine dart about and avoid eye contact for any length of time. His nose was longer than mine. I did have him beat there. We both had winner smiles and dimples, which, I had been told by my last girlfriend, were what had kept her around for two more months than she had planned. My dad also had a belly. Thankfully, I was still slender and could eat just about anything without suffering in the weight department. His arms were more like those of a lumberjack’s; he could easily swing an axe with them. My muscles, however, were better designed to flip pancakes rather than mow through timber. Maybe I would grow into his rugged look, but I somehow doubted it.