“It’s her choice,” he said evenly. “Hers and Henry’s. It’s not Athena’s or mine. And not yours either.” His fingers closed around Andie’s neck and squeezed. He lifted her until she was on her toes, so easily his arms barely flexed. Cassandra remembered the ease with which he lifted her the night of the party. She remembered Athena’s iron fingers around her throat. But Andie could still breathe, even though her hands rose to try to pry him loose.
“Do you want to remember?”
Andie’s eyes were ringed with white. Cassandra had never seen her so scared.
“No!”
He let go. Andie held her throat with her hand and fell back on the bed with Cassandra, but she was all right. The skin wasn’t red. There wouldn’t even be bruises.
“No, I don’t want to remember.” She looked at Cassandra and started to cry. Cassandra hugged her. Andie never cried. Not when her hamster died in second grade. Not even when her dad left to start a new family.
Henry stood up, hands balled into fists. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I’ll do it to you too, if you want.”
Cassandra shook her head, not quite sure who she was shaking it at. The heat in the room lingered, but wasn’t radiating off Aidan like it had when he’d grabbed Andie. Still, he seemed taller and more beautiful. More of a god.
I shouldn’t regret that. We’re going to need him to be before all this is over.
“Don’t jump to my defense.” Andie sat up and wiped her eyes. She gently pulled free from Cassandra. “I’m not your wife. I’m not Andromache. It’s gross.”
“That’s not why I did it.” Henry’s legs twitched, like he couldn’t decide whether to pace or storm out. He ended up doing nothing.
“What are we going to do?” Andie wiped her eyes again and sucked in a hitching breath. “Go home, pack our bags, leave notes saying we’re headed to California? What about my mom?”
Henry sat down heavily. “I can’t believe this. Cassie, she’s right, we can’t both go. What about Mom and Dad?”
“There’s nothing we could tell them that they’d understand. But we’ll come back.” We’ll come back. Whenever we can. After all the gods are dead, and who knows how long that will take?
“Maybe they don’t want us. Maybe they just want you.” She said the words, but Andie’s voice held no hope. Cassandra couldn’t let them stay. She couldn’t leave them behind to have their necks snapped.
“We’ll come back.”
“We should probably tell Athena.” Aidan stood apart from them, near the door, arms crossed.
“No. It’ll slow us down. And besides, I don’t trust them.”
He nodded, staring at the carpet. “I’ve got to go back to my house. Get my bag again. Rewrite the note.”
“We’ll meet back here in an hour, okay, Andie?”
An hour. Not much time. Certainly not enough to say good-byes, or to do anything that they’d have liked to do one more time in the city they grew up in. Andie got up and walked out the door. Henry and Lux followed behind. After they’d gone, Cassandra reached under her bed for her duffel bag and started to fill it with clothes from her dresser.
“Do you think Andie’ll come back?” Aidan asked. “She was pretty upset. Maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“No, you were right about that,” Cassandra said. She pushed past him to get into her closet and yanked shirts and jeans off plastic hangers. “Even if you were wrong about everything else.” In the corner of her eye she saw his shoulders slump. He hadn’t touched her since she’d brushed him away near the deadfall. But he wanted to. And angry as she was, part of her wanted to let him.
“Cassandra, I’m sorry.”
“About what exactly? About the fact that we’re all probably going to die because gods can’t stand the thought of going quietly? They’ve been around forever. Isn’t that long enough?”
“It’s not easy for them. You don’t really understand … anything about forever. About what that word really means.”
She rolled a sweater up and stuffed it into her bag. “I guess I don’t. I’m just a human. I just live. And die. Nothing I do is eternal.” She threw makeup and moisturizer into the bag. She wanted to throw them against the wall. Makeup and moisturizer. Ridiculous.
“Why did you come here? Why did you find me?”
“Because I never stopped loving you.”