“But?”
She crossed her arms and tried to seem disinterested.
“But now that you’ve met me, are you disappointed?”
“Not sure yet,” he said. “I do wonder what you were like before we came to town.”
“I was ordinary,” she said. “I blended in.”
“Impossible. With Aidan? You can’t blend in with something that pretty on your arm.”
“Don’t call him ‘pretty.’” Her knee knocked into his. “And you weren’t here. You didn’t see how well he hid.”
“Okay. But then why aren’t you thanking us? If everything was so boring and ordinary.”
“I like ordinary. People only wish for adventure until they’re stuck in the middle of one. Haven’t you ever seen The Fellowship of the Ring?”
“Sure. Lots of times. But I’ve been both hero and zero, and make no mistake—”
Cassandra exhaled. “Look. The difference between you and me is that you slid into your old life like it was a pair of old shoes. Mine has toes filled with razor blades.”
Odysseus pushed off the wall.
“The difference between you and me, Cassandra, isn’t our old lives,” he said. “It’s that I know who I am in this one.”
“I know who I am in this one,” Cassandra said. “The same as I was in the last one. A small fish caught in a big stream. Full of sharp rocks, gods, and assholes.”
Odysseus laughed. “Assholes?” He pushed her hair off her shoulder, a gesture she was getting very used to. “But I cheered you up a bit, didn’t I?”
“Distracted, maybe,” she said. “But the fact remains. This is the only thing I can do now.” She held up her hand. “What I was made for, Athena says. So she’d better not try to stop me from doing it.”
“Just Aphrodite though, right?” Odysseus asked. “What about the others?”
“What?” Cassandra asked, and dropped her hand.
“Other gods,” he said. “Major and minor. Ares and Hades. Hephaestus. Good old drunk Dionysus. Will you be able to point that thing in their direction, when they haven’t murdered the love of your life?”
Cassandra looked down and said nothing.
“You hadn’t thought that far ahead, had you?” he asked.
“I killed Hera.”
“Because she was trying to kill you. You’re not a murderer, Cassandra. You’re not a hunter. And when it comes down to it, you might find it not so simple. Even with Aphrodite. When you look into her eyes. When you understand. It might not be so easy.”
“Then I hope I’m too angry to hesitate,” she snapped. But she wasn’t angry now. Only exhausted, and more than a little scared to really think about what Odysseus said.
“I just want him back, Ody. There has to be a way, doesn’t there? There has to be a way to go and bring him back.”
Odysseus hugged her and rested his chin on her head.
“I don’t know. But if you find a way, I’ll be there. Right to the end of the earth and over it.”
3
WORLDS
Henry had no taste. Andie lay upside down on his bed, scratching his German shepherd’s neck. A poster for The Black Keys hung on his west wall, which wasn’t too bad, but the rest of his room was a mishmash of crap.
“At least there aren’t foldouts of naked women, eh, Lux?”
“Huh?” Henry asked. He was barely listening, sitting at his desk trying to finish a calc problem.
“I said your room is a mishmash of crap. You shouldn’t let Lux lie in here so much. How’s he ever going to learn that there are better bands than Linkin Park and better movies than Avatar?”
“Those are old. And Lux likes Avatar. Now will you shut up so I can finish this?”
“Is that a Vancouver Canucks commemorative puck? I swear if you don’t die in this gods’ war I’m going to kill you.”
Henry scowled. “Don’t you live somewhere else?”
Andie ruffled Lux’s fur, unaffected. “If he really wanted me to leave,” she said to the dog, “he’d have stopped doing that stupid math problem and taken me home a half hour ago.”
“Why do you need a ride, anyway? Why didn’t you let Odysseus take you?”
Andie eyed Henry slantwise. The keys of his calculator clicked, and he erased something, his head of black hair bent over the paper.
“I can’t believe I used to be married to you,” she said. “So rude.”