I’ll get vengeance for Odysseus, too. I promise. Somehow.
She pulled her hand free before her thoughts turned too dark. She wanted to comfort Calypso, not turn her to dust.
“Isn’t there any better lighting?” Cassandra asked. “I can barely see my feet to keep from falling down the stairs.”
“Here. I know the way well.” Thanatos reached for her arm and drew her closer to his back. His fingers slid against her palm, testing the heat there as if he was trying to feel the rage licking through her fingers.
They descended the last step and hit a floor of hard-packed damp dirt. Thanatos moved away quickly, and Cassandra spun in the pitch black, half-certain her shoulder was going to bump into a hanging corpse. Then he lit a torch, and yellow light flooded the small room.
No corpses. Not much of anything, really. A few shelves of dusty books. An old stone table. Some candles. He moved along the walls, using his torch to light other torches, and made some lame joke about an earthquake striking at that instant and burying them all.
“Your sense of humor is even more twisted than Athena’s,” Cassandra said, and Calypso blinked.
“Athena didn’t have a sense of humor.”
Cassandra shrugged. She ran her hands down her legs, smoothing her skirt. Her most recent wave of anger had subsided and left her cold. She took a breath. The air in the basement smelled of worms and water.
“What are we doing down here?”
“Looking for a map,” Thanatos replied.
“To Hades? You need a map?” Her nose crinkled. “I thought you knew where he was.”
“It’s not as easy as all that. They don’t call him the Unseen One for nothing.”
Calypso laughed. “I thought they were just making fun of his helmet of invisibility.”
Thanatos laughed, too, then made a stern face. “Don’t get smart. This is going to be nasty business.”
“How’s that?” Cassandra asked. “How can looking for a map be ‘nasty business’?”
“Because our map is nasty business. It’s one of the Erinyes. One of the Furies. And she’s not going to be pleased when we bait her here. She’ll be even less pleased when I drink her blood.”
“What?”
“A little vampiric, I know. But the Furies belong to Hades. They’re his favorite daughters. His most loved pets. They always know where he is, and their blood will sing the song to me.” He paused. “Like a really gory GPS.”
Cassandra willed her stomach to be still. She was the killer of gods. Losing her lunch in front of Thanatos wouldn’t do.
“So where is she?” There didn’t appear to be anyplace in the basement to hide a Fury. It was one room with no doors.
“I don’t know. But we’re about to summon her.”
Summoning. The word sounded ominous. Dangerous. Cassandra glanced at Calypso, but she didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned. She barely seemed curious.
Maybe I’m an idiot for using her as a litmus test. Maybe I’m stupid for thinking she might care about what happens to me at all. She hasn’t really cared about anything since Odysseus died.
But those were paranoid, unfair thoughts. Calypso had taken care of her, fed her, counseled her. Brushed her hair and tried to make her laugh. And she asked for nothing in return except for one good death, when everything was over.
“You can help by lighting candles.” Thanatos tossed her a box of matches. He didn’t tell her which candles to light, so she began to light them all, each tiny flame adding yellow to the brown and gray room.
“Is this just for ambiance? Or are we about to do some”—she made some ridiculous flourish with her hands—“magic?”
“You get very sarcastic when you’re nervous.” He moved toward the back wall and bent down, feeling the packed dirt with his hands. “Calypso, will you help me with these?” They knelt together, and Cassandra watched as they pulled a massive set of chains with cuffed ends out of the ground. The chains were fixed somewhere down deep. Maybe to the bedrock. She swallowed. Nothing disturbing about that.
“Can you handle these?” Thanatos asked, and Calypso tested the chains’ weight in her hands.
“Yes.”
“Don’t even give her a chance to speak, when we bring her in.”
The sight of Calypso with the chains made everything suddenly real, and it was moving too fast. They were about to summon a thing, a Fury, that was strong enough to need to be bound by chains with four-inch-thick links. It could be a trap. A lie. Thanatos could be summoning one of his own pets. A quick vision of her insides splashed against the wall and soaking into the dirt of the floor popped into Cassandra’s head.