“Make a note for next time,” he said.
They closed their eyes as she shrieked again. It felt indecent. Cassandra imagined the Fury down there, bound and writhing on the floor. Kicking her claws into the stone walls, the chains cutting into her skin. While they sat upstairs on leather sofas and chairs, sipping lime water.
“You’re sure no one can hear her screaming?” Cassandra asked.
Thanatos waved his hand; a don’t-worry-about-it gesture. He hadn’t spoken to her since whatever spell Calypso had used to make them lust for each other had worn off. He hadn’t really looked at her, either, which was the only reason she felt safe looking at him. Whatever Calypso had done, it was strong. It still tingled in her chest. It made her fixate on the details of his face: the darkness of his lashes against his cheek. The muscular curve of his shoulder.
Calypso sat alone on the sofa with her legs tucked up, pleased as a cat despite a quickly forming bruise along her jaw.
“I think I’m going to go outside for a minute.” Cassandra set her water glass on the table. “It feels cold in here.”
Outside, the sun baked into her arms and face. She wished she’d worn a black shirt. White reflected too much heat. She walked through the yard toward the pool and looked out over the hills. In the basement, the Fury’s screams grew less insistent, and less frequent.
“Your stomach doesn’t want to hold still, does it?” Thanatos asked. He walked up behind her, along the stone tiles beside the pool. “You can’t keep your mind off her,” he said, “can’t help but pity her a little. Even though you think she’s a monster.”
His words weren’t cruel, nor were they an accusation. It struck her as strange that he wouldn’t see pity as weakness.
“She is a monster,” Cassandra said.
“No. She’s a Fury. She is as she was made. But you don’t fool me. Your feeling for that creature borders on compassion. It’s not what I was expecting. Not what I had heard about the girl who kills gods.”
“What have you heard about me?”
“Whispers.” He shrugged. “Most of which I ignored. Some tales of a reincarnated prophetess. Rumor had it that gods were looking for you. I didn’t really pay attention until the gods showed their hand. That they were dying. Then my ears pricked. And then you started killing them. Imagine my delight when a satyr whispered you were headed my way.”
Cassandra cursed under her breath. “Satyr David.”
“Of course. But I don’t know why he thought he had to warn me about a young girl from small-town New York.”
“Because you weren’t sure,” she said, scrutinizing him. “Not a hundred percent. I might have been able to kill you. I might be able to still, one day.”
“Don’t be so full of yourself. You’re not that different from a thousand angry girls before you. Tracking me down with bloodied, broken hearts clenched in your fingers. Wanting someone to pay. Wanting to pay yourselves.”
Psych 101 from the god of death. What a treat.
“You know about Aidan,” she said.
“I do.”
“Well excuse me for saying so, but you don’t know shit about Aidan.” She turned to face him, and her heart pounded to her fingertips. Not with anger. If her skirt had pockets, she’d have stuffed them inside. Anything to keep her hands from his shoulders, and her arms from snaking around his neck.
“Damn Calypso,” he whispered, staring at her lips.
“It’ll wear off, won’t it?” Cassandra asked, and clenched her teeth. She was getting angry now, and the anger made it worse.
“Yes. I think so.”
“Good. Because I really want to—” She paused and looked at his chest, rising and falling fast with his breath. “Put my hands underneath your shirt.”
“And I want to throw you to the ground. But it’ll have to wait. We’ve got a Fury to bleed.”
* * *
The candles in the basement had burned down to nubs. A few had gone out. The torches, too, burned low. Instead of relighting them, or exchanging the candles for fresh ones, Thanatos pulled a chain and lit dusty, yellow sixty-watt lightbulbs screwed into the ceiling. Cassandra didn’t know why they hadn’t used them before. Maybe because it changed the entire mood—from ritualistic to interrogation chamber in the pull of a cord. Two detectives from the ’70s might come out any minute and straddle backward chairs.
The Fury had also altered the room: She’d heated it to the point of being suffocating. But the heat had a used-up feel. It must’ve been ten times worse at the height of the Fury’s rages. Now she knelt at the ends of her chains, having somehow gotten her legs underneath her. Her wings and sinewy veins were nowhere to be seen. She was just a girl in a short black dress and boots.