“Hey, my shirt,” Odysseus protested, but he looked as green as she did, watching Ares tie the bandage.
Athena took a breath. All that stood between them and the living world now was a leisurely walk up smooth stone steps. She started up, and stopped. A familiar sound was coming from somewhere farther up.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” Ares asked. But it wasn’t her imagination. The wolves stood at attention, ears pricked forward. They heard it, too. “Hear what?” Ares asked again.
Athena leapt forward with a shout.
“Hermes!”
16
THE MOTHER COUNTRY
Despite the fact that Thanatos had sprung for a suite, the room felt cramped. Cassandra had been on the road for too long, on the run for too long, on the hunt for so long that she couldn’t remember sometimes what was more important, the hunting or the running. She was tired of crappy water pressure and shampoo that never lathered enough. She was tired of the way Calypso hummed through every task she performed. And she was tired of Thanatos. Of the way he looked at her sometimes. Like he could see through her skin, all the way down.
He probably can. He’s the god of death, for Pete’s sake.
Cassandra looked out the window. They’d been in Athens for two days. Down on the streets, mopeds slipped easily through late-afternoon traffic. Up on the hill, the lights surrounding the Acropolis were on, and the ruin glowed. Athens was beautiful like she’d always thought it would be, back when she daydreamed about going someday with Aidan, when she thought it was just an ancient city. Before she knew the bitch it was named after.
Thanatos called it “the Mother Country.” It wasn’t. Not really. But it was all they had left. The last trappings of lost glory, a handful of crumbling buildings mostly poached of marble. And somewhere in the midst of it, the god of the dead lived out his final days.
There hadn’t been a plague. No rash of illnesses or packed hospitals. No hastily dug graves or backed-up crematoriums. No deaths that could be called out of the ordinary for a city of Athens’ size. They’d checked when they arrived, and found not so much as a fish kill. Cassandra should have been relieved. But she’d been so sure there would be traces of Hades and his illness that the lack made her pause. In her mind, he’d been a moldy black spot on the map.
Thanatos was out there now, scouting, determining where Hades was and what paths they should take. Looking down at the crowds of pedestrians, she thought she might catch a glimpse of him maneuvering through the shadows, but there was no sign, not of him nor of Calypso, either. Cassandra was alone, a princess in an ivory tower, waiting patiently to slay her dragon.
The door to the suite opened and Calypso entered, carrying a large plastic bag of food with her good arm. Souvlaki stuffed with French fries. It smelled good, but it looked as though she’d bought enough to feed Hermes.
“Is he back yet?” Calypso asked.
“No.”
Calypso set the bag down on the table and Cassandra rifled through it.
“Lamb and chicken both,” Calypso said. “But no way to tell which is which without unwrapping.” She flicked a lock of Cassandra’s hair over her shoulder. It was a familiar, affectionate touch—Odysseus used to do it, and suddenly the weight of his absence hit Cassandra square in the chest. It must have hit Calypso, too, because her fingers lingered on Cassandra’s shirt. Cassandra grasped them, to squeeze and comfort, but what she felt made her jerk away. Calypso’s fingers were half-rotten bone, and left wet streaks on her skin.
That’s just my imagination.
Imagination and not imagination. Since the vision after the Fury attack, a shadow stretched across Calypso’s face like a caul. Sometimes her hair fell out. Sometimes her teeth. What was seen couldn’t be unseen. Cassandra’s eyes re-created it from all angles, and when she slept her brain re-created it, too, turning it over in dreams a hundred times worse. They enhanced it with smell, and sound, and left her woozy and uneasy after waking.
Since they’d been in Athens, Calypso seemed happier. She laughed more, and left the hotel for hours at a time to wander. She came back smelling of stray dogs she’d found and fed. And when they crossed over the sea, she’d stared at the stunning blue so intensely that Cassandra knew she was remembering a time from before, when she’d used to swim in it.
It was one last turn on the carousel. The last act in Calypso’s long goodbye.
Or so she thinks.
After the gods were dead, Calypso wouldn’t want to join them. Enough time would pass for her to see she had things to stay for. Friends who cared. Cassandra’s brain laid these ropes of reason around her vision of Calypso’s death, around and around in a slow, quiet noose. And always the vision lashed back. You can’t change fate.