I hear the shift in Haden’s tone, and I know he’s being sincere—I can hear the remorse coursing off him—but Garrick treats him like he’s just spat in his face.
“Take your apologies and shove them up your ass,” he says.
“Garrick, please,” Haden says.
Garrick looks at me. “Be careful, Daphne. Haden’s selfishness and his obedience are a dangerous combination. He’ll do anything to try to win his honor back. If he’s willing to let a little kid be thrown into a Pit full of monsters because he didn’t like seeing him around, what do you think he’s going to do when he doesn’t get what he wants from you?”
His words strike a dissonant chord inside me. His view of Haden doesn’t match the remorse that I hear in Haden now. They just feel wrong to me.
But then again, I barely know Haden at all.
What would he do if I couldn’t convince the Oracle to change his mind? What would he do when I continued to say no? Because I’m sure as hell … or Hades … never going to say yes to helping him.
“Watch your back, Boon,” Garrick says. “Because nobody else is going to do it for you.”
“I’m not a Boon,” I say through gritted teeth.
A very round woman appears at our table with a loaded tray. “Well, howdy, folks,” she says. “I’ve got chicken noodle soup, sodas, a salad, cheese fries, and cheeseburger! Whose poison is whose?” She looks down at us, and her grin fades. “Oh no, oh, dears, you’re not all headed to a funeral, are you?”
After the waitress leaves, Garrick grabs his bowl of soup and Pepsi and moves to the next table over like he can’t stand sitting close to Haden anymore. But instead of eating, he lays his head on the table and moans, as if his exchange with Haden has zapped up all of his strength. I keep a close eye on him in case he decides to make a run for it anyway.
“You know,” I say tentatively, “if you stopped treating Garrick like a Lesser and more like your brother, he might start to forgive you.”
He nods as if he might actually consider the idea.
Haden and I sit across from each other in awkward silence for a few moments, but the smell wafting up from my cheese fries and bacon cheeseburger reminds me of how insanely hungry I am. I pick up a fry, and a long string of gooey, melty cheese trails behind it. I catch the slight curl of Haden’s lip while he watches it.
He pulls his own plate closer to him and starts picking the croutons out of his salad.
“You seriously got a salad?” I ask him, trying to lighten the mood.
“Yes?” he says, and then pushes the glorious pile of grated cheddar cheese off the lump of iceberg lettuce on his plate. “Is that a problem?”
“We’re at a greasy spoon. You should at least have the decency to get something greasy. That’s their specialty. This,” I say, pulling his plate away, “doesn’t even fall into the proper definition of salad. This is just lettuce.”
“I like lettuce,” he says, but the grimace on his face betrays how he really feels.
“How do you maintain all that muscle if you eat like a rabbit?”
“We eat different things in the Underrealm.”
“He doesn’t like anything,” Garrick says from the adjacent table. “He’s the pickiest eater this side of Tartarus.”
“You mean you don’t like bacon cheeseburgers?”
“I’ve never tried a bacon cheeseburger.”
“You’ve never …?” I place my hand over my heart like this news wounds my soul. “We are changing that right now.”
I take a knife and cut my burger in half. I shove a rebellious piece of bacon back under the sesame bun and present it to him like it’s precious cargo. Which it is. I don’t take sharing my bacon cheeseburgers lightly.
“I can’t,” Haden says, trying to nudge my hands away.
“I will be morally offended if you don’t at least take a bite.”
“Just eat it so she’ll shut up!” Garrick says. “I’ve got a headache.”
Haden takes the half burger from my hands and holds it gingerly. “If I’m going to eat this thing, you have to do something for me first.”
“What?” I ask reluctantly.
“Tell me how you did what you did to that Keres. How did you know how to make it go solid enough for me to kill it?”
Garrick nearly knocks his Pepsi off his table. “You killed a Keres?” he says. “That’s impossible!”
“Not with Daphne’s help, apparently.”
“What did you do?” Garrick asks. He almost sounds angry.
“I … screamed at it,” I say with a shrug.
“What?”
“But how did you know to scream at it like that?” Haden says. “Plenty of people have probably screamed at a Keres before, but I’ve never heard of one becoming solid as a result.”
“I don’t really know,” I say. “I was just scared and tried the first thing I could think of; I didn’t really know what would happen.” I take a sip of root beer. “It was like how I calmed your cat that one time. You know how I told you that I hear the songs that living things put off? People or animals or even plants? Well, when I was a kid, I figured out that if I imitate the tone an animal puts off, they’re more likely to listen to me. I use it all the time on the strays my mom brings home. Some of them can be pretty wild until I give them a good talking to.”
“So you were trying to charm the Keres?” Haden asks. The grease from the burger is starting to run down his fingers but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“I mostly thought I’d imitate the screeching noise it was making and see what happened. It actually seemed to make it angrier. I’m just glad you were able to kill it before it attacked me.” I point at the burger. “Now, are you going to take a bite of that before it gets cold?”
“Do I have to?”
“I answered your question, so yes.”
Haden bites off a small corner and starts to chew.
“So?”
“It’s … actually, it’s …” His eyes widen and he drops the burger on top of his salad and stands up. His gaze goes out the window and then darts to the trucker at the bar. He scans the whole restaurant quickly, as if looking for someone.