“She won’t come for you,” Thanatos said.
“The hell she won’t,” Ares spat.
“Wait.” Odysseus pressed closer. “Where’s Calypso? Did she stay with Cassandra?”
Thanatos set his wine down on the coffee table. His long fingers rubbed against the legs of his jeans.
“Calypso is dead. Alecto killed her.”
The room went still. Athena reached for Odysseus and found air. He was gone before anyone had time to think of something to say.
Calypso. Dead.
She didn’t have any right to feel so bad about it. But she did anyway.
“Is Cassandra all right?” she asked.
“No.” Thanatos hung his head. “But at least she’s almost done.”
* * *
Cassandra ate as much pizza as she was able. It was funny how comforting her parents found watching her eat a decent meal. It had been too long since they’d been able to feed her, or tell her things, or make sure she was safe. They intended to make up for it in spades, and she would let them, for as long as she could.
But who knew how long that would be? Seeing the confused relief in their eyes was terrible. Knowing she would do it to them again was worse. It hadn’t been her idea to come home. After she’d murdered Calypso with her bare hands, Thanatos had scooped her up and made the plans without discussion. They hadn’t even taken Calypso’s body. It was probably still lying in Hades’ house, among the other dead things.
Unless Alecto had returned to take it to her sisters, to defile it somewhere, tearing it apart and cackling in a ruthless, satisfied circle.
Cassandra closed her eyes. Whatever the Furies did to the corpse was irrelevant.
I killed my friend.
“You’re going to have to do summer school as it is,” her dad said, and poured her more soda. “For a few weeks at least. You can’t disappear without consequences.” But what those consequences were, he didn’t say. Neither did her mother. They tiptoed around it and talked themselves out of it with every slice of pizza. It could wait until tomorrow, they thought. She’d had a hard year, but at least she was safe, they thought.
They were poor punishers due to lack of practice. Seventeen years without enforcing anything more than two days’ grounding would do that to a parent. The closest they came to scolding that night was telling Andie she couldn’t stay over.
“We kept your room closed off,” her mom said gently. “But I went in to straighten up. Sometimes. Of course now you can do it yourself.”
Cassandra touched her doorknob and made a silent wish that she’d open it and fall through into a void. Out of existence, just like that, with no memory of her left behind for her family to mourn over.
“Do you want me to make pancakes in the morning, Mom?” she heard herself ask.
“That would be nice. Cassandra?”
“Yes?”
“I know it was hard. I won’t pretend to know what you felt. But I know what I felt when you were gone, and if it’s anything like that, I—” Her mother paused and looked at her, hard. “It’s not okay to make us feel like that. It’s not okay to do that to us on purpose.”
“I know. I should’ve come home.”
“You should never have left.”
“I know. That’s what I meant.”
Her mother hugged her tight, and Cassandra could feel her heart beating fast, as though just saying those words had scared her to death.
“I love you, Cassandra. You’re a good girl.”
No, I’m not. Not anymore. Now I’m a monster.
19
DEATH AND THE DYING
I’m afraid to open the damn door.
Athena stood outside Odysseus’ room. She’d waited as long as she could, given him as much space as she knew how, only to stand motionless with her hand on the knob. Screw that. She swung the door open and stepped inside.
“So, when do you want to kill Alecto?” she asked.
Odysseus looked up at her.
“What?”
“When do you want to kill Alecto? We can go as early as tomorrow. I might be dying, but I can still tear the wings off a couple of overgrown harpies. She’s dead. Say the word.”
He didn’t say anything. He sat on his bed with his elbows on his knees. If he’d wept, she couldn’t tell. If he’d thrown anything, she couldn’t tell, either, as his room was generally messy.
“You can say something. Anything you want to. I know you loved her.”
He ran his hand roughly across his face.