“No telling how he’ll return. Through which door he’ll come,” Calypso mused. “Perhaps we should just squat. Make ourselves at home. As long as we avoid the tarp-covered wing, it should be as comfortable as the hotel.”
She swept the candles across a dark shadow and Cassandra winced when the light shone on the oily eyes and bared fangs of a stuffed wolverine.
“I don’t know what hotel you’ve been staying in,” Thanatos said. He brushed passed them to recheck the hallway, and Cassandra headed for the windows. She craved the light. The natural light of the sun, to remind her that outside still existed.
It’s only a building.
But that was a lie. It was Hades’ house. Death and decadence around every corner, and the idea of staying more than an hour, let alone sleeping there, made her stomach clench and flutter.
Maybe if we knocked all the windows out. Let air move through the place.
She took a deep breath against the cool pane of glass and abruptly spat it back out again. No less than two dozen dead flies and moths lay in piles on the exterior sill. Dead when they came too close. Like the cat and the three rats.
Like the three of us.
But not exactly. Thanatos couldn’t die, and Cassandra suspected that Hades’ death wouldn’t rebound on her. Even if he was a ticking time bomb of bubonic plague, of Ebola and smallpox, cholera and Spanish flu. But Calypso—Cassandra looked over at her, where she stood studying a tapestry of a unicorn woven with gold thread. Calypso should go. As soon as they caught a glimpse of him, they’d send her away, just to be safe.
“Clear,” Thanatos said, emerging from the hallway. “Plenty more floors. If you don’t want to see the stuffed doorman, hang by the stairs for this next one.”
Cassandra didn’t need to be told twice. She and Calypso stayed close together and made small talk with their eyes until he finished his sweep. Thanatos didn’t ask if Cassandra was all right. He didn’t put his arm around her, or walk two protective steps ahead. And she didn’t know why she wanted him to, when she could take care of herself.
They passed so many floors that by the time they made it to the last she’d lost count. But she’d begun to feel better about being inside. The air on the upper three floors was fresher, thanks to the missing walls. Now that they could see under the tarps, it was clear that a cave-in had occurred. Large chunks of plaster blocked the hallway. Hades hadn’t bothered to clear the damage.
“Top floor,” Cassandra said. She stepped off the stairs into a wide open space. No hallways here. Only the shadows of what looked like rows and rows of shelves and cases. Calypso leaned forward and her candlelight flickered feebly in the dark. Heavy curtains had been drawn shut against the sun.
“May I?” Cassandra asked, and Calypso handed the candles over. They walked past the first row of shelves together, heading toward the windows to let in some light. But when the flame illuminated a severed head floating inside a jar of cloudy liquid, Cassandra squeaked and dropped the candles. The wax extinguished the flames at once, leaving them in complete darkness.
With a head. A severed head in a jar. Cassandra bit her tongue and cheek hard to keep from screaming.
What does it matter if I scream? It’s not like I can wake it.
She bit her cheek harder to shut her brain up. She’d had less than a second to look at the face behind the glass, but her imagination filled in the blanks: waxy skin around the mouth, and eyes like pickled onions behind half-closed lids. A tongue as gray as a storm cloud.
“It’s all right.” Thanatos threw the curtains back from one set of windows and then another until cold white light ruled the room.
They stood in the center of a row of shelves. Each shelf held six jars. Each jar held a head. Cassandra wasn’t well-versed in plagues and disease, but Thanatos said that the head she’d glimpsed in the candlelight had belonged to someone who died of the Spanish flu. Another face covered with blisterlike pustules appeared to have succumbed to smallpox. And in the center, a bloated, twisted skull floated in an oversized jar, the victim of whatever disease had taken down the Elephant Man.
Thanatos said it was all right. But the hell it was. They stood surrounded by death and disease, preserved body parts and grotesque medieval books on anatomy. Covered petri dishes lined three rows, each labeled lovingly in fancy, handwritten calligraphy. She thought she read ANTHRAX below the nearest one and stumbled away. Calypso caught her by the shoulders and steadied her until they passed the shelves.
A large white bed lay near the windows.
“This is his bedroom?” Cassandra asked, and shuddered.