“Thanatos?”
“Yeah?”
“Am I evil?”
He looked at her with calm eyes. This was what he’d been trying to puzzle out this whole time. What she was.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said.
Cassandra smiled shakily. “Me neither.” She flexed her hands. They didn’t feel like her hands. So much power in little bones and skin. It was strange to have that power and still feel so powerless.
“I’m angry about everything,” she said softly. “Angry that Aidan’s dead. Angry that he deserved it. Angry that these people, these gods, showed up one day and made everything hard. Athena stuffed a bad life into my head. Made me fight when I didn’t want to fight. Hurt my friends. Became my friends.
“And I feel guilty for being so angry.” She sighed. “And I can’t control it. And I killed Calypso.”
“It doesn’t make it any easier that she wanted to be dead,” Thanatos said.
“No. And she wouldn’t have wanted to die, if she knew that Odysseus was alive. She hoped, at the end. I saw it in her eyes. Maybe that’s why I did it. Maybe I killed her on purpose because I hated her hope. I wanted him to be dead because Aidan was dead. So I wouldn’t be alone.”
“You’re adding to your own memories,” Thanatos said gently. “You weren’t really thinking that. It happened too fast.” He said those things to comfort her. But he didn’t say it was an accident, or that she hadn’t meant to do it. He didn’t lie.
“I have to learn to control this,” she said. “I have to learn to swallow it.”
Thanatos bent to retrieve Aidan’s headstone. He lifted it one-handed and set it carefully back into its place.
“You can’t swallow it, Cassandra. You have to let it go.”
22
THE WAR UNSEEN
Thanatos dropped Cassandra in the Applebee’s parking lot to meet her dad for an early dinner and a movie. Her idea. Making up for time lost being a jackass, she told herself. Not a tactic to avoid Andie and Henry, though that was a bonus. She didn’t know what to tell them about Calypso, or about almost murdering everyone in her path.
She remembered testing her touch on Andie, when they’d visited Henry in the hospital after the wolf attack, and her stomach twinged with shame.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Thanatos asked. “We can go somewhere else. Talk.”
“I’m fine. And thanks. But what about you? Where are you going? Think Athena will let you back in the house?” Or perhaps he was leaving. Back to California. It surprised her how much she wanted him to stay.
He can’t go. He’s my only witness. The only one who knows what we did.
He ran his hand through his hair and ruffled it like he was tired.
“You won’t leave?” she asked. “Town, I mean.”
He touched her shoulder lightly. Just a fast touch from cold fingers. If he’d lingered any longer, she might have walked into his arms.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “But I won’t go back to Athena’s. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find her staring down at me with a hatchet. I’ll find someplace else to stay.”
“There’s not much to choose from. There’s a Motel 6 off the highway that seems pretty popular with gods.”
Thanatos chuckled and pulled a face. “Or maybe I’ll rent a house.”
He pulled out of the lot just as Cassandra’s dad pulled in. They honked at each other and did the guy salute.
Throughout dinner her dad did a good job pretending that she hadn’t been gone at all, and pretending that meeting at Applebee’s for smothered chicken and potato skins was something they did often instead of never before. Sometimes he went overboard with cheerfulness and she had to force her cheeks to go along with it. But it made her sad that he tried so hard to keep her happy, as though keeping her happy would keep her home. He blamed himself, and he’d do it again the next time she ran away to fight in one god’s struggle or another.
“Do you want dessert?” he asked. “Or would you rather get something at the movie?”
“I’m stuffed. Maybe some Sour Patch Kids at the movie. Or some Cookie Dough Bites.”
“And probably some popcorn,” he added. “Medium soda.”
“Dad?” she said. “Thanks for not locking me in a basket.”
She could tell the word choice confused him, but he smiled anyway.
“Sure, kiddo. But do it again, and I make no promises.”