“I don’t know who exactly. But I think it’s the Moirae. Wearing her face.”
Whoever it was knocked. Three times. Odysseus swore. Athena shook the fist out of her hand and walked to the entryway.
She took a deep breath, ready to knock the Moirae flat on Cassandra’s ass. But when the door opened, Cassandra simply stood there without a jacket on. Wet dirt and trampled grass stuck to her bare feet. Beneath the weak house lights it was hard to tell that something was wrong with her eyes. If she hadn’t looked up at the balcony, Athena might not have noticed at all.
“What is it?” Odysseus asked, and the thing wearing Cassandra smiled a wrong smile, as though it hadn’t figured out quite how to use her face.
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?”
“Who are you?” Athena asked.
“Clotho,” a voice that wasn’t quite Cassandra’s voice replied.
“And Lachesis,” added a voice that wasn’t quite Cassandra’s voice but wasn’t exactly the first voice, either.
Athena waited a long beat before asking, “But not Atropos?”
They shook their head.
“It is she we come to discuss. But we have to hurry. We don’t have much time.”
*
Cassandra sat mute inside her mind. She felt Clotho and Lachesis’ reactions as if they were her own, and heard every thought they had. Athena looked so frightened. She wished she could tell her that there was no guile in these Moirae. That they meant her no harm.
Walking into the house, she saw Odysseus standing in front of the couch where Hermes lay. A sword was in his hand, gripped tight. It seemed somehow amusing to Cassandra, and she wanted to wave to him from inside her mind. Inside her mind, as through a window. But when she tried, Lachesis pressed her hand gently down.
*
Clotho and Lachesis. The Moira of Life and the Moira of Destiny. They maneuvered Cassandra’s body poorly; one eye tracked later than the other, and the way they walked had a strange side-to-side tilt. Beneath the lights of her living room, Athena saw that strands of red and silver-blonde hair had twisted into Cassandra’s brown.
“What are you doing with Cassandra?” Odysseus asked. “Is she all right?”
“She is fine. Here with us. We would not harm her.” They looked around the house, jerking Cassandra’s head like a puppet.
Athena wanted them out. Out of her living room, and out of Cassandra, and she wanted them out now.
“Then what do you want?” Athena asked.
“We want to tell you what is.” They made their way to the middle of the room and stopped, seemingly content to stand and go no farther.
“Tell us what is?” Odysseus asked. “That’s all? After you tried to kill us?”
“We did not. But some of you have died.” Cassandra’s head turned, a little too far. A joint popped, and her head turned back quickly, as though the Moirae were surprised by the limit. “It is Atropos who kills you. Atropos who would kill us all.”
Athena remembered how the Moirae had looked on Olympus. Clotho and Lachesis were two deflating balloons, bleeding into their dark-headed sister.
“All this time we have struggled with her in secret,” they said. “Our sister is sick. And when the Moirae of Death is ill, she spreads her sickness down. To all her leaves and branches.” They peered past Odysseus, to Hermes, lying still on the couch.
“He’s unwell,” they said. “He’ll be gone soon.”
Fast, angry tears blurred Athena’s vision. A fat lot of nerve they had, coming into her house and telling her that her dying brother was dying. A fat lot of nerve, coming to them now. When it was too late.
“We need to kill her,” said Clotho, or Lachesis, or perhaps both. “Kill Atropos.”
“So kill her,” Athena said.
“She is weakened. But she will not go easily.”
“So kill her harder.”
The Moirae inside Cassandra frowned. They looked at Athena the way a parent looks at a child they’ve just discovered has been spoiled.