“Thanks for the sandwich.”
“You’re welcome.” Calypso smiled back, and small wrinkles appeared beside her eyes. The skin of her face was softer, and drawn thinner. The price of Cassandra’s touch when she’d dragged her to safety. A streak of gray had appeared in her hair in the space of a blink inside the cave, just behind her ear, bright white against the brown waves. Now she kept it gathered together in one piece, and twisted it through a new braid. In the sun it looked shiny and separate, pretty as pulled taffy.
Calypso nodded toward Cassandra’s basket.
“You should eat more. You’re getting thin. And you need to sleep. You need to do something to sleep better.”
“We’re not going back,” Cassandra said. “And we’re not calling them. Not yet.”
“Not yet,” Calypso repeated. “They think you’re dead.”
“Not everyone. Not my parents.” When they left that cave in Texas, she decided she wasn’t going back to Kincade. Not to a mess and grief and confusion. Not to watch Hermes panic and try to regroup. She had work to do, the work of killing gods, and she wanted to do it alone. Or so she told herself. But the first time she had Internet access, she scoured the web for news from Kincade. Andie and Henry’s Twitter feeds were both jammed with speculation about why she’d run away. There was nothing else. The papers didn’t write up runaways. Only Andie and Henry thought she was dead. And so far they hadn’t let anyone else in on the suspicion.
“But your brother,” Calypso frowned. “And poor Andie.”
“They’ll understand. When it’s over.” When all the gods are dead, and we have our lives back.
As if we could ever have our lives back.
Calypso raised her brows.
“You’d feel better if you called them.”
“No I wouldn’t. I’d feel heavy, and guilty, and I would miss them.”
“You miss them anyway. At least if you spoke to them you might have some comfort.”
“The only thing that comforts me—the only thing that gives me an ounce of comfort—is the thought of Hera sinking like a stone in that underwater cave.” Cassandra threw a tomato onto her napkin. “I hear the sound of it, the clink, clink, clink of her body against the bottom. I hear it in my dreams, and I sleep like an angel.”
“You don’t sleep at all.”
The nymph’s steady eyes hung on her, heavy and so damn thorough. An almost constant irritant these days. Calypso saw everything. Half the time it felt like she could read Cassandra’s mind.
“It’s almost time to go,” Cassandra said. “Are you sure he’ll be there?”
Calypso glanced at her watch and brushed crumbs from her palms.
“Yes. If he wants to keep my friendship. Which he does.”
“Good.” She watched Calypso clear the baskets and discarded napkins without trying to help. She would’ve only been batted away. Calypso acted very much like a servant sometimes.
Cassandra frowned. It would have been nicer to have a friend.
“You don’t have to do everything, you know.”
“Yes, I do,” Calypso said.
“You pay, and you’re helping. You’re not a slave. And I shouldn’t snap at you all the time.”
Calypso stopped, and crunched an aluminum can of Fanta in her fist.
“Cassandra. Don’t forget your promise. Our bargain.”
Cassandra lowered her eyes. “I won’t.”
“Look at me when you say so.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
“Say it again.”
The gravity of those green eyes held her up and down all at once. But Cassandra did as she was asked.
“You’ll help me. And when all the work is done, and the gods are dead, I’ll kill you, too.”
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