Calypso set the bag down on the table and Cassandra rifled through it.
“Lamb and chicken both,” Calypso said. “But no way to tell which is which without unwrapping.” She flicked a lock of Cassandra’s hair over her shoulder. It was a familiar, affectionate touch—Odysseus used to do it, and suddenly the weight of his absence hit Cassandra square in the chest. It must have hit Calypso, too, because her fingers lingered on Cassandra’s shirt. Cassandra grasped them, to squeeze and comfort, but what she felt made her jerk away. Calypso’s fingers were half-rotten bone, and left wet streaks on her skin.
That’s just my imagination.
Imagination and not imagination. Since the vision after the Fury attack, a shadow stretched across Calypso’s face like a caul. Sometimes her hair fell out. Sometimes her teeth. What was seen couldn’t be unseen. Cassandra’s eyes re-created it from all angles, and when she slept her brain re-created it, too, turning it over in dreams a hundred times worse. They enhanced it with smell, and sound, and left her woozy and uneasy after waking.
Since they’d been in Athens, Calypso seemed happier. She laughed more, and left the hotel for hours at a time to wander. She came back smelling of stray dogs she’d found and fed. And when they crossed over the sea, she’d stared at the stunning blue so intensely that Cassandra knew she was remembering a time from before, when she’d used to swim in it.
It was one last turn on the carousel. The last act in Calypso’s long goodbye.
Or so she thinks.
After the gods were dead, Calypso wouldn’t want to join them. Enough time would pass for her to see she had things to stay for. Friends who cared. Cassandra’s brain laid these ropes of reason around her vision of Calypso’s death, around and around in a slow, quiet noose. And always the vision lashed back. You can’t change fate.
But I can. I’ll learn.
“We’re not really so far from Ithaca,” Calypso said. She sat near the window picking fries out of her pita and dipping them in tzatziki. Ithaca. Odysseus’ island. “I hated that island,” she went on, “for taking him away from me. And now I’d give anything to go and find him there.”
Cassandra said nothing. Anything she said would come out wrong, or hollow, or just plain stupid. She knew. She’d heard enough from other people after Aidan died.
“If I turn my ear the right way into the wind,” Calypso said, “I can almost hear him. A memory on the air. Ithaca must remember him even after all this time. Or at least I’d like to think so.” Calypso looked down. “Can you feel Aidan? In this ancient city?”
“I haven’t been listening.”
Calypso nodded. “Too busy sniffing out Hades.”
“Yes. But not only that. The Aidan who would haunt Athens wouldn’t be Aidan. He’d be Apollo.”
“They’re one and the same.”
No. They weren’t. But Calypso needed to think so. Because she needed to believe that Odysseus was the same boy who had loved her beside the sea.
“Yeah, well,” said Cassandra. “I hate him as many days as I love him, anyway. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to kill myself now that he’s gone.”
Calypso stopped chewing.
“I didn’t mean it to come out that way,” Cassandra said. “I get … pissed off at the drop of a hat, these days.”
“I know. I understand.”
“I didn’t mean to make you sound—” What? Pathetic? Go ahead, idiot, stick your foot farther down your throat.
“It’s all right, I said.” Calypso pushed a piece of meat into her mouth and went back to looking out the window. Conversation over. They ate the rest of their lunch in silence.
By the time Thanatos returned, Cassandra had fallen asleep on the couch watching a European version of MTV. She woke to the sound of the shower turning off. The rest of the suite was empty. Calypso had taken enough of her crap and fled.
The bathroom door opened. Thanatos poked his head out and peered at her.
“Did you find him?” she asked.