No. Aphrodite would die screaming at her hands, and it wouldn’t be any trouble at all. Cassandra’s palms burned quietly, and she brushed them against the cool fabric of her jeans.
“He’s not lying,” Calypso said after a few seconds.
“I know,” Cassandra replied.
He was too afraid to lie. Nothing he would protect could hurt him worse than she could. Still, the idea that Aphrodite had gone to ground, out of her reach, made her stomach twist.
We’ll find them, someday. They can’t hide forever. Someone will have seen them.
“What about Hades?” she asked. God of the underworld. God of death. When she’d gone to the underworld looking for Aidan, Persephone said that Hades’ death would be a blight on the world. That he would die in a blast of virus and disease. An entire city would fall around him to some unspeakable plague. One last tribute, she’d called it. But not if Cassandra could help it. If she couldn’t have Aphrodite, then she’d settle for him.
Calypso and David stared.
“Hades?”
Cassandra nodded. The idea of him walking in a city somewhere, ticking down like a biological weapon, had been in the back of her mind since she’d returned from the underworld. More than once she’d dreamed of a man clothed in black, surrounded by thousands of corpses, blackened and bleeding from the eyes. The first time she woke in a panic, and flipped through every news channel she could find. But it hadn’t been a vision. Only a nightmare. It was harder and harder to tell the difference.
David laughed and drew his hand roughly over his chin.
“Cally, your friend has big balls for such a little girl.”
Calypso made a face. “Don’t be gross, David. Have you heard anything about Hades, or not?”
He sighed. “He’s not on this continent. He doesn’t like it. Except for Mexico, when the Aztecs were there, and then he came north for the frontier. That’s the last I heard of him here.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes. It didn’t matter if Hades wasn’t in the United States when David had just supplied them with passports.
“I can’t get you to Hades,” he said finally. “But if you’re after the god of death, why not try the real thing?”
“The real thing?”
Cassandra searched the whole of her mind all the way to Troy and back but couldn’t discern who he referenced.
“Thanatos?” Calypso asked, and David nodded.
“Thanatos. Death embodied. If you want Hades, he’ll know where to find him.”
“And?” Cassandra snapped. “Where is this … Thanatos?”
David finished his beer and stood. “You’re in luck. He loves Los Angeles.”
*
“Don’t you know how to do your hair? I thought all girls today would know at least how to do a fancy ponytail.”
Cassandra stared at her reflection in the hotel mirror. The girl who stared back had a face clean of makeup and slightly tanned shoulders from time spent under unfamiliar sun. Brown hair hung down to her elbows. It hadn’t been cut in months.
“I don’t want to do my hair. And I don’t want to wear this.” The dress Calypso had put her in stuck to her in every place that would make her self-conscious. It was black, but a shadow of gray patterning across her chest and down her hip suggested a leopard’s spots. They might have stripped it off of any wasted Hollywood socialite.
“We won’t get in if you don’t wear that.” Calypso stepped behind her and swept her hair back over her shoulders. Four quick twists and what felt like a dozen bobby pins threaded through Cassandra’s scalp made it almost presentable.
“I don’t like the idea of that, either.” She squirmed as Calypso applied makeup to her eyes and lips. “I don’t need this. You’d be enough. I could sneak by in your shadow.” Calypso wore light blue silk. Somehow it made her eyes greener and her skin more honeyed. She patted Cassandra’s cheek.