Inside, the faintest scent of incense and Greek tea hung in the air. It was a sudden, aching reminder of Nan, so unexpected and bittersweet that my eyes filled with tears. I tried to wipe them away, but Zander saw.
“Hey …” He stepped closer, his hand brushing my cheek lightly. Zander pulled me close, which made it worse because I felt that crazy attraction, but it was all mixed up now. He wasn’t who I thought he was. I hadn’t wanted him to be who I thought he was when I thought he was a player, but I didn’t want him to be this either.
Or did I? Would it be better having a partner with benefits or just more confusing?
I was having trouble thinking straight and there was so much to think about. I shook my head and pulled away, turning my back to discreetly erase the remaining tears. “Thanks,” I said hoarsely. “I’m fine.”
“You’re new to this.” Zander sighed, almost to himself. “I have to remember that, try to be more … sensitive.”
It wasn’t a word that suited him. “It’s okay,” I said. I’d stopped crying, but my eyes and nose were probably still that awful shiny red. I sat on the sofa, looking down so Zander couldn’t see the ugly mess I’m sure I was. He took the armchair next to me.
“I guess I have a lot of questions to ask you,” I said finally.
He nodded. “I thought you might.”
“Can you tell me what you know?” I said without looking up.
“Why don’t we start with what you know,” Zander suggested. “I’ll fill in the blanks.”
I nodded. “Okay.” And then had no idea what to say. I decided to start with what I’d been about to tell Demetria when Zander turned my world inside out. “I know that I see something,” I said. “The mark, I’ve always called it. It’s like a glow around someone and it means they’re going to die.”
I raised my eyes, almost afraid to see what he thought.
“Mm-hmm,” Zander prompted casually, like we were talking about a test at school or a movie we’d both seen. “So you know the moment they’re going to die?”
“Not exactly,” I answered. “The light is on them all through the day of their death, as far as I can tell.”
His expression flickered, like the shutter on an old camera, a momentary change of emotion I couldn’t quite place. And then he said, “Anything else?”
I looked back down. It was easier to say it that way. “I know that I can change things. I can tell them what I see, what I know, and they live.”
“Sometimes,” he corrected. “Right?”
“Right,” I said, remembering the ones who died anyway. “Sometimes.”
He nodded.
“I know …,” I started, pausing when I realized there really wasn’t a single other thing that I knew. Not for sure. “I guess that’s all I really know.”
Zander disagreed. “You knew there were others.”
“Well, yeah. There was a letter in Nan’s things, written in Greek. She gave it to me when I turned sixteen, but I never bothered with it until after she was gone and I realized that the mark was more than just knowing about death. It was an ability to delay it.”
“And the letter said …?”
“It said I was a descendant of Lachesis, one of the three Fates of Greek mythology.”
“Responsible for determining the length of a human life,” he finished.
“Yes.”
“That’s it?” Zander asked.
“No,” I said, looking up to catch every nuance of his reaction. “It said I could change the course of fate, but only at the cost of another life.” I felt everything in me tense as I asked the critical question: “Is it true?”
He nodded. Without hesitation. “Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“My mom told me.”
“But how does she know?”
He shrugged. “She just does.”
“Has she ever seen it happen?”
Zander looked confused. “Seen what happen?”
But she wouldn’t. That wasn’t her gift. It was mine. I could picture how it would look, the mark disappearing from one person and reappearing on another. Someone in the same scene, unmarked before.
What was the likelihood I’d ever be there to see it? The mark wasn’t like a fly, moving through physical space, or a germ, passing from one person to another. I’d never know who’d been sacrificed. Never know if anyone truly had been. I’d have to take it on faith. Or not. Kind of like religion, which is what it had been for the ancient Greeks. But I was a seventeen-year-old high school student, not a Greek goddess.
Maybe the original Fates were just girls like me, too. Normal people. Maybe they all were—Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna—none of them gods at all, but regular people with bizarre, extraordinary abilities or really good tricks; Jesus’s walking on water nothing more than finding a sandbar underneath.
It was the chicken and the egg. Untestable. Unprovable. You either believed or you didn’t.
Diagonally from me, Zander sat, waiting expectantly for whatever else I had to say.
“That’s it, I guess,” I told him finally. “That’s all I know.”
He nodded, but said nothing.
“So?” I prompted finally.
“So, what? Are you asking me what I think?”
“No. I’m asking you if it’s true. Me—us—being some kind of descendants of Greek … gods.”
“Yes,” he said, annoyed at having to answer it again. “Of course it is.”
Of course. Right. How could I have thought otherwise?
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’m a soul guide.”
“So you said. But what is that exactly? Do you know when someone’s going to die?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t cause their death?”
“Right.”
“But you also don’t do anything about it.”
Zander frowned. “No, I do what I’m meant to. I expedite, help the soul get to where it belongs.”
“Like a fast lane to hell?”
“Or heaven. Whatever they’ve earned in their life. But yes.” He nodded. “That’s not far off.”
“So, you’re like … saving them the afterlife paperwork?”
“That’s a very earthly view.”
“It’s the only one I have, Zander.”