“Right.” He sighed and ran a hand through his loose curls. “Try to think broadly, Cassie. Metaphysically. There’s more to the workings of the world than you can frame in our terms.”
“So explain it to me.”
“A soul guide’s role …,” he started, but seeing my expression, stopped and shook his head. “I don’t think you’re ready to listen.”
“What do you mean? I’m listening.”
“No. You’re sitting there, frowning, with your arms crossed,” he said pointedly. I looked down. He was right: classic defensive posture.
“I’m sorry, Zander. You’re right,” I said, wondering why I wasn’t feeling the way I thought I would if I ever found out there were others. I was feeling sad. Disappointed. Not that I’d found someone—but that it was Zander. “I think you just caught me off guard with this whole thing,” I told him, my heart aching a little as I said it. “I thought there might be others like me out there. I just didn’t expect it to be you.”
“What? You weren’t waiting this whole time for me to tell you I was the angel of death?” He wasn’t grinning, but I could tell he was holding it back.
“No,” I said, smiling weakly. “That was a bit of a surprise.”
Then I realized what he’d said, the way he’d described himself: angel of death. It’s what Demetria had called her visions. Had I been right about her all along?
“Wait … is she one too?” I asked, confused.
“Who?”
“Demetria.”
“We’ve already been through this,” Zander said shortly. “No. She is not.”
“But she knew about you, didn’t she? She told her mother she’d had visions, seen the angel of death.”
Zander looked down, picking uncomfortably at the frayed knee of his jeans. “Sometimes they can see. Just a little bit. I don’t know exactly how.” He shook his head. “It’s happened to me once before. Both times they were Greeks. Maybe they had a touch of the blood, distant relatives or something.”
“Huh.” My brain was sluggish, unable to come up with anything more intelligent. It hit me then that I was exhausted. Completely drained. How could I not be after going from Nick to Demetria to Zander to this, the truth I’d been seeking?
Outside the sky was black. Like despair, my overwrought mind offered.
“I’ve gotta go,” I said to Zander.
“Okay,” he said. “We should talk more, though. There’s a lot to cover …”
“Another day. Please. I can’t take any more right now. Really.”
He drove me home. I watched dim shapes pass by—road signs, houses, cars—their images moved across my brain like Rorschach inkblots, meaningless and forgettable.
We pulled up in front of my building and made plans to meet again, talk more. As I was reaching for the handle, Zander said, “I was wondering … all these weeks you kept trying to get me to admit I’d been at the hospital with Demetria. Why?”
“I thought you were the father of her baby,” I said simply, feeling silly to be reminded of my oh-so-human crush, the worries I’d had about Zander. Stupid nothings compared to the truth.
“She’s pregnant?”
I nodded. “When I saw you there, or thought I saw you, I …” I shook my head, embarrassed.
Zander snorted. “I can see why you were worried about me. First your friend tells you I’m a player, then that.” He smiled. “It’s a wonder you ever went out with me at all.”
“Yeah.” I smiled too, surprised to find it still a relief to have him confirm there was nothing between them. He hadn’t even known she was pregnant.
Then he said, “You understand now why I was hanging around her.”
No. I hadn’t. But suddenly I did—her bandaged wrists, the reason she was at the hospital.
The warmth of our shared moment turned icy.
“Were you with her when …?” I couldn’t even say it.
“No.” Zander didn’t elaborate and I didn’t have the strength to ask more; I wasn’t even sure what the questions should be.
He leaned over to kiss me before I got out, but I didn’t have the heart for it. Thinking about him lurking, waiting to be a part of her death put a serious damper on romance. I turned my head and it became nothing more than a chaste and brotherly peck on the cheek.
Chapter 19
Back in Kansas, when I learned that my mom hadn’t died the way I thought she had, I had to wait for the library to open to find out more. Drea, my aunt, only had a laptop that she shuttled from work to home to the airport and back again. I guess I could have looked for an Internet café or something, but that hadn’t occurred to me at the time. When your world is rocked, you don’t always think straight.
Like now.
I sat in the quiet of our apartment, wishing Petra were home so I’d have an excuse to avoid the computer that sat patiently in front of me.
But she wasn’t. Reluctantly I lifted my eyes to the screen, where my news-filled homepage glared brightly. A message scrolled across, offering pain relief, then listing about a hundred side effects you could expect if you took it.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I knew all about that.
I typed in the name. It seemed to expand ominously as the letters built one upon the next: THANATOS.
I’d heard it before, of course. Maybe from Nan, in the bedtime stories she used to tell. Definitely in my earlier research. I’d spent hours online and at bookstores and libraries after reading the translated letter that claimed I was a descendant of the Fates. But there was surprisingly little to learn about them, and far more fiction than fact. The Fates made it to TV and video games and books, but though Christianity has the Bible and Islam has the Koran, Ancient Greece has nothing. Maybe their sacred texts were destroyed when the religion was outlawed, leaving only myths about myths.
What sources existed were full of errors, calling the Fates immortal and ugly, a trio of weavers and spinners. None of it applied as far as I could tell. We were definitely mortal, I didn’t think I was ugly, and I’d earned solid Bs in Home Ec, only for effort, not skill with a needle or thread. My pillows and wash bags came out lumpy and crooked without fail.
The things I’d read made me doubt the letter and its claims more than believe them. Maybe that’s what I’d wanted. Now I was back at it, trying to pick truths from these flawed sources, not about my ancestors this time, but about Zander’s.