He nodded briefly, then faced forward, shifting the car into drive. “I know.”
Zander pulled away from the curb. Out the window, I watched bundled students hurrying home. We passed Hannah and Erin and I waved quickly. I’d face twenty questions in the morning, if not sooner.
Before I came face-to-face—and closer—with Zander by his car, I had planned for this to be my conversation. I told him everything I knew last time. He gave little besides confirmation. Today, I’d find out the stuff I needed to know. But it hadn’t exactly started like I’d expected.
“I’ve been doing some reading,” I told him as we left school behind.
Zander nodded.
“They call Thanatos ‘Death.’ ”
He shrugged, eyes on the road, cucumber cool. “Yes.”
“But you don’t kill them?”
“I already told you I don’t.”
I let out my breath, unaware I’d been holding it in the seconds it took him to answer. He had told me before, but it was a relief to hear it again. “You’re a soul guide.”
“Right.”
“How do you do it?” I asked, rubbing my lips gently. The bruised feeling of his kiss had faded, making it easier to concentrate. “What exactly do you do?”
“I take the necessary actions to escort the soul to its proper realm.”
It sounded like he was reading from a textbook. “C’mon, Zander,” I scoffed. “You can do better than that.”
“No,” he said, glancing at me sharply. “I can’t.”
“Well, do you need to be with them?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward, checking street signs, then turned left.
“So you need to be at the deathbed of all these people?”
“Not exactly,” he said evasively, “but I need to be with them. At some point.”
“Don’t the police get suspicious? I mean, isn’t that like a telltale sign of a serial killer or something? Someone who’s always showing up at crime scenes or around people who wind up dead?”
“I’ve been questioned once or twice.”
“Really?”
Zander shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. I didn’t kill them. It’s not like it’s ever the same cop. This is a big city, Cassie. Not some one-traffic-light burg.”
Yeah. That’s exactly why I’d come here.
“So what happens if you’re not there? With people about to die?”
“What happens if you’re not?” We’d stopped at another red light, Zander glancing out his window, then mine, before settling his eyes on me.
“I guess things just play out the way they would have anyway,” I said slowly, adding, “In which case, maybe it would be better if I was never there.”
“Talk like that’ll get you tossed in the lock-up with your buddy Demetria,” Zander warned with a smile.
“I didn’t mean like that, Zander.” I wasn’t going to let him drag me off-track. “So if you’re not around, the person doesn’t get escorted to … Hades?”
He laughed outright. “Hades? You know no one calls it that anymore, right? That went out, um, about two thousand years ago.”
I flushed. “No,” I said crossly, glad the green light forced him to look away. “I guess they forgot to put that in my descendant-of-the-gods training manual. Along with everything else.”
“Listen,” he said, squinting at a street sign, “I think you’re getting too wrapped up in worrying about stuff you don’t need to. The important thing is that you’ve got this ability for a reason. You have a role, a job to do. Don’t worry about my role—it doesn’t concern you.”
“Actually it does,” I said. “It concerns me a lot. I am very concerned.”
“What are you so concerned about?”
“I’m concerned that you know people are going to die and can ignore it so easily. Don’t you feel like you should try to help them? Maybe not all of them, but there must have been some, somewhere along the line, that you felt like you should have warned.”
“No. There haven’t been. It’s not my job to warn them.”
“That’s like the guards at Dachau saying it wasn’t their job to help the inmates. Just following orders. Is that what you do, Zander?”
“I’m not a bad guy, Cassie. You of all people should understand that.”
“Yeah. Right,” I said. “After all, you’re saving them lots of time with the post-death paperwork and everyone knows when you’re dead, time is money.”
Zander pursed his lips. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
“Zander, I assure you, I couldn’t take it more seriously.”
“Then why are you being flip?”
“I’m not being flip. Or if I am, it’s only to try to show you how ridiculous what you’re saying is. How come, if we both know someone’s going to die, it’s up to me to decide whether they should or not, but you have no responsibility?”
He started to answer, but I cut him off. “Yeah, I know, Zander, because it’s my role, not yours, right?”
“Yeah, Cassie, that’s right.”
“Even assuming for a minute that’s true, which I’m not saying it is,” I said, “how could I possibly know who to save and who not to?”
“You just know.”
“But, Zander,” I said, feeling the sudden sting of tears. “That’s the problem. I don’t.”
He frowned, glancing over, then right back to the road. I tried to explain.
“I’ll give you a perfect example,” I said. “I was in town with Liv one day and saw this old guy sitting out in the cold, with the mark. Everything about him told me I shouldn’t warn him. I mean, what good could it possibly do? The guy wasn’t going to suddenly cure cancer or save the world from nuclear war or even be there for some sad kid trying to grow up, like Nick Altos.”
Zander looked confused and I realized I’d never even told him about that mess.
“I warned him anyway, the old guy. And you know what he said?”
“What?”
“So be it. I’m ready.”
Zander shook his head. “You should have known better.”
“I did,” I said. “But when I got out there, I couldn’t not do it. And then I felt so bad about making that mistake and putting someone else’s life on the line, that I went too far the other way and let Nick Altos’s dad die for no reason.”