Chapter 20 #2
Margo sits down again, beaming, and my skin prickles with warning.
Is this them playing “good cop” and “bad cop” and they’re trying to get information out of me?
Or just get me on their side so I can convince Kalos?
Because I’m not buying Margo’s sudden altruism.
I’m terrible at mind games but maybe I need to try one of my own.
“Thank you,” I say, deciding to butter her up.
“The clothes and the pillow—and everything else—will be appreciated.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was this bad down here.” She smiles gently again.
“Your necklace is pretty,” I offer as we stare at each other awkwardly. I drop my gaze to the glittering masterpiece adorning her neck. “I can’t stop looking at it.”
Her expression changes to one of pure delight and she fingers the crystals again.
“Gosh, isn’t it just the most beautiful thing?
These are all from the Citadel. It was a crystalline palace in the sky and when it fell, people swooped in and stole the crystals and sold them on the black market.
Well, except for Omos. That’s a friend of mine—he’s a monk living close to the outskirts of the lands where the Citadel used to be.
People trade them to Omos, and he gave them all to me.
I had them made into a necklace.” She leans forward conspiratorially. “Seth absolutely hates it.”
“The crystals?”
She nods, grinning with real pleasure.
“And you paint things that bother him,” I point out. “Are you guys not getting along?”
“Oh no, we get along well enough.” She fingers the crystals, her gaze dreamy.
“As for doing things that Seth doesn’t like?
There’s an art to it. He bosses around everyone and tries to rule, and it gives him a big head.
I like to show him in small ways that he can boss around everyone but me. That I see through him.”
Her tone is fond. Really, really fond. It makes me wonder about them. “Are you guys…together?”
Margo stiffens, her hand dropping from her necklace. She puts on another bright smile and picks up her paintbrush again. “We are Anchor and god, just like you and Kalos. And speaking of the two of you, have you met the Fates yet?”
Fates as in plural? “I met Lachesis in a coffee shop back home.”
“You did? Interesting.” Margo taps the stick-end of her paintbrush against her lips. She looks surprised by my admission, the uncertain expression flicking over her face again.
Shit. I hope I didn’t give away information that was supposed to be secret. I’m so bad at this. “Who were you referring to?”
Margo eyes me and dabbles her paint brush on her palette again.
“The Fates here, of course. They’re the ones running the show.
Here, they’re called the Spidae, and they control the web of fate.
” She says web of fate in a lofty tone. “I haven’t met them yet, of course, but everyone else we’ve run into has, which tells me that they’re pulling quite a few strings… pun intended.”
“Who else have you run into?” I ask.
“That’s not important. What’s important is that if you meet them, you remember that they can see past, present, and future all at once.
They know exactly what they’re doing. If you think something is coincidence, it’s not.
” She paints a bright yellow pompom on top of the party hat and shakes the brush at me to emphasize her point.
“They’ve already decided how everything is going to go.
It’s all said and done. We’re just puppets playing out the story on stage. ”
There’s something ominous about that. Like everything has already been decided and nothing we do matters.
It makes my hackles rise. She might be trying to scare me more than warn me.
It’s hard to tell with Margo. I’m still not entirely convinced she’s not down here being the “good cop” to Seth’s bad one. “What do you mean?”
“Just that,” she says smoothly. Margo adjusts her seat atop the stool, touches her necklace again as if to reassure herself, and goes back to painting.
“It took me a while to figure this out, but if there are gods of fate in play, that changes everything, you know? For a long time, I wondered why and how they would allow Seth, a god from another plane, to come over to their playground. How did that slip past them? Then I realized…it didn’t.
It didn’t slip past them at all. They knew he was coming over.
The fact that they keep bringing over people from our world to serve as Anchors instead of taking from the locals tells me that they’re busy sticking their hands in everything to get the most favorable outcome possible. ”
“What does that favorable outcome entail, exactly?”
“That’s the question we should be asking, isn’t it?
That’s why I’m down here talking to you.
” She waves the paintbrush in the air and goes back to splatting more yellow, this time polka-dots on the hat.
“Seth told me to show up and convince you to join with us, but you’ll figure that out on your own.
Or not. I’m here to talk about the bigger pieces at work. ”
“The Fates.”
“Correctamundo. I figure they want Seth here on this side for some reason. Maybe he shakes things up. Maybe he improves things on the other plane—back on Earth—and the Fates here lost a bet. There’s a reason he’s here.
And the way I figure it, if we keep on the route we’ve been, they’ll have no choice but to add him to their pantheon at the end of this.
He can’t stay a rogue god forever. They’re going to want to contain him, to force him to abide by their rules.
If they were going to boot him back to Earth because he didn’t belong, they would have done it already, you know?
If he’s causing problems, they’d have gotten rid of him right away.
But we’ve been here for months and so far, nothing.
I’ve concluded that they want him here, just like someone wants you here, specifically paired up with Kalos.
And if the Earth Fates are involved, that means I’m right. ”
I frown at her, because her theorizing is making my head hurt…but it also makes a lot of sense. A terrifying amount. “Why me, though?”
“I ask that all the time,” Margo continues. “Why me? Why me with Seth? We aren’t copacetic on any level. He drives me crazy, and I live to poke holes into his ego. And yet for some reason we were thrown together. It made me think, and I started painting, and I realized that was the key.”
Now she’s losing me. “Painting…?”
She picks up the palette she’s been using and shows me the blobs of paint on it, excitement written across her features.
“Yes! The way I think of it, it’s a bit like a color palette.
They’re mixing and matching personalities to see what the outcome is.
You, Elsie, might be yellow, for example.
” She blobs yellow onto one corner of the palette and turns back to me. “We’ll say Kalos is green.”
She scoops a load of green paint on the end of her brush and swirls it into the yellow at the corner, angling her palette so I can watch. The paints swirl together, becoming a lighter, pale shade of green.
“This is what you get when you mix the two of you together. Let’s say that you’re a happy person and he’s a sad one—I’m just going with generalizations, mind you, for this example—mixing you together gets him a little less sad, a paler shade of green than he was before.
He’s been neutralized. Whereas if he was with someone more extreme… ”
Margo moves her paintbrush over her palette and swipes into a puddle of black paint and adds the black to the pale green. It immediately turns dark and murky.
“You see?” She says. “Now imagine you’re the paint and the Fates are the ones holding the paintbrush.
You think they’re not mentally mixing colors every day, every hour, every minute, trying to get the most favorable outcome possible?
Sure, they could have picked someone in this world to work with Kalos, but there’s something about you that’s preferable to them.
There’s something about your pairing that seems optimal for them.
Because I’ve noticed one thing—each god has four Aspects, which means there are four Anchors.
So far, those that have Ascended that have an outworlder have become attached to that and kept the bond.
They brought their Anchors home with them.
” She pauses, eyeing me for my reaction.
That’s not going to be the case for me, as I’m returning to my world for my afterlife, but I don’t reply.
“Are you listening to me? Whatever is happening isn’t random. Nothing is random. Nothing at all. This is all some master plan they’ve concocted that we’re not in on.”
I shiver at how ominous that sounds.
She turns on her stool and beams at me. “Which is why it’d be smart for us to work together. I need you to convince Kalos that it’s in his best interest.”
I manage a wry smile. I’m supposed to convince Kalos? That’s a joke. “You know he’s Apathy, right? He’s not going to put his neck on the line for anyone, especially not me. He barely even likes me.”
Margo’s brows go up. “You don’t think so? Because I’ve met several Apathy aspects in Seth’s little crusade to build his army, and I can tell you that your Kalos is the least apathetic of all Apathies we’ve met.”
That surprises me. “How many have you met?”
She waves her hand again, dismissing my question. “Not important. I’m just pointing out that there might be a little more going on between the two of you than you’re letting on. He might be Apathy, but I think we’ve found something he’s willing to get out of bed for.”
“What?”
“You. Duh.”
“Me?” I’m shocked. “Why? What has he said?”
But she just gives me a knowing smile, and I realize she’s not going to tell me anything.
I want to grab her and shake her by her bejewelled shoulders and demand that she spit out answers.
I hate these games. That’s all it is, I figure, given that I’m in a jail cell of some kind, separated from Kalos, who I’m supposed to be serving and helping.
If Margo and Seth were on the up and up, they wouldn’t be treating us like this.
“Well, if you want us to work with you, you’re going to have to treat us better,” I tell her, my back stiff as I struggle to control my frustration.
“Like I said, this is just a safety net until we have reassurance that you’re working with the two of us.
Seth needs friends, and you need to talk Kalos into it.
” She gestures at my surroundings. “Once Seth is assured you want to work with us, this will all be a bad memory. All you need to do is get Kalos to see our side of things.”
I give her a skeptical glance. Exactly how much power does she think I have here? I’ve been thinking of myself as an assistant, but instead of fetching coffees for a celebrity, I’m dragging an Aspect through the countryside. “He’s a god. I can’t talk him into anything.”
“Uh huh.” Her mouth curves into a smile.
“I can’t. Seriously. He’s Apathy, remember? Him getting out of bed is a big win. If you’ve dealt with other Apathy aspects, you know how difficult it is for them to get motivated.”
Her confidence flags. She dabs at her painting, but some of her enthusiasm is gone.
“No, I know. Apathy is…tricky. Arrogance is really the easiest to work with because you just flatter them into doing what you want. Apathy needs more motivation. Which is where you come in, Elsie. What’s your goal here? ”
“My goal?” I spread my hands. “What goal am I supposed to have? I’m Kalos’s until the end.
I’m exchanging my life for…” I pause, because I don’t want to tell Margo about David.
I don’t want to tell her the reasons why I’m here, why I so readily agreed to do this.
The wound is too raw. “It doesn’t matter.
I agreed to be Kalos’s Anchor, and I know how the job works.
I’m at his side constantly until I’m killed.
If he’s the last Aspect standing, he wins. I’m going to lose either way.”
She waves a hand at me again, dismissing my words. “I know how the endgame works. Seth reminds me all the time. What I’m saying is, what’s the game plan right now? You’re just going to keep running until you die? Spreading disease wherever you go?”
I shake my head. “Not us. We’ve been careful.”
Margo gives me a pitying look. “Do you really think so? Or have you just not been paying enough attention?”
Her words take me by surprise. I tighten my grip on the blanket, thinking.
Wherever the other Kalos went—the Aspect that was chasing us—there were sick people.
I’d made it clear to Kalos that I didn’t want to do the same…
didn’t I? Would he care enough to ensure that he wasn’t spreading disease?
Or would he just not give a crap because they’re mortals?
She’s saying this just to mess with me. “You’re wrong.”
“You sure about that?”
I’m…not. That’s the terrifying part.
My tongue glues to the roof of my mouth.
We haven’t backtracked to see how people are faring in our wake.
We’ve just been traveling on and on, down roads and through the countryside and a town…
oh god. What if we are spreading disease?
Would Kalos even realize what he’s doing?
I think of all the people at Gental’s celebration and how they’d kicked us out because they didn’t want us spreading disease.
I think of poor Kina and her family. “I… we don’t want to hurt anyone.
That was never the plan. But we can’t just stand around and wait to die, either. ”
“That’s the pickle, isn’t it?”
I have nothing to say to that. I need to think. I need a moment alone, without Margo trying to influence me. “I’m done with talking right now. Can you please leave?”
“Oh, honey. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. You didn’t know?” She looks truly regretful. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, all right? This is a different world, the rules are different, too. You don’t know what you don’t know.”
But I should have known. I should have guessed, and I let myself be blinded by all the good I was doing, shepherding Kalos around like a do-gooder martyr.
Turns out I’m nothing but a plague rat.