Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
She left the Reaper and bypassed the Valkyrie on her way out.
Well. That had been the plan. But her mother was on her almost before the bedroom door closed.
“He’s better, don’t you think?”
“What are you basing that on, Mom? Better compared to what?”
“I knew your coming would help.”
“He looks ghastly compared to the last time I saw him. I don’t know what he looked like last week or last month. My baseline’s way out of date.”
“And whose fault his that?” she snapped.
Amara blinked and took in her mother’s denial / sudden fury / helplessness. “That’s fair,” she conceded. “What did Paeon say?”
“Paeon?”
“Yes, the god of godly medicine. Why are you saying ‘Paeon?’ like you have no idea who I’m talking about?”
“It hasn’t come to that yet.”
“Oh. That’s . . . good, I guess.” Amara’s knees wanted to buckle from relief. If Mom had declined to bring in the big gun, her dad couldn’t be in too much trouble. “But maybe you should—”
“I put your friend in your tower.”
Amara giggled in spite of herself. “Thanks. That’s not a sentence you normally say. Anyone normally says.”
Her mother grabbed a piece of her hair and gave it a tender yank. “You must be tired. Go rest. See to your friend. And we’ll talk about everything and anything in the morning, when the others get here.”
“Okay.” Amara tried to do the polite triangle hug but her mother was having none of it, giving her a squeeze that left her breathless. “Good night.”
* * *
It was stupid, given the size of the compound, but everything looked smaller, starting with her mother and ending with the tower, three stories high and artfully covered in vines, an Insta-worthy picture if there ever was one, but she didn’t so much as glance up.
Instead, she unlatched the unreasonably tall and heavy egress and shoved, and in seconds she was hammering on Gray’s door.
She jumped at the scream.
“I’m coming! Don’t harvest my soul, I’m coming!”
“Jesus,” she said when he swung the door open. “How long have you been greeting people like that?”
“Two seconds. C’mon in.” He let her enter, then waved his arms like Vanna pointing to the right letter on Wheel. “You believe this place? Of course you do. You were spawned and raised here. But wow.”
She borrowed a line from Olivia Goldsmith’s Flavor of the Month. “It’s not home, but it’s much.”
Gray was in his normal sleeping attire: shirtless with shorts. Thank goodness they were just friends, because it had to be said: The man had an outstanding physique. It wasn’t fair; Gray counted ignoring the McDonald’s drive-thru and going inside as a workout.
He'd been given the smallest of the tower chambers and she was glad. Better the tower than the house; sharing the same space with death gods didn’t always work out well. This way Gray had a separate space to retreat to if needed.
The chamber was simply furnished with a double bed, an end table, and two overstuffed, wine-colored chairs.
There was a small table between the chairs, and the brass bathtub was directly across from the bed, adjacent to the fireplace.
The built-in bookshelves were bare, the carpet a deep brown, the windows shut tight against the March chill.
“This place is like the fanciest of fancy B and Bs. Gotta say, the tub’s so cool, I don’t mind not having an en suite bathroom.”
“There’s a bathroom on this level,” she replied absently.
“Yeah, I know. Your mom—”
“It’s the second door on the left just after the door to your room.”
“Um, Amara? Preeeeeetty sure you’re not listening.”
“But if you don’t like that, you’re welcome to come up to the top of the tower and use mine.”
“Okay, now I’m getting a ‘she’s not listening’ vibe and a Rapunzel vibe.”
She laughed. “Don’t be an idiot; my hair’s not nearly long enough.”
“Yeah, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your bob’ won’t work. C’mere, have a seat in one of these ludicrously puffy chairs and tell me about this tower. Your family tower!”
“Pass. There’s a reason my room’s at the top. It was given to me so I could look over the kingdom I’d one day inherit.”
“Couldn’t give you a ground-floor room and a ladder, huh? So tell me about your dad. Wait—first, check this out, your mom got me settled and left a platter of—well, it sounded like she said loofah, but that can’t be right.”
“Lefse with fresh butter and brown sugar,” Amara said, smiling to see the snack setup. “She used to bring it to me when I was studying. Or grounded. Or sulking. So every couple of days, now I think about it. Once it was four times on the same day.”
“Do I even want to know what constitutes a grounding offense in Casa El Death?”
“Your Spanish sucks, and the usual. Lying about giving my lutefisk to the dog. ‘Forgetting’ to get their signatures for the in-school-suspension slips.”
“Slips, plural, huh?”
“And hiding the crown. I was young and dumb and thought Death couldn’t do the job without it.”
Gray raised his eyebrows. “So you thought a world without Death was a plan?”
“Young and dumb.” She shrugged. “Like I said.”
“I know this isn’t helpful right now, but everything you say is fascinating and scary and wonderful and terrible.”
“Warned you. You know you’re ridiculously brave, correct? Because most people would avoid Death’s domicile. Most people would have dropped me like a bag of dirt when they found out what I was.”
“A cute bundle of nonsense wrapped in a bow of bitchery?”
“Stop it.” She plopped down on the chair, then spread butter on a small triangle of lefse, sprinkled it with a staggering amount of brown sugar . . .
“Oh my God.”
. . . then rolled it into an eight-inch cigar . . .
“Ohhhhhh my God, Amara! You’re gonna unhinge your jaw now. I’ve never been more terrified.”
. . . and gobbled it down in two bites.
“I saw it and don’t believe it. Do me, too, please, but instead of half a pound of sugar, maybe half of an eighth of a cup max. And instead of eight inches, maybe three?”
“Boring.” But she obliged, and smiled to see Gray’s enjoyment.1
“Your mom says this is made out of potatoes. Super-thin potatoes.”
“Potatoes and butter and cream. Don’t tell me you’ve lived in Minnesota for years and never had lefse.”
“I’ve lived in Minnesota for years and never had lefse. I guess it’s more popular up here by the border. Don’t worry, I’m rectifying even as we speak. How’s your dad?”
“Concerning.”
“. . . Okay. Is he really dying?”
“He thinks he is. Or he wants me to think he is. Or maybe he is.” She fixed herself another brown sugar / butter / potato cigar. “Coughing up blood—nobody does that for fun.”
“That is true. Nobody coughs up blood for the hilarity factor.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, but he wants me to take over the family business.” She masticated, then added, “Which, to be fair, I already knew.”
Gray, who’d just popped the last lefse inch into his mouth, nearly choked. “Yeah. It’s one of the reasons you left . . . what? A decade ago?”
“One reason, yes.”
“So you’re taking up the scythe? Or the twenty-first-century equivalent?”
“Of course not. I’m going to find out what’s making my dad sick and fix that instead. With luck, by the end of the week, we’ll be back in Minnesota guzzling virgin margs by the pitcher and wishing we had lefse on the side.”
“Sure, sure. End of the week. It’s Thursday night, but whatever. Not that this is about me, but visiting your folks is a nice reminder that mine aren’t nearly as weird and damaging as I thought.”
“They are,” Amara corrected, ignoring the coil of anger in her belly when she thought of Gloria and Greg Gray. “And they are damaging.”
“See?” Gray gave her a friendly whap on the arm. “Bad as you thought it was here, it could’ve been worse. Death and Hilly never abused you, they just want you to spend the rest of your life murdering everyone in the Midwest.”
“I was wrong not to realize Death’s tankard was half full, not half empty,” she intoned, and got another whack on the arm.
“Let’s talk about anything and anyone else besides your family.
Or mine. Abortion? Who was really behind January sixth and/or on the grassy knoll? Why Harry and Meghan are the worst?”
“Harry and Meghan are not the—ugh, point taken. You want a subject change. But hey! At least my family is keeping their word. No contact until they’re ready to apologize.”
“Since they never will, you’ll never have to see them again.”
Gray shrugged. “Their choice.”
“And their loss.” She stood and stretched. “See you in the morning, I’m going up. Also, my mother will make a seven-course breakfast and if you leave so much as a crumb on your plate . . . well. Lie awake in terror and contemplate alllll the wrath.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Sweet dreams. Ha! That pillow missed me by a mile.”
1 Lefse is soooo good. Don’t take my word for it; try some.