Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Mom!”
With Skye on her heels, Amara nearly collided with Gray as he shot out of the library. “There’s no way that racket means anything good.”
“Keep behind me,” she ordered.
“Sure, sure. Except I’m not gonna, so.”
The clichés had it right: No matter how fast she tried to move, it was like trying to sprint through molasses.
Her urgency was in direct proportion to her difficulty in getting to her mother’s side.
She had never heard Hilly sound like that.
The only time she came close was when Amara accidentally drove the family SUV off the cli—
Oh, shit.
The three of them kept getting in each other’s way until they were at Death’s door, all trying to enter at once à la the Three Stooges.
“He’s not here,” Hilly cried. She was crouched over Death, still in the apron she’d worn to oversee breakfast, holding fistfuls of his pajama top, her nose an inch from his. “He’s not here!”
“Let go of his shirt, Hilly,” Skye said calmly.
“He’s not here!”
“He’s there, Mom. He’s right there. In your, um, fists.”
“He isn’t, you ridiculous child!” Hilly wrenched her attention back to her husband. “You come back to me, Reaper,” her mother commanded the unconscious—
Please only be unconscious or even a coma not that I want my father to be in a coma but please please don’t be dead I’m not ready no one is ready.
—body on the bed. “Come back to me, bone man! Freyja Brunhilde Gondul demands it, you eater of souls, you king of the graveyard. Lord of crossroads, return to me at once!”
“I wish my folks had cute pet names for each other,” Gray said faintly, and Amara bit her lip, hard, to lock back the hysterical giggle. The pain helped her get a grip, and she crossed the room, gently moved her mother aside (thank God Hilly went easily), and felt for a carotid pulse.
Has his skin always been so papery, so fragile? Death’s hair had faded further in the hours since she’d seen him, his closed eyelids so purple they looked like bruises. And he was thinner than the night before, which should have been impossible. Worse, far worse . . .
How can he look so small? He was the giant of my childhood, one of the biggest men in the Midwest. Even when I was old enough to drink, I had to look up to him.
“He’s not dead,” Amara said. “His heart is beating. Possibly in irritation because Mother keeps shouting and shaking him.” But she softened the sarcasm by taking her mother’s small, cold hand in hers.
The screams had terrified her, but her mother’s desperation and anguish were as frightening. “Mother? Do you hear me? He’s alive.”
“There’s no point in calling nine-one-one, right? You guys? Even if we took a car to drive to the nearest cell tower for service?” Gray had his phone out, but made no move to do anything with it. “I mean, who would we even call?”
“No one,” Skye said firmly. “This is a family issue. It always has been.”
“Has anyone reached out to Paeon?” Amara asked.
Her mother’s shocked reaction gave the answer. “Surely it hasn’t . . .”
“Mom. It’s crazy that the night I got here, I had to remind you that Paeon was an option.
Death has been sick for a while. Long enough to call me home, so I’m guessing at least a month.
And now he’s unresponsive.” She understood that her mother was using denial to cope, and she also understood that she couldn’t keep indulging that delusion.
“Paeon could be our only option.” To Gray: “He’s an ancient doctor who took care of gods so well, he eventually evolved into the god of godly medicine. ”
Gray was already nodding. “Well, yeah! Definitely call that guy.”
“No one has needed his art for decades,” Skye pointed out. “Possibly centuries. It will take time to find him. It will take time for him to come to us. In the meantime, the question before us is . . .”
Oh, hell.
“—what does it mean when Death is unresponsive? And what happens next as a consequence?”
And they all looked at Amara. Even Gray.
Dammit.