Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Holy shit, holy shit, holeeeeee shit!
Graham Gray tried to calm the hell down for the dozenth time in three days. And for the dozenth time in three days, he failed.
He should have been terrified. Or at least worried.
Apprehensive? But nope; seeing Amara in action robbed him of all fear.
Hell, he couldn’t even be nervous. Okay, he could, but it was nothing to do with death-god shenanigans, and everything to do with how he finally knew how Amara Morrigan tasted: warm and sweet, with a sharp, almost metallic undertone.
Vanilla beans wrapped in tinfoil, except the tinfoil wasn’t as prickly as it looked.
Maaaaaybe don’t be hanging out in Death’s bedroom thinking about how his daughter tastes?
Good advice. He tried to give them all a quick once-over without giving away the fact that he was giving them a quick once-over.
Luckily, once they got over the shock of Amara showing up with a guest, they’d politely ignored him most of the time.
Given that the enduring goal of his childhood was to be politely ignored, he was fine with it.
So! All the suspects in one room, probably. Let’s start with Hades and Persephone, draped all over each other. Not a chance in hell (argh, unintended pun!) those two were plotting anything beyond who gets the next orgasm.
La Croix? He looked cool as a cuke, which was apparently his thing, and that tracked right now: If he was up to shady shit, why come to Minnesota to fetch Amara?
He wasn’t sent; he as much as told them over dinner that night in Minneappolis that he felt it was his duty, not an order.
He could have steered clear of the drama, but didn’t.
Plus, he really liked Amara’s mom. Hard to see him going all in on destroying her husband.
Gray still remembered her wild despair when she found Death comatose.
Hard to picture La Croix being fine with it.
Arawn? Anyone with adorable hellhoundlets probably wasn’t plotting to do away with Death.
All right, he knew that didn’t necessarily follow.
It’s possible the houndlets are clouding my objectivity.
Still, hard to see Arawn caring enough to try and murder Death.
He looked intimidating as shit, but seemed super-detached pretty much all the time.
Gray wasn’t sure Arawn cared about anything, never mind glomming new territory.
Skye? Amara’s beloved teacher looked mildly interested in the goings-on, like it was a tennis match you’d bet money on, but not real money. Plus, she was probably the closest thing Amara had to a friend besides himself. Why would she hurt her?
Chernobog? Who the fuck knew?
“Is this the best place to do this?” Penny asked, slipping an arm around Hank’s waist. So weird to know you could blame winter on them. Okay, that wasn’t entirely fair; it wasn’t Persephone’s fault her mom overreacted. Punishing two-thirds of the planet with months of blizzards? Not cool, Demeter!
He turned his attention to the bed. Blizzards aside, Death looked worse each day—you could chart the deterioration—and no one knew the fuck why, except Gray was pretty sure Amara did know, and all the suspects were gathered because she had a bit of a Sherlock streak, for which he blamed Benedict Cumberbatch.
“Penny has a point. Wouldn’t the dining hall be more appropriate?
” Hank asked, and Gray couldn’t get over the man’s resemblance to Steve Martin.
It wasn’t just the short white hair. It was the man’s resting tense face, and how his rare smiles were always strained, like he was amused but also constipated. “Roomier, at the least.”
“Too many temptations for Gray to feed my hounds,” Arawn said with a snigger. And he was right, dammit. The hellhoundlets were locked up somewhere, which sucked because if ever a sickroom needed hellhoundlets, it was this one. Boo! They were born to be free, dammit! Free and cute!
“We’re doing it here,” Amara replied. “The scene of the crime, so to speak. The corpus delicti. Plus, my mother doesn’t need the distraction of tending to our culinary demands.”
“Why?” Hilly asked at once, already rising from her chair. “Are you hungry?”
“Only for the truth,” Gray said. He tried for sincere, but it came off like a TV prosecutor mugging for a jury. Not that he would have minded if Hilly had produced another smoked turkey. The woman was a friggin’ kitchen sorceress. Possibly literally. But Amara was right. Everyone had to stay put.
Almost everyone. He was perfectly aware he was a glorified bystander. “If you’re hungry, Hilly, I’d be glad to bring you something.”
Amara’s mom waved his offer away. “Absolutely not, you’re a guest here.”
So weird that Hilly had set the standard for pale Midwestern homemakers everywhere, centuries earlier and almost by accident.
Martha Stewart would give every one of her teeth to apprentice here for a week.
Well. Supervise Hilly for a week, maybe.
That could be fun to watch, in a death-match kind of way.
Gray made a concerted effort to focus on what was happening right now as opposed to imagining cage matches. If the worst part of the weekend was seeing Death get sicker while helping Amara kill people, the best was solving Amara mysteries, which were his favorite mysteries.
He’d wondered for years about her suburban studio apartment and crap car, just like he’d wondered about her taste in food.
Amara favored bitching about McDonald’s while sucking down a Filet-O-Fish with a McNugget chaser.
If she cooked, it was ramen noodles and Campbell’s tomato soup.
Credit where it was due, she could make a mean grilled cheese and a perfect omelet .
. . and that was about it. No interest in cooking, or even grocery shopping. Takeout, but never from anywhere good.
In other words, Amara’s entire living situation was a collection of knee-jerk reactions to her growing up as Death’s heir, in a luxurious compound where she slept in a tower bedroom, drove a Ford Mustang, and ate homemade everything, and plenty of it.
Oh, and the jobs. It had taken him way too long to figure out why someone with a trust fund was always hustling for temp work, never stayed more than a few weeks, and often jumped into industries she didn’t like or actively loathed.
All that to say, the weekend was worth it just for a deeper glimpse into the life and times of the woman he loved.
As a friend.
As a friend.
The kiss was irrelevant. She’d been under a huge amount of stress and strain and, going by her extreme mortification afterward, deeply regretted it the second she laid one on him.
The last thing he wanted to do was make things worse by suggesting they not only cross the line between friends and lovers, but pole-vault over the fucking thing.
God, he’d adored her from the moment she shoved him off the roof and into a haystack-sized pile of mud. But Amara was like a porcupine: Sharp quills hid the soul of a sweetheart. Dangerous . . . but only when provoked. Sexy, but . . . no, that’s where his metaphor broke down.
“When did you decide?”
That brought him back to the present. If he could have gotten away with it without looking like a total ass, he would have rubbed his hands together.
Gray had heard the same pleasant tone when Amara was zeroing in on a #MeToo fuckface.
Her targets got the same bland questions and pleasant demeanor right before she torpedoed their lives.
“Beg pardon?” Hank asked.
“When did you decide to go along with my parents’ scheme to make Death sick and trick me into my birthright?”
Dead (heh) silence. Penny and Hank looked at each other. Skye looked at the floor. Hilly looked at Death. Chernobog looked at Hilly. And La Croix . . .
“What?”
Holy shit, La Croix was surprised.
Amara was eyeballing La Croix with her “hmmmm” face. “Did you decide as a group? Perhaps in this very room? Or did you all come to the decision separately? Not that it matters. I’m just curious about how we got here.”
Cue the awkwardest of awkward silences.
“Will no one answer me?” La Croix yelped. “I say again: What?”
“Why would you make such an accusation?” Hilly said, still looking down at Death.
Hilly was too calm. And she’d asked the wrong question. Amara took a breath.
“Well, let’s see. I had no warning, despite the fact that Death has allegedly been ill for months.
You were willing to take your time before reaching out because you assumed you had total control of the situation.
You were far too calm and civilized about the whole thing. Very much out of character.”
“I resent that,” Hades said indignantly.
“I don’t,” Skye said with a chuckle.
“If this was real, my folks would have been in touch the second Death sneezed. And well before he became bedridden. But they didn’t say a word before this week. Because it’s not real. And their choice of messenger was telling, too. Giving him Death’s crown was a nice touch.”
“It’s been a lie?” La Croix sputtered. He turned to Hilly. “You used me to perpetuate an illusion?”
Wow. He sounds genuinely hurt. Huh.
“I don’t think—” Penny began.
“Two: You told me you never called Paeon, despite the fact that nothing like this has happened in the history of human events. Despite the fact that he’s the only person still living who might have been able to help.
I understand why you wouldn’t lie to Paeon—too many ways that could have blown up in your face—but at the least, when I brought him up, you should have agreed to bring him in.
Even if you didn’t mean it. But you didn’t.
I reached out. That was a red flag the size of a quilt right there.
You ignored my suggestion because you knew exactly what was wrong. And Paeon probably would have, too.”
“Told you,” Skye said to the room. “Didn’t even take her the weekend to smell a rat.”
“All fine to say this now,” Hades muttered. “You were on board, as I recall.”
“Shush, peanut gallery. Hold all questions and comments until the end. Three, you all vary from incredibly freaked to weirdly calm. And when you voice a concern, it’s never ‘This shouldn’t be happening.
’ It’s always ‘It’s not supposed to be like this.
’ Because while you expected him to be sick, you didn’t plan on him being this sick.
And it’s obvious that the coma took every one of you by surprise. ”
“Oh, I said ‘like this’ one time,” Penny huffed. “Hardly damning.”
Amara nodded. “I concede that. It’s not damning on its own. But if I pull all the oddities together and consider what I know about you, all of you, and what you think you know about me, it’s plenty damning. But that’s not the worst of it. Is it?”
“Nope.” From Chernobog, who’d been leaning against the far wall, arms crossed over his chest, quiet as a grave marker.
Just being around the big lug was intimidating; small wonder he did what he could to seem less terrifying.
The dye job was downright adorable. What is that?
Gray wondered. Nice’n Easy Boy Band Blond?
“It’s gotten away from you, hasn’t it?” Amara asked.
“Whatever spell or poison or trick you colluded to pull. Whatever nonsense scheme you came up with. Death’s not getting better.
That’s what you’re all freaking out about.
Not that Death is sick . . . but that he’s visibly decaying before our eyes. ”
“Oh, but—”
Amara ignored Penny’s timid interruption.
“There was supposed to be a reveal, right? As if this was reality TV and not, you know . . . reality? Once I stepped up, Death was supposed to make a suspiciously miraculous recovery, I would have faced my fears and then I could leave with a calm acceptance of my future, blah-blah. Which carries its own problems—clearly none of you thought past Death’s recovery.
And his miraculous recovery would have raised red flags, too. ”
“You’re right,” Skye said, holding up her hands in what Gray had to assume was an uncharacteristic placating motion. “It was juvenile and insulting, and we—”
“You fucking idiots.”
“Amara,” Skye continued, more than a little taken aback, “we never—”
“Don’t you understand?” Gray asked. “Hilly always backs Death, so that’s not such a surprise. But your betrayal is the worst, Skye. Because Amara loves you. Because she thought you were friends.”
“No one hit your buzzer, new guy,” Penny said. “You shouldn’t be here, much less with our Amara. You’re not suited.”
“I’ll have you know, her eccentricities blend perfectly with my clinical insanity,” Gray snapped back. “And I’m not with her. Not like that. Amara will back me up.”
“Goodbye,” Amara said, which wasn’t the backup Gray had been looking for.
Hilly’s head snapped up. “You’re—”
“This is your scheme and your headache,” Amara replied. “Best of luck fixing what you put in motion. See you in another six years.”
Gray cleared his throat. “I guess that’s my cue to go pack. Thanks again for all the lefse.”