Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
“Wait,” Skye said. “I thought you were leaving.” To the group: “Did she not tell us she was leaving several hours ago?”
“Changed my mind. You know how capricious I can be. Flighty, yet dour. Easily distracted, yet glum.”
They were back in the sick room and her dad was front and center, so to speak, in a huge bed that would have made anyone look small, and made Death look still more frail. His deterioration over the long weekend was as sorrowful as it was shocking.
I never thought he’d die. And even if I did, I never thought he’d die small.
“Yes, yes, you’re good little hellhoundlets. Who’s the best little hellhoundlet? You are! And also you. And you, too!”
“I do appreciate your lover, Amara,” Arawn said.
He’d pulled up a chair beside the fireplace and stretched his long legs out in front of him.
La Croix was also beside the fireplace, as close as he could get without actually climbing into the flames.
“No one in recent memory has ever been so charmed by my beasts.”
“Lover?” Gray asked.
Arawn flapped a hand at him. “Oh, please.”
“Oh.” Gray nodded. “Death god thing.”
“You’re both still sex-flushed and sweaty,” Penny pointed out with a giggle. “Not a death god thing. It’s a ‘having eyes and not being entirely stupid’ thing.”
Gray ignored the needle. “Sensing when people have banged is another death god superpower, I guess,” he said, gazing into a hellhoundlet’s large liquid eyes. “Yes it is. Yes it is! Awww, your ears are so silky.”
“Anyway.” Amara fought the urge to kiss and kick Gray, not in that order. “I’ve got good news for all of you. Death is just fine.”
“What?” From Hank and Penny, in amazed unison.
“Good.” Chernobog.
“This is news to me.” Dr. Paeon.
“Graham Gray, do not give my dogs whatever you’ve hidden in your pocket.”
“This is your fault.” La Croix to Hilly. “You let her read too much of that Arthur Conan Doyle pop culture dreck.”
“Have you gone completely crazy?” Skye cried. She’d been the last to arrive, and either was wearing what she’d worn the day before, or she had lugged several identical pairs of cargo pants and black sweaters with epaulets to the compound. “Aren’t any of you listening to her?”
“That’s true, Skye,” Amara said. “They’re not great listeners. But then, they don’t have to be.”
“Hush, Amara . . . Death is not ‘just fine.’ Oh, gods, I knew this was going to be too much for you,” Skye moaned. “Oh, you poor kid . . .”
“And the reason Death is fine is because that,” Amara continued, pointing to the body on the bed, “is no longer Death. I am, for all my remaining days, however long they be, and retroactive to my first Reap. My parents were right; it’s time I embraced my responsibilities regardless of my father’s state of health. Or his state of death.”
Chernobog: “Good.”
Penny: “Wow!”
La Croix: “Well done. Could someone throw fifteen or twenty more logs on the fire?”
Hank: “Congratulations?”
Arawn: “It strikes me that this could have been a conference call.”
Amara turned to Hilly with a smile. “Did I pass, Mother?”
“Do you even need to ask me such a thing?” Hilly hugged her. “With flying colors. With every color in the spectrum and a number invisible to the naked eye. I’m so proud of you. And so sad for you. For all that makes no sense.”
Skye: “What?”
“That’s not to say we’re giving up on Dad,” Amara said, ignoring Skye’s pained yelp and wiggling out of the hug to hold her mother at arm’s length. “See my face, Mother. My word on it, we will never give up on Dad. But the goal now is simply to cure him—”
Paeon snorted. “Simply.”
“—as opposed to the time-urgent emphasis on curing him so he can instantly return to his sworn duties. Which makes your job a bit easier, doesn’t it, Paeon?”
“Well.” The god of godly medicine considered. “Yes.”
“Has everyone in the room lost their minds?” Skye cried. “Amara can’t do it. She herself said so over and over and over. For years!”
“You’re sweet to worry about me. And obviously I can,” Amara replied. “Have been, in fact. It’s not as awful as I imagined. To be fair, a big reason I got through it was because Gray was with me.”
“Awwww! Thanks, babe. Still can’t get that poor teenager out of my head, though.”
“I know. Don’t call me babe. But . . . it’s my job now. Unless.” Amara gazed around the room. “There are objections? Not that those mean anything. I’m the heir and I’m stepping up; it’s nothing you can vote on. I just want your objections on the record. If there are any.”
“None.” Chernobog.
“Oh, that’s not for me to say,” Arawn said with a not-quite-nice smile. “As you said, this is yours. It was always yours.”
“I mean, congratulations?” Penny said. She lifted her arms as though she would hug Amara, as she had done many times when Amara was a child.
But didn’t step closer. And let her arms drop back to her sides.
And Hank reacted to her discomfort, and put an arm around his wife, queen of the dead, author of winter.
So it begins, Amara thought, sad and proud and wary at the same time. I’m no longer Hilly’s annoying little girl who could be amused with tickles and candy. You don’t just rush up to Death and give them a hug. You keep your distance. Even when you don’t want to.
“Well done, Amara,” La Croix said. “I would rise and take your hand but I cannot feel my extremities.”
“Jeez, La Choy. Hilly, d’you mind if I . . . ?” Gray left the hellhoundlets alone long enough to cross the room, fish a quilt out of the open closet, and drape it around La Croix’s shivering shoulders. “Just FYI, it’s at least seventy-five degrees in here and climbing.”
“I cannot believe what I’m hearing!” Skye just about shrieked. “Why are you all standing around simpering at her? This is a disaster!”
“No, Brexit was a disaster.” Gray smirked. “This is just inconvenient.”
“Shut up, you twittering imbecile!”
Amara wasn’t sure who Skye was referring to. “Are you all right? You look like you’re going to stroke out.”
“Am I all right? Do any of you hear her? Or yourselves?” Skye clutched her head, then grabbed her braid in both fists and yanked, hard. Once, twice, and again. It was a startling, almost disturbing thing to watch. “She can’t do it! She has long said so!”
“Well, as I also said, dreading the Reaps was worse than doing them. I’ll never get over how odd that is. And I’m new, obviously.” She spread her hands and shrugged. “But I’ll learn. My father was new, once. And I have help. I’m not so proud I’ll go it alone.”
“You are not your father!” Skye practically screamed.
“Skye,” Hilly began tartly, but subsided when Amara shook her head.
“You only got through one Reap before you and your luckless paramour fled to the zoo, for gods’ sake! Like children ducking class!”
“Right. The zoo. That was relaxing. And you knew that how, Skye?”
“I—what?”
“How did you know Gray and I went to the zoo?” Amara’s tone was pure honest curiosity. Just asking a simple question. We’re all still friends. Nothing amiss anywhere. “You weren’t with us. And we didn’t tell anyone what we did or where we went.”
“It’s not like your activities have been a secret,” Skye snapped. “And La Croix gossips like a fishwife.”
“I knew nothing of a zoo.” La Croix was rubbing his hands together before the roaring fire that was making everyone sweat. “And I demand you leave me out of whatever this is.”
“Amara, we’ve been friends for years.”
“Have we, Skye?”
That checked her. “Yes! Obviously! It’s why you must listen to me now. I’m the only one in this room who has your best interests at heart.”
“Oh, I do beg your fucking pardon,” Hilly snapped.
Skye unwisely ignored the growing wrath of Hilly. “Haven’t I always looked out for you?”
“No, Skye.”
“Yes! See? I—what?”
“You’ve always looked out for yourself. Sometimes our needs aligned, and when I was younger I mistook that for empathy and friendship.”
Scáthach, the guide to death for the Isle of Skye, pulled herself up to her full height, which was intimidating, but only if you had never met Death. Or Chernobog. “What are you daring to say to me?”
“It took me a long time to see what you were doing. Partly because you fooled yourself into thinking you had my best interests at heart, which made it easier to fool me.”
“Of course I have! I always have! Fool you? You would come to me when you couldn’t go to your own mother.”
“True. But it doesn’t change the fact that you used our faux friendship as a means to secure your fondest wish: more territory. It’s always been your goal. I’m just wondering when you decided.”
“That is an absurd and hateful lie!”
“You have always been there for me,” Amara admitted. “Constantly following me and pushing me. It’s why you encouraged me to hide in Death’s car when I was a little girl.”
“I didn’t—I just said—”
“You knew it was too much for any child, and you made sure to linger long enough to comfort me when it was over. You also promised to do all in your power to see to it I would never have to take Death’s mantle. And I think that’s how it started, for you. I think that’s when you decided.”
“Jesus.” Gray’s expression was pure revulsion. “You talked a little kid into crashing a Reap so you could profit from her emotional scarring?”
“That was years ago! Why are you fishing for an apology now?”
“That’s not what I’m after. I’d like to talk about the foxes,” Amara continued.
Skye threw up her hands. “What are you babbling about now?”
“I saw one at the zoo, which was odd enough, and another one at the Air Force base during my second Reap.”
“Odd?” Hank asked.
Amara nodded. “I double-checked when Gray and I got back. The Roosevelt Zoo doesn’t have a fox exhibit. They never have. And foxes belong to you, Skye, the way the night belongs to Chernobog and the hellhounds belong to Arawn. It’s how you could keep an eye on me while poisoning my father.”