Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Ican’t concentrate the next morning. It has nothing to do with the early hour or the fact that I’ve gotten almost no sleep at all, or the fact that I got written up at my university library job yesterday and I’m looking down the barrel at unemployment.
I make coffees and hand out orders, all the while watching the door to the cafe with a burning determination.
Silently, I will for the next person to enter to be the forgettable-looking woman with the strange name.
I need her to return. I need it more than anything.
I need answers.
When she walks through the door, I don’t recognize her, even though I’ve been scanning every face that enters, looking for some hint of familiarity. “Caramel latte with a double shot,” the bland woman orders. “For Lachesis.”
“Can you spell that?” asks Nicole, who’s running the register.
“I’ve got it,” I all but bark out, immediately pumping caramel into a paper cup.
My hands are trembling. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
The woman waits at the pick-up counter, but I don’t know if she looks the same as yesterday.
It’s throwing me off. She’s got a strange sort of sameness to her features, as if she could be any middle-aged white woman in America.
I hand her the cup and wait.
“Thanks,” she says, raising it up in a toast, and moves to the back of the cafe.
That’s…it? That’s all I get? No other mysterious warnings? No mentions of my brother’s nosebleeds? Have I hallucinated all of it? Am I going crazy?
I blink after her, then automatically glance at the screen for the next order and start prepping a green tea latte with extra matcha. With wooden motions, I fall back into the coffee routine, my mind whirling. How did I imagine something so crazy—
“Oops!” There’s a loud splat—a sound any barista recognizes—and I immediately turn.
The woman is standing in the back of the cafe by the empty tables, dabbing at the spill with a tiny napkin. She glances over at me and gives me an expectant look.
Oh.
Oh.
“I’ll get it,” I say, snagging the mop and a roll of paper towels from the back. No one rushes to join me. Spills are no one’s favorite to clean up. I kneel beside the woman’s table and throw down paper towels. “Can I get you another coffee?”
“No, have a seat so we can talk.”
I stand, glancing over at my co-workers. There’s nothing I want more than to sit and talk to her, but I can’t afford to get fired from my best-paying job. “I really shouldn’t chat with customers while on the clock.”
“No one’s going to notice us, honey. They won’t recall this at all.” She leans back in her seat and lights a cigarette, then takes a long, slow drag. “Oh, shit, that’s good. A vape just doesn’t compare, you know?”
“You…can’t smoke in here…” But I look over at the counter and my coworkers are ignoring us as if we don’t exist. “Um…”
She points her cigarette at me. “Sit, Elsie.”
I swallow a gasp of shock. “Wha— How did you know my name?”
The woman makes a face. “It’s on your name badge.”
“Oh.” I feel stupid now.
“That, and I know everything about you.” She smiles and takes another drag on her cigarette.
“I know about the boy you kissed in the closet at eight years old. I know about the thirteen tampons you flushed down the toilet in middle school even after swearing it wasn’t you when they clogged.
I know about the hundred dollars you loaned to your co-worker there because he cornered you in the parking lot after hours and you felt like you didn’t have a choice.
” She points her cigarette at Micah, behind the counter.
I haven’t told anyone about Micah, not just because I’m scared of him. It’s because I felt ashamed that I caved in out of fear. I’d thought I was stronger than that. “How…” I swallow hard. “Who are you?”
“Who do you think I am?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Then you’re smart.” She smiles at me again. “I’m Lachesis, the middle Aspect of fate. Verdandi the Norn. Goddess of destiny. Whatever you want to call it.”
The knot in my throat feels enormous. “Why are you here? Is David…dying?”
She flicks her cigarette ashes onto the center of the table, right into the puddle I’m supposed to be cleaning. “We both know he is. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
Her casual question unlocks something ugly inside me.
“Do about it?! What more can I do? I’m working three—no, wait, four—jobs to cover the bills.
I’ve all but quit college to keep us afloat.
He’s still weak so cleaning the house and taking care of things falls on me.
I live with him and pay for his college so he can get a medical degree, because if he’s not in school, his loans come due, and that will just make a bad situation worse.
I ride a bicycle to work when he’s at school because we can’t afford a second car.
And speaking of cars, it needs new tires and we’re already using the spare on the left front and it’s about to go bald.
The oil should have been changed six months ago.
I eat nothing but ramen seven days a week because that’s all I can afford.
The apartment rent is going up and I’m somehow going to have to find a way to make an extra five hundred dollars a month, so I’m looking for yet another job—”
Lachesis puts a hand up. “Let me try again. I’m not trying to shame you. I’m offering you a bargain.”
The hysterical bubble in my throat eases. I blink away the tears threatening to spill. “A… bargain?”
“I figured you wouldn’t believe me without proof, so that’s why I showed up yesterday and did the whole ‘carnival’ thing.
” She twirls her cigarette and takes another puff of it before leaning forward to address me.
“Your brother David is dying. Lucky for you, I’m one of the goddesses of fate.
That means I can pull a few strings—pun intended—and make sure he has a nice, fulfilling, cancer-free life.
With one tweak, he’ll live to be a hundred.
He’ll get his doctorate and switch to cancer research.
After that, he’ll spend the rest of his life on cures that will save countless others.
All you have to do is say yes to what I’m about to propose. ”
Oh. “Yes.”
Her brown brow goes up. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask yet.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.” Determination burns in my belly. I’ve been hoping that David would catch a break at some point—perhaps this is it.
She closes her eyes, an expression of pure bliss on her face. “God, that’s why you’re perfect for this job.”
“When do we get started?” I clasp my hands in my lap, no longer concerned with coffee spills or smoking customers. I truly believe her when she says she’s the goddess of fate. She knows things no one else could possibly know.
And she knows how to save David. Nothing else matters.
Lachesis stubs the last of her cigarette in the puddle of coffee and crosses her arms over her T-shirt. “While I admire the bravado, I feel obligated to tell you the details of the situation. Just go into this with an open mind, all right?”
I nod. It doesn’t matter what she says. If she really is the goddess of fate and can save David, then I want to do this, no matter the cost.
“I owe a favor to someone in another realm, so we’re doing an exchange of sorts.”
“Another ‘realm’?”
“Another world, a parallel one. All souls exist in a woven tapestry on this side, a spiderweb of threads on their side. We Fates have similar jobs, so we swap stories and share information from time to time. If they need something, we help, and vice versa. At this moment, those Fates need someone that can easily be pulled from this realm’s weave, because the right candidate doesn’t quite exist in their world.
We’ve had success with a few others in the same situation recently, so I dug around in our tapestry, looking for someone that won’t be missed.
Someone that has something to lose, and someone that has the right sort of cheerful determination for the shitty job I’m about to hand them. ”
Someone that won’t be missed. Ouch. I’d argue that I’ll be missed by David, and by my coworkers that I’m continually picking up shifts for, but otherwise…
well. We don’t have a big extended family, David and me.
There are no lovers, and my friendships are all surface-level because I never have time to hang out.
Anyone I was close with drifted away years ago and moved on to college and other things.
Even so, it stings to think that I’m so easily ‘removable.’ “I see.”
“And frankly, your coping mechanisms make you ideal.”
That makes me pause. “Coping mechanisms?”
She takes out a new cigarette, lights it, then pulls a long drag on the new one before answering.
“Your endless cheerfulness and can-do determination are trauma-induced. Don’t make me get all psychological on you.
Those things are perfect for what we need, because you’re going to be more or less the one driving this scenario. ”
I am? “I’m still saying yes, but what exactly is the job?”
“You’re going to have to babysit a god. And he’s not a nice god. In fact, he’s the god of disease.”
I recoil at that. The god of disease? The very thing that’s killing my brother?
“I know. Irony, right?” Lachesis’s smile is faint. “We didn’t plan it that way, but funny how things work out so well.”
“Why is there a god of disease at all?” I ask, indignant. “Why celebrate something like that?”
“It’s a catch-all term for everything, truly. Disease, decay, rot, contagions, sicknesses, epidemics, pandemics, plagues, illnesses…I could go on and on.”
“And I could ask again, why would you want to celebrate something like that? Why would you worship it?” There’s a hard edge in my tone. “Why wouldn’t you want to eradicate it instead?”