Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
“Oh yeah, this is so much better.” She flicks her cigarette ashes at me again. “Good job.”
“I fucked up.”
“I’ll say.”
“How…how is he?”
Her eyes narrow and she gives me a withering stare. “You don’t get to ask that.”
I shrink back, wounded at her anger, and at the realization that I’ve hurt Kalos, badly. “I was hoping he’d forget about me. That he’d go home and realize I’m nobody and that I’m not important.”
She just glares at me. “You’re a really sad sack, Elsie Anderson.”
What?
“I realize you’ve got a few hang-ups due to what you’ve been through. You mortals like to call it PTSD. I call it dealing with hard knocks. I get that you’re used to devaluing yourself so you don’t inconvenience others, but at some point you do realize it’s bullshit, right? That you’re allowed to be a person in your own right, with wants and needs?”
I stare at her.
“Right, well, that argument is too late now, isn’t it?” She takes another drag on her cigarette. “Horse out of the barn and all that. Anyhow, thanks to you, our friend Kalos has entered a fugue state and refuses to come out of it. Aos now has a disease god who refuses to do his job at all. The population of that world is disgustingly healthy, and because of that, the influx of souls to the underworld has cratered.”
“You…make it sound as if that’s a bad thing?”
“Did you learn nothing at his side?” She finishes her cigarette and flicks the butt in my face. I bat it aside as she lights another. “Overcrowding in cities, food scarcity, those are just dandy and fun, aren’t they? Disease is all about balancing things out. Remember our conversation from before?”
“Clearing the forest for new growth,” I murmur. I remember.
“There’s no balance right now. The poor will continue to be ground underfoot by the rich because survival will get harder with more mouths to feed. There won’t be enough land to grow food for all the people depending on it. Because people are scrabbling for existence, there will be no renaissance, no great thinking, no progress of society. Not until he breaks free of his own apathy, and that might take hundreds of years.” Her lip curls. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
“You’re blaming me? Because people aren’t dying?”
“Because you fucked a fragile ecosystem. There’s a difference between helping the lesser of four evils and fucking it over entirely.”
“I’m not that important—”
She snarls, cutting me off before I can finish. “You could have prepared him. Had a hard conversation with him early. Now I’m pissed that I’m being made to look like the bad guy by sending you there. I was doing a buddy a favor, and you blew this shit up in my face. I tried to do you a solid, too.” She shakes her head, her new cigarette forgotten in her irritation.
Do me a solid…? I gasp, remembering my brother. “David! Oh my god. How is he? Can I see him?”
Lachesis’s unplucked brow goes up. “You want me to help you out now? When you’ve fucked me?”
I clasp my hands under my chin. “Please. Please please. I need to see him. To know this was all worth it.”
Her jaw juts in a mulish expression.
“Please? I’ll do what you like. I’ll go quietly to wherever you need me to go.” I beg her with my eyes. If I can’t have Kalos, at least I can have this small thing. “I just want to make sure he’s all right.”
“Ugh. I should have handed you off to Atropos and been done with it. Fine.” She puts her cigarette between her flattened lips and puts her hand out. “Come on.”
I touch her hand.
The moment we make contact, the world around me changes. Everything swirls, a thousand pale filaments appearing and disappearing, as if I’m passing through an enormous web. Sunlight pours in, and the webbing clears away to reveal…
A park.
It’s a pretty day, the grass green and fat clouds dotting the blue sky. The trees gently sway in a breeze I can’t feel and nearby, someone is playing fetch with their dog. At the edge of a path, a man in a baseball cap is bent over, cleaning a tiny bronze plaque on a park bench. He straightens, and my heart skips.
That’s my brother.
“David?” I step forward, releasing Lachesis’s hand.
“He can’t hear you,” she tells me. “This is for your benefit only. You don’t exist on the mortal plane any longer.”
I glance back at her and take another step toward my brother as he sits down on the bench and sets a single gerbera daisy on the empty seat next to him. My favorite.
“Hi again, Elsie,” my brother says, rubbing his thumb on the plaque. “Sorry I haven’t been out here much. It’s been busy.”
Stepping forward, I wave a hand in front of his face. He doesn’t notice but just keeps rubbing his thumb on the tiny bronze plaque on the bench. I lean in to read it.