“Of course I noticed,” she said. “You idiot. What do you think I was doing here?” She opened her door and ducked inside.

“Andie.”

If she heard she didn’t show it. She just backed out and drove away.

3

UNDERNEATH

The dark is not total. There is some light still, and movement of air that isn’t my breath, and isn’t yours. There’s still time, before the light sets on another passing day, or week, or hour, whatever arbitrary chunk of time she’s decided to turn into a cycle. There’s still time for you to open your eyes.

Athena trembled, cold despite the warm blood on her arms. Odysseus lay before her on soft, slate-colored sand. His eyes were closed. Achilles’ sword was still lodged in his chest. She’d tilted him onto his side to accommodate it.

“I can hear his blood, singing down the edge of that blade.”

“Shut up, Persephone.” Athena jerked her head in time to see the trailing edge of her cousin’s dark dress. Persephone laughed, and Athena bit her tongue, saving whatever strength she had inside a body that felt clammy and pliant. Persephone couldn’t hurt him here. Not where Athena had set him, on the far bank of the river Styx, in the hinterland between the living and the dead. Not while he still breathed. Even the queen of the underworld had limits. But Persephone could send things: shades, and worse than shades, across the river in the night. Athena swallowed. The light around them faded like a waning candle, and when it was gone, she’d have to be ready to fight again.

“You can’t keep this up forever, Athena.”

“Watch me.”

“He won’t live here.”

“But he won’t die, either.” Odysseus would breathe, and lay unconscious and shivering, with a monster’s blade through his chest. A bead of sweat, or a tear, rolled down Athena’s cheek. She held his hand gently and there was no letting go. Over and over her mind replayed those last seconds inside of Olympus. She saw Achilles walk to Hera and the Moirae. Saw him smile. Had it been a sudden betrayal? Or had he played them all along?

It doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, it came easy. And I should have known.

“Is that what you really want?” Persephone asked. “For him to linger here, half dead and always dying?”

Athena laughed weakly. “Half dead and always dying. He’ll be just like you. And you don’t seem to mind it much.”

The wind changed, and carried the scent of sweet decay to Athena’s nostrils. She kept her breath shallow to stave off gagging. It hadn’t come from Odysseus. His wounds bled, but were no worse. He remained trapped in between. The smell could have been from anything else in the underworld. From whatever beast Persephone intended to send across the river that night, or from Persephone herself, from the half of her body that was still wet and rotting. Or perhaps it came from the Styx, the river of hate. Often Athena thought she caught a hint of what she imagined hate must smell like. Hot and metallic.

She passed a hand across Odysseus’ forehead. She was so tired. Bone tired.

When the light returns I’ll lie down beside you. I’ll lie beside you, and you’ll keep me, for a little while.

The light would return. She didn’t know when. Sometimes the blackness felt so long, and the cuts on her arms and throbs in her joints weighed her down until she wanted to scream. Until she did scream. And then she would blink, and the light would be back. She could see what it was she fought, and she would fight on. Athena didn’t know how long they’d been there. It wasn’t worth trying to measure the cycles of light and dark. The light wasn’t morning. It was barely real light. And it didn’t matter. She and Odysseus were there, and there they would remain.

“Odysseus,” Athena whispered, and watched him as the dark came. When she could no longer see him, she got to her feet and clenched her fists.

4

THE GODS OF DEATH

The doors of the bar stood wide open and let in a swath of bright light. Which was good, because there wasn’t much light from anywhere else. Just a green glass lamp hanging over the pool table and a few yellow bulbs behind the cash register. Cassandra looked at herself in the slivers of mirror visible between bottles of Pucker and vodka. She looked as young as she suspected she looked.

“Stop fidgeting,” Calypso said into her drink. “You might as well be a blinking neon underage sign.”

“Sorry. There aren’t a lot of bars back in Kincade where sophomores like to hang out.” Cassandra wrinkled her nose. The interior smelled like smoke and old wood, open doors or not.