by Kristie Cook
“My father gave us forty days. He was quite firm about that.”
It was approaching the end of July. “So how long do you have left?”
“We’ve got about two weeks.”
She had only two more weeks to spend with him? “Are you going to school in the fall?” she asked.
“Back to work.”
“Down south?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do for your father’s business?”
He sighed. “It’s complicated.”
Therese stopped in the open space at the end of the lot and squared herself in front of Than. He was so tall. He towered over her. She felt a little shaky. She decided not to pry.
The dog’s barking seemed to grow louder, and the two of them looked in the direction of its barking and giggled.
“He sounds scarier than Cerberus,” Than said.
The hair stood up on the back of Therese’s neck and she froze. “What did you just say?”
“I said teach me to dance already. We’ve been out here for ages.”
She knew that wasn’t what he had said, but she decided to dismiss it. Maybe he was a fan of Greek mythology.
“I’m going to teach you the waltz first because it’s the easiest. You can basically march in place, one foot and then the other, and not miss a step. You don’t have to spin around until you get the hang of it. Here, put your hand on my waist.” His warm hand on her body made her tingle with pleasure. She put one hand on his shoulder and took his free hand with the other. “If a girl is a good follower, she will put her fingers against the backside of your shoulder like this and her thumb against the front side of your shoulder like this.” His shoulder was thick with muscle. She couldn’t prevent her fingers from trembling slightly. “That way she can feel if you’re going to lead her backward or forward. She can also tell what you’re going to do by the pressure you put on her other hand with your hand, and here, too, at her waist. You have to use your hands, along with your body, to talk to her, to tell her what to do.”
“So I’m supposed to tell you what to do with my body, and you’re supposed to follow?” he asked with a wry smile.
She broke into a grin. “Are we still talking about dancing?”
He lifted his chin and laughed. Then he looked at her. “I like you so much.”
She bit her lip and looked down. He’d just told her he was leaving. Why let her heart get broken in two? “Okay, so the steps are in counts of threes, but like I said, it’s like marching: one two three, one two three.”
He tried it out and she followed, but he paused when he should have kept going, causing her to crash into his chest.
She righted herself. “Sorry.”
“My fault.” He swallowed hard. “Let’s try that again.”
“Ow!” She pulled her foot out from underneath his boot. “It’s okay.”
“Are you hurt?” His face was full of concern.
She couldn’t feel anything with his face so close to hers. He could have chopped off her leg, and she wouldn’t have known it standing here looking into his crystal blue eyes, his mouth so close to hers. “I’m okay. But I forgot to explain that the guy should always start with his left foot.”
After a smoother start, he seemed a natural leader: firm, but sensitive to her movements. He moved her across the parking lot effortlessly now, the gravel crunching beneath them and that dog in the distance incessantly barking.
“You’re very good,” she said. “The best leaders don’t try to master their partners. It’s like a cooperation of wills.”
“I like that,” he said. “A cooperation of wills. I like that a lot.”
He picked up on the movement quickly and after a few minutes tried to mimic what he had seen Todd doing with her on the dance floor earlier.
“Wow, you’re a fast learner.”
“You’re a good teacher.” He twirled her around.
“What are you doing in Colorado, besides working with horses? I mean, why’d you come?”
“I’m waiting for you to recognize me.”
Her mouth dropped open and a shudder worked its way down her spine. She stopped dancing, pulling herself away from him. She took several steps back. “But we just met two days ago.”
He frowned and looked at the ground. “Have you really already forgotten? Don’t you remember putting your arms around me and,” his voice faltered, but he swallowed and found it again, “giving me my first kiss?”
She stopped breathing.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he added, looking into her eyes. “I will remember it for all eternity.”
She shook her head and took several steps backward. “Do you have me confused with someone else? Or are you making stuff up? I’m sure I would have remembered that. I haven’t even had my first kiss.”
“If we had more time, I’d take things slowly. I don’t have you confused with anyone, and I’m not making stuff up. You kissed me in your dream that night I took your parents’ souls.”
She staggered back against a parked car, nearly falling. Her entire body trembled with fear. The hair on her neck stood on end. She found it difficult to speak. “And now you’ve come to take me, too?” She swallowed hard. “Good. I want to go.”
He took a step closer. “I’ve come to help you avenge their murder.”
“But, but the lieutenant has already …”
He stood only inches away from her. “He wasn’t the master mind. The real villain is still out there.”
She pushed herself up with the help of the parked car. She knew that. But how did he? Her knees were weak, and she could barely stand. “I don’t care about the real villain. I want to be with my parents. Take me, too.” She stumbled forward and into Than’s arms. “Take me to them,” she said again.
He kissed the top of her hair. “I told you, you wouldn’t be the same if I did.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered breathlessly.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Therese?” It was Jen calling for her through the dark parking lot. “Therese? Than? Are you guys out here?”
Than steadied Therese onto her feet. “Are you okay?”
She gave a near-hysterical laugh. “No! I’m not okay. I’m losing my mind.”
“Therese?” Jen’s voice was closer now. “Oh, there you are. Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Pete’s about to play his last song of the night.”
Therese turned to her friend and tried to hide her misery. “Already?”
“Yeah. It’s almost ten. The place shuts down early on weeknights.”
Therese nodded. “Of course I want to hear it. That’s why we came.” She took a step forward, but her knees buckled, and she fell on the ground.
“Geez, are you alright?” Jen asked.
“Um, yeah. Just tired,”’ she replied as Than helped her to her feet. “Still a little sore from yesterday.”
He kept his hand around her waist as he led her back to the Wildhorse Saloon. Once inside, their group gave them suspicious looks as she and Than joined them on the side of the dance floor, but no look was more scrutinizing than Meg’s.
Pete’s smooth voice soothed Therese as it carried through the building.
“It’s a waltz,” Than whispered in her ear. “Can we try it? Please?”
At first she shook her head. She could barely walk. How could he expect her to dance? But when she looked up into his pleading eyes, she couldn’t resist him. “Okay.”
Therese could feel the stares of everyone in their group as Than took her in his steady arms and practically carried her across the dance floor to Anne Murray’s beautiful song, a wedding song, she thought. It was called, “Can I Have this Dance for the rest of My Life?”
He was leaving in two weeks, but just as she had in the ride over here, she felt herself falling for this sensitive, beautiful guy who claimed to be a god. She was crazy, or maybe he was, or maybe both of them shared an insane delusion between them.
By t
he end of the song, though, she felt better and could actually return Than’s smile. She clapped along with the others to congratulate Pete, but then, before leaving the floor and rejoining the others, she whispered to Than, “This can’t be real, can it?”
He whispered back, his breath hot but somehow managing to send chills down her scalp and neck, “Give yourself time to process it. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He walked her over to her aunt and the rest of the group to say their goodbyes. Therese rode in the backseat of her aunt’s red Toyota Corolla and stared out the window at the darkness around her. She tried to push off into the sky to turn somersaults, but she remained planted beneath the seatbelt. It hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been a dream at all.
Chapter Eighteen: Hunting with Alecto
After the dance, Than hovered with Alecto, both of them invisible in the air conditioned air above a man at a desk in a small room at the back of a shoe store in Indianapolis. The shoe store was closed for the night, so there were only two others in the shop, taking inventory of their stock. The man Than and Alecto knew as Steve McAdams had short brown hair and a suit that was old and too small with a slight brown stain on its lapel. He was about forty and the ring on his pudgy finger signaled that he was married. He was filling out forms with a ball point pen that bled black ink on the side of his hand.
The two gods materialized outside his door and knocked.
“Yeah?” the man called. “I’m busy. What is it?”
The two gods entered. “Federal agents.” They flashed badges. “We have a few questions.”
“And what is this about?” He sat up, flustered, tossing the pen on the desk.
“Do you recognize this man?” Alecto showed him a picture of Kaveh Grahib, the man that had shot Therese’s mother and caused the death of both of her parents.
Steve McAdams shook his head. “No. Who is he?”
“Think carefully,” Alecto said in a threatening voice. “Be sure before you reply.”
“His name is Kaveh Grahib,” Than said. “Ever heard of him?”
The man looked at Than and then back at Alecto, whose eyes were narrowed and appeared to be shooting invisible darts into the man’s skull.
“No,” Steve McAdams said. “Why? Should I?”
Alecto walked across the room and put both hands on the desk, leaning her face toward the man’s within a foot of his. He leaned back as far as he could in his chair.
“I swear I don’t know him.”
The room began to shake, and hot steam jets shot up from the Lethe River through the floor on each side of the man’s chair.
“What the … ?” the man flinched and cowered further back in his chair.
Pouring up from the two jets were swarms of black snakes, hissing and darting their tongues as they quickly curled their way up from the floor, onto the legs of the man, and up to his wrists and neck.
“Ah! Ah! What’s happening? What the hell is happening?”
“Think carefully,” Alecto said again. “Are you sure you do not know of this man?”
“Help!” the man screamed, but Than knew his cries were futile, for Alecto had already immobilized the two others in the store with her acrid steam from the Lethe, putting them in a funk they would not recall.
The steam enveloped the man.
“I swear I don’t know him!”
Alecto stood up and turned to Than. “He’s not the one.”
Immediately the snakes rushed back down from the man back into the holes in the floor from whence they came. The man fell in a stupor on his desk covered with the foul steam. The jets stopped and the steam began to dissipate. Than and Alecto left the man, but not through the door.
Chapter Nineteen: Questions and Answers
After a warm shower, Therese lay in her nightshirt in bed with Clifford curled up beside her near her waist. Than said to give herself time to process what he had told her outside the Wildhorse Saloon, but how does one process such information? He’s the god of death? His sisters are the Furies? They’ve come to Earth to avenge her parents’ murder?
She couldn’t sleep, so she took the remote from her nightstand and turned on the television tucked in a small armoire beside her desk. Puffy stopped in his wheel to see what the bright lights were all about. “Sorry,” she said to him. “I know it’s late.” Puffy liked to work in silence and darkness.
Puffy continued on his wheel as she flipped through the channels and finally settled on an old George Lopez episode she had already seen. She tried to distract herself with the humor before her, but her eyes left the television to stare at the light reflecting on the ceiling. This whole business with Than as the god of death couldn’t be real, could it? Had she lost her mind? The death of her parents had taken a toll on her sanity, right? She’d become a deranged lunatic.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Clifford’s ears pricked up. Therese was vaguely aware that Puffy had frozen, like a chipmunk in the middle of the road. She and Clifford jumped to their feet at the same instant. Standing across the room in the same pale blue polo and jeans he had worn earlier was Than, the supposed god of death.
Clifford sat back down on his haunches and wagged his stub of a tail.
She didn’t move. “How did you get in?”
Than gave her a wry smile. “I’m a god.”
“Why are you here? Did you decide to take me after all?” She was suddenly not so certain she was ready to go.
“I came to check on you. I was worried.” He moved toward the bed. The smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol lingered in his clothes from the dance hall. “Mind if I sit down for a while?”
Laughter roared on the television, but Therese wasn’t laughing. “I guess not. Go ahead.”
He sat at the foot of her bed, and she returned to the headboard against her pillows by Clifford. She tucked her feet closer to her body to avoid touching him.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep and that you’d have questions, so I decided to come to see if I could help put your mind at ease. I know this is hard for you.”
“You have no idea. How could you?”
His mouth tightened into a frown. “I suppose you’re right. I can’t know how you feel.”
“How can you be here, anyway? Don’t you have a job to do? Is nobody dying while you’re here handling horses?” Her voice had a touch of hostility in it. Then she remembered Dumbo. “Why couldn’t you do anything to save Dumbo?”
He gave her a weak smile. “So I was right. You do have questions.”
“And you haven’t answered any of them,” she said sharply.
“There was nothing I could do about the horse. I’m sorry. I don’t kill living things; I merely guide their souls after they die. I have nothing to do with the timing.”
“Couldn’t you pull some strings?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “As to your other question, I made a deal with my dad. I told him if he’d make my brother, Hip, take my place as the guide for the dead, I would come to Earth and help my sisters find your parents’ murderer and avenge their deaths. He gave me a time limit because while Hip is doing my job, humans have restless nights without dreams, and Zeus won’t tolerate that for long.”
That explained why she hadn’t been able to reenter the dream lately. “But why would your father care about avenging my parents’ death?”
Than shifted by lifting one bent leg partly on the bed and turning to face her, his back to the television. “My father is a just god and his priority is justice for the souls in his care. When humans fail to find justice for the dead, he and my sisters step in. The lieutenant needs help finding the person who orchestrated your parents’ death. My sisters, Tizzie and Meg, are working on the case. I plan to help as well, but first I wanted to get to know you.”
“Why?”
He moved closer to her on the bed, sending her heart into arrhythmia. “Don’t laugh, okay?”
Laugh at a god? she thought. Yeah, right. “I
won’t.”
“My mother may have given me some affection when I was young, but I don’t remember it. The other gods on Mount Olympus rarely visit the Underworld. They only come if they want a favor. They know my job is necessary, and I suppose they’re glad it’s me doing it and not them, especially Hermes who did it before me, but that doesn’t stop them from looking down at me with contempt. And the humans I encounter have already died. They have no love for me.
“But that night I took your parents and you came close to dying yourself, that night you swept down from the sky from out of nowhere and took me into your arms, that night you kissed me, well, that night changed me.”
Therese pulled her knees into her chest with her covers around her. Than moved closer, his face inches from hers. She couldn’t tell if she was frightened or aroused. Maybe she was both.
His mouth seemed to twitch with anxiety. “Before that night, I didn’t know what I was missing, but once you showed me what affection was like, I needed more. So, to be honest, my true motive in coming to Earth was to seek you out.”
Therese couldn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say. She sat there, stunned.
“I knew I wouldn’t kill you—at least, I didn’t think I would. As I’ve said before, you wouldn’t be the same. I don’t think I’d like having a wife with little personality and no freedom.”
“Wife?” Therese whispered.
“Just listen,” he said. “After that day your parents died, I went to my father to see what it would take to make you a god. As a god, you would retain your personality and free will and could live with me in the Underworld unchanged. I reminded my father how he got my mother, Persephone. Are you familiar with that story?”
Therese shook her head. “Vaguely. I don’t recall.” She still hadn’t gotten past the word “wife.”
Than pulled off one of his boots. “Do you mind?”
Like she would deny a god. “Make yourself comfortable,” she murmured.
He pulled off his other boot and then brought both legs straight in front of him on the bed, crossed, stretched over the tan and white comforter nearly to her headboard. Therese shifted over to give him more room, still unable to believe. He didn’t sound like a god. Shouldn’t a god speak differently? In her mind she said, “You sound so human.”