Abbi burped a little laugh, then cleared her throat to try to cover it.
“I have only your welfare in mind,” Cupid said. “Don’t be difficult.”
I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or amused, but since he hadn’t turned into a massive, winged warrior, I assumed he was willing to listen.
“You didn’t kill her,” I stated.
He shook his head.
“Did you wound her?”
“Yes.”
“So she may not keep the book with her, fearing it could be tracked by you. By us, or others. Now might be the best chance to find the book, find where she may have hidden it.”
“Or the worst,” he countered.
“I think it’s time to renegotiate,” I said. Lu’s hand under the table rested on my thigh. I laced our fingers.
“We have a stake in our own welfare. We have free will,” I said. “Finding the book, getting it out of Atë’s hands is important to us. We want to find the monsters that took our lives, even if that monster is a god.”
“You don’t want to declare war on Atë or any god,” Cupid said. “If nothing else, trust my word on that.”
“I didn’t say we wanted war.”
Did I want to see Atë bleed? Yes. But I was under no misconception that we could enter a fight with her and survive. There were other ways to kill a god, other weapons at our disposal.
“Atë wouldn’t touch the book,” I said. “There’s a reason she wanted it in my hands. There’s a reason she bound and gagged Lula and waited for me to come for her. She has plans for us.”
Cupid sat back, his exhale loud. “Yes,” he admitted. “She does.”
“Death said Atë wanted me to remain a tethered spirit.”
“Than? When did Thanatos speak to you?”
“When I touched the book, and it mostly killed me.”
Cupid was silent, weighing that. “Mostly?”
“Death said my dying didn’t agree with him, so he sent me back to life.”
Cupid smiled, the first time since we’d come into the kitchen. His eyes glinted. “Old man can’t resist tipping Fate’s scale. He’s supposed to be on vacation.”
“He said he’s the sort of god who can bend rules.”
Cupid chuckled. “Aren’t we all?”
Eunice cleared her throat. “Death isold, Bo.”
“As am I. All right,” he said, “we renegotiate. Tell me what you want and what you offer.”
“We want your help finding the book again,” I said.
Lula squeezed my fingers so hard, I was losing feeling in them. “And when we find it, we want you to help us kill Atë.”
Lightning flashed in his eyes, and Lorde whined softly. He patted her head gently, but the storm did not fade.
I waited. It was part of what we wanted, part of what we planned to do with him or without him, but it was not everything. We had learned not to trust gods. Not even this one.
