There’s something ominous about that. Like everything has already been decided and nothing we do matters. It makes my hackles rise. She might be trying to scare me more than warn me. It’s hard to tell with Margo. I’m still not entirely convinced she’s not down here being the “good cop” to Seth’s bad one. “What do you mean?”
“Just that,” she says smoothly. Margo adjusts her seat atop the stool, touches her necklace again as if to reassure herself, and goes back to painting. “It took me a while to figure this out, but if there are gods of fate in play, that changes everything, you know? For a long time, I wondered why and how they would allow Seth, a god from another plane, to come over to their playground. How did that slip past them? Then I realized…it didn’t. It didn’t slip past them at all. They knew he was coming over. The fact that they keep bringing over people from our world to serve as Anchors instead of taking from the locals tells me that they’re busy sticking their hands in everything to get the most favorable outcome possible.”
“What does that favorable outcome entail, exactly?”
“That’s the question we should be asking, isn’t it? That’s why I’m down here talking to you.” She waves the paintbrush in the air and goes back to splatting more yellow, this time polka-dots on the hat. “Seth told me to show up and convince you to join with us, but you’ll figure that out on your own. Or not. I’m here to talk about the bigger pieces at work.”
“The Fates.”
“Correctamundo. I figure they want Seth here on this side for some reason. Maybe he shakes things up. Maybe he improves things on the other plane—back on Earth—and the Fates here lost a bet. There’s a reason he’s here. And the way I figure it, if we keep on the route we’ve been, they’ll have no choice but to add him to their pantheon at the end of this. He can’t stay a rogue god forever. They’re going to want to contain him, to force him to abide by their rules. If they were going to boot him back to Earth because he didn’t belong, they would have done it already, you know? If he’s causing problems, they’d have gotten rid of him right away. But we’ve been here for months and so far, nothing. I’ve concluded that they want him here, just like someone wants you here, specifically paired up with Kalos. And if the Earth Fates are involved, that means I’m right.”
I frown at her, because her theorizing is making my head hurt…but it also makes a lot of sense. A terrifying amount. “Why me, though?”
“I ask that all the time,” Margo continues. “Why me? Why me with Seth? We aren’t copacetic on any level. He drives me crazy, and I live to poke holes into his ego. And yet for somereason we were thrown together. It made me think, and I started painting, and I realized that was the key.”
Now she’s losing me. “Painting…?”
She picks up the palette she’s been using and shows me the blobs of paint on it, excitement written across her features. “Yes! The way I think of it, it’s a bit like a color palette. They’re mixing and matching personalities to see what the outcome is. You, Elsie, might be yellow, for example.” She blobs yellow onto one corner of the palette and turns back to me. “We’ll say Kalos is green.”
She scoops a load of green paint on the end of her brush and swirls it into the yellow at the corner, angling her palette so I can watch. The paints swirl together, becoming a lighter, pale shade of green.
“This is what you get when you mix the two of you together. Let’s say that you’re a happy person and he’s a sad one—I’m just going with generalizations, mind you, for this example—mixing you together gets him a little less sad, a paler shade of green than he was before. He’s been neutralized. Whereas if he was with someone more extreme…”
Margo moves her paintbrush over her palette and swipes into a puddle of black paint and adds the black to the pale green. It immediately turns dark and murky.
“You see?” She says. “Now imagine you’re the paint and the Fates are the ones holding the paintbrush. You think they’re not mentally mixing colors every day, every hour, every minute, trying to get the most favorable outcome possible? Sure, they could have picked someone in this world to work with Kalos, but there’s something about you that’s preferable to them. There’s something about your pairing that seems optimal for them. Because I’ve noticed one thing—each god has four Aspects, which means there are four Anchors. So far, those that have Ascended that have an outworlder havebecome attached to that and kept the bond. They brought their Anchors home with them.” She pauses, eyeing me for my reaction.
That’s not going to be the case for me, as I’m returning to my world for my afterlife, but I don’t reply.
“Are you listening to me? Whatever is happening isn’t random.Nothingis random. Nothing at all. This is all some master plan they’ve concocted that we’re not in on.”
I shiver at how ominous that sounds.
She turns on her stool and beams at me. “Which is why it’d be smart for us to work together. I need you to convince Kalos that it’s in his best interest.”
I manage a wry smile. I’m supposed to convince Kalos? That’s a joke. “You know he’s Apathy, right? He’s not going to put his neck on the line for anyone, especially not me. He barely even likes me.”
Margo’s brows go up. “You don’t think so? Because I’ve met several Apathy aspects in Seth’s little crusade to build his army, and I can tell you that your Kalos is the least apathetic of all Apathies we’ve met.”
That surprises me. “How many have you met?”
She waves her hand again, dismissing my question. “Not important. I’m just pointing out that there might be a little more going on between the two of you than you’re letting on. He might be Apathy, but I think we’ve found something he’s willing to get out of bed for.”
“What?”
“You. Duh.”
“Me?” I’m shocked. “Why? What has he said?”
But she just gives me a knowing smile, and I realize she’s not going to tell me anything. I want to grab her and shake her by her bejewelled shoulders and demand that she spit out answers. I hate these games. That’s all it is, I figure, giventhat I’m in a jail cell of some kind, separated from Kalos, who I’m supposed to be serving and helping. If Margo and Seth were on the up and up, they wouldn’t be treating us like this.
“Well, if you want us to work with you, you’re going to have to treat us better,” I tell her, my back stiff as I struggle to control my frustration.
“Like I said, this is just a safety net until we have reassurance that you’re working with the two of us. Seth needs friends, and you need to talk Kalos into it.” She gestures at my surroundings. “Once Seth is assured you want to work with us, this will all be a bad memory. All you need to do is get Kalos to see our side of things.”
I give her a skeptical glance. Exactly how much power does she think I have here? I’ve been thinking of myself as an assistant, but instead of fetching coffees for a celebrity, I’m dragging an Aspect through the countryside. “He’s a god. I can’t talk him into anything.”
“Uh huh.” Her mouth curves into a smile.
