But Ailo wasn’t certain she wanted to share the prize with her elder sister.
The guard sent for the medical supplies returned and the accountant was roused. Before he had fully recovered himself, he slid into the seat at the computer, straightened his glasses, and furious typing ensued.
As all this transpired, Talto resisted her captors. She ranted, spewing vile insults, threats, and phrases of hatred at Menessos. “My treachery will never cease, Menessos. I will loathe you for eternity and I will gnaw at you until I taste vengeance!” She jerked loose and launched herself across the room at Ailo. “And you, you bitch!” she cried. “You exposed me! I was only trying to ensure
Menessos must have had enough of her taunts. He walked over, pushed her head to the side, and bit into her neck. She squirmed and screamed—tearing wider the wound his fangs made. He drank and drank. When she slumped in the arms of the guards holding her, Ailo cried, “Master! Please, show mercy to my sister.”
Snarling, Menessos spun around. His thin beard was covered in blood. In a flash he was before Ailo, his hand wrapping her throat, pressing her to the wall. “What she sought to steal was mine, and it is my right to exact compensation!”
“Yes, Master. Yes,” Ailo pleaded, holding her reddened cheek. “But do not kill her. Please.”
Even as she spoke, the blood he drank affected him. The dark circles under his eyes vanished, his cheeks were no longer sunken. She knew he had gifted the child, but she wondered what else he had done this evening that had drained him so.
He was touching her.
Even as her eyes fluttered shut to search for the answers in their physical contact, he jerked away. “No!” he shouted and raised his hand as if to strike her.
She cowered before him and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “I helped you!” she blubbered pitifully, her hands defensively raised above her head. “I helped you again!”
Menessos held his pose, rigid, breathing hard, then lowered his arm. “That you did.”
“I’ve almost fixed it,” the accountant said.
Everyone’s attention transferred to him and the computer screen.
With every back turned to her, Ailo eased along the floor and silently exited the room. She headed directly for the suites beyond the theater.
• • •
The gloved guards held Talto as she struggled, and their hands flitted about her body in their efforts to keep her contained. She had to be mindful of the fabric of her dress moving and resituating repeatedly to keep the phone from being discovered.
The anger was so easy to show because it was real. The struggle was easy to make because she didn’t want to be restrained. It was shouting at Ailo that was hard. But Talto knew when the guard’s grip loosened a little that she could break free, that she could fling herself at her sister and scream her condemnation. She knew that would be convincing to the audience at hand.
She did not expect to actually slap Ailo. She thought the guards would pull her back before the attempt succeeded. It hurt her greatly that she was able to get that strike onto her sister’s face.
But it hurt her more to read in that brief touch that Ailo’s concern was only about fleeing and stealing the powerful child. There was nothing in her sister’s thoughts that betrayed a concern for Talto’s plight. In fact, there was a measure of pleasure in it for Ailo.
Talto was subdued again, and she felt as if she was the one who’d been struck.
Then Menessos drank of her.
It weakened her as much as it strengthened him. Her world became hazy, her knees weakened. She heard Ailo beg for mercy. She heard Ailo say she’d helped Menessos again.
Though someone held a compress to her neck, darkness swirled at the edges of her vision. She fought to keep her feet under her, then gave up and let her full weight pull her down in their grip. For several minutes, she heard the chatter of the men like the buzzing of bees. She heard the clack of typing, she heard the accountant triumphantly announce he’d corrected all her attempted thievery.
The ambiance of the room shifted from tense and angry to relieved. The guards patted the accountant on the back. Through the forest of legs that were moving about before her eyes, Talto realized they were all wearing pants. No gray silk.
With a scream of anguish she began to sob. “Ailo’s gone,” she said.
Everyone turned to check the room.
“She made me do this,” Talto wept. “She made me read the accountant. She made me steal from you so there would be a distraction.”
Menessos crouched before her. “Why?”
Talto looked up into his eyes. “So she could steal the girl-child.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
People say water is crisp and refreshing when they are hot and the liquid is cool. I don’t think I’ve ever been that hot. To me, if a drink has the same adjective as, say, a cracker, something is wrong.
But the water in the goblet Hades gave me hit my tongue like a brittle frost. It was so sweet and so cold at once that it hurt. It seeped through my teeth, infused my tongue. It crackled into my jawbone like magic. And I could feel it moving higher.
“What have you done?”
Hades smiled. “You agreed that I might satisfy myself two ways. You are too suspicious, too
My mind raced. The river. He told the man to fetch the water from the river. “Lethe.”
He nodded.
“You double-crossing bastard.” It was the river of forgetfulness. “This wasn’t part of the deal.” The magic in the water had risen to my temples. It was reaching its arms—no, its tentacles—of static across my cranium, and fingers of fire curled around my eye sockets. I covered my face with my hands. My knees weakened and buckled.
“Don’t take my mind,” I cried. “Not my memories.”
He crouched beside me and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “There’s only about a minute left now. It will be all right. I will care for you.”
He was erasing from my mind all the people I knew and cared for, wiping away what little I knew about being the Lustrata. “You’re stealing who I am!”
“I must be paid, dear Persephone. When I am, I will . . . ” He snapped his fingers and the stone of our deal appeared. He read: “ . . . secure the safety of all those you hold dear, without harming others, and without taking anything from others be they innocent or guilty.” He snapped his fingers and the tablet disappeared. “As promised.”
The world swam before me. I felt like I was floating in a river, bobbing on the surface and feeling the current pulling at my feet. I put my hands down to the ground to steady myself. “They’ll be safe, you swear?” I choked on the words.
“I swear.”
I could tell my torso was leaning this way and that. I was trying to tell which way was up, where my balance was, but I kept overcompensating. I widened my arms and dug my fingers into the ground. “What of my destiny?”
His warm hand cupped my chin. It was stabilizing. I was grateful for it and I loathed him for it all at once.
