She’s not stalling. She’s not arguing, she’s just filling the silence.
“I’m not going to hide what I look like to get someone to love me like an actual human person, mom.”
“Why not?”
“It’s fucking lying, for one thing.”
“So what?”
“I don’t know how to explain to you why lying to your boyfriend is a bad thing.”
“Then perhaps it isn’t a bad thing.”
It’s not like I haven’t thought about hiding my beauty before. It’s not like I haven’t tried it before. I’ve magicked myself into different people at parties many times, just to get away from Renfield. There’s just something so completely gross about having to mask yourself, so you don’t get treated like a walking vagina.
“Kathra, Hunter is just one man.” She says it like a spell, like an incantation that will drive me away. Her voice catches on something, and when she tears it free, its edges go ragged. “There are many more of them. Any man would be lucky to have you, any other man.”
“Hunter isn’t just any other man, mom.”
He was my man. My only man. And someday I hoped he’d be my husband…
“Hunter was different,” I say and catch myself. I feel like I’ve been slapped. “Is. He is different.”
“Was,” mom insists. “He was just a human.”
“Just a human?” I repeat. I laugh. It’s a hysterical, pissed-off noise, a Disney villain laugh. “He’s not just a human, mom, he’s not just anything! He’s Hunter, he’s my Hunter, he’s the man I live with; he’s my date to those stupid fucking galas; he’s the man who makes me breakfast even if he got back at four o’clock in the goddamn morning; he’s the man who makes me laugh when I want to curl up and die; he’s… he’s…” I’m crying now. Sobbing, but I’m smiling, thinking of him, seeing his face, smiling back at me in the kitchen. Bathed in early morning light, surrounded by the charred remains of burned eggs, burned bacon, burned everything. Standing in the middle of a smoking kitchen, hands in the air, saying, “I can explain.”
“Was dad just a human to you?”
She stares at me, through me, at some horrifying thing I can’t see. She swallows visibly. “Kathra. Don’t.”
“You know what? Fine. I’ll go to the Hells with no blessing,” I say, and my laugh goes sour. “I’ll just walk up to the First Gate and ask very politely to be let inside. Hey, hellions, got a moment to hear about our lord and savior Aphrodite?”
“No!” There’s panic now. It’s muted, but it’s there. “Kathra, no. Please. You will be killed.”
“What did you expect, mom?” I say. I get right up in her face. She reels back, which is stupid, she has no reason to be afraid of me. “I’m human. Humans die.”
She hesitates. “But you are not human.”
“Yes, I’m human enough. And if you don’t help me, I will die like a human, and I will stay that way.” I mean, I’ll take my own life—it’s the only way I can die like a human and remain dead. And it’s the worst possible thing I can say to my mother, even if we aren’t close.
“Let’s say you did make it into the Hells, what are you thinking to do there? How do you plan to fight the legions of those who will take it upon themselves to defy you? You are making a mistake, you are not ready for this.”
“I don’t have time to be ready for it.”
“Which is exactly why you should not go. You are in pain, I know, I understand, but—”
“Really? Because I don’t think you fucking do.”
She scowls. Her face never creases, never breaks its porcelain visage, even when she frowns. “You are so uncouth.”
“And you raised me better than that?”
It’s an old jab, and even through her mask of a face I can tell it stings. She complains about how little she sees me for someone who couldn’t be bothered to show up to a single fucking birthday party while I was growing up.
“Your father was right to have you raised in the mortal plane,” she says. “I’d likely have killed you by now.”
“Ditto.”
“The soothsayer told me many years ago that I would have trouble with my one daughter. She spoke the truth.”
“That is usually how soothsayers work,” I say dryly.
“Little did I know how severe a trouble it would be.”
“I get it, I’m a burden, can we back up to me walking up to the First Gate with a gift basket?”
She sighs. A short, frustrated puff of air through her nose.
She touches my shoulder, and for one mortifying second, I think she’s about to force me out of the dream—but she doesn’t. She closes her eyes, and I feel my body… changing. I can smell the ocean properly now, I can feel the cold marble under my feet.
She’s bringing me to her. As in, the body sleeping in my bed is no longer in my bed. She’s bringing me to Elysium.
She stares at me for a long time. “Why couldn’t you have loved a nice, immortal boy?”
“You didn’t.”
She looks like I’ve slapped her—then she smiles, only just. She laughs. “No, I did not. I had hoped you would be wiser.”
“You know what they say about the apple…”
She hesitates. The air between us turns thick and stretchy. “You were meant to be smarter than I, but it appears you are just as…” Her expression shifts, softens. She sighs. “… Just as stubborn. Just as susceptible.”
“Susceptible to what?”
She doesn’t answer. She just looks at me, like the sailor’s wife bidding farewell before a long voyage they both know he won’t survive.
“Mom?”
“Why did you have to be so much like him?”
For a second, I don’t know what to say. Because he actually
