“No, I don’t know that it’s true,” I protest, but my protest sounds weak, even to my own ears.
“From what the team tells me, you placed yourself in danger to help a woman you didn’t even know,” Sunday says.
“You people are wrong,” I counter. “I did that out of instinct. I’m not a fighter.”
“See. Your instinct was to help,” Mel says.
“There’s a way out. If you don’t want to do this, there is a way out for you,” Rye says quietly, cutting through the rest of the chatter.
“Rye!” Aziza scolds.
“She needs to know her options,” Rye replies.
“We have never told the candidates they can get out of it until some time passed and they had the chance to really think,” Sunday joins in, looking ready to punch Rye.
“Well maybe she already made up her mind,” Rye says. “Look at her. Aziza is right, she’s weak. She’s small and has no strength whatsoever.”
It hurts to hear what he thinks of me. But I push that aside. I don’t care what he thinks. Mostly. His words anger me though. He said there’s a choice, and then he tried to make the choice for me. Screw that.
“Fine, let’s say for the sake of argument, this is real. What exactly does this curse I’m supposed to stop entail? What’s supposed to happen?” I ask, working hard to push Rye’s assessment of me to the farthest reaches of my mind.
“You don’t want to hear how you can turn this thing down?” Rye demands.
“What I don’t want to hear is you telling me I’m weak,” I bark at him.
“Hey, I’m trying to help you,” Rye says.
“How are you trying to help me? By crushing my confidence?”
“This isn’t a school dance, and you are not Wonder Woman. There’s no invisible plane or a lasso. You got that? You agree to this, you die.”
“Since when do we deter people?” Grace asks Aziza under her breath.
“Good question,” she says as she glares at Rye.
“Jinx, tell me about the end of humanity. What’s it supposed to look like?” I ask, avoiding Rye’s heated glare.
“The classics: mass death, fiery skies, and demons that rise up from below. And other fun things,” Jinx says, looking at his phone as he lists off the world’s impending doom nonchalantly, as if he is ordering dinner at McDonalds.
“How do you know that? I mean, how do you really know that this Imelda chick’s curse isn’t dead, just like her?”
“Have you ever heard of the Four Horsemen?” Ya-Ya asks.
“Like of the apocalypse? Yeah, I’ve heard the stories. They are supposed to bring hell on Earth. Each one represents something awful, right?”
“That’s right. When the end of humanity comes, it will do so with the Four Horsemen: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death,” Mel says.
“You’re saying the Four Horsemen are coming?”
“No. I’m saying, they are already here...”
I have to get out of here. They think that the Four Horsemen are here and I am somehow linked to it all. These people are clearly on acid.
Mel steps closer to me, touching my arm and then my forehead.
“You don’t look so good,” she says and turns to the others. “Humans never seem to stomach the inevitable well. Talk of fate, destiny, and paradoxes. Someone get our little Paradox a cup of water with ice.”
Rye disappears the second Mel says water, and I stretch back into a La-Z-Boy and wait for the room to stop spinning.
“Before you possibly crash and burn, there’s more you need to know,” Jinx adds, and if I wasn’t about to hurl, I’d gladly jump up and punch him in his teeth.
“What else do I need to know?”
“For one, you are going to have to find the Four Horsemen, all of them.”
Mel puts her hands on her hips and looks at the floor instead of my face.
“Find them, then what?”
“You…well…you have to kill them,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry. Maybe the floor is about to suck me into a swirling vortex, but I am pretty sure you just said find them and kill them.”
“And…,” Mel begins and stops as Rye comes back in with a bright red solo cup and some Tylenol.
“Seriously,” I scoff and groan, pinching the bridge of my nose.
I take the solo cup from Rye to sip on the cool water inside. He offers me the painkillers, and I gladly accept. For the cocky god he was earlier, he is being really sweet now. Kinda sexy.
Stop it! You can’t seriously think of him like that, not now. Not with all of... whatever this is.
“You have to do it before the next solar eclipse. It’s scheduled to happen one year from today. We have some time to prepare at least,” Rye finishes what Mel was going to say before.
“Oh, well thank goodness for that, you have a plan,” I say sarcastically, dramatically throwing my hands in the air like all is saved.
I know I shouldn’t be so touchy, but this is my life last time I checked and right now, I just want it to be normal again. But when was it normal? My mom killed herself, my dad can’t cope with the loss, and I am talking to a room of gods. Honestly, I think normal checked out on the five o’clock bus.
Because I can’t help myself, I have to ask more questions. I mean, if I am going to save the world and all, with the help of some hot gods—I glance at Rye—then it will be nice to have all the facts going in.
“What if the eclipse happens and I only take out three, or even just one of the horsemen?”
They all share a look just like earlier.
“Stop doing that. You guys are making me nervous every time you look around the room like we are sitting in a funeral home and our dearly departed has come back from the dead.”
“That’s a colorful imagination, Sails,” Grace says and chuckles.
Mel glares at
