"We haven't really talked about that," he admitted.
"Why not?" The girl with the braid frowned. "That's stupid. You should know what you're fighting for."
Out of the mouths of traumatized eleven-year-olds.
"She's got a point," I said.
Rafael looked at me. "What would you want? If we had a choice?"
A choice. What a concept.
I thought about the last few weeks. We'd spent them running, fighting, and bleeding. Surviving by inches. Every decision made with a gun to our heads, literally or metaphorically.
But what I actually wanted? That wasn't hard.
"I want things to go back to normal," I said. "My normal. Taking contracts. Good ones. The kind where you actually know why someone needs to die." I looked at Rafael, watching for his reaction. "I'm good at what I do. I like it. I just want the freedom to say no if a job feels wrong."
"So you want to keep killing people," the girl with the braid said flatly.
"Yeah. Bad people." I shrugged. "Someone's got to."
Rafael's hand tightened in mine. "What else?"
"Expensive suits. Dance clubs where the music's too loud and no one asks questions. Coffee that's too sweet." I squeezed his hand back. "And you. I want you there when I come home."
His eye had gone bright. "That sounds perfect."
"What about you?" I asked. "What do you want?"
He was quiet for a moment, like he was testing the words before he said them out loud. "I'm going to miss the administrative work."
One of the boys made a face. "Administrative work?"
"Ledgers. Schedules. Organizing people and resources." Rafael's mouth curved slightly. "I know how it sounds. But there was a certainty to it. Everything had its place. Everything made sense on paper."
"That's the most boring thing I've ever heard," the girl with the braid said.
"Probably," Rafael agreed. "But I was good at it. And I liked it." He glanced at me. "Maybe I could do something like that. Find work that uses those skills without the Church attached."
"You could run logistics for the Pantheon," I said. "Directors always need people who can manage operations."
The kid in the loft snorted. "So you want to be a secretary, and he wants to keep stabbing people. Weird relationship."
"Yeah," Rafael said, and he was almost smiling now. "But it works for us."
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” I told her, waving a hand.
The girl with the braid opened her mouth to say something else, but movement outside the barn caught my eye. Hades was crossing the yard toward the house, his posture different. Alert.
"He's here," I said.
The temperature in the barn seemed to drop ten degrees. The smallest one with the rabbit stopped rocking. The kid on the phone looked up. Even the boys with the baseball went still.
"Stay in here," Rafael said. "Don't come out until someone tells you it's safe."
"Is it him?" the girl with the braid asked. "The man from the facility?"
I didn't answer. Didn't need to.
