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“Aren’t you?” He examined the wall and selected another picture of me torturing poor Ares, which
seemed to be a theme. This one had me stabbing him in the face repeatedly. The artist had really gotten into it. There was a massive spurt of blood that momentarily obscured the image after every strike.
“That wasn’t you?”
“No!”
“Oh, Ares is still alive, then?”
“You know damned well he isn’t! But that—”
“Then that was you.” He looked at it in satisfaction. A vamp would like that much blood, I thought crossly.
“I did not stab Ares in the face!”
Fred waved it away. “Artistic license.”
He tapped another, which looked more like my mother than me. It was of the other main grouping, the goddess-y line, showing flowy dresses and flowers and castles, which I guessed the blood-crazed demon went back to when she was tired of face stabbing. “That’s not you?”
“Fred—”
“’Cause it kinda looks like you. Better hair, of course—”
“I did my hair today!” I said, snatching it away from him.
He eyed me doubtfully. “Maybe it needs a cut. You know, the salon downstairs is still open—”
“Fred!”
“Just saying. Like I’m saying that you need to look closer.” He flicked the page with a nail. “That’s this place. This is their safe space, their castle. You gave them that, and you stand guard over it, making sure nothing can hurt them. Look.”
I looked. Back across the row of pictures, some in crayon, some in colored pencil, a few in vigorous pastel. But Fred was right, they all had a theme. And it fucking broke me.
I already had a home, I realized, a castle in the clouds as some of them had drawn it, safe and secure from all attackers. And if it wasn’t, well there was a guardian, wasn’t there? Not a dragon, but a Pythia, fierce and capable and—
“You’re not gonna cry, are you?” Fred asked, looking at me worriedly.
“No.”
“Liar.”
He put an arm around me while I shivered through a second epiphany in the space of an hour.
We stood like that for a long time, staring at the pictures. I couldn’t take it all in; I just couldn’t. Not right now. But it felt like something had changed in that moment. Something big.
“Cassie?”
“Hm?” I looked at Fred, who was looking back earnestly.
“You’ve had an emotional day, I can tell—”
“Yeah.”
“—so I’m gonna do you a solid—”
“Yeah?”
“—and eat your pie.”
