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“So it might be…” I reach toward him, my hand a good five inches away, and he flinches. “A relief if I killed you?”
He shakes his head.
I make a sympathetic noise. “You’re scared to die. I get it. But that’s not your worst nightmare, is it?”
Kenneth pinches his lips together; the confirmation traces little zings of electricity through my veins.
“If I know anything aboutyou, your worst nightmare is being rejected. Being worthless. Being forgotten.” I lean a little closer. “That could happen tonight. You could disappear, forever, and nobody would look, because there’s nobody left to—oh. It changed, didn’t it?”
He’s the color of chalk.
“You don’t know what’s worse. Dying here at my hands or walking free and spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.”
“Fuck you. Get it over with.”
“I have better things to do.”
His voice drops again. “Bitch. I should have finished what I started at the gala.”
I get to my feet and turn away. He’s had plenty of chances to get back at me, and he’s terrible at it.
Let him keep trying.
He can live in his nightmare, if he wants.
Every time he opens his vile mouth, he creates it for himself.
My mom brushes by me on my way to Hercules, her palm warm on my arm for a moment. Then I’m in his arms. He’s here. He’shere.
“Oh, shit,” says Poseidon.
“Kenneth.” My mom gets down on the floor next to him, her curse everywhere. He doesn’t know what to think about her. Everyone always underestimates her, because she’s beautiful, and she looks so sweet. He stays perfectly still while she reaches up and takes his chin in her hand. Then she leans in and whispers into his ear.
Hercules tenses right before she laughs.
Jesus. I feel that all the way down to my cells. It’s the darkest laugh I’ve ever heard. It’s like a nightmare.
Kenneth screams.
He keeps screaming while Gio hauls him to his feet and unties his wrists. He’s begging by the time Poseidon shoves him out the door, and still babbling when Zeus drags him to the end of the driveway and tosses him out of the gates. My uncle waves down the security agents in a clearlet him go.
Zeus watches him leave, then slips his hands into his pockets and starts back down the drive.
Castor and Pollux dart forward and open the door. “Dad!” Castor shouts.
Zeus picks up his head and waves.
“You okay?” Castor’s still shouting.
“Yes,” Zeus calls back.
“If you’re done crying, can you make breakfast?”
Zeus rolls his eyes. “We have a cook, Castor. He lives in our house.”
“He lives in a separate house,” Pollux says. “It’s technically a detached—”
“We didn’t want to wake him up,” Castor yells over his brother. “Would’ve been a dick move.”
