Percy raised his dagger to point at the Spear of Destiny, which Molly held between her fingers. “You’d better not have touched my Caravaggio when you took that.”
With a smile, she replied, “I’m not in the habit of destroying beautiful things, Percy.”
The comment set Joe’s blood to boil, hating the way she could tune in to all Cleo’s knowledge of Percy. But Percy replied, as though it was in any measure similar to the Caravaggio, “You almost burned my fiancé.”
Molly’s eyes ran over Joe, disdainful.
Percy added, “And you almost killed me.”
“Oh, Percy,” she cooed. “You wouldn’t have stayed dead for long. I would have brought you back, just like these boys.” She looked him over, with nothing but hunger in her gaze. “But unlike them, you would have had a special position. As my ownverypersonal assistant.”
Althea made a choking, vomiting sort of sound, Joe, a huff like a jealous fiancé might, but Percy’s face softened into a slightly bashful smile. “You would have brought me back? To be your slave?”
Her nod was expressly enthusiastic. “Yes.”
“Forever?”
“Of course.”
Grin now spreading from ear to ear, Percy turned to Joe as though he’d just won top prize on a scratch-it card and expected Joe to celebrate with him.
Seeing Joe’s expression dimmed his own somewhat.
Gruffly, Percy replied to her, “That would have been horrible. So disrespectful, to expect a man like me to spend his afterlife… like that. Awful. Horrible.” He added, for Joe’s benefit, “She’s a true villain.”
“Back to the point,” Joe spat.
“Yes,” said Percy, trying very hard to remember where he was going with any of it. “Molly, I like you a lot?—”
Joe actually stomped his foot.
“Which I’m only saying,” Percy enunciated at Joe pointedly, “to make it known that I don’t want to kill you. You’re clearly very smart, very tasteful?—”
Joe let out a long and loud and perfectly involuntary groan.
“—and I hate the Church too?—”
“Is this really how you’re going to deal with it?” Joe whisper-snapped.
Percy shrugged it off with a small eye roll, finishing, “And people. A lot of them. But not all of them. And there are good people here, tonight, and in this city, who don’t deserve whatever you think you’re about to do to them.”
She twisted the rusted shard of metal in her fingers. “With this blade?” She smiled to herself. “Do you remember when you told me how useless the sheath is? Asked me what Christ’s blood had ever done for me? Shall we find out?” Her eyes cut a path to her right. “Althea? Is that your name?”
Eyes just as black and dark as the ground she stood upon, Althea snarled, “Is that my name? You fucking bitch.”
Molly gave a goading shrug. “I’m not the one who convinced all those little girls to come away with a murderess.”
Althea started straight forward with her knife, only to be wrenched back by Leo’s ready hand. “Al, no. Percy, why the fuck are we talking? Why haven’t you killed her yet?”
Rather than admitting to the group, especially Molly, that he had indeed tried to but actually had no idea how to kill her, Percy meandered over his words, until Molly explained instead, “Because one must run distraction. Skeletons are slow and stupid, and it takes a while for them to dig themselves out of their graves.”
“What?” asked Giordano, suddenly, unnervingly aware of the echo of a clicking and a clacking behind the trees.
Percy stepped forward, moving into the centre of the small clearing, looking up at his once-friend. “Stop them. Put them back where they belong. We’ll talk this out. I’ll even let you keep the spear.”
“How kind, Percy,” she trilled. “I think I will keep it. And just for that, I’ll keep you, too.” Flinging her arms out long, the seal on every grave in sight lifted. The crunch and snap of breaking concrete filled the air with dust and dirt as dozens of coffins cracked wide open. With a white flash of bones, the lot clattered to the ground.
“Everyone here,” Percy shouted, and in the next second, all four were in the centre of the ring, back-to-back with Percy, weapons at the ready. “You three need to head south. She hasn’t opened the graves there. Be quick, take the sheath, get on a train?—”