Page 48 of The Reluctant Reaper
“It’s not fake. It’s an actual cave. The house was built around it.”
“A death god thing?”
“A death god thing. Crawl in.” Amara turned, closed and latched the double doors, and turned back to find Gray hadn’t moved. “Well?”
“The last time you told me to crawl somewhere, my shorts got soaked and I wound up kneeling in dog shit.”
“That was three years ago! What,Ishould have crawled into the culvert? It was your errant basketball.”
“You had jeans on! I was in shorts.”
“You’re always in shorts!”
“My point!” In response to her glare, Gray sighed and got down on all fours. “They’ve set it up so you have to crawl in, but your folks couldn’t put down some carpet?”
“Jesus, you sound like an old woman.”
“Always have, always—ow! Even Berber carpet would be—hey, there’s a tiny waterfall in here!”
“We supplement the underground spring with well water.”
The waterfall was bracketed with flowstones that resembled icicles, making it look like winter had been trapped inside the cave with them.
She crawled past the cave popcorn, the clusters of calcite crystals that looked like bouquets of diamonds in the low light, and the dogtooth spar, which always looked like a pile of sea sponges to her. Above them, boxwork had covered the low ceiling with honeycombed weathering, and cave bacon draped the opposite wall. Amara assumed the scientists who had named such things were perpetually hungry.
“Cool, you have your own indoor grotto.”
“I loved coming in here, especially when I hit my teens. It’s very peaceful.”
She settled in next to Gray who (shocker!) had questions. “Not that your chilly, misty secret indoor lair isn’t lovely, but is there a reason we aren’t having this meeting in a room with heat? And/or blankets? Or in your Mustang? We could drive to Dairy Queen and then watch our ice cream melt before the power of your car’s heater.”
“Do you remember when I suggested my mother reach out to Paeon?”
Gray blinked and focused. “The thing that happened a couple of hours ago? Vaguely. He’s the god of godly medicine, right?”
“Yes.”
“Am I gonna get to meet him? Because I have this thing with my elbow he could maybe take a look at...”
“Apparently you won’t meet him, since I assume Mother still hasn’t contacted him. Which makesnosense. She doesn’t need me to remind her to take action, and she’d be the first to tell you that. So is she doing this—or not doing this—on my dad’s orders? That’s the best-case scenario, and it sucks.”
Gray frowned. “So what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking this is a woman who was fully prepared to gut my sixth-grade teacher for not letting me check out books from the adult library. And she’s as protective a spouse as she is a parent. My middle school got pissy when my dad took me out for two weeks, and when Mom saw the letter they sent him, she went right down there and tore a few strips off their hides. So believe me when I say Freyja Brunhilde Göndul ignoring a viable option isunbelievablyout of character. Why wouldn’t she pull out all the stops?”
“Is that why we’re meeting in your chilly grotto? You think there’s mischief afoot?”
“Nothing works in here. Not cell phones, not walkie-talkies, not radios or fax machines or electric can openers.”
“Wait, why did you bring an electric?—”
“It’s a black hole of No Service. Best of all, no one can sneak up on us; there’s only one way in or out.”
Gray studied her in the low light. “Wow. Youdothink there’s something afoot. Or you’re about to murder me in the perfect place to stash a body.”
“If I didn’t murder you when you gobbled up my secret stash of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls?—”
“You should have put them out. I had to go hunting for them.”
