Page 158 of Cherish

“I didnotwatch you shower this morning, or any other morning.” She lifts her chin, straightening her spine to appear taller, although she’s still just my height. “I will have you know thatIam the God of History, and it is my responsibility to record every historic event—of which your shower was not.”

My mind immediately snaps to some ofmyrecentshowers—a few of which Hudson may or may not have been a part of—and my eyes widen even more.

She swings her gaze to mine and deadpans, “Nor yours.” Then she shakes her head. “I have enough work just keeping up with the big events of the day. I am exhausted—and that’s sometimes giving up on smaller moments I desperately want to record as well.”

“How do you do it?” I ask after a second. “I mean, how do you sleep? Or even find time to go to the bathroom?”

“And who was watching the world when you were at breakfast with us this morning?” Macy adds. I hope the Curator doesn’t notice the fact that she sounds more than a little accusatory.

Apparently, she doesn’t—or she doesn’t care—because she just sighs. “I told you this morning. Kleo spells me a few hours every day. She was in here while I was with all of you earlier. But she can’t spell me again so soon, so you are on your own for lunch and dinner tonight.”

“Kleo?” Macy asks, and I can tell she’s trying to figure out where she’s heard the name before. “Is she a god, too?”

“She’s a muse,” I answer, thinking about how I couldn’t find the statue of the muse this morning, until suddenly she seemed to appear out of nowhere. It still seems way too far-fetched to be believed. Then again, there are a lot of things in this world I can say that about. “But are you talking about someone real or just the statue from your garden?”

The Curator lifts a brow at me. “You’rereally going to talk to meabout statues coming to life?”

“Iturnintoa statue, not the other way around. It’s not actually the same thing.”

She inclines her head. “Fair enough—which was the title of a song in 1997 by Beth Nielsen Chapman.”

I don’t know whether I should comment on that or not. She keeps saying song titles and dates like she’s on a musical category ofJeopardy!or something, but I don’t know if that’s just because she loves trivia or if it’s because she’s a frustrated musician herself.

Eternity seems like a long enough time for her to learn an instrument—at least, if she didn’t have to work all the time. I wonder if she’s actually been to any of those concerts she has posters for, or if she just sees them in her crystal ball or whatever it is she uses to record history.

The thought makes me sad—this whole situation makes me sad—and for the second time in as many minutes, I start thinking about how both of us can get what we want out of this situation.

“So how does Kleo come to life?” Macy asks, still stuck on the Curator’s marble helper. “If she’s not a gargoyle—”

“She’s not. A friend of mine charmed her for me years ago, so I could have an occasional break. But the charm only works for a few hours at a time. Once she’s back in statue form, she can’t take human form again until the sun sets and rises.”

“So, just to be clear,” I state. “For several hours a day, a statue who isn’t really a person is deciding what history gets recorded and what doesn’t?”

Heather snaps her fingers. “Ohhh… Youcuratehistory.”

The Curator rolls her eyes but continues. “You make it sound worse than it is.”

“It sounds pretty bad,” Macy tells her. “Worse, even, than the fact that one person has been charged with recording all of the world’s history. Forever.”

“Onegod. And it’s not like anyone else is volunteering for the job,” she answers, and there’s more than a touch of bitterness in her tone. “Jikan got to take a vacation a couple of months ago. Cassia spent the last thousand years on vacation. And Adria—” She snorts. “Does she actually doanything?”

“You mean besides make people miserable?” I ask as I glance down at the Crone’s tattoo of impossibleness on my wrist.

The Curator laughs. “Thatisher singular talent.”

“Don’t we know it,” Macy mutters.

“But speaking of recording history—and being miserable—I need to get back to it,” the Curator says. “We can talk more tomorrow morning, at breakfast.”

She turns around and starts to close the door/bookcase that leads into her secret history domain, but I reach out and grab it before she can.

“Do you mind if we come in there with you?” I ask.

She looks surprised—and more than a little suspicious. “I don’t let people in this room.”

“Yeah, the whole locked-door-and-secret-passageway thing kind of clued us in to that fact,” Heather snarks.

Which has the Curator narrowing her eyes to slits. “It’s been a while since I’ve smote anyone. Don’t make me regret that fact.”

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