CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Lineage

 

HE’S STARVING. HIS body feels like a hollow shell of itself, waiting to be filled up with—well, not guts or lungs or blood, but potato chips and slushies and those little doughy-chewy pretzel bites dipped in the nuclear-yellow probably-plastic cheese. It was like this after a fight, too—the worse the fight, the more ravenous Cason felt.

He’s never before felt this hungry.

He comes out of the convenience store with both arms loaded. One bag looped around the crook of his elbow while his hand shoves a super-size Snickers bar into his maw.

Back in the cab.

Psyche still in the back. Tundu outside the car, pacing, using his cell. Talking to his family.

“Ahm sho hungry,” Cason gurgles, finishing off the Snickers and dipping back into the bag for a sack of Bugles. Little crispy horn-shaped corn snacks. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

“It’s your body repairing itself,” Psyche says from the back. “The human part of you needs it. To replenish. To rebuild.”

“Oh,” Cason says, gob-flecks of corn chip peppering the dash. He wipes them away with the back of his hand. He does feel better. Not perfect. Not all the way back up to speed. But good. And he feels thin, too. Ropy. Strong. Like he’s back in old fighting shape. All the lumps and mush have burned away. Tightened up. “Okay.”

“I sense you’re feeling guilty about Frank.”

Dry swallow. “I don’t want to talk about this.” He pops the cap on a Dr. Pepper. Guzzles it. Burns his throat as it charges toward his guts.

“You shouldn’t feel bad. He was leading you astray.”

“Please.”

“He lied to you. He knew that you weren’t human. Did you know that? He knew.”

“I’m not talking about this. We just left him—no. We’re really not talking about this.” He finishes the Dr. Pepper, gasps for breath, then shifts his torso so he’s staring back at the pale, wild-haired girl in the back of the cab. “What I want to talk about is: who the hell am I? We didn’t finish that part of our conversation. I want to know who I am. I know I’m adopted. And now you’re telling me I’m... I’m not human. And shit, who knows? Maybe you’re right. I just broke my legs and now I’m up and walking around. I got the shit kicked out of me and while I do in fact feel like I was hit by a dumptruck, I should be in traction for the next six months. So, you’re telling me I have divine parentage? Then I need to know who. Who are my parents, Psyche?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out since I met you.”

That’s not what he wants to hear. He tells her as much.

“I know. But it’s true. The others, at the farmhouse. I think some of them knew. They must’ve. They targeted you for a reason. But I wasn’t privy to that. Aphrodite didn’t even know. Not all of it, at least. I think the others did this to you without... without her involvement. If she was involved, I’d know. I was her shadow for a very long time.” She sighs. Under her breath: “My mother-in-law. Ugh.”

Outside, Tundu paces, gesticulating as he talks into the phone. Trying to explain to his family where he was all night. Tundu said that Frank called him, told him the story—or most of it—and that Tundu didn’t hesitate. Cason, he said, was his friend. And he said the last few nights he went to bed feeling helpless, a small man in the face of very real gods. He doesn’t want to feel helpless, he said. So, here he is.

“Can’t you...” Cason gesticulates around his brow. “Get into my head, figure it out?”

“I do see someone. I see your mother, I think. A woman. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Humming a song. The song about the mockingbird and the diamond ring. And I smell the city and I hear cars honking and—that’s all I see. It’s buried deep. From a long, long time ago.” She pauses. “But there is something else.”

She hands him a road atlas.

On the cover is an icon of a man holding up a globe. She taps the man on the cover. “Atlas. I know him. Well. I’ve met him. Dumb as a sack of amaranth. Couldn’t find his own tiny shorts with all the maps in the world, so I don’t know why he’s on the cover of this one.”

“What’s your point?”

Psyche flips to the middle of the book.

Hands it to him.

It’s open to the state of Kansas.

“I see a crimson thread,” she says. “A literal bloodline. Faint. Like someone is trying to hide it. But it’s there. It starts with you, and connects here.”

She taps the map.

“Concordia, Kansas,” he says.

“Yes. Something is there. Something bound to you.”

“Then that’s where I’m going.”

“Are you sure? There’s no promises that this harvest will yield fruit. We could find your wife and son. I could... try to quell their... feelings about you. I’ll do it. To make up for my... transgressions.”

“No. I have big question mark-shaped holes inside me, and I need answers to fill them. Somebody’s messing with me. And worse, they’re messing with my wife and my kid. I still don’t know why or who I even am, so...” He trails off. “Concordia, Kansas, here I come.”