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a great piece that encompassed exactly what happened at the Ball, and she could even be promoted. 
              It sounded great. It was great. The only thing was that despite how wonderful it sounded, something told her there was more to this Monster’s Ball than was thought, and much more than she wanted to find out.
    ***
              “You’re not going?”
              Thanatos looked up from his Blackberry to the one person who’d never left his side since his “banishment.” While his parents and other siblings were never more than a summons away, Hypnos was almost always present. Sometimes it seemed as if he was serving Thanatos’s sentence with him.
    With one leg propped up against the other, Hypnos looked relaxed sitting in the large leather chair that faced Thanatos’s desk. On his brother’s face was a look so smug, Thanatos was curious. “Going where?”
              “The Ball, Cinderella. Where else?”
              Shrugging his shoulders, Thanatos returned his attention to his Blackberry. Technology was one of the things at which the human race was successful. And they couldn’t even take all of the credit for that. Their not so human counterparts, vampires, werewolves and witches, still held the patents and copyrights to many of the technologically forward products. Cell phones, television, the internet, even the Blackberry in his hand...
              “So, are you going?”
              “Why should I?” Thanatos murmured, lifting his gaze to his brother. Hypnos was speaking of the Monster’s Ball, the event that had begun in the last years, and that usually housed an array of species of the paranormal, along with many unsuspecting human counterparts. It was humorous, that humans assumed everything at the Ball was an acted-out Halloween script. Every year since the event had begun, he’d received an invitation from Thoth, the warlock host. Thanatos had attended twice. Many of the immortal species who attended were cursed in some way, just as he was, but unlike him, they were looking for mates to either undo their curse or make it significantly better.
    As a god, Thanatos didn’t believe in the idea of a mate, well a mate for himself. He’d met enough werewolf couples to know that within their species existed the phenomenon, possibly because of their animal nature, but no two gods would ever uphold vows only to each other for eternity. His parents loved each other as much as any gods could, but Erebos had fathered children who did not belong to Nyx, and Nyx had taken gods to her bed that weren’t Erebos. Jealousy had ensued, but in the end, it was their way.
              “How long have we been brothers?”
              That question alerted him that whatever Hypnos was leading to would be important. The last time his twin had asked that question had been ages ago when Hypnos, learning to control his powers had unconsciously listened in on Cronus’s thoughts. It hadn’t helped that the all-powerful Titan had known it was one of the dark gods, and came demanding answers. In the end, Thanatos confessed to mischief--he couldn’t die after all--but Cronus had dismissed it as a ‘boon’ to the dark gods.
    Thanatos lowered his Blackberry to the smooth top of his office desk. His eyes wavered left, catching the Empire State building and surrounding buildings in the skyline. When he’d come to New York to expand his financial empire, he’d chosen this building particularly for that skyline. It was a shame the Towers were no longer there, that human hands had played a part in bringing down such magnificent buildings. On that fateful day, and although it was against the rules, he’d wished for his powers to have Death claim those who’d so callously orchestrated the taking of so many innocent lives.
              “What are you trying to tell me, Hypnos?”
              His twin looked ready to argue about