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Marco thought he saw something flicker over the old woman’s scarred features. Something like… grace . “But you’re—you’re not Ashlynn, dear.”
    “Of course she’s Ashlynn,” Marco said.
    As a teenager, his ex had always been polite about his mother’s illness, but shied away from her, as if madness were contagious. Now, Ashlynn let his mother grip her hands likethey were a lifeline, and didn’t pull away even when the older woman’s nails dug into her skin. “Ma, let Ashlynn go,” he said quietly. “You’re hurting her.”
    “It’s all right,” Ashlynn said. “She’s hurting worse than I am.”
    Lori pushed forward with a bottle of pills and his mother’s nurse in tow. “Both of you get away from her,” his sister said, glaring at Marco as if he’d caused his mother’s outburst. Ironically, it was the one damned thing he didn’t feel guilty about today.
    “You’re okay now, aren’t you, Ma?” Marco asked. “I’m right here with you.”
    “Please,” Lori said, acidly. “She doesn’t even know who you are. On the days she remembers you, she tells the doctors that her son was a soldier, a peacekeeper. And you know what breaks my heart, Marco? She sounds proud. Ma’s mind is so far gone she doesn’t have any idea that you’ve become some kind of mercenary.”
    He shouldn’t have this argument. Not now. Not again. Not here where everyone was listening. But being home again was opening every old wound. “I’m not a mercenary, ” he hissed, voice low. “It’s not like I sell weapons to the highest bidder. I choose sides in the world.”
    Lori just shook her head, angry tears in her eyes. “But nobody elected you to choose sides, Marco.”
    “The people we elected are doing a shitty job of it!” Marco wanted to slam something. He wanted to kick over chairs, or crash the floral displays to the floor. It was only Ashlynn’s hand on his arm that calmed him and gave him the presence of mind to fish a check from his coat pocket. “Here, take it.”
    That’s when Lori realized it was a check. “I don’t want your money,” Lori snapped.
    Marco took a deep breath. “Funerals are expensive.You can’t afford it with the house, and mom, and the restaurant—”
    “Your money is blood money, Marco. I think you should go.”
    And, for once, his sister was right.

Chapter 6
    K yra was shaken.
    It wasn’t that she thought she was the only person in the world whose mother suffered from mental illness. But in confronting the hydra again, she hadn’t expected such a stark reminder of her own past. It made her feel sorry for Marco Kaisaris and, somehow, she was going to have to shake that off.
    She’d managed to get the hydra to agree to go for coffee. If she played this right, she could lure him into the basement dungeon she’d built for him, and then neither his poisonous blood nor his bullets could ever hurt anyone again. But Marco didn’t look like he was in any mood for a caffeinated beverage. He maybe needed a Scotch on the rocks, not a latte.
    Once he’d helped her into the car, he was distant, but showed no signs of suspicion so she must be doing a good job of impersonating Ashlynn. Then again, the man had just lost his father. She had him at his most vulnerable. “No one ever tells you how much smaller a person looks in death,” Marcosaid, pulling out of the parking lot. “It’s like something’s missing, as if their spirit took up physical space.”
    “Oh, but it does, ” Kyra said emphatically. But now wasn’t the time to give lessons to mortal men on the physicality of the soul. Snow was turning to sleet, and it was good that Marco was driving because Kyra had trouble concentrating on the road. She was too busy watching for signs that Daddy was on her trail. She knew to be alert for the vultures of Ares or Athena’s telltale owls, but here in Niagara Falls, Kyra had to be just as wary of the local echo god who once carried Iroquois war cries on the