Page 57 of The Deeper Game
The buzzing stopped. “Pull yourself together.”
It was too late. Tears clotted my eyes.
God! How self-centered I was! All this time I was thinking about the tattoos as a power struggle, a failure on Thor and Zeus’s and especially Odin’s part to understand how negative they were.
I wasn’t thinking.
I wasn’t listening.
“You don’t think you’ll survive the Prime,” I said. “You don’t want to go out with your masterpiece unfinished.”
“Do I need a gag for you, too?”
“I’m right, aren’t I? You don’t think we’ll survive.”
He was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I thinkyouwill, goddess.”
He started up the tool.
My belly nearly dropped through the floor. “You think you’re going to die on this job, and you’re still going for it?”
“The Prime is the most glorious prize, and the most upsetting to our enemies. It’s reckless, but I can’t stop wanting to rob it. You of all people should understand.”
I tried to move my arm away from him, but I was immobilized. I was moving enough that he couldn’t tattoo it. Again he turned off the tool. “What?”
“Do the others know you think that?”
His eyes went dark. “It doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything.”
“So they don’t know? How can you not let them know? Like, hey, I have a bad feeling on this one. Like we mightdie.” I could barely believe I was saying the words.
“Talking about it would just make it worse. Don’t make me regret being honest with you,” Odin said. “I respected you enough to answer your question truthfully.”
“They have to know, Odin. You have to tell them.”
“It’s not how we do things, Isis,” he said. “We all have different feelings about jobs, but we go ahead and do them, because it’s what we do.”
“They can’t pull it off if you refuse to go.”
“I would never refuse to go. I want to rob it as much as Zeus and Thor do. Anyway, a bad feeling could mean many things.”
I regarded him wildly. “I don’t want you to die.”
He touched my chin. “A bad feeling doesn’t mean we’ll die.”
“But it could. Is this foolish?” I wondered. “I’m going to stop this.”
“You can’t.”
“Odin.” I felt the tears prick my eyes.
“Don’t try. It’s a mountain we must climb. You want us to stop being who we are? To retire in yourfucking-gbrochure?”
My heart beat wildly. “I don’t want you to stop being who you are! But why are those the only two choices? Rob the most glittering bank in the world or fish like old men? I want another choice.”
“Giving up on the Prime feels like giving up on life,” he said. “Do you remember what Zeus said when we first decided to get these tattoos?” Calmly, he inspected his work. “He said that we’re a family now and that means we can be as messed up as we want to be. That we will support each other in our messed-up ways and belong together. We’re messed up, Ice.”
Shivers rained over my skin. My throat felt too clogged to speak.
