I was drinking Jack and Coke. In this living room, we looked like a Norman Rockwell painting gone wrong. “Just think,” I told Felicia. “If all o...f this hadn't happened, we'd be graduating right now. We'd be on our way to college.” “So what?” asked Felicia. “We're not.” She had been saying things like this lately. She seemed to refuse the possibility that we could have ended up anywhere but a hundred feet underground. “But think about it,” I told her. “I spent all of high school studying and. If he ever loved my mother – which I doubt – he will hate her after she leaves, and do everything in his power to get her back. If that does not work, I think he will try to have her killed. Remember, he is wealthy and has influence. Her leaving would be a tremendous insult to him, and he will respond. Mother tells me that he ... has become more and more unstable in the last year or two. It seems logical to assume that he is using or smoking some type of drugs, because he comes home smelling. His arms had been stretched out to a pair of columns and the tips of his wings bound to two columns farther out. Four reapers stood before him and the high priests and priestesses stood to either side. He kept hearing Amaranth’s sobs over everything else. One of the reapers approached him. Kasdael looked at him sullenly. “I’m sorry, Ashriel. They threw a fucking lottery between all of us. I don’t agree with this. I don’t want—“ “Kasdael,” Reushuel snarled at the young reaper. “I don’t want. "Well, thank you, but I still have to deal with over twenty-one more cases here, don't I?" I noted the women now waiting impatiently through this, "Why have they just stayed there?" Oh, yes, that. The new God decreed that they cannot leave the room or do anything unrelated to you in here until you've decided their fates. It fits, since they are stuck in many ways already without your seed." Before that is done, I will ask Tina if there is any other unfinished business, as this will take a.