I got it out of her. She’d managed to pick up Lyme disease, which was horrible. It wasn’t anything I could fix, though. It wasn’t…at some levels, it wasn’t any of my business, but I could at least express sympathy before I left.

Gods didn’t always help their closest chosen with things like this, which made me feel better about Monica’s situation.

Part of the cycle of life. Part of reality, and we were only supposed to tweak it so much.

But I was rather sober as I left, hoping she’d recover soon. At least she would, unlike Monica. At least what she had was sort of treatable. Sort of.

She wasn’t going to die, and I pulled my jacket around myself against a cold I didn’t really feel.

It wasn’t fair, and I couldn’t make it fair. I could only trust that there was some reason for it.

Then I sensed a ripple of energy, something that I couldn’t identify but knew was bad.

And I knew it was our spider friend again. We had to stop him.

We had to find her, or we had to steal it.

But now two gods were fighting. I could feel it, and from the glances around, so could some of the people on the street. The ones who could sense such things, but I doubted many of them knew.

Anansi was one of them, but who was the other? Had my warning got in too late?

Something landed on my shoulder. It was Hunin.

“Who is it?” I asked, quietly.

“Anansi and Persephone. He’d have got the jump on her, but…”

But my warning had got in just in time, it seemed. Just in time to give her enough warning to defend herself. “I hope she wins. Maybe she can solve the problem for us.”

“Maybe,” the raven said. “You have the right idea looking for the wife.”

“But we might never be able to find her. I mean, maybe Mike’s on the right lines, but…”

“She hid where he could find her. She tested him. But…”

“But he failed.”

I kept walking. Nobody was looking at me. We weren’t important to them in that moment, we were insignificant.

“He failed, yes.”

“Did he really love her enough?” I asked, softly. Maybe Hunin would know. Maybe whatever instinctive wisdom the raven carried would…

“You have something more important to do right now. Go.”

I blinked. “Go…” But the raven was gone. I knew he was right, though. I drew my sword and ran to the epicenter of the trouble.