“Thank you,” Elpis half-sung, spinning on her heel towards the bathroom. Bits and pieces of color rained down; in the dimness of the room the tiny colors burned.
Her voice carried easy and cheerful from the bathroom. “Baku-chan, couldn't come. Well, she could—but she really, really shouldn't. You, allllll of you, aren't good for her. Except that you, just you, kind of are. Which is sad, but if she killed you it'd probably be as bad as she killed him and the last time she did that, she went sort of sad, sad crazy and ate my friends.”
When she stepped back out, flowers half floating a bowl (she couldn't find a vase), her scarf a loose, soft mess around her and bulky jacket flapping open, Elpis was smiling. “I'm not going to kill you, by the way.”
She set the bowl down carefully, before claiming the newly vacant spot on the folding chair and peering at Death—the big one. Her cheery eyes darkened.
“He had no right,” Hope said softly. “No right at all. It wasn't even because she made him angry, not really.” She looked at Alex with wide, lethal eyes. “Everyone gets a little angry, sometimes, that's allowed. Even for him. But that's not why he did it, not really. He did it because...because he could.”