There was such a charm to him, to the way he spoke to her, spoke of her, that Bast found herself growing rather attached to the Greek. She knew that the delusions he was experiencing were because he'd been drugged, and it sounded like he'd gotten some of the really good stuff. But drugs only enhanced or inhibited what was already in a person; sometimes it was stuff they didn't even know was there, things that were hidden or submerged or held back in the subconscious. But it was still there. Bast wondered without the drugs, just how charming Thanatos was. She'd have to find out.
Later.
Because now, after telling her that her mouth was molten (which would totally have been a come on from anybody else) he was saying that he was burning. Was he having a bad trip? Bast did what she'd seen her adopted mother do a million times: she lifted her hand and placed the back of her wrist against Thanatos' forehead to see if he truly was burning. How could she really know though? Gods were different than mortals. Sun gods always ran rather hot. Most death gods, at least those she'd met, tended to come off as cooler to the touch. Except for Anubis, but he was sort of an exception to the rule. Thanatos didn't feel too hot for a normal person, but maybe he was too hot for a death god?
The wonderful thing about this place and these people was that plans were always fluid. If she didn't show up on time, or at all, at the party with her friends, they'd go on without her. They'd see her tomorrow, or the next day. Maybe next week. It didn't matter. The wheel kept turning. So right there, on the spot, Bast changed her plans for the evening to exclude the muscians and include the Greek.
“If you're burning,” she told him with a smile, “then we should cool you down, shouldn't we? Come with me.”
Bast didn't wait for a response. There was no one else nearby, or too nearby, and really if anybody had repeated what they'd seen they'd be accused of being on drugs. Because one moment, there was a dark-skinned woman and a man in boxer shorts standing on the sidewalk, and the next moment they were gone. With an effort of will, Bast moved them through Concept, not to one of her many flats, but to her personal temple in the Egyptian quarter. More specifically, to the bathroom attached to her master suite in her personal temple in the Egyptian quarter. Which was rather unusual for her, it was very rare that she let others into her home, let alone strangers. But Thanatos was rather rare, too, she thought.
Her plan was to get him into a tub of cooling water. But she loved her bathtub. It was a perfectly round, circular bowl of marble, set into the floor. Rather than having a faucet that dumped water in from the side, she had an overhead shower, almost the same circumference of the tub itself, set into the ceiling that made it look and feel like rainfall filled the bowl. Bast loved her tub. And those boots he was wearing were not going in it.