Will had been quietly on edge since Saturday. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Lucifer with his hand grasping Clio's wrist, commanding her to lift up her dress. When he slept, he watched her burn, smelled the flesh cooking on her bones, heard her screams, all while he remained frozen in place, unable to twitch a muscle.
He hadn't gone to the workshop this morning, unwilling to leave Clio on her own, and, if he were honest, not quite ready to take his chances setting foot outside the building's wards. With the Sheriff, with Gisborne, even with a shithead god like Hermes, there were precautions he could take, strategies he could employ, places he could avoid. With Lucifer, all anybody could do was pray.
He was tired, he was tense, he was scared in a way he didn't know he'd ever been, and he wasn't of a mood to be meeting more Greeks who were apt to throw their troubles in Clio's face like she had none of her own. But when Clio had learned another of her sisters was back in town, her expression had brightened like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, and to see her smile that way, there hadn't been a chance he was gonna say anything but I'd love to meet her.
Still, as he followed Clio to the door, he couldn't help but remember the last time she'd opened it to one of her sisters to cop a spray of venomous words, and it left him feeling prickly and protective. But the woman on the other side of the door could not have been more different from Melpomene.
Thalia beamed back at Clio, eyes bright as her sister ushered her inside. "I want to hug you so bad, but it'll smoosh the cake! Here," she passed the cake box to Clio, jammed the bigfoot box under one arm and turned to the Merry Man, who was hanging back from the entrance with an uncertain expression. (Uncertain and British and ginger; ooooh, Clio had such a type.) She flashed him a bright smile. "Hi, Will Stutely! I've been jamming to your songs all along the I-80."
She'd been trying to set him at his ease, and she was rewarded with a smile – small, a tad wary, but a smile nonetheless. "That's all Clio's doing," he said. "She came up with the whole thing, put it all in motion. She was brilliant."
"That's my big sis," Thalia agreed, with a fond grin at Clio. "Brilliant and clever."