People rarely made sense to Thoth, and Cypress made less sense than most. First, she had really wanted to be friends with him. She even asked twice, explicitly. Then she really wanted to know if he trusted her after meeting her for only the second time, and now she was turning down everything she just said she needed.

She threw her arms around his neck, initiating their second hug in as many minutes. He hugged her back, raising his eyebrows at Danny’s spluttering expression over her shoulder. Spluttering was nothing new – Danny did it a lot – but it wasn’t like Thoth had said or done anything weird this time. Had he? Cypress said she needed money, so Thoth was offering it to her. That was a normal friend thing to do, to offer to help your friends and give them things you weren’t using. Thoth had been giving his friends books that he’d finished reading for years and that was never considered weird.

Unfortunately, Cypress seemed to side with Danny. Thoth’s jaw dropped open.

“Why not?” He demanded to know. “I’m not using it. I don’t want it. You need it.”

Logic? Did the rest of the world have any?

He must have stumbled across some kind of social custom or taboo which was totally nonsensical. That was usually what happened whenever people reacted in that way to something he said or did. Thoth knitted his eyebrows together, wondering how people even remembered all of these stupid made-up rules of life, let alone why they followed them.

Cypress released him and he folded his arms, missing her next question. His brain had found a problem it needed to solve and had shut the door on the rest of the world. He frowned at the floor, chewing his lower lip in a very Aura-esque fashion and ticking through the possibilities. He’d already reached a dead end on any option that involved getting money while staying on Shaman, so going to earth to get the inheritance was the only way forward. If Cypress wouldn’t go, then…

“Okay.” He shrugged. “I’ll go and get it and bring it back, then.” He paused to let that sink in, a small grin creeping across his face. “I’ll just go on my own to another planet, facing off a whole church of people who have been trying to kidnap me for the last five years… on my own.”

Having never been able to keep his feelings out of his face, Thoth didn’t even bother trying to stop his grin from taking on a knowing edge. They’d know they wouldn’t be able to stop him once he got an idea in his head, and there was no way they’d let him go on his own. Time to pack for Earth.

MASTER OF THE ORBIS . MASTER OF THE WATER ELEMENT . SON OF AURA