“Ask her father. I remember only pain. It probably began as implantation, a forced possession, but how exactly he went about it is beyond my recollection.”

“Did you . . . ?” Teddy Jo let it trail off.

“Absorb the essence of Deimos? Yes.”

Teddy Jo shook his head. “It’s not apotheosis. Apotheosis implies reaching the state of rapture and divinity through faith. It’s not an appearance avatar.”

“No,” I said. “That would imply the deliberate voluntary descent of a deity to be reborn in a human body, and from what I understand there was nothing voluntary about the process. Deimos wasn’t reincarnated.”

“There is no word for it,” Christopher said.

Teddy Jo rocked forward, his hands in a single fist against his mouth. “That’s because it goes against the primary principle of all religion—the acknowledgment of forces beyond our control possessing superhuman agency.”

“With the exception of Buddhism,” Christopher said.

“Yes. The key here is ‘superhuman.’ A deity may consume a human or another deity, but a human can never consume a deity, because that implies human power is greater than divine.”

Just another night in Atlanta. Sitting on my porch between a Greek god who was really a human and an angel of death who was having an existential crisis.

“This shouldn’t be. You can’t be Deimos.”

“But I am,” Christopher said.

“I know.”

“It’s the Shift,” I said. “The power balance between a neglected deity such as Deimos and a very powerful human is skewed toward the human, especially if there are no worshippers.”

“It would have to be a really powerful human,” Teddy Jo said.

“I was,” Christopher said. “I suppose I should say I am.”

“Do you retain any of your prior navigator powers?” I asked.

“No.”

We sat together on the porch, watching the universe strip herself bare above us.

“Theophage,” I said.

“What?” Teddy Jo said.

“You wanted a word for Christopher. Theophage.”

“The eater of gods?” Christopher smiled.

“That word is for the sacramental eating of God, in the form of grains and meat,” Teddy Jo said.

“Well, now it’s for literal eating.”

“We should get going,” Teddy Jo said.

“So, can I come?” Christopher asked.

“Where? Where do you want to go?” Teddy Jo asked.

“To Mishmar. I could carry her. She wouldn’t need a winged horse.”

“No. Even if you could carry her that far, you couldn’t get there fast enough.”

“He’s right,” I added. “The plan is to escape Mishmar before my father arrives, but it’s possible he will catch me there. For whatever reason, he is reluctant to kill me, but he won’t hesitate to fight you. If you saw him, what would you do?”

“I would kill him,” Christopher stated in a matter-of-fact way.

Well, he would definitely try.