Heather is, for her part, happy to follow along. The recently deceased nature of this non-corpse is apparent, but defining it more thoroughly, tracing its world-line and its entanglements with the world, would be a terribly invasive act likely to result in Heather absorbing the entire pantheon and forever abandoning humanity; ordinary legwork and a safe amount of mundanely supernatural perception would seem to be in order. She has self control, these days.

"She's a shy one, usually. Foreign royalty. Most people I know had to learn our own ways of coping with truths beyond reality, she was born to it and had to learn ways of coping with ordinary things. When we first met, I was jumping at shadows, thinking everything that happened was her stage direction, but it was really something more like Shakespeare fleeing from Hamlet constantly running backstage to try to strangle him. And then they kiss, I suppose, and Elizabeth I has to bless their union because Shakespeare is her son."

"I might introduce you, but she's likely not going to show herself. If you see a whisper of yellow, too faint even to be your imagination, pretend she said hello." Most likely, Sevens is just watching. Little voyeur (affectionate).

"Cute," Sam says, distractedly. "She reminds me of an old friend, in that way." 

The no longer dead god brings them to a narrow wooden staircase leading through back of house. This is not the kind of place that guests should be near; it's clearly how the mortal waitstaff, such as it is, moves between floors without being seen. 

"Here," he says.

To someone with anything resembling magical vision, it's like looking at a crime scene under black light. The body was dragged a ways up the stairs after the murder, until he stopped being dead. 

"The problem is that they killed me on the Solstice, but not in the right way. There's a ritual to it, and this is how you get eternal winters, instead of one dark day." 

He says all this like it's perfectly natural. 

"Not in your fine establishment, of course," he adds. "But in our world." 

He's sober, now, and looks close to fifty. Instead of the party clothes, he's wearing a long white robe wrapped over one shoulder, edged in dark purple. He's still crowned, but it's also dark in color, with small sparks appearing and disappearing between the branches. 

"Hmm. Can you describe the events as you experienced them?" For whatever sort of "experienced", anyway. "Can the sacrifice still be performed correctly, or was its integrity damaged?"

"The sun dies and is born again; I was killed by an agent of Winter and left to reconstitute myself in a dark corner, instead of at the height of our revels." He pouts, which doesn't fit the senatorial aspect at all. "Ruined the whole party. I have to be reborn from the sea for it to work, and in any case the party hasn't stopped, which is a problem in itself." 

He looks at Sam. "You're not the investigator, but you have remnants of her presence about you."

Turning back to Heather. "I was killed by a blow to the head, instead of the ritual dagger, and I was not eaten." He looks thoughtful. "I suppose if we did it correctly, but it wasn't due for another few days. Time isn't meant to pass here. So we need to find the agent, first and foremost. I don't think Miliways is too happy either."

"Always winter, but never Christmas. So to speak. Oh, I shouldn't assume anything, really. So Winter would like to continue past its appointed time, you think? Oh, I'm really not a classicist."

Heather's small smile belies her verbal fretting.

"I think so."

Stressed out gods are a weird thing to look at. 

"Bar is not going to be thrilled that there was a murder, no."

He looks at Heather. "What's a classicist?"