by Amie Gibbons
“Maybe just have you checked out for sociopathic tendencies. That’s all.” I hugged her around the shoulders and waved at the men keeping a good ten feet between us and them. “Come on, guys! Do your thing. We won’t bite.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tyler said, voice dipping down into throaty as the nearest guy, a paramedic, reached us. She slid out from under my arm and offered her hand to him. “Help a lady up?”
I laughed, nearly falling over. She was fine. They’d check us out, interview us, find the panther, interview him if he could talk, and it’d all be fine.
Oh yeah.
“There’s flowers upstairs,” I said. “They’re new.”
The other paramedic helped me up and the detective from before came up behind him.
“They magical or something?” Detective Cheap Suit asked.
“Yeah, um, after they’re checked out and whatever the witches need to do to clear them is done, I’d like to keep them. A few of them imprinted on me.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I can’t believe this,” Millie said, a shade too loud. “How did they wake your mom up? There had to be something left to bring back. I’d love to know how they affected the brain like that. How is she?”
I smiled. “She’s doing great. Her muscles are atrophied but they’re already working out a schedule for her physical therapy.”
“It’s just so wacky.” She leaned over, sipping her Christmas-tini til the liquid dropped far enough for her to pick it up without spilling the candy red confection. It was her second.
It’d taken almost an hour to catch Millie and Tyler up on everything that happened over the weekend, the reason the gods went to sleep, the whole group of gods trying to defect thing, and then the rest of the hour to tell Millie about the scene at the courthouse earlier.
Tyler and I had to stay to talk to the cops for hours, while witches from the hotline went upstairs to check on the flowers. They figured out the flowers needed to have their roots plugged into an energy source, and transferred each to a soil and plant food filled pot.
The seeds that hadn’t implanted were collected to be studied. The flowers that hadn’t bonded to me quickly bonded to the witches handling them, and by the end of the work day they all had homes.
I tucked my two under a blanket in the backseat of my car, and the rest were going home with whichever witch happened to handle them first. Definitely a baby duckling thing going on.
Made me wonder what happened to that first one to make it a dog hating loner in the middle of the park.
Maybe it didn’t have anyone to bond to and my dogs just scared it.
“I can’t believe you’re working for a god. I can’t believe they made you fight in a ring like something out of Gladiator.”
“Not really,” Tyler said.
Millie shrugged. “I never saw it.” She leaned back, tilting her face to the last rays of the sun. “Sixty degrees in December. I love the South. Did you really insult the gods?”
The Corner Pub was a Midtown staple. A squat, square building with picnic tables in the back, squished between a road and a five story slab of a stone building that was furnished studio apartments. The building was not so affectionately known as grad school dorms since only grad students who didn’t know better ever rented them.
“I only insult Apollo,” I said. “And he deserves it.”
“But you’re asking us to help him?” Tyler asked.
I wrapped my hands around my coffee. I wasn’t cold but it gave my hands something to do.
“Well, the gods in general, but yeah. I don’t trust Apollo, I’m pretty sure I hate him right now, but these gods trying to defect are bad. I don’t need to like or trust the Greeks to know in my gut they’re on the side trying to help humanity. Those gods trying to defect will make life… I don’t know, something bad, for humans if they get their way.” I took a sip. “And they backed out of their deal.”
“Your gut isn’t proof,” Millie said. “Do you have anything tangible to point at to tell you for sure there’s not a basis for… I can’t believe I’m saying this, for Ravena’s claims?”
“Spoken like a scientist.” I smiled. “I’ll put it this way. It may be part of my psychic abilities, or just intuition, or based on a ton of tiny things I can’t articulate, but the gut is real. I know Ravena does not have the best interests of humanity in mind. If that means I have to put up with liars and users on the other side to stop them, I’ll do it.”
“I’d really like to see what it’d take to kill a god,” Tyler said.
“Tyler, if there’s one person in this country who could pose a threat to the gods, it’s you. So please don’t let them know that when we meet with them.”
“They’d kill me if they just suspected I’d be a threat?”
“In a Nashville minute, as you’d say.”
Tyler grinned, toasting me with her scotch. “Respect.”
I shook my head and laughed. “I’d be worried if I didn’t know you’d never be so stupid. You’d never advertise you were going to go after anyone. Or that you had gone after someone. You still haven’t told me what you did to that guy Three-L year.”
She chuckled.
“What did Apollo do to you?” Millie asked, little forehead wrinkled up as she stared at the ugly apartment’s side like she was asking it a question instead of me. “I mean besides trading you your mom for working with him and sucking you into this huge battle. It seems personal.”
“Millie,” Tyler said as I searched the air around Millie, “remember how we talked about things you don’t ask? This is one of them.”
Millie didn’t look away from the building, frowning, her eyes sad behind her glasses. I squinted and hazy grey formed around her head, a cloud above little blots of white and red around her chest.
“Why?” she asked, finally looking at me.
I scooched over on the bench and wrapped an arm around her, hugging her into me. She leaned her head on my shoulder.
“Should we burn that building down?” I asked. “I’m sure we’d be doing the people who live there a favor. It has asbestos.”
“Say the word and it’s gone,” Tyler said. “Or, you know, let me go after the reason you hate that building. I don’t have to kill him. I can settle for maiming.”
“Or I grow the hell up and get over that jackass because it’s been years,” Millie said, sitting up and grabbing her drink. “We’re supposed to be talking about you.” She took a long sip. “And you’re avoiding the question.”
I clunked my head down on the table.
Tyler must’ve given Millie a look because she said, “What? What am I missing? Did they have sex or something?”
I sat up. “I’m torn between not wanting to get into this and wanting to help poor, clueless you understand human interactions. Or in this case, human and god interactions.”
“Haha.” She stuck her tongue out at me, a gesture so much funnier coming from a grown woman lawyer. “Just tell me, do we hate him?”
“I…” Don’t know.
“We are willing to help him,” Tyler said, saving me from answering. “But we don’t like him. Hate’s a strong word, but there’s definite dislike.”
“So we’re not going to be getting him a Christmas gift but we won’t be feeding him to Cerberus? Okay.”
“Would you feed your ex to Cerberus?”
“So Apollo is her ex!”
“He’s not my ex,” I said. “He’s just, remember that guy I was seeing Three-L Spring? We went out a bit and I told you I liked him.”
Millie gave me a blank look and I suppressed a smile. She couldn’t remember names or faces, basically people, to save her life.
“You never met him,” I said. “I just mentioned him. That was Apollo. He was disguised and hiding his magic. He pretended to like me, or maybe he really did, to test my magic. I didn’t let him finish the test because he let what he was doing slip. I was pissed that he lied to me and avoided him since.”
/> “And he managed to get his hands on you, tested your power, and offered you your mom for the job and lending your power,” Tyler said. “And is still trying to screw you.”
“Or he just uses his appeal and making me think he likes me to keep me in line.”
“We hate him,” Millie said, giving her drink a dark look before downing it. “I need another.”
“No,” I said, pushing her water towards her. “You need water. You can do many things, holding your alcohol is not one of them.”
She pouted but took the water, mouth latching onto the straw like a baby looking for milk. She downed half the cup within seconds.
“Okay,” she said, standing up. “Bathroom, and then I get another martini.”
“You do have to drive,” I called after her. “Or are you going to fly home? Friends don’t let friends drink and fly. You could run into an innocent pedestrian bird.”
“We have to go talk to the… your friends, remember? I’ll be sober by the time we’re done.”
“Millie.”
“Mom.”
“Ouch,” Tyler said. “I think-”
The stone wall of the apartment building exploded in front of us.
Dust and chunks and God knew what else blew out, pieces smacking the Pub and the ground almost in slow motion before I realized I was moving through the air.
Huh, the blast must’ve blown us backwards.
I blinked once, the dust stinging my eyes, and the world went dark.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I blinked, lifting my hand to wipe under my glasses. My arm wouldn’t move. I tried the right one and it worked. I wiped at my eyes. It was too easy, like there should’ve been something in the way.
Where were my glasses?
I opened my itchy, aching eyes to a blurry world that didn’t make sense.
The apartment building next to the pub was on its side, the wall ripped out and orange and black rampaging through the remnants of the studio apartments. Things popped and crackled through cotton. It almost sounded like a fireplace, but that wasn’t possible. The bar a block or two over was the one with the fire pits. It wasn’t Corner Pub’s thing.
Millie’s face appeared above me, close enough for me to tell it was her without my glasses. Her wings blocked out the sun.
Wait, the sun had just been setting, it had maybe some rays left and she shouldn’t have been blocking them out with just her wings.
The building, the light from the building. That must’ve been it.
Millie’s lips moved without sound, and black streaked her suit and face. Her brown curls frizzed out of their hair clip and looked like she took cheap black spray-on dye to them in patches.
Apollo appeared next to her. What the hell was he doing here!
He put his hand on my forehead and I was too tired to push it away. Right, that’s why my arm wouldn’t move.
Wait, why wouldn’t my arm move?
Apollo took his hand away and my brain sprung back like instant sobriety after a weekend bender.
The building wasn’t on its side, I was laying on something. The building was on fire, every room exposed and billowing smoke. The crackling came through crystal clear now. I couldn’t hear anything over it and the screaming voices nearby. Couldn’t tell if people were screaming in pain or just panic.
“The building!” I shot up.
And fell back because my arm wouldn’t move. I turned to look at it, forcing my head to move because I knew what I’d see.
My hand and part of my forearm were pinned under a slab of stone. It took me a second to realize it was so much of the forearm because the arm was bent at a ninety degree angle like it was just bending at my wrist.
I made a small noise that no one would recognize as human. “That should be hurting, shouldn’t it?”
“Be grateful it’s not,” Apollo said.
“No, no, because that means it’s… what’s that medical term for it? When it’s disconnected? I’ll never get feeling back. It’ll have to be amputated!”
“Cassandra.” Apollo took my face in his hands, holding it so I’d meet his eyes. “I can heal this. You will not lose your arm. But you must stay calm and stop moving.”
Had I been moving?
“I have to move the stone before I can heal your arm,” Apollo said. “Right now you seem to be in shock. I’m hoping you stay that way until I heal you, but this may hurt… a lot.”
Millie kneeled next to us, taking my free hand. Her wings were practically grey with soot but she looked unbroken and still had her glasses. She’d probably taken off at the loud noise on autopilot before the blast could get her.
“Tyler?” I asked, looking at her instead of whatever Apollo was doing on the other side.
Millie shook her head. “Don’t know. When I came back down, I called Apollo and started looking for you guys. Found you first.”
She looked at Apollo with a quick jerk of eyes. “So we’ll find Tyler once you’re all fixed up,” she said, voice picking up speed.
Shit, Apollo was about to do whatever he was going to do to my arm.
“And we’ll put out that fire,” Millie continued. “Apollo has reinforcements coming. They’re a bit drained because they were ambushed earlier in Olympus and there was a fight.
“Apollo said he was pulling magic from you, that’s probably why you were feeling dizzy during the trial. And so far we didn’t see anyone fall out of the building on fire, so that’s a plus. I don’t know about you, but if someone was burning, I think I’d smell it. Guess we shouldn’t have been joking-”
I screamed. Pain swept through the phantom limb thing I’d had going on. Not even pain; pain wasn’t a strong enough word to cover this. Thick black tar turned up to boiling followed by death by a thousand stings.
I opened my eyes without realizing I’d closed them and the world wasn’t where I left it a moment ago.
I was draped on a picnic table pushed up against a wall. Rubble littered the ground, so I was probably still in the back of Corner Pub, probably on one of their tables.
Noise kept my ears too distracted to focus on any of it. I looked over and my left arm was lying next to me. It looked intact, with no more funny angles to it. I focused on my index finger and tried to wiggle it.
It moved!
I clenched it into a fist and opened it. Did that a few times before sitting up.
My head didn’t spin. I didn’t puke split-pea soup, either. Things were looking up.
The fire blazed along twenty feet away. They’d pushed me as far as they could get me without having to leave the area. Smoke clogged the air and as soon as I recognized it I started coughing. The noises started to parse themselves apart as I matched them with visuals.
There was still crackling from the flames. They didn’t seem to be going out despite the five gods shooting magic at them. It seemed to make them grow.
People screamed and sirens shrieked.
The lion roared.
Lion!
She leapt from the second floor of the building and came towards me, a tiny young woman I recognized from a talk at the law school last month on her back.
Wait, how was I seeing so clearly? The building was twenty feet away and the girl carrying lion still a few feet. I wasn’t blind, but I couldn’t see people that clearly at a distance.
I touched my face. My glasses were back on. They’d survived the blast?
The lion stopped next to my table, sitting so the girl clutching her fur slid off. The lion rubbed her face against my hand, winked at me, and ran back to the building, taking off to the third floor with a leap like she had a springboard.
“Friend of yours?” I asked the girl. She looked at me, eyes wide and unblinking as an Anime character. “Sit down.”
I swung my legs off the table and hopped down. Still okay. Apollo must’ve done a number to heal me.
The girl didn’t sit, just kept staring until I pushed her down by a shoulder and she collapsed on the bench, muttering
something in Japanese.
I ran towards the building. What could I do that the gods weren’t already doing? One of them was obviously running in to save people as a lion. No clue why one was a lion, but hey, one question at a time.
First things first, making sure everyone was out. I poured speed into my limbs, ready to pull a Flash through the first floor. I ran.
And stopped. My legs worked, I could run, but only at normal human speeds.
My magic was tapped. Shit.
The lion leapt down, landing not five feet from me. The guy on her back had his legs bent up and tucked tight against her. She shrugged him off and he scrambled to get his feet under him as he let her go, probably afraid if he didn’t hurry it up, she’d eat him.
“Thank you!” he called after her as she ran back to the building.
The sirens stopped and firefighters ran around the corner a moment later, holding a giant hose and yelling at the gods to get back.
Fat chance.
They opened fire on the building and the flames leapt higher like they were just fed.
Well, shit.
“It’s magic,” I screamed, throat seizing halfway through. I bent over, coughing up smoke, phlegm… a lung.
The firefighters probably didn’t even hear me.
I ran up to the line of firefighters, still spraying the water despite what their eyes must’ve been telling them, that the water was making it worse.
I grabbed the lead one’s bulky suit clad arm and he waved it like he was trying to shake a bug off.
“It’s magic! The water’s making it worse!” I said, coughing between words.
He did some signal with his gloved hand and the water went off a moment later. The flames blew out the roof with a roar and I almost could see the roof collapsing through the smoke.
“It’s magic,” I said. “The water, the magic they’re doing”—I gestured at the line of gods—”is making it worse. We need to do something else.”
“Like what?” the lead guy asked.
I shrugged then jogged over to the gods, feet slipping along on the rubble.