by Amie Gibbons
My mouth felt fuzzy and I opened it, half expecting soot to be staining my teeth. No, they looked pretty normal.
I crouched down to hunt through the cabinets under the sink for bath stuff. In the first there were a few fluffy yellow towels in different sizes. I grabbed a hand towel and the bath sheet and put them on the tub’s shelf. Next up were different soaps and travel sized hair stuff. I grabbed a few, not really paying attention to brand. I was to the point where I just wanted something that worked.
After a quick shower to wash my hair and scrub the worst of the soot off me, I started the tub. I didn’t want to be soaking in quite so much of my own filth.
I looked through the other cupboards while the water filled, and found bath salts, loofahs, bubble bath, a few unwrapped candles, and even a bath pillow. This guest room was definitely made for a girl.
I put some Epsom salts and vanilla scented bubble bath in the water, stuck the pillow on the side, and pulled out my phone. What were the odds Olympus got cell reception? Hmmmm, no bars. So, not good.
“Freaking magic world, you’d think they’d have found a way to incorporate technology,” I muttered, not too upset about it as I climbed into the tub.
Obviously they’d done something to that effect because there was a TV and stereo in the living room. And Apollo didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have those around just to make it look like a normal living room.
Also, he wouldn’t want to miss college ball. For some reason he had never been able to explain to me, he loved college basketball and football.
I could ask him about it after my bath, or after I got some sleep. Until then…
I pulled up one of the e-books I had stored on my phone and sunk down into the just too hot water with a sigh.
Wow, was I really relaxing? In a bubble bath? Reading an actual fiction book?
My day may have sucked more than any day since my mom’s accident, but it was ending on a pretty good note.
My pets would be joining me soon. My mom was being watched over. And my two closest friends in the city were here, probably in rooms just as nice as mine, and enjoying their spa level bathrooms.
I hit the Jacuzzi button once the water level was high enough, reclined against the soft pillow thing, and let myself get lost in somebody else’s fantasy drama for a while.
I could get used to the VIP treatment, I really could.
Too bad it came with a leash.
# # #
“So we got out of there without any damage, pretty much going against everything I’ve ever read and now we’re going back?” Millie asked as we walked into Apollo’s theater Tuesday afternoon, the security guy letting us into the closed theater with a bow.
We all got a great rest and left Olympus for work in the morning like it was a hotel. We really could come and go as we pleased. I left my dogs and plants there so I wouldn’t have to take them to work, and somehow Apollo had produced some of our clothes for the day. Made me wonder if someone could charge a god with breaking and entering. It was almost a normal day, except we were heading back there instead of home after work.
I wanted to check on my mom even though in the phone calls throughout the day she told me many, many times she was fine. She got worried the sixth time I called, asking me if I was sick or pregnant. I chilled after that.
“Yep, Apollo summons us,” I said in my most dramatic voice.
“Where’s Tyler?” Millie asked.
I looked around the empty lobby. “Maybe she didn’t want to risk coming back?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
I paused, staring down Millie. “Whatever it is, she won’t tell me until this is all over.”
“Huh… Oh!” Millie’s eyebrows jumped up, stretching her eyes behind her glasses. “That. Do they know?”
“Apollo knows, and he doesn’t want his father to figure it out. Maybe he didn’t call Tyler back because of that.”
“Oh please.” Tyler blew in through the front doors. “Boys always call me back.”
She winked and I just shook my head.
“Well, once more into the breach, ladies?”
“Right behind you,” Millie said with a hand roll.
I led them upstairs. “What door did you guys come through last night?”
“The one in Centennial Park,” Tyler said.
“There’s one in Centennial Park! Where? Oh.” I put up a hand. “Don’t tell me.”
“Right in the Parthenon.” Millie grinned.
I groaned.
“Come on,” Millie said. “They had to put one there.”
Apollo met us at the door as soon as we entered.
“What, were you waiting by the door?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, youthful face set in a hard look no twenty-something face should ever have reason to wear. “It’s started.”
“What’s started?”
“The power…” He said something in another language, hands waving as he shook his head. “I can’t think of the word… popped! Whatever you want to call it. The magic’s started spilling out.”
“The magic?” I clutched my hand to my chest like that’d keep the panic from building. “You mean the alignment!”
“Yes! It’s started early.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Apollo ushered us across the rolling green hills towards some part of Olympus I hadn’t been to. We just followed. No questions or complaints, we were moving way too fast.
“If… you,” Millie huffed like her lungs were still clogged from yesterday, “guys have healing here, why do I still have asthma?”
“Allergies?” Apollo said.
“But you have healing,” I said.
“Allergies aren’t…” Millie took a deep breath. “Aren’t invaders or injuries. Allergies are the body overreacting and attacking itself. Not anything needing healing. I get it.” Millie grabbed her side. “I’m so out of shape.”
“Oh please,” I said. “You just have bad lungs. You’re in good shape.”
She shot me a look over her glasses before bending her head into it and moving her arms with her to get moving more.
“What do we do when we get there?” Tyler asked, keeping pace despite the heels.
Good thing I wore my boots today. I’d have been screwed in even the platform heels she was wearing. Stilettos would have been out of the question… and aerating the ground.
“My uncle has invented,” Apollo said and I swear Millie’s head prairie dogged up, “a crystal that is supposed to work as a spell catalyst.
“It will suck our power in, channel it into the spell that will slow down and funnel out the energy in the curse, hopefully back into the crystal to be transformed into natural, neutral magic again. The idea is our magic will cancel out the negative magic. The difficult part was making something with enough structure to hold that much energy at once.”
“What do you mean natural, neutral magic?” Millie asked.
“The original curse took magic and perverted it. Instead of being energy you could twist and do what you would with, it became energy with a goal of its own. Destruction. If we took that power into ourselves directly, we would never be able to control it, the most benign, selfless, virtuous spells would cause nothing but pain and destruction.”
“Not possible,” Millie said as we finally crested the hill. “It’s energy. Energy just is. Except you could put in a rider almost, theoretically you could…”
Her mouth moved but nothing came out and I could tell from her twitching, talking fingers she was arguing with herself. “No, no, I can see it. I have no clue how they did it, but I get how it could be possible. Now, if… whoa.”
We all slammed on the brakes as we rounded a boulder and the valley below spilled out before us.
The land was an expanse of soft green grass with patches of wildflowers here and there, and it formed a perfect, circular bowl. Like a giant came along with an ice cream scooper and took out a chunk of the earth for his dessert.
And everyone
was there. Thousands of gods and magical beings, clustered around something in the dead middle of the bowl.
“Wow,” Millie said.
“That pretty much covers it,” I said.
We inched down, the ground steeper than it first appeared.
“Tyler?” Apollo called, turning around after a moment.
She was still at the top of the slope, staring down the valley with a glare that’d make a Disney character pessimistic about their chances of survival.
She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can go down there.”
Apollo half jogged back up the slope and rested a hand on her shoulder for half a second before pulling it back, face flushing like she was hot to the touch. He backed up a bit and talked to her. He looked concerned but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“What the hell is going on with her?” I asked Millie.
She shook her head. “She’s scared someone less understanding than Apollo is going to figure out what she is and go after her people.”
“What does she mean, her people? There were no magical people before two years ago.”
“There’s an excellent explanation,” Millie said. “One that explained things I didn’t even know were questions until you told us about the alignment Monday.” She wrinkled her forehead. “Yesterday? Wow, that was only yesterday.”
Tyler finally nodded and Apollo reached, pulling his hand back before touching her, like he was going to pat her shoulder then thought better of it. They headed down to us together, keeping a few feet between them.
Almost like exes would.
Did something happen between them? Is that why Apollo’s looking out for her?
Whoa! I was being crazy. Apollo wasn’t my boyfriend. I didn’t want him to be my boyfriend. I didn’t trust him enough to even want to work with him let alone sleep with him.
The crazy must’ve shown on my face. Tyler actually paled, holding her hands up.
“Cassandra, whatever you’re thinking, it’s not you, it’s your mind reacting to hormones. Remember, I’m your friend.”
Is that why I suddenly don’t want to look at her? And why I was seriously contemplating throwing her into the pit of gods and telling them she had a secret and didn’t they want to know it?
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
“I… what I am comes with some problems. One of them is every few months, I go into heat. It started this morning. Males react to it, and their women usually can sense it enough to see me as a threat and want to take me out. That’s why I almost didn’t come today.”
“I can channel her power through us into the spell so hopefully nobody will notice,” Apollo said, eye going back and forth between us, looking confused. “It will take some doing, but I should be able to do it.” He finally settled on looking at her, “What do you mean their women?”
“Girlfriends, wives, girls who have crushes on them,” Tyler said. “You know, their women.”
“Cassandra has made it very clear she is not my woman,” Apollo said, a slow smile fighting its way onto his face. “So this only makes women jealous if they actually want the men? Not just a general jealousy of all women when you get all the attention?”
“Well, you don’t see Millie looking like she wants to murder me,” Tyler said, smiling wide and beautiful, eyes sparkling. Like a woman trying to lure a man into her…
Whoa! I looked at the ground, clenching my fists and counting down from ten.
I looked up and all three were staring at me.
“What?”
Apollo wasn’t even trying to fight the grin anymore. “You’re jealous. You heard her. That only works if you actually want the man who is being affected by Tyler’s charms. You’re jealous.”
The bastard may as well have eaten a canary for how smug he looked.
“Probably because you dosed her with oxytocin,” Millie said, wiping Apollo’s smile out like a slap. “She’s tied to you by the chemical bonding. That could be what’s making her jealous. It’s basically the chemical that promotes love. But since you dosed her with it, does it really count?”
Knowing Millie, she wasn’t even trying to be mean, but damn did she do a good job of getting Apollo over himself.
“Come on,” he said, head pointed down and forward. “We’ll get set up at the edge so no one can get hit by Tyler’s hormones before I can channel them.”
“I’m sorry,” Millie said, looking genuinely distressed. “I shouldn’t have said that?”
“It’s fine.” He shrugged and walked faster, some facet of his god powers keeping him from slipping.
We were left to slog after him, slow and careful.
“You have to show me how you did that,” I said, putting my arm around Millie’s shoulders. “You wiped him out in a paragraph. Can you say ruthless?”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
“Yeah, but this is the guy who drugged me with magic to make me like him more. And I can’t ever get rid of that. I don’t really feel bad about you reminding him of that.”
“Oh, good. You’re nice, so if even you don’t feel bad, I shouldn’t.” Millie nodded.
Tyler took off her shoes to walk better and caught up to us, linking her arm through ours. “You’re nice too, Millie. You’re just blunt.”
We hit the bottom and Apollo had recovered some of his swagger, giving us a grin that only looked a little forced.
“I know you didn’t mean to sound cruel,” he said to Millie. “I’m not used to people being so forward. The South is usually too polite for that. It’s refreshing, really. Southerners can take an hour to say five minute’s worth. And they say stuff like, ‘Bless your heart,’ when they mean ‘Screw you.’ No one would ever accuse you of being indirect.”
Millie snorted, looking down. “You would think, huh?”
“Someone did? Was he deaf?”
Tyler pressed her lips together, giggles sneaking out. “An ex actually told Millie she was indirect once. It was probably the worst insult he could have given her. Except telling her she was stupid or something.”
Millie shrugged. “And yes, he had a hearing problem. Not deaf, but enough of a problem that he needed a special type of hearing aid. He couldn’t afford one in school.”
She crossed her arms, holding herself in, probably not even realizing it. Blue washed around her, tinging her aura without me even trying to see it. The black spot that always came up when her ex did hovered over her left eye.
“Probably doesn’t have a problem with that now,” she said so light I could barely hear it.
“Does she have any idea how much she projects?” Apollo asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Does she know she’s blocking something out?” The black spot he meant glowed white around the edges.
“Did you just psychically point that out to me?”
“Yes.”
“Ooooookay. And yeah, she knows there’s gaps. She remembers things in flashes. She was drunk when she slept with him. Knows that, just not what she’s forgetting.”
“I could try to pull it up for her, sh-”
“Don’t even think about it.” I glared at him and Tyler looked between us.
His eyes flew wide. “You know what’s in there? And you haven’t told her?”
“Saw it once when she ran into her ex. It was clips and random pictures, but I got the gist. And no, not telling her.”
“And you think she doesn’t have a right to know?”
I shook my head, freezing when Tyler’s eyebrows flew up.
“She couldn’t handle it. She’s already bad whenever he comes up, that’s the last thing she needs.”
Apollo smiled, giving me a pointed look. “See? Sometimes it’s necessary.”
My jaw dropped. “Telling humans about the alignment?” I said out loud, tossing up my hands. “That’s totally different.”
My friends stared at us. Oops.
“Ummm, did we miss something?” Mil
lie asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “Mental argument. Ignore us. So, did something happen, sweetie?”
She shrugged. “Just a weird dream last night. Happens every once in a while, brings all this stuff up. It’s stupid.” She waved her hand like she could make the feelings go away.
“So,” she said, staring Apollo down, “that’s why I have such a problem with you dosing Cassandra with oxytocin. Because a stupid guy did that to me over four years ago and I still think about him.”
“I don’t understand; there was no magic four years ago,” Apollo said, making Millie scowl.
Tyler shook her head at him. “He did it the natural way. With about as much thought as you gave to hooking Cassandra to you.”
“Yeah,” Millie whispered.
“Probably one of the reasons you’re dwelling on him lately,” Tyler said to Millie. “Because this is bringing it all up again.”
“Can you do anything about that?” Millie asked Apollo way too fast, eyes popping. “Get him out of my head? Get rid of whatever feelings I still have? Or just wipe out all memory of him? I’d Eternal Sunshine him away in a second.”
Apollo looked at her without saying anything.
“Wow,” he finally thought to me, taking her hand. “She’s going to have to deal with it eventually. That’s probably why she can’t move on.”
“Yeah, that’s my guess. Just waiting for her to get to where she can handle it.”
“Even if I could,” Apollo said to her, “I wouldn’t. You may not want those memories now. You may never want them, but… I took a part out of myself before we slept, to help me forget a girl, and I will never get that part back, or even know what I lost when I got rid of it. I know I lost something, and I can’t remember what. It’s a horrible feeling. I won’t do that to someone else.”
“What? You didn’t say that last night,” I said.
“No, I did not.” Apollo looked at the ground as he let Millie go.
He set us up after that, not saying much of anything.
Tyler and I chattered away, leaving the melancholy twins to their thoughts. They talked a bit, just exchanging monosyllables here or there.
I knew Millie would give anything to undo the damage her ex did to her, but what had Apollo’s done that was so much worse than betraying him that he made himself forget it?