by Amie Gibbons
Millie had dropped the pen in the room when we first got there, covering it with her little stumble. And the potion would do the rest. She really was a genius.
She hadn’t been the one to invent it, but she was the one who first gave me the idea for using it back at Apollo’s house when we were trying to find the defectors.
“You,” Ravena hissed at me. “You did this.”
“Duh,” Millie said, shaking her head and making her curls dance. “You have a penchant for stating the obvious, don’t you?”
“You have his magic tied up, right?” I asked Apollo.
“Yes. And your potion,” he said to Millie, “it will mark anyone that comes through here the next few days?”
“Yes,” she said. “I can’t guarantee they won’t sense it, but these guys didn’t, so there’s a shot. Once they come in here, if they’ve had any contact with Ravena, like shaking hands or even just talking to him in person, the tracker will latch onto them. I’ll give you the spell and you can watch them light up on a laptop.”
“Whoa, what?” I said. “Laptop?”
“The spell is a computer program. You run it on the laptop.” She held up her hands. “Don’t ask me how it works, I do not speak computers.”
“You humans.” Apollo shook his head in wonder. “Brilliant, just brilliant.”
“We can’t all be big and powerful,” Millie said. “Somebody has to design the equipment the meatheads pump iron on.” Then quickly, “It’s a metaphor; I’m not trying to insult you.”
“So what now?” I asked, trying not to meet Ravena’s eyes as he thrashed against his bindings.
“We take them into custody. I’ll ask my father if he thinks it better to keep news of their capture secret to try to trap more who would come here. Or if we should announce it and show the others what happens to those who would defect and work against us, in the hopes of scaring them out of it.”
“Oh yeah, I didn’t think this trap all the way through with that whole thing.” I shrugged. “Sorry.”
Apollo shook his head, “No, either way we choose, we are better off than we were before. You were brilliant.” He looked over at Millie and Tyler. “All of you.”
“What do we do now?” Tyler asked.
“I talked my father into letting you all go as long as you tell him what you are and what you know after the alignment.”
“Why after?” Tyler asked.
“Because if he knows before, I’m afraid what he’ll do to you.”
“Ah. Good point.”
“And I made sure everyone will keep their hands to themselves when you girls come back to help with the next pulse of magic.”
“Wait, we still have to do that?” I asked.
“Of course. Just because we caught some defectors doesn’t change the fact that magic is still ready to bust out and wash over the world. We have a long way to go yet. May I suggest you all sleep while you can. The next breach could be in minutes or days, but it’s still coming.”
“And you’re going to need the extra power from me to boost your psychic abilities to see it.” I wasn’t really asking.
“Yes.”
“You could have told me that before.”
“And I should have. You know now.”
“Alright.” I looked away first. “Let operation wait on our asses commence.”
“You should’ve listened to me,” Ravena said, making me jump. “This is what your life is going to be after this. You’re his, forever.”
I nodded. “Probably. If that’s the price I pay to not be yours, I’m willing to pay it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I went to work the next morning like it was any other day. You know, except for checking my phone every two minutes like a junkie waiting for a text from her dealer.
My office looked… small. It had always been small but now it wasn’t my small anymore. It was a box that belonged to the city. It had never truly been mine.
Would anything at Apollo’s ever be mine? Would I ever be my own person working for him? Being with him?
Only time would tell.
I sat at my desk, pulling the stack of files towards me. I wasn’t even really working anymore. I was cleaning house. Giving cases to other prosecutors, going through letters and trying to figure out if any of them belonged in anyone’s file or if they were just random people writing to us because they didn’t know who else to write to, trying to keep the work I’d done on cases straight so nothing important would be left out when I handed them over.
The end of an era.
Seemed fitting since this week was the end of another one, too.
Times, they were a’changing.
Buzzzzzzz, the phone rang on silent, making me jump. I snatched it up off my desk.
“Yes,” I said before even checking who it was from.
“Hey,” Tyler said. “You hear anything yet?”
“No.” I secured the phone between my shoulder and head, shuffling papers in front of me, not knowing what else to do with my hands.
“This waiting is killing me. I’m usually the one charging in, going on the offensive, not waiting for something to run the ball so I can play defense.”
“Your sports metaphors are lost on me, but I get what you’re saying.” I shrugged. “We just wait. Could be today, could really hold off until the twenty-first. They don’t know.”
“And that pool thing is something Apollo was supposed to use but now isn’t so he can hopefully lure the other defectors there, right? Would it help if he did use it?”
“Not really, he has another seeing pool. That one’s just a backup, which is why the defectors chose it. They figured he wouldn’t use it and wouldn’t catch them.”
We said bye and I tried to focus on the pages in front of me.
The Greeks had decided to split the baby. Keep the capture of the group of defectors a secret for a few days, see who else they could catch, and then tell the gods about the defectors’ defeat all at once, trying to time it right before the big burst of magic would hit.
I saw my mom last night and worked today. I wished I could say I felt human again, but I didn’t.
Though, I did have one reason to think I really was human in the end. Ravena had said it. That I was a god in a mortal’s body. Meaning their power but a human lifespan.
Maybe I couldn’t escape what I was, but maybe what I was didn’t need escaping.
Another thing only time would be able to tell.
The phone buzzed against my desk again and I rolled my eyes, betting it was Millie. Her pic showed up on the phone and I nodded, yep.
“Hey Millie, nothing yet.” I picked up the next file, flipping it open.
Jordan Talbet, one of our frequent fliers. He’d violated his probation with a drug bust not one week after swearing during his pleading he was in treatment and the bust before was the last time he’d ever do or deal anything stronger than coffee.
“Potion’s gotten a dozen hits, all at once,” Millie said, almost too fast for my ears to follow. “I kept a copy of the program geared towards that spell so I could keep an eye on it, too.”
“Okay, that’s great. It’s working, so-”
“Then it shut off.”
I dropped the folder, the papers splattering the floor. “What?”
“The potion or spell, I don’t know which, just suddenly shut off. I don’t know if the gods noticed and are doing something about it, or what, but I don’t have Apollo’s number, so can you find out?”
“Yeah, but I don’t get what happened.”
“That’s the point, neither do I. The spell shut off. Something shut it down. I can’t even begin to guess what that would be, but it’s powerful, and it knew the potion was there. The gods need to know. Call them. And then call me.” She hung up.
“Oooookay,” I said to the air before hitting Apollo’s number.
Ring, ring, rinnnnnng.
He didn’t pick up.
“Shit,” I whispered, grab
bing my bag and leaving the mess of papers. I’d deal with them later.
# # #
I called Millie and Tyler back, telling them to meet me in Olympus if they could. I didn’t want to drag them in any more than I already had, but this was Millie’s spell, she’d understand it more than me, and if there was one person I wanted watching my back, it was Tyler.
I was a block away from Apollo’s theater and got to the door within five minutes. I didn’t wait for the girls because Tyler was at a lunch with her judge and Millie was over in midtown. It’d take them both at least ten minutes to get here and I didn’t know if we had that.
Then again, what did I think I could do by myself if gods were in trouble?
I faced down the door, the white still blinding me with the sheer power leaking out of Olympus.
I’d done this the first time I saw this door, but this time, I wasn’t scared because I thought I’d never get out, I was scared because people I cared about in there might not.
I don’t have to go in. I paused with my hand on the doorknob. I can go back to work. Either way, the world won’t end. It’s just a matter of how much power the gods will lose in all this. It’s not like they’re going to be able to kill each other. Right?
I opened the door, walking through.
The circular garden I’d come and gone through since that first time mere days and a lifetime ago looked like it had every other time. Bright, cheery, alive in the sparkling sunlight. Nothing off, nothing wrong.
The world was quiet and smelled of sweet flowers.
So why was there a knot tightening in my stomach?
I walked towards the hollow the gods were at last time. If something was going on, dollars to donuts it’d be there, right?
I walked down to the hollow, straining my ears. Nothing.
What the hell was going on? Was Olympus ever this quiet?
“Too quiet,” I said under my breath.
There! Something hummed off to the right of me. I looked around, the sunlight almost too bright for me to concentrate through. What was that?
The hum grew louder, drawing me to it. The melody came through static, like an old radio trying to pick up a station.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was someone listening to a radio.
No. This was too weird, even for Olympus. This was just… wrong.
The music seemed to be coming out of a bungalow off around where Hades’ rose garden was. I was so lost here. I didn’t even know Olympus enough to know where Apollo’s and Hades’ houses were compared to each other. Were they next door? Walking distance? A mile?
This was getting me nowhere.
I walked up to the bungalow on a stone path. It had swirls interrupting the stones, making patterns. Bushes lined the path with green, but they were decorated with red and gold bunting, giving it an almost Christmassy look.
Maybe they decorated for Christmas now? Embracing the modern holidays in the country they claimed as theirs?
I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. The hard oak swung in. Either not properly latched or it was spelled to let people in at a knock.
Here, who knew?
I rested my hand on my gun, wishing for some of Millie’s potions right about now. My powers felt fully charged up, but still, against gods, planning ahead and stocking weapons that’d work better on them seemed like a pretty good idea.
The living room was a homey, crowded affair. An overstuffed couch with a grandma-ish afghan tossed over its back, a fireplace with wood neatly stacked inside, waiting to be lit, knitted carpets over the hardwood floors. It even smelled like wood and wool, like these were real ingredients and the whole house was freshly baked.
Wait. Did that make sense?
Something was here. Something warm and waiting. It liked me. It wanted to hold me in its arms and rock me like my grandmother used to do. It wasn’t going to hurt me. It wasn’t going to hurt anything.
I sat on the couch. So tired! So done fighting and waiting. The adrenaline was too much. This was all just too much. I let myself relax in the softness of the couch, let the smell of knitting fill me. Did knitting even have a smell?
I giggled. Did it matter?
My eyes fluttered closed of their own will and I let out a sigh. Just a few minutes. A little nap and I’d get up and going. There wasn’t anywhere I needed to be after all.
Just a few minutes.
# # #
I woke all at once, the calm and sweet smell that lured me to sleep long gone.
Something was wrong with this place. Something had wanted to lure me.
I sat up.
Clink, clang, clink.
And stopped where I was, unable to stand. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and looked down.
Chains hugged my wrists and ankles. I was on the same couch as before, but in a completely different place. Like whoever captured me just picked up the couch with me on it, like that was easier than moving me.
Or the bungalow had been some sort of magical projection and I was seeing reality now.
Or the other way around.
The couch sat against a whitewashed fence outside. Something right out of Tom Sawyer. The green grass below looked off, more blue than green maybe? I couldn’t focus on it enough to grasp what it was. Across the flat as a tennis court yard was a well, right in the middle.
These guys really loved their symmetry and water in the middle of things, didn’t they?
The sky was blue with fluffy clouds, a lovely day in Olympus, or wherever I was. The white fence around me had a diameter of about twenty feet, but the only things in here were me on the couch and that well.
I swung my feet down, chains clinking but at least reaching that far. I could probably go about two feet out before they’d catch and hold me back.
I put my feet into the grass slowly, ready to yank them back if the weird grass did anything.
It didn’t. It was just grass. Grass soft as cashmere, but just grass nonetheless.
“Oh dear.”
I jumped as far as the chains would let me, turning to look over my shoulder. A woman stood behind me, off to the side of the couch, apparently just having got in here even though there wasn’t a door in the fence I could see.
Ha! Like that mattered here.
Her face was pleasantly wide, brown and wrinkled. Her eyes were a dark blue that was almost black, and her waist length hair was a thick sheet of frizzy dark grey.
A grandmother goddess?
Apparently some of them did age.
She waved a hand, making the wispy white dress she wore shimmer in the light, and the chains disappeared.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked, walking around to stand in front of me. She offered me a hand and I took it, letting her haul me to my feet.
“I apologize for my son.” She walked over to the well, a tea set on a tray suddenly there, like it’d been sitting there the whole time. “Silly boy. I don’t know what I did wrong in raising him, but he never learned how to treat a lady.”
She kneeled in the grass, green stains not a concern for that white dress here, and poured steaming water out of the teapot, the steam coming off too real for wherever this place was.
“Where are we?” I asked, walking over to her and sitting next to the tray. “Who are you?”
“Both important questions, but there is a far more pressing one, dear.” She handed me the tea cup. It smelled spicy, like pumpkin pie but lighter. Chai tea maybe? “Milk and sugar?”
“Sure.”
I looked down and my tea clouded like milk was poured in without my seeing it, and I took a sip. It was delicious, but other than the stronger flavor than most teas could manage, completely normal tea.
“So now that we answered the tea question, can you tell me what’s going on?” I asked, keeping my tone respectful.
“Oh?” she tilted her head, almost birdlike. “You thought the pressing question was whether you wanted tea?” She smiled wide, showing wrinkled, little old la
dy gums. “You are a silly girl. My boy says you think like a man. Their way of saying you’re logical, typical men.”
She winked at me conspiratorially. “Never realizing they are far more ruled by emotions than women could ever be.”
“No argument here,” I said, taking another sip. The tea warmed me from the inside, the caffeine sweeping the cobwebs from my brain slow and steady. “What question should I be asking then?”
She took a deep drink of her tea, the near boiling liquid apparently not a problem for her. “Now, dear, that would be telling. How will you learn if I simply give the answers to you?”
“Do I need to learn something? Is that why I’m here?”
“Ah, that is close enough, I should say.” She stared at me.
“Um, the question I should be asking is why am I here?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay?” I shook my head. “Sooooo?”
She didn’t say anything, just kept smiling at me.
“So why am I here?”
“Oh.” She waved the question away like a fly. “I said that was the right question, not that I would answer it.”
I scowled, couldn’t help it. This was getting old. “I’m not trying to be rude, I’m sure you’re a very important goddess and you deserve my respect. And you have it. But, I need to get going. My friends need me.”
“No they don’t.” It was so matter of fact I believed her.
“Um, okay. Why not?”
“They have it under control.”
“Have what under control?”
“You tell me. You seem to think you know there’s a problem and you must think you know the solution if you believe they need your help.”
“I… ugh, no. I’m not sure. I just, nobody was answering and then I couldn’t find anyone here. I was worried.”
“You’re exactly where you need to be.” She nodded at the pool.
“I’m assuming that’s Apollo’s main seeing pool. So why am I here and he isn’t?”
“He wanted you here to watch it for him.”
“Wait.” I held up a hand, whirling my finger. “So he’s the one who chained me here. Which means… you’re his mom?”
“No.”
I clenched my jaw. “Then who put me here?”