by Nicole Thorn
“Problem?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Boring. I don’t like human houses. You never do anything good with them.”
Mom sighed. “Oh lord, you believe the god stuff too.”
“Believe?” Hermes asked. “I’m the personal mailman of the damn gods. It would be hard to not believe when I’ve walked in on Zeus in full blown animal form as he goes to town on—”
“Hey!” Artemis snapped. “Can you not tell stories about my dad railing someone as a flamingo?”
“I never said he was a flamingo, so don’t assume. Maybe let me finish my point before you jump in to ruin it.”
“Don’t get short with me. I snap my fingers and I can have a certain man showing up here in a jiffy. A man with a name that starts with P, if you’re picking up what I’m throwing down.”
Hermes glowered down at her. “I can kick you to next Sunday.”
“I can break your legs with a sneeze. Come at me.”
“Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms. “Can we not get in a fight right in the middle of my living room? There are humans in the houses around us, and I would prefer it if they didn’t see what you could do.”
Mom looked like she was about to have a panic attack, her fingers rubbing her temples. “Three of them. I can’t deal with three of them . . . ”
“We won’t be long,” Hermes said to her. “I only need to borrow your kid for a couple hours. Or something like that. I don’t know yet. Just, just don’t even worry about it. I’ll return her with little to no damage.”
Mom shot him daggers. “I’m not letting a stranger walk out of here with my only child.”
“Would it help if you had others? I mean, I’m flattered with the obvious ploy to get in my pants, but I have a full day ahead of me. I can come back if you need.”
Artemis smacked his arm. “Not everyone wants you, just so you know.”
“Wrong, actually. Ask my many, many former lovers.” He turned to look at Mom again. “I’ve never had any complaints. But if you somehow weren’t making a case for us having sex, then I’ll leave off on, I’m no stranger. While I haven’t talked personally with Callie before, we all know her. She’s our little speaker, ya see. Like a Marshall of sorts.”
I held a hand up. “Her and my father don’t believe that I’m the Oracle, or that the gods exist.”
Artemis squinted, but didn’t say anything. I got the feeling she had to hold herself back, and what she might have said terrified me. I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of this goddess.
“That’s dumb,” Hermes said to my mom. “Why don’t you believe her?”
“What?” Mom asked. “Are you going to try and convince me that you’re a god now?”
“Don’t,” Aster said to him. “Can we just head out and do whatever the hell you have planned? I think that would be best for everyone.”
Mom pulled me away from them, her hands on my shoulders. “I’m not sending my child along with a bunch of people who think they’re gods.”
“I don’t think I’m a god,” Aster said.
“Great, so one of you is sane.”
Hermes sighed, taking control of the conversation again. “Listen, I don’t want to put a whammy on you, but I’m taking the girl.”
“No, you really aren’t.”
With a nod, Hermes said, “Okay, then I’m really sorry.”
He snapped his fingers before I could stop him, and my mother started floating in the air. She screamed, going higher and higher before I could grab her leg to pull her back down. She flailed, shouting nonsense.
“Get her down!” Aster ordered Hermes. “What are you doing?”
“Saving us time,” he answered as Artemis shot him daggers. “Don’t worry; she’ll be fine.”
My heart pounded harder as I stared up at Mom, talking over Hermes so I could promise I would save her. She couldn’t deny magic while she floated in midair, so something in the back of my mind wasn’t too angry that Hermes did this. That part would go away when I had to deal with her again.
“You made my mom float!” I yelled.
“She’ll come back down when we leave,” Hermes said. “Lighten up.”
“Don’t leave me!” Mom called down, her voice a loud pant as she pushed her hands against the ceiling. The horror grew when she managed to get a little farther down, and then drifted right back up.
Two gods had come to collect me, so I felt as if I didn’t have much of a choice in going with them. If I said no, then I might have angered them, and that wouldn’t get my mom down any faster.
“You promise you’ll stop this if I go with you?” I asked Hermes.
“The second we’re out of the house, she’ll start floating down like a pissy leaf,” he promised.
I stuck close to Aster, taking his arm as we moved toward the door. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll be back soon.”
I winced when she yelled at me as I walked out, but I told myself it was the only thing I could do. Artemis closed the door behind us, looking unhappy with Hermes.
“Gentle,” she said to him. “The humans need us to be gentle, so their brains don’t explode. You probably just caused a lot of shit for our girl here.”
“He did,” I confirmed, holding Aster’s arm tighter.
“Sorry,” the boy said to me. “I would have come in alone if I could have, but they’ve been harassing me all morning.”
I’d never regretted becoming part of this world, but I finally had a moment of hesitation. When I stepped foot in that house again, odds were I would be in for a rather long talk with both my mother and father, and I had no idea what the outcome would be. If my mother was still floated on the ceiling . . . then I would die.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Aster said. “What do you like? Ice cream? Horses? Cars? I’ll buy you something.”
I smiled as best I could, patting his chest. “You’re sweet, but you don’t have to buy me. Just give me a place to sleep when they kick me out.”
“Good idea,” Artemis said. “Aster can get himself a king-sized bed and the two of you can stay up all night playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, or whatever the fuck people do nowadays.”
My cheeks got warm at the idea of being on someone’s bed, but I let it go as quickly as it came. “Can we go do whatever it is that we’re meant to do now? I think it would be best if I got back as soon as I could.”
Aster lifted an eyebrow at Hermes. “He wouldn’t tell me what the plan was, so I have no idea what we’re even up to. I was kidnapped and brought here.”
That didn’t make me feel better, but it wouldn’t have been the first time a god brought me somewhere without giving me information. I didn’t die any of those times, so this would probably end about as well as that. If I died, then Apollo would have gotten annoyed. I liked to think that alone would keep me safe.
“To the truck!” Hermes said, pushing us along. I couldn’t help but notice that he still hadn’t told us where we were going.
I sat in the back with Aster, both of my arms around his as Artemis hissed driving instructions at Hermes. They bickered as the truck zoomed much faster than the speed it should have been going. How we didn’t crash baffled me. Again, I told myself they wouldn’t get us killed. It would have taken time to replace me.
I looked out the window, thinking I would see the same wet, grassy area I’d been in ten minutes before. I didn’t. Everything went by in such a blur that I couldn’t tell what direction we might have been going.
“Did your dad stop by?” I asked Aster, bouncing in my seat.
“Nope,” he responded. “I don’t think he will unless he needs something. Haven’t decided if that’s good or bad yet.”
I got sad quickly, thinking about that. Aster probably barely got to see his dad, and I couldn’t imagine those visits were much fun. At least I had both my mom and dad at home with me most of the time.
“Sorry,” I said. “If you’re ever at home bored, you can come by my place and I’ll entertain you. I probabl
y won’t be very good at it, but I’ll try hard.”
He smiled at me, sitting back in his seat. “I don’t think I’m fun company.”
“We just have to do something fun then. You can lay on my trampoline while I try and bounce you. Or we can play video games. Do you like those?”
“I don’t really play.”
“Neither do I. I just don’t know what normal people do to waste a day.”
The car stopped hard, smashing my face against the back seat. I grunted, and Aster rubbed my shoulder as I shook the shock off. I didn’t bleed or anything, so I thought I might have been fine.
“Are we here?” I asked.
“We’re somewhere,” Hermes responded.
We all got out of the truck, and I had to hop to get onto the ground again. I stuck close to Aster, looking around at a strip mall with at least ten shops that all looked too pricey. Other than that, I noticed that the sky was clear and the air felt warm.
“Are we still in Seattle?” I asked.
Artemis snorted. “Not a chance.”
With wide eyes, I stared at Hermes. “Where are we then?”
He already walked away from us. “I have something to do real quick. Wait here and don’t move a muscle.”
I exchanged a stare with Aster, who didn’t look any happier with this than I felt. As much as I enjoyed a good adventure, this one made my stomach hurt. I needed information so I could settle my anxiety.
Artemis bounced on her toes, putting her hands behind her back as she walked around us. “I think I’ll . . . wander. You two can chat while we wait for Hermes. Stay close to each other.”
When she did wander, the goddess didn’t stay that far away. She mostly paced, her eyes searching the area. It felt like she was ready for something we couldn’t see.
I swung my arms around lazily, yawning as the first minute started to go by. It didn’t take long for me to get bored as we waited. In moments like this, the voices started getting too loud for me.
“Did you miss me?” I asked.
“Huh?”
Smiling, I said, “Kidding. I’m not really the kind a lot of people miss.” If I were, then maybe my friends would have come by more than they did.
Aster stammered for a moment before finally getting a sentence out. “I didn’t not miss you. I was—well I have a lot of distractions in my life. I’m sure if I had time to breathe, I would have—probably would have at the very least thought about you a little more. The cake was good.”
I grinned brighter, thinking about how adorable his awkwardness was. I wanted to let him off the hook, but the slight twitching was a charming thing about him that I hadn’t noticed before.
Artemis walked by us slowly, not stopping as she said, “You two should go get lunch together some time.”
I gave her a funny look before I said, “I wouldn’t mind that. Do you have any friends here yet?”
“No,” Aster said. “I don’t get out a lot. I mostly keep to myself.”
“Shame,” Artemis said. “It sounds to me like you need a friend. I hear Callie spends a lot of time alone too, so it’s kind of nice that you guys found each other.”
I agreed with her, but her tone sounded off to me. “What do you like to eat?”
Aster stared blankly for a moment. “I can work with anything. What do you like?”
“Cake,” I answered with a small laugh. “I really like food.” As the girls at my old school liked to point out. Though I wasn’t worried about having to eat in front of Aster. I didn’t think he would make me feel bad about how much I ate.
Artemis did another sweep around us, whistling to herself as she brushed past me. I didn’t bother trying to ask what she was up to, worried about what her answer might have been.
“So,” I started, lifting up on my toes again. “Would you maybe want to come over to my house sometime? Like, when a god wasn’t making you come over?”
It took a second, but he said, “I wouldn’t mind. I mean, if you wouldn’t mind. Which you probably don’t, since you invited me . . . ”
I giggled again. “You’re very cute. Do you know that?”
His mouth hung slightly open for another second. “Uh, I don’t know what I did.”
“That’s okay. I know what you did. And I hope you keep doing it because you get this little wrinkle between your eyebrows and I like looking at it.” I reached forward, gently touching the stress line with my fingertip. “Boop.”
“You booped me.”
“Yes, you’ve been booped. That was a warning boop. You don’t want to know what happens when you get my real booping.”
“Do I not?”
I tried to look as serious as I could, my eyes getting wide. “No, you really don’t. My true boops are the things of nightmares.”
I managed a whole three seconds before I started laughing, and Aster smiled at me. It made me feel better about whatever mess we had gotten in.
Hermes finally came back from a store, a big bag in his hand. It had come from a candy shop, and brimmed with treats.
“Why?” I asked.
He grinned, lifting the bag up for us. “I got this for you kids. It’ll be waiting on your beds as payment for what you’re about to go do for me. You’re welcome.”
And with that, all the worry came back to me. “You haven’t bothered to mention where we’re going, or where we are right now. You realize you have to let us know, right?” He . . . had to. Right?
He ushered us back to the truck, silent as could be while we got inside. He started speeding along again, and I really wanted to know what was going on.
My head felt light at the same time I couldn’t see straight. I reached out for Aster, wanting something solid to hold onto. From what little I could see, Aster seemed as out of it as I did. It was all I could do to blink a few times, and I felt like the air left the truck.
When I opened my eyes again, we stood outside, all four of us. Looking around, I saw rocks and a whole lot of nothingness. A few trees, but not much else.
“Where are we?” Aster asked. “Please, give us an answer this time.”
Hermes knocked on what looked like the side of a mountain, and I stood back in the grass. Something opened up, appearing like some sort of cave. I couldn’t see a thing inside, and I couldn’t hear anything but the hissing of voices. I didn’t like it, and my whole body felt cold.
“No,” I said. I wanted no part of this.
Hermes walked around us, stopping with a hand on each of our backs. “You’re in no danger,” he said to us. “Stick together no matter what and try to keep your eyes open.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling sicker with every moment. “Where the hell did you bring us?”
“The underworld,” Hermes answered in the second before he shoved us inside.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
Well . . . Hades
Aster
WHEN YOU GET stuck in the underworld by a god that you just met, with a girl you barely know, the only option is to curse for a solid ten seconds. When I finished cursing, I turned around to glare at the blank space where the portal that Hermes shoved me through had been. Naturally, he had taken away our only means of escape.
“That was impressive,” Callie said, staring at me with huge eyes. “I’ve only ever heard one person curse like that in my life, and he was a crazy man.”
I rubbed the back of my head. “Sorry.”
She poked me in the nose. “Boop.”
“Thanks. Are you okay?”
Callie nodded, while looking down at her body. “Well, as okay as I can be. I don’t like it here. It feels . . . wrong.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Can’t you feel how wrong it is?”
I felt something, though I didn’t know what it was. A wrongness, sure, but more than that, too. I felt the absence of light, and I missed it even more than when I stood around Seattle. It felt like the dark had started to drain me, slowly, like sucking poison out of a wound one sip at a time. I swallowed thickly, then g
lanced at Callie, who still had her arms wrapped around herself. “I don’t know what I feel.”
“You don’t want to be here?”
“No,” I said.
“Then that’s all I need to know. We should probably figure out why Hermes shoved us through that doorway so that we can get away as quickly as possible. My mom is going to want an explanation for everything that happened.”
I almost snorted at that. Her mother had been left floating on her ceiling, screaming for her daughter not to leave. She needed more than an explanation. She’d probably need some kind of alcoholic drink to deal with everything she had witnessed. When my mother found out that I was a demigod, she said that she stayed drunk for the rest of the week.
Speaking of which . . . “It could be worse. Hermes put my mother to sleep.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean like a sick dog?”
“No, no,” I said, waving my hand. “Actual sleep. I left her on the couch, and I just know that she’s going to scream at me for that later.” I frowned at the thought, but I didn’t say anything else.
Callie touched my arm, forcing me to look down at her. “It’s all right. I’m sure she’ll understand that you didn’t have much of a choice.”
I wished my mother could use logic in such a fashion. No, she would still blame me. Probably more so for having left her after the god debacle. Shaking my head, I looked around. “Where do you think we should start. You’re the oracle. Point me in a direction, and we shall go.”
Callie chewed on her lip, her eyes darting around. “That way, I guess. I’m not exactly good at this oracle thing. I’ve only been at it for a few years.”
“That’s okay,” I said, taking her hand so that we didn’t get separated. The land seemed pretty sparse around us, but I didn’t trust that something wouldn’t pop up and take one of us when we weren’t paying attention. “I’m not exactly anyone’s first choice of a protector. I would probably get myself killed trying to keep you safe.”
“You’re my first choice,” Callie said.
I smiled at her as we kept walking.