They Will Not Be Silenced

by Nicole Thorn

  The gum fell out of my mouth as the world went white for too long. I reached out for Aster, but I didn’t feel him anywhere. I almost screamed out in panic, hoping he would find his way back to me. I didn’t want to go back alone, leaving him in that awful place. I still couldn’t feel his body when my feet hit the ground.

  I forced my eyes open, seeing a wall I knew well. Sticky notes were everywhere, colored and in my handwriting. I breathed again, happy to be home. Then I freaked out again, because I didn’t see Aster beside me.

  I turned sharply, spotting him only a few feet away. I didn’t give him the chance to do much of anything before I attacked him gleefully. It was almost a tackle, but I jumped on him instead. He had no problem catching me, even though I was on the chunky side. That felt nice, making my tummy get a little fluttery. He even seemed fine with me wrapping my arms and legs around his body, clinging to the boy like I would have died if I didn’t. I breathed, hugging him tighter.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said. It startled me, and I didn’t even know if it was real at first. Nothing felt real when we’d been in the underworld.

  We both looked up, seeing Apollo leaning against my door. Apollo didn’t look happy. In fact, he glared at us like an angry parent who’d caught their kid trying to steal the car. It probably didn’t help that I was wrapped around Aster and didn’t jump down to my feet at the sight of the god.

  “Do either of you want to explain where the hell you’ve been for the last two and a half days?”

  CHAPTER NINE:

  Parents Suck

  Aster

  I BLINKED. “Two and a half days?” I knew my father wouldn’t joke around about something like that . . . well, I liked to think that he wouldn’t anyway, but I needed the confirmation. My mother had been left unconscious in our apartment, and she would be furious if she had woken up. If she hadn’t woken up, well that would lead to a whole new host of problems.

  Apollo glared at me. “I’m in the middle of a scolding, do not interrupt me when I’m scolding you.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes, mostly because I thought that it would be a shame to have my own father kill me. “Well, by all mean, commence.” The second the words left my mouth, I regretted them.

  Apollo didn’t strike me down like a fly that bothered him, so I counted my blessings. “I shall,” he said, clearing his throat. I took Callie, who hadn’t unwrapped herself from around me, and walked her over to the bed that had candy all over it. She slid down my body slowly, landed on the mattress with a soft oof, and then winced when a sucker stick poked her in the butt.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Apollo said when I went to sit next to her. “There will be no cuddling during this scolding. Aster, you sit over there, right this instant.” He pointed at Callie’s computer chair.

  “We’re not cuddling,” I said. Then turned to Callie. “Not that it wouldn’t be great to cuddle with you. Not that I’ve thought about it, but that doesn’t mean that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. What I’m trying to say is that—”

  Apollo thumped me on the back of the head. I winced, then turned to glare at him, remembered that he was an Olympian, and tried to cut back before I got another, harder, thumb on the head. “Learn when to stop while you’re ahead,” Apollo said. “Just say it would be nice to cuddle with her.”

  “What?”

  Apollo gestured to Callie and raised his eyebrows meaningfully. I turned to Callie, who had started rubbing the back of her head with a confused look on her face. “Um . . . it would be nice to cuddle with you,” I said.

  She smiled. “You look very cuddlable too.”

  Blood rushed to my face as I turned toward the desk chair and sat down. Why my father insisted that I do that, I didn’t know. Not that it bothered me. I mean, Callie was a sweet girl and she had been very nice to me, and she was pretty too. So, it probably would be nice to cuddle with her. Really not that I had thought about it though.

  Gods, even I had started getting sick of me.

  Apollo rubbed his hands together. “Where to stare. First of all, what the hell were you two thinking, going off with Hermes?” He turned to Callie. “Did you learn nothing from what happened with Verin and Juniper?”

  “Well—”

  “No!” Apollo said, interrupting Callie. “You are not to interrupt this scolding, do you understand?”

  Callie nodded.

  “You went off with Hermes!” Apollo said. “What part of you thought that was a good idea?”

  “Are we supposed to answer?”

  “No,” Apollo said, and this time I actually stopped talking, because his eyes blazed bright yellow. Usually that only happened when he felt some strong emotions. The last time I’d seen that, he had been screaming at my mother for something or other. I looked down at the ground as he continued. “Now, Aster, I get that you think you’re indestructible because of all the things that the two of us had done. Let me explain to how stupid that is. It’s stupid. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “No talking.”

  “Then why do you keep asking questions?”

  “Are you talking?”

  I started to miss my room all the more. I’d just gotten back from the underworld, figured that my mother might’ve been asleep for two days, and had no idea why my father seemed so upset by the entire thing. It felt like I’d been having a nightmare for the last day or so.

  Callie cleared her throat and held her hand up.

  “What?” Apollo barked.

  “How do you suggest that we tell Hermes no next time? I think it’s pretty obvious that saying no to the gods is a stupid move. He could’ve gotten mad at us, then turned Aster into a tree, or something. Do you want to explain that to his mother?”

  Apollo scowled.

  “Or Artemis could have shot him with an arrow!” Callie continued, throwing her hands up in the air. “They already made my mother float on the ceiling, and I’m going to have to deal with that. I mean, sure, she’ll probably believe me now when I say something magical is happening, but at what cost?”

  Apollo pursed his lips. “Artemis was there as well?”

  We both nodded, waiting for him to tell us to stop talking.

  He let out a hefty sigh. “I’m going to need to talk to her about the appropriate and inappropriate things to do with my children and Oracles.”

  “Um, what is she doing with us?” I asked.

  “Never mind that,” Apollo said, waving his hand with another lofty sigh. He sat down on the bed next to Callie, crinkling more candy wrappers. For some reason, I wanted sit between them, or better yet, force Callie out of the room so that she didn’t have to endure another second with the gods. I kept myself under control, mostly because of the tree thing again. While it might’ve been nice to get sustenance from the sun, I also thought that being able to walk and talk was neat. Which meant keeping my mouth shut.

  Something I’d never been good at.

  “All right, so what happened in the underworld?”

  Callie told him everything while I stayed quiet, my foot bouncing up and down on the floor. It sounded insane when she explained it, and not because she didn’t do a good job of explaining. It just sounded insane that we had spent some time in the underworld and that she had gotten two visions, for lack of a better word. She should have been exhausted, but Callie looked capable of running a marathon if she really wanted to.

  When she finished, Apollo frowned. “Well, none of that sounds good.”

  “I didn’t think so, either,” Callie agreed.

  “You want to tell us why we got dragged down to the underworld?” I asked.

  “Well, isn’t it obvious? We needed Callie to take a look around and see if anything felt out of place.”

  She cleared her throat, putting her hand in the air. “Why not get someone more helpful, like the seers?”

  “Because when the seers get involved in things, so do their demigods,” Apollo said slowly. “And that usually leads to all
kinds of destruction and despair. Do you want destruction and despair?”

  “Well, no,” Callie said.

  “Neither do I,” Apollo said, then paused. “Well, not today. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Why did I get dragged along?” I asked.

  “Hmm?” Apollo glanced at me, then waved his hand. “Oh, my sister is just trying to make a point, don’t worry about it. I’m sure she’ll get bored and stop sooner or later.”

  “She’s trying to make a point, one that involves me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think that’s going to calm me down?” I asked, getting to my feet and starting to pace. It felt like my heart would explode right out of my chest. Callie jumped up, getting in front of me. I almost crashed into her and had to reel back to avoid collision. As I stumbled away, into the desk, I cursed. A dozen of her sticky notes fluttered to the floor, and I tried to apologize.

  “Artemis wouldn’t hurt you,” Callie assured me, touching my arm. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Yeah, that’s like swimming with a shark about two inches from your nose, and someone telling you not to worry about it.”

  Apollo slapped me on the shoulder hard enough that I stumbled forward a step. “You shouldn’t worry about it. There’s nothing that you can do anyway.”

  That made me feel better.

  “Are you done scolding us?” Callie asked, touching Apollo’s shoulder.

  “Hmm?” he asked. “Oh, yes I am. I’ve got other things to worry about. It looks like you’ve both made it out alive at any rate. I should go bother my sister now and see what the hell she’s thinking.”

  “Wait!” Callie said, putting her hands out. “Are my parents okay?”

  “Yes, yes,” Apollo said, waving his hand. “I’ve taken care of them. You’ll be able to talk to them tomorrow. And before you ask, yes, Aster, your mother is fine too. She’s also in a fine mood, so I wish you luck with that.” He vanished before I could do more than open my mouth to ask what that meant.

  Which left me and Callie alone in her room. She flopped back on her bed, sighing. “I’m tired.”

  “Has it really been two and a half days?” I asked.

  She reached for her laptop, which had been carelessly thrown onto her pillows. She opened it, glanced down, then nodded. “Yup. I wonder how that made my mother feel. I’ve never directly disobeyed my parents like that before.”

  I walked over to her, sitting on the edge of the bed. When I put my arm around her shoulders, Callie leaned into me. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. They’ve got more important things to worry about right now. Like the fact that all the Greek myths they probably learned about in high school are real, and that you’re the Oracle and have been for years. That’ll take precedent over the fact that you disobeyed them.”

  Callie eyed me. “You’re a lot like your father.”

  “Why would you say that?” I asked, shuddering. “Stabbing me with scissors would have been less brutal.”

  She patted my leg, then started to get up. “I’m going to go check on my parents. You stay here.”

  She left then, which meant that I sat alone, in her room, on her bed. Why that made me feel uncomfortable, I didn’t know. It was a testament to why I shouldn’t be allowed around other people, and why Apollo should have let my mother lock me up when she wanted to.

  Sighing, I looked around at the sticky notes. They had some kind of order, I felt. She had arranged them in a pattern that I didn’t understand, but Callie wasn’t insane or stupid. She had to have been trying to figure out what they meant. I got up and walked over to the wall of notes. She had four stacks of sticky notes on her desk, all of the pads had writing on the first note. I looked from those notes, to the ones on her walls. They didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

  One of them had a knock-knock joke on it. I stared at that one for a little while, just dumbfounded. What god thought it would be fun to use their Oracle to tell a knock-knock joke? Not only that, but why had Callie written it down on a sticky note and plastered it to her wall? It made little sense to me.

  Then again, having the gods talking in your head constantly probably didn’t make much sense to her, either. Apollo came to visit me a couple of times a year, and I almost died every single time. I couldn’t imagine his voice constantly in my head, nor would I want something like that happening.

  Callie came back into the room, a frown on her face. She stopped when she saw me standing there. “My parents aren’t home. You don’t suppose that when Apollo said he took care of him, that meant he did something to that would hurt them?”

  “Well, he didn’t do it on purpose, if he did,” I said.

  Her face twisted.

  I put my hands out. “I’m sorry! I meant to say that he didn’t do anything that would have hurt them. They’re fine. Probably out to lunch or getting drunk to forget that their daughter is the Oracle.”

  She frowned harder.

  “Dammit!” I said, throwing my hands up. “I’m no good at this. They’re fine.” I put my hand on her shoulder.

  Callie smiled at me. “You’re doing okay.”

  “You’re lying,” I said. “Not that I mean to call you a liar, or anything . . . ” I sighed. “You know what, I’m going to head home before I manage to insert my whole leg as well as my foot into my mouth.”

  Her smile got bigger and Callie squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing you said would make me feel better about this. I abandoned my parents for two days, right after they learned that the gods are real. That’s a pretty screwed up thing to do.”

  “You didn’t want to leave.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Sure,” I said, shrugging.

  She smiled again. Then frowned. “Do you have a way to get home?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Well, my dad’s car is still in the garage,” Callie said. “I can take you home, but you have to drive.”

  “You want me to drive myself home, with you in the car? Couldn’t I just borrow the car and bring it back?”

  “Nah, that’s okay,” Callie said, waving her hand. “I can have one of my friends pick me up and take me home. Kizzy would never leave me out in the middle of nowhere by myself. Neither would Zander, or Jasmine, or Jasper.”

  I squinted a little. “Jasmine, Jasper, and Juniper? They’re the seers, right?”

  Callie nodded, taking my hand. I let her haul me out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and toward the garage. “They’re really nice, but they’re always super busy. Too busy for me. Though, with Jasmine, if we accidently touch, the two of us get blasted apart and knocked unconscious.”

  My eyebrows rose.

  “It’s a whole predicting the future kind of thing,” Callie said. “Too much power or whatnot.”

  She continued talking all the way to the car, then once we got in the car. It was a nothing special SUV that wouldn’t even be able to go off road.

  I noticed immediately that the alignment was off, and the moonlight turned the dark gray color almost black. “Are you sure that you want to call the seers to come get you?”

  “Of course!” Callie said, smiling at me. “They wouldn’t mind picking me up. They’re my friends.”

  I didn’t know about that, but I kept my mouth shut. Oh, I had little doubt that the seers and their demigods were good people. Callie seemed to genuinely like them, and I found it hard to believe that she could like anyone less than kind. I just thought that they didn’t quite understand what having people in her life meant to Callie. She didn’t have friends and her family thought she was crazy.

  She had been so lonely. I could see it throughout her entire room. The sticky notes, the care she took with them, spoke of hours alone, organizing things that only she could understand. This misunderstanding on their part made me inclined to dislike them. Since I felt certain that the demigods could all kick my ass, I hoped that I wouldn’t have to meet them.

  I pulled up to the apartment bu
ilding and slid into one of the reserved spots for the superintendent. My mother, in this case. We technically had only two, but she’d taken another one for herself as soon as we’d arrived. I didn’t know if she could do that, but nothing bad had come of it so far.

  Callie glanced to the right, at my truck.

  “That’s mine,” I said. “Bought it used about a year ago, with money that Apollo gave me. The engine was crap, but it I got it working like new.” The Toyota Tundra had been fairly new when I’d bought it, but that hadn’t kept the engine from being crap. It had taken me quite a while to make it purr like a kitten. I loved the stupid thing.

  Callie smirked. “I’m starting to get the impression that you like cars. You were practically drooling over the one your father brought you in the other day.”

  “That was a dream,” I said, shaking my head. “If I could make cars out of thin air, I’d never do anything else.”

  Callie laughed, unbuckling her seatbelt.

  “Before we get inside, I just want to warn you that my mother isn’t going to be happy with me,” I said in a hurry. “I mean, she won’t be terrible, but she’s going to do some yelling. So, if you want me to take you over to a coffee shop or something, then I would be willing to.”

  “Is she going to be mean?”

  “No. Well, not really. She can be, but I don’t think she’ll be this time . . . ” I trailed off, frowning out the window in front of me. I didn’t know how to explain my mother. Finally, I said, “She might come off as mean, but she has the best of intentions. Even if you don’t see them right away.”

  She frowned at me. “I’ll come in with you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, unless you don’t want me to,” Callie said.

  “No, no, I’m not saying that!” I waved my hands kind of frantically, not wanting her to feel unwelcome.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Wait, what just happened? Before I could ask that, Callie had gotten out of the car, and walked around the back of the SUV. I sighed, pushing my door open as well. I could hope that my mother would stay on her best behavior, but that didn’t mean much for her, unfortunately. Her best behavior meant the silent treatment.