Aphrodite

by Kaitlin Bevis

  Poseidon shrugged. “Humans have them.”

  Scientists had never been able to figure out why stem cell function and frequency degraded with age. There was no reason for the human body to function perfectly one day and a little less perfectly the next. Humans only died because they were designed to.

  A phone buzzed. Poseidon fished Persephone’s pink phone out of his pocket.

  “We’re ready.” Persephone’s voice erupted from the speakers. “Drop the shield.”

  Were my powers getting harder to use each day until they failed completely? I looked over my shoulder, trying to see the scratches. They’d healed at some point. Would healing take a bit longer every day, until I stopped being able to heal all together?

  Was I mortal? No. I’d know, wouldn’t I? Surely I’d be able to sense my body dying with every breath.

  “Done,” Poseidon said into the phone, before hanging up without so much as a goodbye.

  “You know if she thinks I’m in trouble, she’ll do something stupid.” I was linked to Persephone. She could give me powers, as well as take them away. Power was our life force. I wasn’t going to be responsible for Persephone losing any of hers.

  Poseidon hesitated. “Are you asking me for a favor?”

  “No.” I didn’t understand Poseidon’s obsession with Persephone, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything to her, whether I asked him to or not. Especially if she could save me. The sooner I died, the sooner he’d be out from under my thumb.

  Chapter XVIII

  THE SOFT KNOCK on the door sent me cowering into the bathroom. I couldn’t let everyone see me all weak and trembling, much less sweaty and gross.

  You’ve been through a battle, the rational side of my brain pointed out as I studied myself in the mirror and groaned. The cuts and bruises might have healed, but that hadn’t done anything to disguise the crusty blood crisscrossing my skin or the dried sweat plastering my hair to my face. Even my dress looked dirty.

  Scrubbing my face in an attempt to salvage my appearance, I wondered, on a scale of one to ten, how stupid casting a glamour would be right now. Voices filled the stateroom and I swore.

  Stop stalling, I commanded myself as I wove my hair into a complex braid. But I couldn’t seem to keep myself from lingering. The familiar motions of putting myself back together again grounded me. I needed that after what I’d just been through.

  I glanced beneath the counter where I’d stashed one of my bags and searched for something thick to wear that wouldn’t expose much skin in case we encountered any more Olympian Steele. Yeah, not exposing skin was rarely my goal when getting dressed.

  “You’ll do,” I muttered, slipping the thigh-length, form-fitting sweater I’d brought in case I got cold over my head and pairing the gray wool with some leggings and knee-high leather boots. I’d be hot, and not in the sense I preferred, but I’d been lucky enough tonight. Fabric wouldn’t protect me from being stabbed, but at least I’d have less exposed skin to be scratched or nicked.

  “Okay,” I breathed, eying myself in the mirror. Satisfied with what I saw, I opened the bathroom door.

  Muses, Graces, and every living, full-blooded deity except Hephaestus filled the suite. How had Persephone managed to gather everyone this quickly? They crowded around the coffee table, listening as Poseidon brought everyone up to speed. My eyes landed on Ares and I swallowed hard, remembering the way he’d held me the last time I’d seen him. Fool me once, I thought wryly.

  Drawn by the power of my gaze, Ares looked up. “Hey!” He separated from the group of gods and rushed to the steps to meet me. “Heard you survived battle. Well done.” The concern in his dark eyes belied the jest in his voice. “You make it out unscathed?”

  I forced myself to grin. “Can I call myself a war goddess now? ’Cause I could rock the warrior princess look. Trade this in,” I plucked at the side of my leggings, “for one of those spiky leather skirts. It could work.”

  Ares laughed. “I wouldn’t trade your heels in for combat boots just yet, but I could get behind the leather skirt idea.” He touched my elbow and drew me toward the rest of the gods. “Sadly though, if the old man of the sea’s face is any indication, we’ll have to talk shop later.”

  “Oh.” Poseidon mocked. “Don’t flatter yourself. We wouldn’t wait for your input.”

  “Well, in that case . . .” Ares shrugged and turned his attention back to me.

  “Quit flirting, Ares.” Athena shook her head, flashing me a rueful smile.

  “Jealous?” Ares teased.

  Athena’s grey eyes swept over Ares in a cool appraisal that ended with a snort of laughter.

  “Ouch.” I laughed, leaving Ares’s side in favor of giving Athena a hug. “Good to see you in the flesh.”

  “You all right, half—Er, Adonis?” Ares asked, stopping himself before calling the demigod half-breed. “You’re looking a little out of sorts.”

  Adonis jerked his gaze away from me as if surprised it had landed there. “No, ah, I’m fine. Just trying to remember something. Can I see that?” Adonis moved between Poseidon and the coffee table to study the map, oblivious to Poseidon’s glare. “Here? You’re sure this is where the disappearances happened?”

  I moved behind Adonis and looked over his shoulder. “I mean, I can’t determine the exact spot based on the information I found. But somewhere around here.” I noticed Artemis and squealed, giving the shorter goddess a hug. “Where’s your other half?”

  “Oh, Ryan stayed home. I wasn’t sure what I’d be ’porting into.” She tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and shrugged. “Thanks for asking. He’ll be happy to hear that you asked about him.”

  Persephone and I were likely the only gods who didn’t refer to the human as her pet. I took a moment to greet the Muses, the Graces, and every other god I recognized from Demeter’s place last year. I felt ridiculously happy to see them all alive and whole and smiling.

  “That just figures,” Adonis muttered.

  “What figures?” Ares asked.

  “May I?” Adonis grabbed a pencil off the table without waiting for permission and drew a line from Miami, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

  Poseidon groaned and sat on the couch with a roll of his eyes.

  Adonis added a line from San Juan to Bermuda, then from Bermuda back to Miami. “From right here?” He pointed to the lower center of the triangle.

  I gave him a quizzical look. “Somewhere around there. Hang on.” I swung by the kitchen counter and rifled through the giant stack of papers I’d accumulated. “Okay, so these”—I handed Adonis a handful of pages—“are the routes of all the ships the demigods went missing on.”

  “This is all of them?” He separated the pages, gold eyes narrowing as he counted the sheets.

  “There are only so many routes, dimwit.” Poseidon shook his head. “Or did you think every individual cruise sailed willy-nilly through the ocean?”

  Adonis ignored Poseidon and put the printed, blue maps on the table, separating each sheet. “What’s with the little arrows?”

  “Those are days at sea. This”—I plucked another map from the stack—“is where I traced all the routes.” I set the paper down on top of Poseidon’s map. “And put an ‘X’ on the last point the demigods’ cards were scanned, and another ‘X’ at the next port of call. They most likely went missing somewhere between the two, and absolutely went missing before the cruise ended, because they never scanned out.”

  “So you changed the color of the line with that last scan?” Adonis asked.

  “Yeah.” I flushed, conscious of all the gods pressing around me to get a better look at my map. The room felt cramped with this many people present. Too warm.

  “Nicely done. So they all intersect . . . here.” He circled the small area on the map.

  “Which is a lot
of ground—Er, water.”

  Adonis nodded. “But still,” he said, pointing at the circle floating in the lower half of the triangle he’d drawn. “Come on, you have to see this.”

  “Shapes?” I glanced at Poseidon. “Humans have known about shapes for a while, right? Or did Zeus scramble that bit of history for me?”

  “Yeah, we know shapes.” Adonis laughed. “But you really don’t know what this is? Come one, I thought you knew everything except for like, good music and stuff.”

  “She knows nearly everything real,” Poseidon interjected. “The myths surrounding the Bermuda Triangle aren’t—”

  “Any more outrageous than the ones about you,” Adonis added.

  Poseidon rolled his eyes again. “There’s no pyramid at the bottom of the triangle, no magic, no lost city. Statistically, there are no more vanished planes or ships or people there than any other spot in the seven seas, when you account for the fact that it’s one of the most well-traveled routes in the Atlantic.”

  Adonis shrugged. “Except for the hundred or so demigods who vanished in the last year, you mean? The ones no one remembers going missing?”

  Poseidon scowled. “Coincidence.”

  “Coincidence?” Adonis pushed his golden hair off his forehead, giving Poseidon a skeptical look. “If everyone’s been charmed into forgetting the disappearances, how do you know there’s not an even higher number of—”

  “Either way,” Athena interrupted, her voice stern enough to shut both the boys up. “We need to figure out who and what we’re dealing with. What are we facing here? A god? A Titan? Something new? Can they teleport? If so, what’s keeping them on the ship?”

  Poseidon shook his head. “I put up a shield blocking teleportation as soon as you all arrived.”

  “My money’s on a Titan.” I shuddered, remembering how much charm I’d had to use to try and snap the passengers out of attack mode. “I’ve never seen anything like this, the entire bar—”

  “Whole club,” Poseidon corrected. “Not just the people sitting near us. Not a single head turned when those bottles broke. But you said we’re dealing with more than one controller using a . . . charm chain?”

  I nodded. “Created by a group of people who can use charm. More than are in this room right now, and we’re the last of Zeus’s known divine offspring. But Titans can create more gods, right? That charm has to be coming from somewhere.”

  “We can create more gods, too,” Persephone added.

  “None of us pass on charm, though. It’s our lifeline.” I had enough to spare some for myself if I ever wanted to reproduce, assuming I even could, but I had more charm than most. The others needed every ounce of their charm to generate enough worship to survive. “Ares, any of your kids get charm?”

  “I’ve never passed on charm.”

  We went around the room, confirming what I already knew. “See,” I said when the question came round to me. “It can’t be from us.”

  “Wait, let’s just get this out of the way,” Persephone suggested. “I haven’t charmed anyone aboard this ship. Ares?”

  “I haven’t charmed anyone aboard this ship.”

  I waited until the statement circulated the entire room. “Obviously, I have. But not to attack us. Any Titans missing from lockup?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Hades said

  “You spent the last few centuries convinced Zeus was in the Underworld,” Ares reminded him. “You may want to double-check.”

  Hades grimaced. “Aphrodite, weren’t you worried Zeus created more gods like you? It doesn’t sound likely, but—”

  I frowned. “Hundreds of them?”

  “They don’t have to be as strong as you if they have numbers on their side,” Artemis said.

  “We should look into both possibilities,” Persephone said. “Any Titan in particular we should be looking for? Who gave Zeus his charm?”

  Crickets.

  Okay, not actual crickets. We were in the middle of the ocean, after all.

  “Rhea,” Poseidon said finally.

  “That’s how she was able to convince Cronus to eat a rock instead of Zeus,” Persephone exclaimed. “That whole myth makes so much more sense now. Okay, so I’ll head to Tartarus and—”

  “She’s not in Tartarus.” Hades ran his fingers through his hair. “We couldn’t—wouldn’t—She’s not there.”

  “Then where is she?” I asked.

  Poseidon and Hades exchanged a glance.

  “I’ll check in on her,” Poseidon promised. “She can’t teleport, so if she is behind this, which I doubt, she’ll be shipbound. Plus, Olympian Steele is almost as deadly to her as it is to us.”

  Almost? Before I could ask about the qualifier, Athena spoke.

  “While speculating has some uses . . .” Athena paused, waiting until all eyes were on her before she continued. “We should use our time wisely.” She pulled a glossy map of the ship from the bottom of the stack of papers, and planted the thick sheet of paper on the table. “We need to search every inch of this ship and we need to talk to everyone so we can get some actual answers instead of wild guesses. Now, Aphrodite has done a wonderful job of keeping everyone in their rooms—”

  “Thank you.” I grinned at her, happy for the acknowledgement.

  She nodded without missing a beat. “But we need to be absolutely sure we don’t miss anyone, and we can’t risk anything being hidden in areas we’ve already searched. So I suggest we take this deck by deck.” She pointed to the middle of the deck where a small symbol indicated there were stairs and elevators. “We’ll need someone to maintain a shield here and at the other exits.”

  “They can break shields,” I reminded her. “With the Steele.”

  “Then we’ll know exactly where they are.” She flashed me a savage grin. “Hades, Poseidon, since you’re our strongest two without charm, you are the logical choices for that task.”

  “And the rest of us?” Ares asked.

  “Pair off.” Athena divided up the decks by section, assigning some of us to shields and the rest to the search party. We’d search one deck at a time within shouting distance of one another. “We’ll charm the passengers into forgetting we were ever there, once we finish their rooms.”

  “That won’t work for Elise,” I said. “She’s immune to charm. I haven’t been able to confirm whether Narcissus and Tantalus are immune or not, but they could be.”

  “We’ll confirm that tonight,” Athena said, unbothered. “And impress upon them the importance of their silence should charm fail.”

  Threaten them, she meant. I looked down, pointedly ignoring Adonis’s heavy gaze.

  “What if we don’t find anything?” Artemis asked, her dark eyes glittering.

  “Then we can hope we’ve already got all the weapons,” Athena explained. “We’ll figure out step two in a bit. Let’s see if there’s anything to be found first.”

  We settled on the questions to ask and the appropriate follow-ups, what to do if we found anything, and a dozen other practicalities before moving to the door.

  “Coming?” I asked Adonis.

  He shook his head. “I’m surprised you are. Shouldn’t you not be using much power right now?”

  “Persephone is going to do all the heavy lifting. The best thing I can do to recharge is to be seen by people.”

  Adonis didn’t look convinced, but he shrugged. “See you later.”

  Chapter IXX

  POSEIDON SHIELDED the room, locking Adonis safely inside. The first three decks were crew only, so we found a crewmember for Persephone to charm in order to get down to the sub-levels of the ship. Athena and Ares split off to search the people-free zones, while the rest of us started searching the crew’s rooms.

  By the time we reached the first passenger level, Per
sephone and I fell into enough of a routine to talk while we worked. Well, talk about other stuff instead of, “Do you think this opens?” Or worse, Persephone’s bright voice wondering, “What’s this for?” She was getting quite an education tonight going through people’s private belongings.

  The interior hallways on the lower decks tried to be well-lit, with recessed lighting in the low ceilings and track lights along the floors, but no amount of artificial light could make up for the lack of windows. Blue and tan lines on the carpet mimicked the effect of looking down at water near shore. So long as I kept my gaze latched on to the carpet, I wasn’t so aware of the walls and ceiling less than an arm’s length from either side of me.

  “Are you okay?” Persephone asked as I marked the room we’d just finished searching off the map. She knocked on the door of the next stateroom. “It must have been awful when those poor people drowned. And gods know how many more were hurt in the fight.” She gave a depressed shake of her head.

  I made a noise she could take for assent. In truth, I wasn’t all that upset about the passengers. Sure it had been shocking and terrible in the moment, but people died. It happened. And more often than not, death wasn’t right or fair. I wasn’t going to twist myself into knots over it. But if I told Persephone how I felt, she’d attribute my lack of grief to divine callousness.

  But here was the thing. Humans were modeled after us. How else could they watch the news—a montage of war, death, and human suffering—over coffee, then go about their day as if nothing was wrong? People needed a certain level of callousness to get by without drowning in the horror story of life.

  “I’ll manage,” I assured her after she charmed a couple into letting us search their room. This cabin looked much smaller than the room Adonis and I shared. The bathroom took up a little more space than a cubicle. The queen-sized bed left only a walkway of space around it, and the rest of the furniture clogged the entryway. Searching the actual room took less than ten minutes. Their luggage, not much longer. Nothing turned up. “So, I take it you haven’t had a chance to chat with a Titan about your powers making ‘stuff happen’ like you wanted to?”