by Staci Hart
Her neck ached, and her legs burned when she flattened them out. She wondered absently when she had eaten last. She hadn’t slept either, only nodded off a few times to be awoken by her nightmares.
But she couldn’t bear to put the mirror down, couldn’t even tear her eyes away, not for a moment, not unless the need was too dire to ignore.
Her stomach rumbled at the thought of food, lurching when she considered going upstairs to get something to eat. A feeling of disconnected unease hung over her, the kind that accompanied a binge, especially a forbidden binge. It was the feeling brought by the knowledge that what she was doing was wrong but doing it anyway and in private, in secret. Because, if anyone knew, she would be judged, and that judgment would sting even worse because it would be justified.
But she couldn’t stop, mostly because she didn’t want to miss a single moment. She didn’t want to face anyone out of fear that they would somehow know what she’d done, what she was doing.
Of course, there was also the threat of Ares that had kept her confined to her apartment. She hadn’t seen him since the first day; the stress of even being near him for a moment had been so much, she’d been nearly paralyzed by fear, and that was with Perry and Heff at her side. If she went up now, she’d be alone. And, if he got her alone, he would take advantage of the fact. She couldn’t even consider what he’d do.
She wasn’t ready to find out.
But she had to eat, and by the noises her stomach made, it would need to be soon.
Just go upstairs. It’ll just be a few minutes. Eat, and then you can come right back. Maybe the break will do you good.
Dita took a long last look at Adonis before she laid the mirror on her coffee table, tossed her blanket off, stood, and made for the elevator. She stepped inside, and her finger hovered over the lobby button as she contemplated heading to the underworld to ask Perry to go with her.
It’ll be fine. I’m sure he won’t be there. And, if he is, I’ll just leave and come back later. So stop being a pussy, and hit the fucking button.
She rolled her eyes and hit the L.
Dita didn’t remember a time when she’d been more needy, though that knowledge didn’t really do much to help her combat it. She was doing her best to handle her shit.
Her best was not even close to good enough.
The elevator opened up to the lobby, and she made it to the refrigerator just as her stomach folded in on itself. She walked to the island with a plate of ambrosia, turning it into a huge hamburger and spicy fries. She was salivating. Until the elevator dinged.
Her eyes flew to the door as it opened to Ares and Hera chatting, too lost in their conversation to see her.
Dita froze for a nanosecond before grabbing her plate and hauling ass around the corner, just outside a small sitting room.
The sound of her heart in her ears was almost deafening, and she took a deep breath, trapped in the hallway, anxious and feeling strung out. She supposed in a way she was.
I have got to get sleep and food before I have a nervous breakdown.
She caught another whiff of her burger, and her eyelids fluttered in ecstasy. Figuring that the sitting room was unoccupied, she could duck in and hide for a few minutes while she snarfed her food, and hopefully in that time, Ares and Hera would have moved on so she could slink back to her room in peace.
As she neared the archway, she heard her name and stopped dead.
“You don’t say.” Pistis, the goddess of trust and good faith, sounded appalled.
“That’s what I heard. Ares was mad because she was boning Apollo,” Zelos, god of jealousy and zeal, said.
Dita could hear he was smiling, that dick.
“Get out,” she heard Pistis gasp. “Poor Daphne.”
“One of the maenads told me Dita’s been going to the big orgies they have in their quarters,” Zelos added.
“Oh, I heard that, too. Those parties get so weird,” Pistis added.
“Well, Dita always has gotten around,” Pheme, the goddess of fame and rumor, said with a snicker. “I mean, with everyone except her husband, that is.”
Zelos giggled. “And I heard she’s been sneaking up to Ares’s room ever since she came back from Greece.”
Pistis said sadly, “How could she ever be with him after what he did to her?”
Pheme laughed. “Have you seen him? He could take his anger out on me any day of the week.”
“Maybe she’s just not woman enough for him.” Zelos’s voice dripped with contempt.
Dita stepped into the threshold. “For fuck’s sake, you assholes don’t honestly believe that, do you?”
Three faces turned to her.
Innocent, naive Pistis turned the color of a spring bloom. “Gods, Aphrodite. No, of course not, not if you say it never happened.”
“It never happened,” she said through her teeth.
Zelos crossed his long legs and pursed his lips, eyeing her.
“You don’t believe me, Zelos? Because I will wrath that look off your face so fast—”
He pointed at Pheme. “Pheme started it.”
Pheme shot him a look before she stood and flipped her glossy blond hair over her shoulder, stepping closer. “You know how it is, Dita. The rumor mill never stops.”
“How could it when you’re fueling it with your fat mouth?”
Pheme gave her a tight smile. “I’m going to assume that your distress made you say that—”
“I know you’re not about to threaten me because I will end you.”
The threat rolled around in Pheme’s empty head for a moment before she smiled like a movie star. “Now, now.” She touched Dita’s arm, her face soft and tone soothing. “Let’s not be hasty.”
Dita looked down at Pheme’s hand and back to her eyes. She was certain her own were glowing, and when a breeze smelling of roses blew through the room, Pheme dropped her hand and took a step back.
“Listen up, all three of you, and especially you two.” Dita made a V with her fingers and pointed at Pheme and Zelos. “You had best shut your mouths, or I will make you so miserable, you’ll wish you weren’t immortal so you could just die already.”
Zelos didn’t look swayed. He looked smug.
“If you think I’m bluffing, you’re dumber than I thought. Don’t think I don’t know about your little penguin phobia.”
Zelos turned to Pheme, whose mouth hung open.
“What? Penguins are unnatural. It’s like a fish-bird.” He shuddered.
“I wonder,” Dita said, “is bestiality your kind of thing. Because I can make it your kind of thing.”
He swallowed hard.
“And, Pheme, just remember that I can make you fall in love with anyone. Like maybe Priapus?”
Pheme’s eyes went wide.
Priapus had the biggest penis, proportionally, of any god or beast. It actually dragged the ground. He couldn’t even wear pants.
Dita watched her reaction and continued. “I’m pretty sure his giant dick would split you like a melon. What would the rumor mill think of that, I wonder?”
Pheme tried to smile, but she looked more like she was sucking on a lemon.
Pistis’s eyes were big and wet. “Aphrodite, I’m so sorry. I can’t help but see truth everywhere. It’s my curse. I am literally the goddess of gullibility.”
“I realize that. I’d advise staying away from these two shit-talkers or else you’ll end up at the wrong end of a curse.”
Dita glared at the silent trio for a moment. She had the good sense to hang on to her plate rather than throw it, which she would have preferred had she not been starving. Instead, she turned on her heel, but when she exited the room, she found Eris leaning against the wall, inspecting her chipped black nail polish.
“Having problems, Dita?”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, Eris,” Dita said as she blew past.
“Good to see you, too,” the Godess of Discord called after Dita.
But she didn’t stop, barely regist
ering her fear of Ares, who was nowhere to be seen, thankfully. When she stepped into the elevator, she mashed B4, and the elevator closed. When it opened again, she stormed through the entryway of the underworld, calling Perry’s name.
“Hey,” Perry called as she walked out of her bedroom. “Whoa.” She pointed to a barstool at a black granite counter. “Sit.”
Perry walked behind the bar and pulled out a bottle of ambrosia, poured some into a wine glass, and turned it into deep burgundy wine. She slid it across the counter to Dita. “What happened?”
Dita took a huge bite and said with a full mouth, “I need to eat. You’re gonna have to deal with this.” She motioned to the bottom half of her face.
“Payback for trailing crumbs everywhere I go. It’s fine. Tell me.”
Dita took a drink and set her glass down on the granite with a clink. “Pheme and Zelos were talking shit about me.”
Perry leaned on the counter and shrugged. “They talk shit about everyone.”
“Pheme actually threatened me.” Dita took another bite of her burger.
“No one ever accused her of being smart. What did they say?”
Dita swallowed and raised a brow. “That I was fucking Apollo and going to maenad orgies.”
Perry rolled her eyes and laughed. “That was the best they could do?”
“Zelos said I wasn’t woman enough for Ares.”
Perry’s mouth hung open at that. “He did not.”
“He did so.” Dita took a gigantic bite, so big that she struggled to chew it.
“Well, he and Pheme have to be the biggest gossips in Olympus.”
“Today sucks,” Dita said around a wad of food.
“What else?”
Dita sighed and dropped her half-eaten burger on her plate. She dusted her hands off and slumped, reaching for her wine again. “I don’t know. I just…I mean I do know, but…” She shook her head. “I’m not sleeping, and it’s fucking me up. I think that’s the short of it.” That, and she had obsessively been watching Adonis on an enchanted mirror, but there was no way she could tell Perry that.
“Is there anything I can do?” Perry asked with furrowed brows. “Maybe I can help.”
Dita looked into Perry’s dark eyes. “I don’t know if anyone can help me.”
Perry moved around the bar and hugged her friend, laying her cheek on the top of Dita’s head. “Time. You can’t fast-forward through it.”
“I know.” Dita’s throat was tight and burning. “I just want it to be over.”
“It will be—eventually. Want to talk about it?” Perry pulled away and sat next to her.
The words stuck in Dita’s throat, so she shook her head.
“That’s the other part of healing. You know that. I’m here for you as soon as you’re ready.”
Dita nodded and took another long pull of her wine.
“So,” Perry said with levity, “what have you been doing? I saw you got Jon into the station today.”
Dita set her glass down and spun it on the bar. “Fat lot of good that did. I almost missed it, too. He was walking right by. That would have sucked.”
“At least he got Rhodes’s name, right?”
“Yeah, but without Josie, he’s not going to get very far. Josie had nothing on Rhodes until she went to Montana. I can’t imagine Jon would have some magical information source to pull from.” Dita looked down at her food, no longer hungry.
“No, but he has you.”
Dita huffed. “Yeah, because I’m doing a bang-up job so far.”
“It’s day three. Give yourself a break.”
“Ugh. I feel nasty. Seriously nasty,” Dita said as she sank even further into her chair.
“You know what I was wondering? What happened with the note Jon left Josie?”
Dita frowned. “I don’t know. Why? I haven’t really thought about it.”
“I mean, how many things could have happened to it?”
Dita considered it for a second. “It was early in the morning, and he left it on her doorstep. Neither Josie nor Anne saw it or knew about it. Would someone really have walked by and picked it up or thrown it away? There’s no kind of accident that makes sense.”
“Right? That’s what I was thinking. Do you think any of the gods had anything to do with it?”
They sat in silence for a moment, but then they met each other’s eyes and said at the same time, “Hera.”
“That bitch,” Perry said under her breath.
“I mean, who else? Just how much do you want to bet she was hoping to get Tori and Jon back together so they could be the perfect little family? I fucking hate her. No one else would do something that blatantly cruel.”
“Well, okay, maybe there’s some other reason, or it was someone else. Devil’s advocate, and all that.”
“Maybe, but probably not.”
Perry eyed her.
Dita put her hands up in surrender. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to go hunt her down or anything. What’s done is done, and she can’t interfere at this point. Artemis certainly wouldn’t work with her. It’s just fucked up.”
“So basically like everything Hera does.”
“Pretty much.” Dita stood. “I should get going.”
“You sure? I can hang for a while. Hades is working.”
The thought was appealing, but the mirror called to her, her obsession. She felt like Gollum, but she just didn’t have it in her to fight the addiction.
She smiled at her friend. “I’m okay. Take your time decompressing from me.”
Perry laughed. “Okay. I’m here.”
“I know,” Dita said as she hugged her friend before leaving the underworld.
Her anticipation grew in the few minutes it took to get to her apartment. When she held the mirror in her hands, she felt herself sink into fixation again, and she absently sat down on the couch, breathless as she watched Adonis, the anxiety from what she’d missed snaking through her like poison.
Day 4
THE SUNLIGHT SHONE THROUGH the ring of trees where Eleni stood. Her boots were planted firmly in the spring grass as she nocked an arrow, took aim, and fired at one of the targets on a tripod. She hit the bull’s-eye and bowed at Artemis with a challenging smile.
Artemis rolled her eyes as she nocked an arrow of her own, drew, and loosed in almost one motion. Her arrow split Eleni’s down the middle.
“Really, Eleni, will you ever learn that you cannot beat me?”
“Let us up the stakes. A game of Mirror, Mirror,” she said, sounding sure of herself.
“If you insist.”
Eleni ran with her bow drawn, did an aerial, and fired midair. Her arrow hit its mark, dead center.
Artemis followed suit, splitting Eleni’s arrow again. The Nephelai pouted, and her wings snapped impatiently behind her.
“My turn.” Artemis put her back to the target and ran for a tree in front of her. She took three paces up the tree and flipped, loosing an arrow midair again. It hit home.
Eleni sighed with narrow eyes and put her back to the target as Artemis had. She ran for the tree, then up the tree, and fired as she flipped. It hit just left of center.
The nymph’s cheeks sparkled, flaming pink and hot as she cursed.
“New game. To the trees.” Her wings beat hard as she flew to a branch with a scowl.
Amused, Artemis climbed into the trees. They nodded to each other from separate lofts and took off running, flying through the treetops and across branches to jump into neighboring trees with bows drawn. Eleni would loose an arrow to mark a target, and Artemis would fire her own before Eleni’s next arrow flew.
She hit every one.
Eleni screeched in frustration but smiled wickedly when she saw an onocentaur chewing cud under a tree. She shot the ugly thing in the ass, and he bleated and ran. Artemis couldn’t help but laugh as she hit the target, and the half-donkey, half-man ran a little faster on his squatty legs.
Artemis leaped for a branch, using it
to catapult her into a mossy clearing.
Eleni landed next to her, panting, with a smile stretched across her face. “Losing is not so bitter when I can end the game by shooting Risto in the ass.”
Artemis laughed as they made their way to sit on the spongy ground. The dappled light danced over them as the trees swayed, and Eleni uncorked her water bladder, taking a long drink before handing it to Artemis.
She leaned back on her elbows. “I must say, the mirror was a clever play. Aphrodite has been mostly absent from the competition.”
“Thankfully so.”
“Although she is still making plays. She is quite good.”
Artemis took a drink with Aphrodite lurking in the shadows of her mind. “This game is not easy, and I am not entirely confident in my abilities. This realm is one I do not understand and have no desire to. But the players are divided, which is all I can hope for at this stage.”
“Perhaps, but it would seem that Josie cares for him even though she resists.”
“Her head will win that war; she cannot trust him with her heart. And if he continues to push her, she will continue to push back. I see a storm coming for the two of them.” Artemis handed the water bladder back.
Eleni took it with a downtrodden frown.
“Whose side are you on, nymph?” Artemis was almost serious.
Eleni rolled her eyes. “Yours, of course, but that does not mean I have to be happy.”
Artemis let the jab go and turned her face up to the rustling treetops. “Well, find consolation in this—I have a plan to occupy Josie that should keep her away from Jon for the duration of the game. She won’t be hurt by him anymore. Would that please you?”
“That would all depend on what you plan to do.” Eleni’s black eyebrow rose.
“There hasn’t been nearly enough of a hunt yet. I plan on introducing evidence, irrefutable evidence, in Rhodes’s case. He will either be apprehended or he will run. If he runs, Josie will chase him. Either way, she will be distracted. My hope is that I can run the clock down.”
Eleni took a drink in an attempt to mask her discomfort. “If Josie chases Rhodes, she could be put in danger.”
Artemis shrugged and said without emotion, “She can take care of herself. I have faith that she will be successful.”