I wouldn’t be making friends. I’d be betraying them.
“What we’re doing here,” Medea continued, heedless of my inner dilemma, “really is for the greater good. We’ve got a purpose. How many people can say that?” She grinned at me. “Let’s get you dressed. We’ll get all your stuff packed up, and then I’ll show you where you’ll be staying. I think you’re going to like it.”
“Thanks,” I managed to whisper. “Just give me a minute, and—” I drew in another sharp breath.
“Of course.”
Medea sat with me in the steamy bathroom until I gained some semblance of control. “Did this happen a lot before?” she asked once I’d regained my composure. “Or just since . . . you know.”
I gave a rueful laugh, sweeping my hair off my clammy skin. “It’s a pretty recent development.” Gods didn’t get panic attacks. Not usually. Can you even consider yourself a god anymore, Aphrodite?
She looked at me for a long moment. “Have you . . . talked to anyone about it? Doctors, or—”
“They are hesitant to prescribe me anything, given my reactions to medication so far,” I all but quoted. “But they want me to follow up next week for counseling and they’ll re-evaluate.” Cool air drifted through the door, a welcome relief to the humidity filling this small space. “Of course, Jason made it pretty clear I can’t say anything about gods, demigods, or all things supernatural in counseling because the psychologist is human.”
“Good old Dr. Sharp,” Medea said with a grimace. “Yeah, he might be charmed, but there’s always a risk something will stick that shouldn’t.”
And Ares had made it doubly clear to hold my tongue since the psychologist could be charmed into taking every word back to Jason. “Yeah. So it’s not like it’ll help.”
“I don’t blame you for giving that a miss. But . . . I mean, I’m not a professional, but if you need someone to talk to, I’m around.” Medea shifted to get up and bumped her head against the sink. “Ouch,” she winced, rubbing at her scalp. “Can I help you up?”
I took her hand. “Why are you so nice to me?” Medea hadn’t known Elise before. What did she get out of coming here?
“Guilt, I guess.” She laughed at my surprised look. “I could help you heal a lot faster.”
“How?” Cool air blasted over me as I followed her out of the bathroom.
Medea grabbed a suitcase and tossed it onto the bed. The demigods had retrieved Elise’s luggage from the cruise when it ended. “I can heal people. Here, put this on.” She tossed me a handful of clothes.
I ducked back into the bathroom, glad to have a task to focus on. “Wait, you have healing powers?” Why not? I was beginning to suspect the list of what Zeus’s demigods couldn’t do was a lot shorter than what they could.
“Not like the gods,” she clarified. “I can’t just lay my hands on you and make you better. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Remember how I said I spent a lot of time in hospitals?” She waited a beat for me to reply, but I was stuck pulling my sundress over my face and couldn’t answer.
“Ymmph,” I managed to get out through a swath of hot-pink fabric.
“My blood is kind of like . . .” She paused, sounding embarrassed. “. . . super special. When people get it, they get better. Which is weird, because you know, god blood doesn’t do anything to humans.”
That was by design. Our healing kicked in to save ourselves unconsciously, like how people breathe without actually meaning to. But to heal someone else took direction. We had to want it. Because, awesome powers or not, humans had to outnumber gods to provide enough worship for us to live off of. Back when the creation of sentient life was just an idea floating around the Pantheon, Apollo had foreseen that if taking bits and pieces of us worked as some kind of magical cure-all, our creations would never stop hunting us down.
“But ours does, enough generations in anyway,” Medea continued.
“I didn’t know that.” I straightened the dress, peeling it off the still-damp patches of skin it stuck to, then stepped back into the hospital room without so much as a look in the mirror.
“Well, it’s not the sort of thing people would normally find out. But I had this stepbrother who was sick. Neu-ro-blas-to-ma.” Medea raised her eyebrows and bobbed her head as she emphasized each syllable. “I was a match for a bone marrow transplant, and his recovery was beyond miraculous. So they did some tests. And my Mom saw an opportunity to profit.”
“Profit, how?” I asked, slipping into Elise’s sandals.
Medea shrugged. “I could fix anything. Anyone. They called me the golden cure. All it took was blood, or bone marrow, or sometimes an organ or two. Mine grow back, you know. Mostly.”
I went still, my hand on the plastic railing of the bed for support, staring at her in disbelief. “Your mom sold your organs?” I knew humans did things every bit as horrific as the gods, even to their own children, but still.
“Pretty much.” She cleared her throat, and I realized how insensitive that question had been. “Anyway, I spent pretty much my entire life in the hospital while my mom lived it up. Jason saved me from that.” Her eyes softened. “He stole me away. With my help, of course. And now . . . I can’t stand the thought of even giving blood. Even though it could have helped you.” Guilt flickered in her eyes. “I tried. But I couldn’t separate it in my head. It just—”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I assured her, sliding my other foot into the sandal and releasing my death hold on the rough, plastic support. Any additional power pumping through my veins would have reacted to the poison and made me feel a thousand times worse. Healing Adonis after Ares had been charmed into stabbing him had mitigated the effects of the poison, but only because it took my powers out of me and put them in him. I wasn’t sure how long my powers would reside in Adonis. The process was supposed to take months, but the precise timing varied, case by case. I was almost dreading their return.
She studied me for a long moment and seemed to realize I meant it. A smile broke out across her face. “You’re the first person I’ve told. I mean, most of the others know—they were there when Jason rescued me, so it’s not like I needed to tell them, but I’ve never made that choice before. I’m glad I told you.”
I returned her smile, a little uncomfortable with the blatant adulation in Medea’s eyes. “Um, yeah. No problem.” Glancing around the room, I found everything packed. “So . . . why the lab work?” I asked, gathering up the shopping bags Medea had brought me.
“Hmm?” She took the other bag and headed out the door.
I followed her down the hall. “The first day you dropped by, you said—”
“Oh, that.” Her expression darkened. “I’m not ready to talk about that, yet.”
Okay then.
“This way.” Medea motioned to the large glass doors at the front of the hospital. “Adonis took care of all the check-out stuff for you, and, oh—speak of the devil.” She waved as Ares walked through the sliding glass doors.
A grin broke out across his face as he walk-jogged over to me and reached for my shopping bag. “Got here as soon as I could. Let me take this.”
“Thanks,” I said, giving him a relieved grin. The bags wouldn’t have been heavy to me a month ago, but now I already felt winded.
When he kissed my cheek, Medea stiffened.
“Here,” he offered, holding out a pair of sunglasses as we exited the hospital, stepping into the searing bright sunlight. “You’re going to need these.”
Chapter XII
Medea
DESPITE MY SUNGLASSES, I found myself squinting against the bright light when I left the hospital with Elise and Adonis. Stepping out the door felt like stepping into an oven.
“Wow!” Elise stepped backward as if knocked off balance.
“Yeah, it takes a bit to get used to the hea
t.” Adonis draped an arm around her. “Fortunately, there’s a pretty frequent breeze. This way.” He led us to a golf cart and placed the shopping bags on the back. “Medea, you want to give the tour?”
“You drive, I’ll narrate,” I offered with a forced smile. Gah, I hated the way he hung all over her. Their relationship wasn’t my business, but the fact that he’d cheated on her with a goddess and she still took him back made me sick. Elise could do so much better.
“What we call Halfling Cay, also known as the Isle of the DAMNED,” I intoned dramatically, shoving aside my worries as Adonis got the cart moving up the dirt path, “was once home to an award-winning medical resort and spa.”
“Which one?” Elise asked. The bruises on her face had faded, leaving an unmarred golden complexion. I could see why she’d done so well as a model.
“I forget,” I lied. We’d buried any references to the resort we came across on the island. If the name of the former resort got out, it wouldn’t take much for someone to find us. We’d gotten the island taken off the map, but the Internet had a long memory, and older references to that resort were hard to kill without drawing more attention to them.
“Unfortunately, the resort went out of business when the economy crashed, but their loss was our gain when one of their last patients, a demigod with substance abuse issues, noticed one of the island’s more unusual properties.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Size.”
“Huh?” Elise asked, her voice rising an octave when the cart hit a bump.
“Depending on the tide, the island is either large enough to belong in Demeter’s realm of the land, or small enough to be considered a part of Poseidon’s realm of the sea,” I explained, watching her to see if she looked confused when I named the gods. Nope. She knew her mythology. Good. “According to our sources, neither god is willing to risk offending the other, so they both leave the small patch of land alone. A bit of money, charm, and shield work took the island off the maps what was that? Five, six years ago? Pretty soon, the rest of the world forgot this island ever existed.”
Elise nodded in all the right places, but she looked a bit overwhelmed. The more I talked, the more her gaze wandered off to the side.
“Basically, we’re in a blind spot,” I said, finishing up the explanation in a hurry when I realized I’d lost her to the pretty scenery. “No one knows about us.”
“Except the humans in your hospital,” she added, eyeing the lush green trees as we passed them.
“Friends, family, and staff,” I explained. There was no reason to trouble her conscience about the forced labor that had been charmed away from my mother’s island. “They’re mostly in the know about our cause, but we do make them swear to secrecy, well, actually, we charm them, just for protection. That’s our dining hall.” I pointed to the beautiful building with more windows than walls. “Residences are this way.”
Adonis turned the cart up a small, twisty dirt road that led toward the upper cliffs of the island.
I slipped into robot mode as we rode up the incline toward the cabins, so familiar with this part of the “Welcome to the Island” speech that I said it by rote. “Every cabin has a view to die for. They each have a bedroom, living space, a bathroom, and a kitchenette. The kitchenette is pretty useless for storing more than snacks between meals, so most everyone eats in the dining hall. Breakfast and dinner are served from five to nine a.m. and p.m. respectively. Lunch is between eleven and two. Happy hour starts at eight, and everything closes at eleven. If you need anything else, clothes, tech, whatever, just put your order in at the commissary and we can have it delivered to a front organization on the mainland. Money isn’t much of an obstacle when you have charm.”
Elise took a moment to digest that, her expression obscured behind her sunglasses. “So does everyone just stay here all the time or are they allowed to leave?”
My mind flashed to her breakdown in the bathroom and a pang of sympathy went through me. She just wanted to go home. “Everyone is allowed to leave, but most people choose not to. It’s safe here from them. But if they choose to go, we take measures to ensure they can’t reveal our location to anyone.”
Elise’s lips parted, as if she wanted to ask a follow-up question. I saw the moment she decided not to when she glanced down and turned away. Worse, I knew the question. What about the people who can’t be charmed? People like her. I was glad she opted not to ask. No one wanted to hear they weren’t allowed to leave.
“Why all the business on cruise ships?” Adonis asked after an awkward silence, his question almost swallowed by the wheels churning against the steep path.
“Well,” I said, gratitude outweighing my irritation with the faithless demigod. “Very few people decline a free cruise. They get a few days to hear our pitch, then when they reach the coordinates, it’s yes or no. People who don’t want to join us don’t remember meeting us until the charm wears off way down the road, unless of course they’re immune. But we haven’t had anyone with full immunity turn us down yet.” We screened potential immunes much more carefully than the demigods who could be charmed. The cart slowed to a stop in front of Elise’s cabin. “And here we are. This one’s yours.”
All the homes on this path were painted in shades of neon. Adonis pulled up to the cheerful yellow cabin with bright orange accents. I’d offered Adonis his own cabin, but the scumbag had declined.
“Home sweet home.” Hopping out of the car, I grabbed both of the shopping bags before Adonis could reach for them and rushed into the house. He’d only be able to keep her occupied for a minute. I needed to make sure everyone was ready.
“It’s me,” I called hastily as I rounded the corner into the living room.
“How’s it look?” Glauce asked, bouncing to my side. She’d hung a welcome banner from the ceiling and strung balloons from beam to beam, giving the room a festive look.
“Good call on the colors.” I said.
Glauce had been insistent the balloons not be primary colors, because it would look childish, or pastels, because it would look like a baby or wedding shower. I’d thought that eliminated all the options. But she found pearlescent balloons in shades of orange, green, and purple. Crepe paper and bundles of balloons dotted the room, making it festive without looking gaudy.
“You’re great at this.”
Glauce flushed at the praise, and I turned my attention to the assembled demigods. “Okay, so when she comes in . . .”
“We yell ‘surprise’?” Jason asked, flashing me a grin. “I think we can handle that.”
I glanced around one more time to make sure nothing was out of place, but Glauce had seen to every detail.
“The colors here are intense,” I heard Elise say to Adonis as she walked in the door of the cabin.
“Wait till you see the view,” I called to her, grinning as her footsteps grew nearer.
“Surprise!” we shouted as Elise turned the corner.
Chapter XIII
Aphrodite
“SHE DOES NOT like you,” I muttered under my breath as Ares helped me down from the golf cart.
Ares laughed. “Well, to be fair, she thinks I cheated on you with you, so . . .”
Eh, I could see the confusion. Adonis and Elise had dated until shortly before the cruise. Adonis and I hooked up on the cruise, and now “Adonis” and “Elise” were together. “Want me to clarify that we weren’t together when that trip started?”
Ares shrugged. “That whole topic is a minefield of what can and cannot be said. Best to avoid it all together.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t volunteer anything, but don’t avoid topics if you’re asked about them either.”
Nodding, I pasted a smile on my face as we approached the threshold of the bright yellow cabin. “The colors here are intense.” I pitched my voice louder, as if we’d only been talking about the house.
Medea’s voice came from the back of the house. “Wait till you see the view.”
I followed her voice into the living area and—
“Surprise!” A wave of voices burst from a sea of golden people crammed into the tiny space.
Ares’s hand steadied me when I jerked back. “I swore I wouldn’t spoil the surprise,” he murmured in apology.
“Look at her face.” Medea beamed. “She had no idea.”
“Uh, this is. . . .Wow!” I glanced around the room, speechless. A tacky banner hung over the floor-to-ceiling windows on the back wall, proclaiming “Welcome Home, Elise!”
Jason walked to the front of the crowd, a broad smile on his face. “We figured you deserved a hero’s welcome. This is Otrera.” He beckoned to a toned, golden girl with an athletic build. “And Glauce.” He motioned a slim girl, pretty like every demigoddess I’d ever seen, but with unfortunate taste in clothes, forward.
“So nice to finally meet you,” Glauce gushed, shaking my hand.
“Hi,” Otrera said with an awkward smile.
A lanky boy whose golden features were the only thing going for him shouldered his way up to the front of the crowd. “I’m Deucalion.”
“Nestor,” another interrupted.
“Idas.”
The names just kept coming in an overwhelming cacophony of noise until one smooth voice interjected with a “We’ve met.”
“Narcissus.” My heart stuttered in my chest, my skin going cold despite the pleasant temperature of the room. He ran Adonis’s modeling agency, but not Elise’s. The demigod, apparently one of the leaders of DAMNED, had been on the cruise. We’d even had dinner together.
“I’m glad to see you two here.” He clasped Ares’s hand in a firm shake and shot me a fond smile.
“Glad to see you,” a familiar voice echoed from behind him. Narcissus’s assistant was never far from him.
“Where were you?” Ares demanded. “We tried to find—”
“Tantalus teleported me to the island. He was convinced there were gods on board trying to take my place using glamours.” Narcissus shrugged, batting a balloon away from his face. “I never saw anyone other than the redhead, and she was in no shape to do any harm. But better safe than sorry.”
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