“Yes,” Hermes would say, “it amuses me. I’m messing with you. That’s what I do. I’m Hermes, I mess with people!”
It was true that he liked to mess with people, but not in the case of his accent. Though he was god of messengers, travelers, and merchants, Hermes was a trickster first and foremost. Any mythological scholar could tell the tale of how he (Hermes, not the scholar) had stolen Apollo’s cattle by nightfall on the very day he was born. (In truth it was by midafternoon, but Hermes wasn’t huffy about the distinction.) Giving him the responsibility of messenger-god was initially just a means of keeping Hermes off Olympus and out of everyone’s hair. Zeus routinely sent him to the relatively far-off British Isles for that very purpose. Eventually Hermes spent so much time there that he picked up the accent and a bad case of rickets. Of the two, the accent was the one that stuck, and its cause was a sore spot.
Hermes sometimes wondered if he might be less of a scamp had Zeus been a better father. Probably not, he usually decided. When one could fly faster, hide better, and listen farther than any other immortal, the temptation for mischief was just too great. Still, one could never be sure.
The Muses landed amid the trees in Hyde Park and shifted into the guise of regular women—or regular gorgeous women, anyway. There wasn’t enough secrecy in the world to cloak a Muse’s ego. Hermes continued to trail them as they entered the Hyde Park Corner tube station. Subtle as always, they didn’t bother buying tickets but simply waved their hands over the turnstile sensors and stepped through as they opened. Unwilling to risk invisibility in a crowd, Hermes chose the guise of an unassuming backpacker and followed them.
The Muses continued ahead of him, oblivious. The longer Hermes followed, the more he felt this had to do with something bigger than crosswords. At the limits of his senses, something dangerous tingled, the source of which he couldn’t quite place.
Erato and Polyhymnia reached Platform 2 and halted in apparent anticipation of a train. Neither spoke to the other. Whatever the cause of their journey together, it wasn’t reconciliation.
Ignoring each other with practiced flair, they instead fixed their attention on a street violinist in a bright blue woolen cap. Behind a case spattered with coins, the violinist had been plying his skills to produce what could only very generously be described as an uninspired jig― until Erato took an interest. After only a few moments under her stare, his tune transformed into a seductive melody of unparalleled intensity. Heated and tempting, it all but peeled the clothes from a listener’s body. Heavy, needful. It rippled through the small group of Londoners. Their eyes widened. Their faces flushed. Though immune himself, Hermes could sense every chord resonating within the listeners’ blood as it pumped hotter, full of desires aching for release.
Also immune was Polyhymnia, whose expression implied that the only thing of hers aching for release was a troublesome lump of bile in her throat. The Muse of sacred songs, of oratory, and of rhetoric (and more recently of legal disclaimers) rolled her eyes, cleared her throat, and nodded once toward the performer. Again his music shifted, this time reforming into a flowing processional easily at home in the grandest temple. Reverent strums of the violinist’s bow dissolved the previous spell as every measure testified to the glory of all creation. Hermes saw tears forming in the eyes of the more easily inspired listeners.
Erato’s own eyes merely blazed with competitive fire as she strove to regain control. The Muses’ dueling influences soon tugged at the poor violinist’s inspiration like two dachshunds with a towel. The music of chaos resulted: Pious sexual melodies teased at Tube-goers’ ears with sensual whispers of offers void where prohibited by law. Achingly passionate appeals slithered along napes of necks with the desire to consult a doctor if listeners experienced dizziness, dry mouth, or uncontrollable yodeling. The violinist himself sidled up to a nearby woman, his instrument held whisper-close to her ear, his heated gaze fixed upon her . . . his bow clearly demonstrating the health warning of a wall-mounted whisky advertisement.
Hermes tried his best to snicker in silence. Even though his curiosity had not yet been satisfied, the god of mischief already judged his trip worth it for this spectacle alone. He edged closer, trying to keep from laughing lest he blow his cover as another immortal in disguise.
He failed. As he tried to pass the laugh off as a reaction to swallowing a bug, Polyhymnia shot a glance toward him, eyebrow cocked. Hermes avoided eye contact. He turned his back, intending to give a show of clearing his throat, when he was shocked to see Apollo himself stepping onto the platform from the tunnel. Though Apollo wore a disguise of his own, the god had a habit of reusing faces. Hermes recognized him instantly and froze.
As minor immortals, the Muses lacked the power to truly see Hermes for who he was. (The consensus among the Olympians was that he was far too skilled in deception for his—or, more accurately, for their—own good.) Yet a god of Apollo’s stature might very well spot him if given cause to look closely enough. Two other women whom Hermes pegged as additional Muses flanked the sun god, and now things were starting to smell terribly clandestine. Were that the case, they’d be on their guard. Polyhymnia would likely tell Apollo of the traveler who had failed to react to the music as any mortal would. One way or another, they could easily discover his eavesdropping.
The god of mischief cursed under his breath. The Fates seemed to be conspiring to seriously ruin his fun, not to mention his reputation: Hermes did not get caught! Not unless he wished to, at any rate.
At that moment, the Piccadilly Line thrust its way into the station. While getting caught by Erato under other, more private circumstances could be interesting, Hermes took the opportunity to back off from the whole group. In the crowd of travelers beginning to swarm the platform, Hermes slipped past Apollo and back up the station tunnel. He had time. Few things were faster than he, and a Tube train wasn’t one of them.
Hermes spent a few minutes pretending to study a Tube map until the train continued on its way through the tunnels, and then he rushed back to the tracks where a once-more uninspired violinist’s jig filled the air. Though Hermes gave the area an extra few moments' study, there was no sign of Apollo or the Muses. Now he had only scant time to reach the next station when the train did so he could properly track them.
He jogged down the length of the platform, spent precious seconds dropping a few bills into the violinist’s case as thanks for the amusement, and then ducked behind a beverage machine just long enough to go invisible without attracting attention. Moments later he was streaking down the tracks after the train.
He caught up to the train a short while before it made its next stop at Green Park Station. Settling in atop the train itself, Hermes pored through the crowd on the platform for any sign of the group and came up empty. Either they were still on the train, or Apollo had shifted his guise and he’d missed them. Hermes counted the first more likely.
It was a disquieting thought. Either Hermes was still on the trail of something small, or he had lost the trail of something big. Or, he realized, Apollo had shifted disguises but remained on the train. Or Apollo just wasn’t shifting no matter what was going on. Or they were all just going out to a concert or something and didn’t want to be mobbed by mortals and paparazzi.
A proliferation of possibilities topped the pile of reasons that Hermes disliked over-thinking things. He went with his gut (it hadn’t steered him wrong yet): they were still on the train. Even so, he fought the urge to try to peek down through a window.
Now any mortal yahoo somehow able to observe the situation would likely wonder why Hermes, being invisible, didn’t just slip into the car, or why Apollo and the others wouldn’t travel invisibly for the entire journey. Mortals have something of a fascination with invisibility— some secretly desire to avoid attention, others just wish to slink through a locker room of the opposite sex. Make no mistake, the immortals of Olympus go invisible for these very reasons (the latter especially). The trouble is that invisibility isn’t nea
rly as effective when trying to hide from other gods. At best, it produces a telltale shimmer effect that only goes unnoticed by immortal eyes if not directly viewed. If the immortal is making any effort at all to see an invisible party, invisibility is akin to throwing a sheet over one’s head and pretending to be an unwanted pile of linens, which is more or less useless unless one is trailing another through a laundry room. A few gods have even developed an uncanny knack of hearing an invisibility field. Disguise is a much more effective method, and most Olympian egos prefer their majesty to be seen in some form, anyway.
As it turned out, the group remained on the train for a number of additional stops, finally departing together and making their way to the streets above. Hermes became visible in an alcove near the exit and followed Apollo and what appeared now to be six Muses at a discreet distance. Apollo was silent. More remarkable, so were the attending Muses.
A short while later, Hermes was crawling along the sticky floor of a movie theater balcony.
The group had entered the theater ahead of him and slipped past the Balcony Closed sign in what even Hermes had to admit was a remarkably discreet fashion for a group of six devastatingly attractive women and their lucky male escort. After a five-minute lead time to allow Apollo to check for eavesdroppers, Hermes crept up after them, spied the three remaining Muses waiting for them in the otherwise empty balcony, and quickly changed into a turtle.
With all due respect to the Spanish Inquisition, Hermes thought, no one expects the turtle. He had always liked turtles. Adopting the guise of a creature with all the flamboyance of a dead rock was useful for remaining unnoticed. Besides, the irony of the fastest god in the bunch taking the form of a turtle was just too enticing to resist. Plus they were just darned cute.
Hermes turtled his steady, silent way through spilled beverages and dropped popcorn toward the meeting, for a meeting it was, he’d decided. The theater was showing Fart-Boom 3: The Jiggling, and not even Dionysus, whose hedonism had drunk his good taste under the table long ago, would see something like that in the theater. So then, what was so secret that they couldn’t just meet on Olympus? The tingling sense became a buzzing, with a slight reggae beat. The last time he got a sense that powerful, Zeus wound up murdered. Nursing a growing suspicion, lucky Hermes crept in behind Calliope’s foot and listened.
Apollo wasted no time once they’d reached the balcony. Within the first five minutes, he questioned the Muses about their extra workloads and frustrations in dealing with modern mortals since the Return. True to Thalia’s prediction, nearly all save Urania were feeling the pressure. Before Urania could offer to help balance things, Apollo went on to tell them of how he’d sought a vision to aid him with similar troubles. The nine of them gasped in unison at the tale.
“Much is unclear,” Apollo said. “Chiefly, how likely Zeus is to truly return, and just what part this mortal does play.”
As often happened when the entire group was together, Calliope spoke for them all. “Do you know who he is? Or why they were on the Tower at all?”
Apollo shook his head. “I cannot be certain the vision is a literal one. I don’t yet know who he is, no. But I have a few details. For one, he’s an American.”
Clio (Muse of history, historical fiction, and travel writing) chuckled. “Ah, the Americans. It’s always about them, isn’t it? Do you know they’re remaking Gandhi and setting it in Indiana to make it more accessible? Is that not insane?”
“Oh my gods, I know!” Thalia chimed. “Accessible: I absolutely loathe that word! Goodness forbid they should—”
“—should ever be asked to relate to something beyond their own precise experience! Exactly!” Clio finished.
“The public isn’t nearly as closed-minded as Hollywood thinks,” Erato purred. “They’re only adding to the problem—”
Apollo cleared his throat. “If we might concentrate on the matter at hand . . .”
The Muses returned their attention to him en masse and merged their voices in a nine-toned chord to deliver a unified “Sorry, Apollo.”
He loved when they did that.
“Obviously this isn’t something we can tell anyone else about. Not yet, not until we know more. Whoever killed Zeus has a vested interest in stopping his resurrection. Those uninvolved still enjoy the fruits of the Return to the point where we cannot be sure of their loyalties.”
“Apollo,” Calliope began, “someone can kill gods. You don’t know how certain Zeus’s return is. Is it worth the risk to pursue this and possibly be slain yourself?”
“Weigh that against the risk of Zeus’s wrath should he return, and a continuance of our current difficulties. I believe that to be the greater peril.”
“What about Artemis?” asked Calliope. “Surely you can trust your twin sister?”
“I don’t want to involve her just yet. If we’re found out, the less she’s involved, the less danger she’ll be in, and—”
“Oh, but you’re just fine endangering us.”
“—and the better position she’ll be in to help us if we get driven off Olympus.” He fixed a stern gaze on the protesting Melpomene, Muse of tragedy, horror, and children’s books. “I endanger you whether or not you’re involved. You’re Zeus’s daughters and my own subordinates. Should anyone discover me, you nine are guilty by association. Working together, we’re stronger.”
Melpomene gave a wicked chuckle. “Oh, I know. I’m simply injecting a little conflict for the sake of drama.”
Apollo sighed through a grudging smile. “Flex the Muse-muscles later, please.”
“Use it or lose it.”
“Time and place.”
“But what are we to do, Apollo?” Calliope asked. “Secret meetings off Olympus are all well and good—”
“Though a movie theater is a tad clichéd,” Terpsichore added.
“—but talk alone will only get us so far before it gets us hanged. So to speak.”
Thalia patted her shoulder. “Nice phrasing.”
“Thank you. Did you like it? I thought it could’ve been better.”
“It was good for off the cuff! Maybe needs just a little polishing.”
Apollo crossed his arms, considering just the right words to make a fine, thrusting point. “Hey!” he decided.
Again they turned toward him as one. “Sorry, Apollo.”
It gave him a fantastic shiver.
“To answer your question, our next step is reconnaissance. Track down this mortal. Once you learn who he is, follow him. Try to figure out just what he’s got to do with Zeus or what he could be doing to bring Zeus back.”
“Might this fellow be one of Zeus’s mortal children?” Calliope offered. “It seems likely if he’s connected to resurrecting him. Dramatically speaking, anyway.”
Apollo nodded. “It’s possible. We know nothing of how Zeus was killed, nor the exact manner of his return, so for the moment it’s only speculation.”
“Or . . . it’s foreshadowing!” Melpomene declared.
“This is reality, Melpomene,” Apollo warned. “Even were it not, I’d rather the Muse of tragedy not be writing it.”
“You forgot children’s books.”
“Yes, she’s a modicum less depressing now,” Erato said.
“Regardless. Find this mortal and follow him. Do not approach—not yet—and do it in shifts. All nine Muses following around a single mortal is bound to attract attention sooner or later. And I’m going to remind you all because, frankly, I worry that you’re not taking this seriously enough: speak of this to no one.”
Calliope nodded for all of them. “Don’t mistake playful for ditzy, Apollo. You ought to know that much about us by now.”
“Ooh,” Melpomene snickered, “is that foreshadowing?”
Apollo ignored her.
Caught up in thought, Hermes belatedly realized that he was chewing on a discarded gummy worm. He spit it out and watched Apollo and the Muses file out of the theater as he pondered just what to do. It didn’t t
ake long. Really, Hermes didn’t see that he had much choice. He liked Apollo, he really did.
It was a shame he’d have to tell the others.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Forget Hephaestus’s plasma screens, I don’t care how enormous they are. When you’re mortal-watching, they just don’t offer the same video quality as a good starlit pool. And if you knew half of the secrets I do about plasma screens, you’d never want to get near the things.”
—Hecate (blog entry, January 12, 2010)
“Oh, please. The only ‘secret’ Hecate knows about plasma screens is that she broke hers and Hephaestus refused to fix it for a decade. Don’t ask how she broke it. She’s . . . weird. Adopted, too, you know.”
—Aphrodite (The Early Show with Danny O’Neill, January 14, 2010)
IN A CONCRETE, whitewashed chamber in the middle of a secret compound, Brittany Simons (a.k.a. Wynter Nightsorrow, a.k.a. the young woman from Chapter Four) sat tied to a chair. Her captors had tied her up with a distinct lack of mercy—the ropes binding her wrists cut and chafed until she'd abandoned trying to escape. Sweat beaded on her forehead under the blinding, hot lights. Every once in a while, her captors would come in to ask her questions or try to convince her to turn from her heathen ways, and each time she refused to answer with anything but curses. To those who observed, she was clearly miserable.
Yet inside, Wynter couldn’t stop unsmiling. At last, some persecution! As a bonus, her captors had let slip that she was now held prisoner in what they described as a “secret compound”. Jackpot!
Yes, Wynter hid her elation well. So well, in fact, that deep within the Olympian courtyards, Hecate gazed into a starlit pool displaying Wynter’s distant image and saw nothing but suffering.
Though none were watching Hecate, the goddess’s own displeasure was plainly apparent to those nonexistent observers: the insult was unimaginable! That these so-called Ninjas Templar would dare to desecrate one of her own temples was repugnant enough. That they would kidnap and attempt to “save” one of her favorite priestesses set her seething. That they had burst in on the cusp of a ritual of secrets enraged her beyond words!
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