The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4

by V. J. Chambers

  “Well, it would be dumb to steal it,” said Sawyer. “If you took it, the person who made that dress would complain, and you wouldn’t be able to wear it without everyone knowing what you did.”

  “Good point,” said Nora.

  Maddie cocked her head to look at the dress. “We were really reaching to think it was Techne, weren’t we?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Sawyer.

  “I wish it was her,” sad Nora. “I really don’t like her. I was looking forward to beating her up or something.”

  Sawyer laughed. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”

  “It makes me mad when you say that my anger is cute,” said Nora, narrowing her eyes.

  He kissed her.

  “Ugh,” Maddie groaned. “You guys, seriously.”

  “What?” said Nora. “I thought you wanted me to make up with Sawyer. You gave me that whole speech about how the thing with you and Agler wasn’t the same.”

  “Wait,” said Sawyer. “What thing with you and Agler?”

  “You don’t know?” said Nora.

  “I guess I didn’t tell you,” said Maddie.

  “Tell me what?” said Sawyer.

  * * *

  Sawyer charged into Agler’s tent.

  Agler was lounging on an arm chair holding a mug of beer. He got to his feet. “Sawyer?”

  Sawyer didn’t think he’d ever been quite this angry in his entire life. He was shaking all over. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to do, or how he was going to do it, but he knew that he had to do something. “You’re a complete jackass, you know that?”

  “I’m what?”

  This was stupid. Agler was way bigger than he was. He was probably four inches taller, and his shoulders were a lot broader. Not to mention the fact that physical confrontations were frowned upon in Helicon. People didn’t hit other people here. But Sawyer wanted to hit Agler. God, he wanted to.

  Sawyer clenched his hands into fists.

  “What’s wrong?” Agler set down his beer on the ground. “I know that you and I never really been close friends exactly, but—”

  “Maddie.” Sawyer’s nostrils flared. He took several steps forward, bringing up his fists.

  Agler backed away. “You just found out about that?”

  “How could you do that to her?” Sawyer advanced on him.

  Agler held up his hands, cowering. “I don’t know.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Agler’s voice broke. “Go ahead. I fucking deserve it.”

  What? Sawyer hadn’t been expecting that.

  Agler looked down at the floor, his shoulders slumped. “I never wanted to hurt her.”

  Sawyer felt the anger draining out of him. He dropped his hands, releasing his fists.

  “I didn’t mean for it to be like that.” Agler covered his face with his hands. “I was just so drunk.”

  “Oh,” Sawyer said, feeling stupid.

  “I tried to apologize, but she hates me.” He thrust his hands into his hair. “I don’t know what to do anymore. And obviously, she’s still upset, because she sent you after me.”

  “She didn’t send me,” said Sawyer. “I just came. I don’t really know why. When I heard what you did, I felt really angry. I wanted to come hurt you.” He considered. “It’s a pretty… male thing for me to feel. I don’t usually feel like that.”

  Agler looked up at him. “You were going to come beat me up?”

  “Well, I was going to try. I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea.” Sawyer looked down at his purple skirt. It had scalloped edges with sparkling embroidery. “Obviously I wouldn’t have been able to hurt you.”

  “I kind of wish you would. I deserve it. It might make it easier. All I do is feel guilty anymore.” Agler sank back down in his chair. He picked his beer back up. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sawyer. “I guess so. She was pretty matter of fact about it when she told me tonight.”

  Agler gestured to the other arm chair. “I have more beer if you want.”

  Sawyer sat down gingerly. “Uh, okay.”

  Agler handed him a bottle. “Don’t have any other glasses, though.”

  “It’s fine.” He opened it. He took a sip.

  “She’s a sweet girl,” said Agler. “She deserved better. Especially for her first time. I mean, that’s rough for all girls.”

  Sawyer slugged his beer. “Yeah, why is that?”

  “It’s a conspiracy to make all men feel guilty all the time,” said Agler. “That’s what women do to us. You might as well go back to being gay. I think it’s easier.”

  Sawyer found himself letting out a small chuckle.

  Agler gave him a lopsided smile.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Word on the street was that Techne was so angry about the play that she was going to really go off at the next council meeting, so Nora and Sawyer made sure to show up. Nora sort of agreed with her. She thought the play had been in poor taste. Sawyer didn’t think so, although other people reported that it got extremely raunchy after they’d left. Freya’d had sex with all of the dwarves. On stage. Although there hadn’t been actual penetration or anything, all of the actors had been naked, and it had looked pretty realistic.

  But they didn’t want to go to the council meeting because they wanted Techne to be successful in censoring all the plays from then out. Mostly, they wanted to go for the drama factor. Techne was going to get mad, and Julian would probably get mad too, and then there would be angry muses having a big argument, and that sounded relatively exciting.

  A lot of other muses seemed to be looking forward to it as well, because the council meeting was packed that night.

  Unfortunately, Techne wasn’t there.

  Someone from the science enclave reported that she’d come down with the exhaustion sickness, and she couldn’t be roused from bed.

  This sent panic through the muses, and the subject immediately changed to the problem of the sickness.

  Which then turned to the problem of finding Owen.

  Which then turned to the status of the dimension device.

  Coeus, looking haggard and tired, got to his feet. “The engineering enclave is at its limit right now. Half of Helicon is sick, and that means that we’re doing twice as much work as we usually would, because there’s less people to deal with the things that break and run down. Add that to the fact that half of the engineering enclave is sick, and you realize that we’re all working harder than we normally would. There’s no time to work on the dimension device.”

  Someone asked if volunteers could go to engineering to work on it.

  Last year, Nora and the gang had all been helping out Coeus when they were relegated to the security enclave for the sake of safety.

  But Coeus shook his head, “It’s not really at a place yet where I can use the help of non-technical muses. I really need engineers right now. But it’s a nice idea.”

  Someone else said that there had to be some way of lessening the load on the engineering enclave.

  There was more discussion of voting on the motion made at a previous meeting, the one that asked muses not to bother the engineers for three months.

  But before anyone could move for that again, someone else spoke up.

  “Coeus said something about canceling May Day last time. What about canceling the Science and Math Gala?”

  There were mutters of dissent and agreement, and Phoebe held up her hands like she was going to say something.

  Before she could, another muse started talking. “Techne’s sick, and so is Jack.” Jack Leaf was the head of the math enclave, Nora remembered. “That already puts strain on the science and math enclaves. It’s going to be a lot of work to get the Gala together. It will take a lot of resources. And it’s hardly one of the more important gatherings, like a Solstice or something.”

  “Not important?” said a math muse. “Of course math and science are important.”


  “All of our events are important,” said Phoebe. “Each one represents a concentrated burst of creativity that we send to the mundane world. Canceling one is equivalent to canceling a huge bunch of inspiration threads. If we cancel the event, we let down the mundane world, and our purpose is to inspire them. That’s what we do.”

  “You’re always harping on that, Phoebe,” said one of the muses, “but you realize that if we all keep getting sick like this, we’re not going to be able to send any inspiration threads at all.”

  “And we’re not going to be able to fight Owen either, because we’ll be too sick to do anything.”

  “This could level us,” said the first muse.

  “I think canceling the Gala is extreme,” said Phoebe. She turned to Coeus. “But do you think it would enable you to focus more on the dimension device?”

  Coeus glanced at Phoebe, and then glanced away. It was obvious that he didn’t want to say anything that would make her too displeased. After all, she was his significant other, not just the head of the council. But he nodded. “Well, there are a lot of things the engineering enclave has to sort out for a big event like that. If we didn’t have to worry about it, we would be able to shift our focus to the dimension device.”

  Phoebe sighed. She turned back to the gathering. “All right, then. Do we have a motion on the floor?”

  “I move that the Science and Math Gala be canceled this year.”

  “I second.”

  “Is there any discussion?” Phoebe asked.

  There was some. Some of the muses weren’t the least bit happy with the idea of putting off the Gala. They all spoke about why it was important, about what Helicon would be missing for the year. While each spoke, Phoebe nodded in agreement. It was easy to see that she wasn’t happy about the cancellation.

  But in the end, the council was a democratic organization, and Phoebe’s desires, even as the head of the council, were not as important as what all of the other muses wanted. And the vote to cancel the Gala was clear. More were in favor than opposed.

  There would be no Math and Science Gala.

  Phoebe said it was the first time it hadn’t been held in hundreds of years.

  Everyone left the council meeting feeling a little bit subdued. Instead of a dramatic fight, what they’d gotten was a sobering reminder that all was not well in Helicon, and that the muses might very well be in great danger.

  * * *

  “You guys mind company?”

  Nora looked up from the table. Agler was standing over them. She, Maddie, and Sawyer were at breakfast, and they were all eating oatmeal full of plump raisins and cinnamon.

  Nora turned to Maddie, raising her eyebrows. If Agler was going to sit down with them, it was really her call.

  Maddie seemed very interested in her bowl of oatmeal.

  Agler sat down next to her. “You don’t like the oatmeal? You’ve hardly touched it.”

  Maddie looked at him, her eyes wide. “What do you want?”

  “Um, I was thinking, you know, about the last council meeting,” said Agler. “Owen’s out there, messing up stuff in Helicon, and I remembered that two years ago, the four of us were kind of the last defense against Owen, and I just thought that maybe we should try to do something again.”

  Maddie stirred her oatmeal. “Yeah, well, if you remember, that didn’t turn out very well. Owen got into both your head and mine.”

  “Well, now we know more,” said Agler. “We know what he’s capable of. We can stop him.”

  “How are we going to do that?” said Maddie.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Agler. “But I thought that maybe if we put our heads together—”

  “You think we haven’t been trying?” said Maddie.

  “Actually,” said Sawyer, “we really haven’t.”

  “We’ve been questioning people,” said Maddie. “We think that Owen is possessing someone, and we’re going to figure out who it is.”

  “Possessing someone?” said Agler. “Why do you think that?”

  Maddie made a face. “Why do we think that?”

  “Well, Himeros was acting weird at May Day,” said Sawyer, “and last year, Nora saw his eyes turn colors like Owen’s.”

  “You said that about me, too, though,” said Agler, turning to Nora. “I thought you’d been drugged or something.”

  Nora chewed on her lip. “Yeah. I guess maybe it doesn’t make sense for him to be possessing people.”

  “Well, he could be,” said Maddie.

  “No,” said Sawyer. “That theory seems pretty busted.”

  “See, I was thinking that maybe he’s got someone working with him here in Helicon,” said Agler. “Like Daryl was last year.”

  Maddie stiffened.

  Agler noticed. “Sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t think—”

  “You don’t think very often, do you?” said Maddie.

  He sighed. “You want me to leave?”

  Maddie set down her spoon.

  “If you don’t want him around, then say so,” said Nora.

  “No,” Maddie said. “It’s fine.” She took a deep breath. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe Owen is working with someone, like he was before.”

  “On the other hand,” said Sawyer, “maybe he’s doing something completely new, something we haven’t even thought about.”

  “Well, he can’t get into Helicon,” said Nora. “So he’s got to be using someone who’s here.”

  “Or,” said Sawyer, “he’s sending the sickness in some other way. The mundane world sends energy back into Helicon. Maybe Owen can beam sickness in the same way.”

  “If he’s doing that,” said Nora, “then why are only certain people getting sick?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sawyer.

  “If you’re right,” said Agler, “then how would we stop that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sawyer.

  They were all quiet.

  Nora ate some oatmeal. It was really good. She should eat oatmeal for breakfast more often. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t make it. Pancakes or omelets took nearly as much time to make, and they were equally yummy.

  Owen. She needed to be thinking about Owen. It was so easy to get distracted in Helicon.

  “So,” said Sawyer, “if Owen’s working with someone, who do you think it might be?”

  “You’re giving up on your idea?” said Nora.

  “We should check out Agler’s idea first,” said Sawyer. “If it’s a dead end, then we’ll try to figure how out to investigate other ideas.”

  Nora guessed that made sense.

  “Well,” said Maddie, “Daryl was one of Owen’s little group of followers. You remember them?”

  “Yeah,” said Agler. “Two years ago, we followed them out in woods, right?”

  “Before Owen talked you into beating him up?” said Nora.

  Agler looked away, chagrined. “I almost forgot about that. I really didn’t used to think of myself as an impulsive person, but apparently…”

  “There were three other guys besides Daryl,” said Maddie. “We should probably talk to them first. They were the closest to Owen.”

  “You think we need the cordial for this?” said Sawyer.

  “The cordial?” said Agler.

  “Handy little gift from Loki,” said Nora. She turned to Sawyer. “Probably a good idea, I guess. If they are working with Owen, either of them, I doubt they’ll actually come clean about it just because we ask nicely.”

  “I want to be there when you question them,” said Agler.

  “We’ll all be there,” said Maddie. “I’ll talk to them, say it’s got something to do with Daryl. Meet me this evening.”

  * * *

  Nora was working on sculpting a tiny horse. She’d been recruited by Mica Pineapple a muse who was making a big inspiration thread based around a miniature manor house she was making. The whole thing was intricate and detailed, down to the tiny horses and people that populated the house
. Mica had been working with some other muses on the project, but they’d all gotten sick, and she’d recruited Nora’s help.

  Nora didn’t mind working on it. At first, it had even been fun. But now, the days she spent making small dogs and servants and carriages seemed to drag on and on. She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be done. It was starting to feel less like fun and more like work. She considered telling Mica that she wanted to drop out, but it was so important to her that Nora didn’t think she could really go through with it.

  So she worked on getting the tiny mane of the horse just perfect, and tried not to think about the ten other horses she had to make today. Mica wanted the stable full. Once the sculpting was done, Nora was going to have to paint them all. She hoped that would be a little more fun.

  As she worked, she thought about the conversation at breakfast.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about working with Agler. He said he wanted to help, and she didn’t think Agler was a bad guy. But she didn’t like the way he’d treated Maddie. He’d just shown up, sat down with them without waiting for Maddie to say it was okay. Sure, Nora knew he wanted to do the right thing, but she didn’t know how she felt about him right now.

  She remembered the previous May Day, how it had been her and Agler out in the fields kissing. If she hadn’t been drugged by Owen that night, might she have had sex with Agler? Would it have been the way that it was with Maddie and Agler between her and Agler? What if she’d lost her virginity to Agler instead of Sawyer? Would it have made a difference?

  Thinking stuff like that made her feel guilty. She loved Sawyer, and she knew that what she had with him was so much deeper than anything she’d ever felt for Agler. Still… Agler was so, well, masculine. And Sawyer was, well, not.

  She was pretty sure that it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. No matter what she did, she wouldn’t have had good sex the first time, whether it had been with a masculine, older guy or not.

  In fact, maybe she and Sawyer needed to try having sex again, because maybe this time it would end up being a lot better than the first time. Probably, once she and Sawyer figured out how to get it on properly, she wouldn’t think stuff like this about Agler anymore.

  “Nora?”