“What’s that?” I asked, having lost the thread of the conversation about the time I started imagining Uncle Christos being torn limb from limb.
“I said they’ve more or less stayed away from L.A., for reasons we suspect begin with Scient- and end with -ology. They don’t exactly encourage competition.”
“And you think Christos is on the run from this Back to Earth cult? Or trapped inside?”
“I don’t know. We—our phone call was cut off. But he’d definitely seen something, and it had him scared.”
Christos scared. The two didn’t even belong in the same sentence. He hadn’t left the circus because he was afraid of heights and couldn’t bring himself to join the family acrobatic troupe, like me. (Or been asked to leave because he couldn’t keep his snooping to a minimum and unearthed dirty little secrets no one wanted brought to light.) He’d left because it was too tame.
“Well, damn,” I said, because that about summed it all up.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Chapter Four
“So, which is it? Are you crazy by nature or nurture?”
—soon-to-be-ex boyfriend to Tori Karacis just before she decked him
A trip to the San Francisco area was definitely in order. But first, I had some snooping to do here. Those bodies atop Mount Lee hadn’t shredded themselves. I had to know what I was dealing with. I didn’t know what I’d find that the Feds hadn’t. It didn’t seem likely they’d left any evidence behind. But maybe the Oracular powers Apollo had given me would kick in at the site. They had to be good for something besides lost sleep…right? I hoped so anyway.
Before I could so much as grab my car keys, my cell phone rang and “Yiayia” come up on the display in all her hirsute glory. Yiayia—grandmother—was the Rialto Brothers’ bearded lady. And a damned good one at that. All natural. Nothing added. Legend had it that our family line had begun when the god Pan had beer-goggled one of the gorgons. I’d recently learned that it was all the gods’ honest truth. At least we’d so far managed to avoid tusks and serpent-hair—cousin Tina’s aggressive overbite and my unruly curls aside.
One ignored Yiayia at their peril.
“Kalimera,” I said. Good morning. I forced cheer into my voice.
“You have been holding out on me. Again,” she accused in answer.
Well, crap. I was in for it now. I could almost see my snickerdoodle train leaving the station. Yiayia’s hobby (*cough* obsession) was running Goddities, a tell-all website/gossip rag about the Greek gods. Think WikiLeaks for Olympians. What I learned, I was expected to pass along instantly. Or else.
“Um, what do you think I know?”
“Anipsi,” she said, disappointment in her voice, “the chats are all abuzz. They say you’ve opened up a portal to the underworld!”
Geez, did everybody know about it except me? Wait, Goddities couldn’t be Apollo’s source, could it? Surely not.
“Um, well, not me exactly. I’ve actually only just learned of it.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Tell me more,” she ordered, like it was obvious.
Hermes’s hairy heinie. Well, any search engine would probably turn up the story about the bodies I was soon headed to investigate, so it wasn’t like I was giving away state secrets. Only…what if, as I’d feared during the worst of my paranoia, the Feds or the police or someone really was listening in on my calls? I thought back on what we’d said so far. Probably enough to get Yiayia committed to a nice mental facility. Maybe we could get adjoining padded cells.
“Well, you’ve heard about the bodies found on Mount Lee?” I asked.
“No-o-o,” she said slowly.
“Check them out.”
“Are you with someone?” she asked, clearly wondering why I didn’t give her the goods myself.
“Yes,” I answered. It seemed easiest.
“Is it your sexy cop?”
I smiled. “No.”
There was a pause. “Tell me it is not Apollo. I thought you were through with him. Remember what happened to Cassandra.”
Ah yes, the prophetess of Troy, who had the power to see but not be believed.
“I know.”
“Or Daphne.” Who was turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo’s advances.
“I’ve got it. Listen, it’s not him, okay. What else is the rumor mill saying?”
A shiver of alarm shot through me, and I knew that whatever she was about to say I wouldn’t like. I hoped Apollo’s god-granted gift didn’t start me jumping at shadows. I had enough troubles.
“They say that Persephone has used the path you’ve opened to flee Hades…for good.”
“I didn’t think that was possible. I thought Persephone had to live a certain amount of time in the Underworld or she’d wither away.”
“Maybe it’s come to that. Maybe it’s a small price to pay after all this time…or she’s found some other way. But, this global warming kick that’s all over the news right now? They say that’s Demeter…gloating.”
“Well, crap.”
“If Hades blames you for his big brothers’ jailing, even if they weren’t on the best of terms, or for Persephone’s betrayal…you’d better watch your back. I—I’m worried about you, Anipsi.”
I was worried about me too. I had to think pissing off the god of the underworld was a hundred times worse than crossing Apollo, the god of music and light.
“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “But…if you hear anything more, you’ll tell me?”
“As long as you promise to keep me in the poop in return.”
“That’s in the loop, Yiayia.”
“Fine, whatever. What about coming on for a guest chat at Goddities?” she asked, shifting gears fast enough to give me whiplash. “You’re practically a celebrity. The group would go gaga.”
At least she had that right. “Uh, I’ll think about it.” When pigs fly. “I’m a little busy right now.”
“Any word on Christos?”
Ah, there it was. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her about Dionysus and Back to Earth, but if she didn’t already know anything about BTE, I didn’t want to tell her and risk seeing it all over the web. I didn’t need them to know I was coming for them, and I didn’t want to put Christos in danger. I put her off with a vague, “I have a lead… But maybe you can help me,” I added. “Do you know any important dates in Christos’s life that he might use as a password? I already tried his and Helen’s birthdays and their anniversary.”
There was the smallest hesitation before she said, “Try February 1, 1980.”
“What is February 1, 1980?”
“The day of their great sorrow,” she said, a tone in her voice I’d never heard before—something like reverence. “Christos and Alexa so wanted to have children, but the only one conceived was stillborn…on that date. They named him and then they buried him. Christos may still honor his birth.”
I felt tears prickling behind my eyes, and my nose got all tingly. It was too horrible. I hadn’t even been born yet. No one had ever told me.
“I’m so sorry for them,” I said, my voice wanting to break.
But apparently Yiayia, who’d had years to get over it, was ready to move on. “I helped?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“Good. Now, what are you wearing to Tina’s wedding?”
“Sack cloth,” I told her. She didn’t seem to find that amusing.
I let her read me the riot act as I again opened Christos’s browser, hit the link for his bank’s website and keyed in the birth date of the cousin I’d never known. It did the trick. The printer revved up as Yiayia ran down.
Finally, it seemed safe to cut in. “Yiayia, I have to run. You did help. Now I have a clue to follow up on.”
“You be sure to keep me postered.”
I rolled my eyes. “Posted. Sure thing.”
I pulled the bank statements from the printer as soon as they shot out, but I didn’t really know what I
was looking for. Christos had taken out a big chunk of his savings before his trip, but the only action since had been some automatic monthly payments. Uncle Christos didn’t believe in debt or credit cards, I knew, so if he’d used plastic on anything, it would have debited his account. But there was nothing. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he was off the grid. If Detective Beverly hadn’t heard from him, I’d really be panicking. But at least I knew he wasn’t dead…yet. Just in a heck of a lot of hot water.
We had a family talent for trouble.
Chapter Five
“Tori, we do not say crazy; we say eccentric.”
—Yiayia scolding a young Tori talking about her family
So my uncle was missing and caught up in some cult, the god of dead people had a mad-on for me, volcanologists were getting torn to shreds atop Mount Lee, and the Feds were looking to me for answers. My life was nearly complete.
What would really ice the cake would be an arrest for trespassing or tampering with evidence, I thought, even as I ducked under the crime scene tape on Mount Lee right behind the Hollywood sign. I wondered whether ambrosia addiction had some kind of side effect in humans…like rampant stupidity. But then, that would hardly explain all the other bad decisions I’d made in my life.
I picked my way over darkened and matted clumps of grass, forcing my gaze over them when all my mind really wanted was to skitter away and defer analysis. I didn’t know what I was searching for, but I sure as hell wouldn’t find it if I didn’t look. Chunks of ripped-out rock littered the landscape, deciding my course as I steered between the bigger bits and twisting my ankles as the smaller bits rolled beneath my feet. By the time I got to the summit, I was lucky to still be able to walk. The mouth of the crater looked charred, as if the Titan Prometheus had tried cauterizing the wound with fire. It still smelled of brimstone and sulfur and… No, I realized. That wasn’t a residual scent. It was something living and breathing, flowing out of the hole in waves, like expelled air. There was no breeze at the summit. Yet the scents washed over me, hot and fetid, with the rhythm of expelled breath and the ooky fertile flavor of bacteria incubating in a Petri dish. Yes, I said ooky. It’s a technical term.
I drew back in alarm. There was something down there. Living, breathing, watching. I was sure of it. I pulled out my phone, thinking to call someone. For backup? So they’d know where to find my body? I wasn’t sure. But anyway, I didn’t know who to call. Armani? I was trespassing on a crime scene. Jesus? While he could probably cut anyone to shreds with his razor wit, I didn’t want to count on him in a fight. My best friend Christie, much as I loved her, wasn’t exactly sidekick material. There were only so many times a body could listen to a high-pitched “ewww” without adding to the carnage.
“Looking for something?” a voice asked, low and sly.
I whirled, my heart pounding in my chest, holding my phone out like a weapon and reaching for the pepper spray on my keychain. Behind me—well, before me now—stood a fox-like creature. Tufted ears, red-gold fur glowing like a second sun…and a long, slender lizard’s tail flicking lazily. He barked out a laugh.
“There is no need to phone-a-friend. I am right here.”
“Friend. Yeah, right. More like a pain in the a–”
“Ah ah ah, show some respect.” He tsked, and it was so strange a noise to hear coming from the foxy body. Almost stranger than words. “Not nice to curse in front of the gods.”
“You’re not my god.”
He—Hermes, in the guise of one of his other namesakes Iemisch (he also answered to Mercury, Loki, Coyote, humor columnist Thom Foolery and any number of other things)—cocked his head and stared at me thoughtfully.
“God of tricksters, travelers and thieves—no, perhaps not. I tend more toward your competition.”
We’d met before. Hermes had supplied valuable intel, in his own way. Cryptic, sometimes in free verse. Never straightforward. Something like an oracle. I had yet to figure out why. Maybe I amused him, but I was almost sure he was playing some game and I was a living chess piece he was nudging toward the proper square. No, I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him…in any of his forms.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“So polite.” Hermes took three steps closer and wound around me like a cat, his whipcord tail lingering over my legs and other areas in a way that would have been sexual harassment had they been hands. Or if I had a weapon at the ready more threatening than a phone with which to take proper exception. “I came with a warning. There is a war brewing, and that—” he nipped playfully at my phone, but let his teeth close on empty air, “—is not going to cover it. I doubt you can speed-dial your enemies to death.”
“War?” I asked, already adding it to my mental list of taking down a cult, kicking my addiction, finding a semi-formal dress and a date… “Can you give me a little more to go on here? Are we talking War as in the card game, Cowboys vs. Aliens or thermonuclear?”
“What have you got to trade for the information?” he asked. His tail lashed the phone out of my hand, and it landed in something I didn’t even want to analyze.
“Oops,” he said in response to my glare.
Oh, if looks could kill… “I don’t have anything to trade,” I told him with a minimum of regret.
“Perhaps not now,” he agreed, tail swishing like a cat’s, “but you will.”
“How do you know?”
“I have my ways.”
“I’m sure you do, but I’m not dealing. No way am I going to promise you some undisclosed future thing for information of questionable use. Do you think I was born yesterday?”
“Well, in the grand scheme of things—”
“Forget it. Look, it’s been nice talking to you. Really. Glad you could drop by, but I’ve got work to do.”
He eyed me. You’d think it would be hard to take seriously a foxy-face with cute little sticky-up ears. You’d be wrong. There was something about the expression, the stillness, the implied threat of those teeth, all of which seemed to be canines and wickedly sharp… “You know, I think you’ve made the right call, deciding to fight your addiction. I mean, fast-healing, nigh invulnerability, ultimately becoming immortal. Awful stuff. But the flipside—fever, withdrawal, hallucinations, death. Definitely the way to go.”
“So, what? Apollo sent you to talk me into staying hooked?”
“Well, I am the messenger of the gods,” he answered helpfully.
With that, he turned tail, literally, flicked it once and was gone. Just…gone.
Or maybe I’d missed his exit, because right now all I could see was red. I was going to kill Apollo. As in dead. Deceased. Bleeding demised.
I stomped over to my phone and lifted it out of the muck. I was just about to wipe it off with the hem of my shirt when I heard. “Stop right there!”
I froze.
“Put your hands where I can see them.” It was the voice of authority.
Agent Holloway, I thought, or maybe Rosen.
Slowly, I raised my hands to shoulder level.
“Turn around.”
I did as he asked, figuring I could go all gorgon on his ass if he made for the cuffs. It was Rosen, and he had a weapon in hand, aimed straight at me, but he didn’t seem inclined to use it. He actually seemed satisfied in some weird way rather than angry, as if my presence confirmed something he’d suspected all along…like my involvement. At least he hadn’t seen Hermes. A fox-lizard might have been challenging to explain.
“Do you people have motion detectors set up or what?” I asked, figuring that zipping my lip would only make me look guiltier. Strategy…sure thing. Certainly not poor impulse control.
“Or what,” he answered helpfully. “You want to step out here, away from my crime scene so that we can have a little talk about tampering with evidence?”
The question was probably rhetorical. Just to keep my mind off what I might or might not be stepping on as I complied, I argued anyway. “There was no tampering involved.
You think I want to touch any of this? Besides, I’m sure the CSIs have been here and done that.”
“The scene hasn’t been released.” Rosen lowered his gun, but it didn’t disappear into that spiffy shoulder holster that always kept the lines from showing beneath the Feds’ suits. Not that he was wearing the jacket right now—not in this heat.
I reached the scene tape and debated which was more ignominious to try in front of the Fed—climbing over or going under. Finally, I opted for under and slid out toward Rosen, who stepped back as if I had the cooties. Hey, I wasn’t the one with sweat stains under my pits and halfway to my navel.
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” I told him flatly once I could see the whites of his eyes. “I don’t know anything.”
“If you weren’t connected somehow to these deaths, you wouldn’t be here.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m stunned by the brilliance of your reasoning. Oh no, wait, I’m not. Hello, private detective, a.k.a. snoop. It’s sort of an occupational hazard.”
“Hired snoop. If you have a client, you haven’t said,” he countered. Rosen was no slouch at staring contests. My eyes were going dry from the effort not to blink. There was a very short list of things that could out-stare us gorgon girls. Fish. The occasional owl. Tikis.
“You brought me into this when you treated me like a suspect—in a slaying I still see in my nightmares. I take that personally. So yeah, I’ve got a client and she’s pretty demanding. If you’re not going to arrest me—” not that I should give him ideas, “—I’d like to get back to work.”
“Does your boyfriend know a former porn star stayed over at your place last night?”
Holy non sequitur, Batman. So that had been him. There’d been rumors that
Apollo Demas, star of stage and screen (hey, the gods had to do something after they’d lost their worship and a great deal of their power along with it) had begun his career in the adult film industry. I might have to stop by the video store on the way home.
Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) Page 5