If I were Christie, I’d probably focus on what I was going to wear, just in case I ended up on the morning news. What went well with handcuffs? Did I go with unobtrusive and demure, completely incapable of cutting down three grown men single-handedly? Since I didn’t exactly own pearls and Peter Pan collars, I went for the first thing I touched, but Tina took it out of my hands and reached for a plain white button-up with just enough darting for shape. Feminine but not girly. “A wardrobe staple,” Christie had called the shirt when she’d made me buy it.
“Button-up is better,” Tina said. “Then you can change later without messing up your hair and makeup.”
Couldn’t have that.
I shrugged and took the shirt, added black skinny jeans and went to the bathroom to change. I didn’t bother with makeup or anything else, since I knew it would all be redone, and I didn’t wear much anyway.
On the way out, Tina dragged me to the hotel’s breakfast buffet, flashed her room key, loaded croissants and fruit into a napkin and looked pointedly from me to the coffee keg. The carafe was keg-sized, anyway, with both ceramic and foam cups sitting beside it. Unfortunately, they only had one size to-go cup, which was not nearly big enough, but I didn’t think the hotel would take kindly to me grabbing the keg like a football and rushing it out of there, so I made myself two cups, doctored them both with cream and sugar, drank one still standing at the coffee bar and refilled the cup before applying lids.
“Okay, let’s go, I said.
She looked like she despaired of my behavior. Since I agreed with her, I didn’t say a word, but followed her out into the extra crisp morning air. It slapped me awake better than the cup of coffee I’d already downed.
The sun was shining, glistening off the dew that sparkled on every leaf. The world seemed newly made, pristine. Perfect. It was the kind of day that made you glad to be alive and death seem far, far away. I felt like crap about it, the kind that stunk and stuck to your shoes, clinging to the treads. The kind that stayed with you…like the memory of cutting down three men without missing a beat.
Okay, enough self-loathing. The only way I was getting through the day was denial. I couldn’t change what was. Couldn’t go back. Couldn’t confess. I’d have to go forward. Somehow.
“Seriously, you all right?” Tina asked, studying me. “You and your boyfriend get into a fight?”
“You could say that.” I took another sip of coffee and avoided looking at her.
“You love him?” she asked.
I glared at her for the question, but she was family. She was entitled to ask. “We may have irreconcilable differences,” I said, avoiding a direct answer.
Like, I’m a killer and he’s a cop.
Part of me knew that wasn’t exactly right. Guns didn’t kill people. People killed people. And all I’d been in Rhea’s hands was a weapon. But that didn’t change the fact that the killing was now part of my muscle memory.
Gah, enough already.
“If so, you can do better for yourself. You deserve more than a constant struggle.”
I let that go. I wasn’t entirely sure what I deserved, but I was not going to wallow in self-pity or self-loathing or whatever. Rhea was not going to defeat me. That meant I had to wo-man up.
I braced myself as we reached the doors of a beautiful little white-washed church with vaulted ceilings and small stained-glass windows catching the light. On the upside of things, my preoccupation with death had temporarily overwritten my fear of heights. I’d forgotten even to notice the path we’d taken. Tina held open the beautiful oak door for me to enter, and I prepared myself to be struck down as I crossed the threshold, but nothing happened.
The inside of the little church was painted floor to ceiling with Byzantine-styled frescos representing the saints, the holy family and, looking down from the pinnacle of the vestry, Christ Pantokrator, aka God Almighty. I’d grown up with kind of a loose sense of religion—believing in God, just not really clear on exactly what that might mean. One all-powerful god sounded good, focused. One message. One agenda. But the fact that no one, not even within the same religion, could agree on exactly what that was…well, it made me wonder. Was Christianity about one god who was open to interpretation? Was the trinity really somehow three-in-one or multiple entities who might sometimes get into turf wars?
Then there’d been Yiayia’s beliefs—the old gods still running around in modern day. But they hadn’t seemed so godlike with their day jobs and petty squabbles. Not for the first time, I wondered what divinity even meant. Did it just mean cool powers and immortality? Was there more to it than that? Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben had said “With great power comes great responsibility,” but the gods I knew didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. I wondered about the Pantokrator. I’d have to ask when and if we ever met, and hope he’d forgive me for hanging with the competition. Or at least his—her?—would-be competition. The heyday of the Olympians was long gone, which was why most seemed so obsessed with staging a comeback.
“You like?” Tina asked, indicating the church.
“Beautiful,” I admitted.
She smiled from ear to ear. “I know, right? There’ll be candles and buntings, a whole bower-type arrangement on the altar…perfect. Come on, I’ll walk you through it.”
“Can you—” I had to clear my throat. “Can you give me just a moment alone?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll, uh, just sit back here for a minute if you want to say a prayer or something.”
She took a seat in a back pew and set the fruit and croissants down beside her. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I took her suggestion and went over to the side of the church where you could light candles and say prayers for the deceased. I knelt on the padded rail and lit a candle, feeling guilty that I didn’t have any money tucked away in my pocket for the offering box. But that was the least of my sins.
Knees already protesting, I stared at the flickering candle. I’d been in church often enough with my mother, who didn’t believe a word of Yiayia’s obsession, to know what to do next. I crossed myself and said, simply, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
I hung my head and contemplated that. I didn’t have a flowery prayer to add, just a heartfelt plea. Forgive me. All of my being went into those two words. I didn’t know who I was asking. Everybody. Anybody with the power to lift whatever part of the responsibility I bore for those deaths at Delphi. The candle flame flickered, flaring bright, dwindling nearly to nothing and coming back again. I didn’t know what it meant, if it meant anything. I didn’t feel any differently. But maybe it was like antibiotics…it took twenty-four to forty-eight hours to take effect. Or maybe I was grasping at straws.
I rose again to my feet, and turned to face Tina. “Okay, I’m ready. Show me what you’ve got.” For her sake, I pasted on a smile that flickered like the flame.
She showed me what to do, and I did it, all the while waiting for lightning to strike me down. I might have been thinking more Olympian than Old Testament, but I was pretty sure a monotheistic God, capital G, would have lightning in his arsenal. Or any other natural forces to command—the attributes of all the lower-case-g gods all rolled into one.
Then the set designers arrived to shoo us out of the way, and we were on to hair and makeup back at the hotel. I ate my croissants and fruit on the way back, suddenly voracious. The munchies had crashed my pity party and were all about the buffet. Someone had definitely given me ambrosia last night. I wondered if Nick had been there for it and if he now saw me as a drug addict as well as a killer. No wonder he couldn’t trust me.
I had a lot of time to think about that while I was reclining in the suite that had been set aside for all of us to prep in. I had goop all over my face and tea bags over my eyes. The makeup prep person—like the sous chef of facial artistry—had first insisted on putting drops in my eyes that stung like the dickens and followed with a hot towel to open the pores, some kind of scrub, soothing cream, cold compress to take d
own the swelling in my face from last-night’s tears, and then had followed with the tea bags and goop. I doubted that any of my original surface skin remained behind.
The others arrived while I was getting prepped, and conversations buzzed all around me. I ignored them, not really concerned with whether Althea preferred apricot scrub over the cucumber crystal cleanser, but at some point Apollo’s name popped up, and my ears—about the only part of me still in their original state—perked up.
“Has anyone seen Apollo this morning?” Junessa asked the room at large. “Tori, what about you? Did your savior come by to check on you this morning?”
I lifted the tea bag off one of my eyes to look at her and got swatted by the sous chef. I glared for the split second before I dropped it back down. I needed all the help I could get and knew it. Even if I didn’t care, there’d be all those pictures immortalizing Tina’s wedding forever after. I didn’t want my ugly mug to break any cameras.
But I’d caught a look at Junessa’s face before the tea bag fell back in to place, and there was something less than casual about the intensity with which she watched for my answer. Then there was the fact that she’d called him “Apollo” like they were on a first-name basis. I doubted he’d found the time to start making his way through the bridesmaids, especially since Spiro would likely make sure he was at the head of the line. (Because I doubted that Jesus had suddenly made him into a monogamist.)
“You know him?” I asked.
No matter how much help I needed, I needed my senses more. There was a mystery here, or maybe the clues to solve one. I lifted the tea bag again in time to see Althea and Junessa exchange a look. The former’s was a warning, as if Junie should have kept her mouth shut.
“Not well,” Junie answered casually, ignoring Althea’s look. “Mostly by reputation. I hear you know him a lot better.”
Stupid media.
I shrugged. I must have unintentionally made a face too, because the goop protested and threatened to crack. I wondered what that would do to my complexion.
“Shhh,” the sous chef hissed at me. “Quiet.”
I took her advice, but only because protesting rarely convinced anybody of anything, and anyway, I was more interested in getting than giving out information. I hoped she’d be compelled to fill the silence. I wasn’t wrong.
“I just wondered, because Serena said that his performance yesterday was a little…wooden.”
My gaze sharpened on her. That clinched it. She knew something.
I waved my arms around to signal that the makeup person should get the goop off my face, and she sighed heavily and began wiping it away with gentle aggression. When I felt I could talk without tearing, I asked, “You know Serena too?”
Oblivious to my undertones, Tina cut in, “You don’t recognize her?”
I was totally baffled now. “No, should I?”
Her disbelieving look was framed by the layers of tin foil all over her head. She looked ready to receive phone calls from outer space. Highlights and lowlights, she’d told me, very excited by the concept.
“Tori,” she said, “Serena Banks. Before she got discovered, she was circus folk. Her mermaid bit was like the most sought-after sideshow act ever. Lenny tried to get her for Rialto Bros., but he couldn’t meet her fee.”
I stared, gears grinding and clicking into place in my mind. Serena Banks…mermaid show. Siren-a Banks…siren?
What had Apollo said—that the sirens were water divinities, devoted to Poseidon. I stupidly hadn’t taken my suspicions of her seriously enough, chalking them up to jealousy. I’d sent Nick to talk to her instead of interviewing her myself. Nick! To talk to a woman who legends had it regularly lured men to their death. The fact that he’d survived didn’t mean anything long term. She was still free to wreak her havoc on him or to finish off Apollo…
“I’ve got to get out of here!” I said, trying to rise from my chair.
“Oh no you don’t,” Tina said, lunging up from her seat and holding me down with uncanny strength. “You disappeared yesterday and missed my rehearsal. You are not going to miss my wedding.”
It was a huge struggle not to fight her on that, but it seemed bad form to manhandle the bride before the wedding, and she wasn’t letting me go any other way. “Fine, then I need a phone and a moment alone.”
“That we can do. I don’t think anyone’s using the back bedroom.”
“Thanks.”
She let me up. As I bolted for the back of the suite, I heard Junessa ask, “Tina, what do you call the color of our dresses, I just love them. So green, like spring.”
And Tina answered, “Sea glass, though it looks to me more like ‘fern’ or ‘moss’, which is just what I was going for. A foresty kind of look, very natural.”
So, not “puke” green then. Yeah, that probably wouldn’t have made it past marketing.
Then I was in the back bedroom and shutting them out. I went straight to the phone on the bedside table and dialed the room I shared with Nick. He answered on the first ring.
“Nick, it’s me. Did you get anything out of your interview with Serena yesterday?”
“Well hello to you too.”
“Nick?”
“She doesn’t much like you,” he said. “In fact, she offered me ‘an upgrade.’ I told her I already had the top of the line.”
I nearly melted at that. “You are so getting lucky later,” I told him. The knot in my stomach began to unkink now that we had fallen back into our banter. “Just stay away from her, okay? I’m pretty sure she’s like me…but not. A siren instead of gorgon get. You know, the kind of girl who drives men to their death for fun and profit.” Because why lure sailors to their doom unless you were after the booty that went down with the ship? And why Apollo, unless she was acting as Poseidon’s agent just like the Selli were working for Zeus?
“Way ahead of you on staying out of her path,” he answered.
“Good. Because I’m kind of attached to you and I still need a date for the wedding.” Flippant had gotten me this far.
“I’m kind of attached to you too,” he said, the warmth in his voice telling me that we were going to get through this.
As soon as we hung up, I dialed Apollo.
When he answered, his voice was stiff and brittle, barely recognizable. The petrification had to be progressing at frightening speed.
“Apollo, it’s Serena. I’m pretty sure she’s the one doing this to you, acting on Poseidon’s say-so—”
The door burst open, and I spun around to see Althea standing there, “Let me talk to him,” she demanded, holding her hand out as if she had no doubt that I’d obey.
“Huh?” I said brilliantly.
With two strides more worthy of her taller compatriot, she was at my side and ripping the phone out of my hand. “Apollo, tell me how it happened and what you need. We’ve got your back.”
I stared, waiting for understanding to dawn. So she and Junie did know Apollo. I’d begun to gather that much, but as to her behavior…
I couldn’t hear Apollo’s side of the conversation, but Althea answered, “Artemis would never forgive us if we let something happen to you. We’ll handle.”
She handed the phone back to me and started to walk away. “Wait, Althea, what’s going on? Who are you?”
She looked amused at that. “I’m the same person I was two seconds ago—Tina’s bridesmaid, your friend, and one of Artemis’s huntresses.”
My mind boggled. “Tina and Junessa?” I asked, sounding strangled.
“Junessa is the same. Tina…well, I think this whole wedding thing puts the kibosh on the idea of her dedicating herself to a virgin goddess, don’t you think?”
Not to mention I knew for a fact that that ship had sailed at about sixteen.
“Come on,” she finished. “You going to stand there gaping or are we going to kick some siren ass?”
“But Tina—”
“Got it covered.”
But a knock at the su
ite door stopped us in our tracks.
“Hotel security,” a voice called from behind the door. “We’re looking for Tori Karacis.”
I prayed quickly and quietly that it was about the girl who’d broken into Apollo’s room yesterday rather than the bodies atop Delphi, but I knew better.
“Here,” I said, all eyes turning to me. Not one, but three official-looking men had come to collect me. One was clearly hotel security, based on the suit and nametag. The other two wore cheaper suits, and one had a badge clipped to his belt. Not just cops…detectives.
“Miss Karacis,” said the one with the badge showing, “if you’ll come with us.”
Tina, pedicure foam between each toe, rose from her chair to her full five foot height, facing them down. “What’s this all about? My wedding is today. Just a few hours away, and Tori’s one of my bridesmaids. I need her.”
“I’m sure we’ll have her back to you in an hour or two, but we have some questions that need to be answered.”
“About what? What on Earth is so important that it can’t wait?”
“Murder,” the badged man said into the dead silence of the room. Everyone heard it.
Tina gasped and fell back a step. “Murder? But…but who?”
“Miss, if you’ll come with us,” he said, ignoring Tina’s questions and pinning me with his gaze. It wasn’t a request, and I didn’t mistake it for one.
“Of course—”
“Althea?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Got it covered,” she answered.
“But how’s she ever going to get ready in time?” Tina wailed. “You can’t arrest her. The wedding party will be all lopsided, and there’s no way I can find someone to fit her dress at the last minute, and there’s the filming—” The hotel security man pushed past the police officers to comfort and calm her, mentioning something about complimentary champagne and assuring her that it would all be okay. I looked at the officers to see what they thought, and they didn’t seem nearly as certain of that.
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