A Hush of Greek (Out of Olympus Book 4)

by Tina Folsom

  Gloria. Her name had come over his lips of its own volition. She’d looked at him then, startled at first, before pulling herself together and pretending she didn’t know him. As if she’d never loved him.

  His heart had broken into a thousand pieces in that very instant. And for the first time in his immortal life, he’d seen love for what it truly was: a lie. He’d vowed there and then never to be fooled by it again. And never to subject any mortal to such pain again.

  He pushed the thoughts away and crossed the street. His house was only a half a block away, and he couldn’t avoid Psyche forever, no matter how tempting she was. Besides, he had to go on a pretend date with her soon in order to get his friends off his tail.

  Eros opened the gate to the garden and entered, but stopped when he noticed Justin sitting on his back porch, his head in his hands, his chest heaving. Worried, Eros approached the fence that separated his property from his neighbor’s and leaned over it.

  “Hey, Justin, you ok?”

  The boy shrieked and jumped up. A moment later, he looked at Eros and sighed. “Oh, hi, Mr. Eros.” His face was tear-stained.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Grocery shopping.”

  “Did you get hurt?”

  Justin shook his head and looked down at his shoes.

  “Then why are you crying?”

  The boy shrugged. He didn’t look up.

  “If there’s something you need to tell your parents, and you want me to talk to them—”

  “No!” His head shot up, his eyes wide.

  Instantly alarmed, Eros asked, “Are your parents hurting you, Justin? If they are, I can help you.”

  “No, no.” He sniffled. “They’re not.”

  “Are you sure?” It wouldn’t be the first time a child protected his abusive parents, though he’d never seen Mr. or Mrs. Clayton raise a hand against the boy.

  “Yeah. It’s just…” Justin looked away again.

  “You can tell me. I’ve got a nephew your age,” Eros lied. “He tells me all kinds of secrets. And I’m good at keeping secrets.” Well, at least that part was true.

  Justin raised his head, his eyes now meeting Eros’s. For a moment, he just stared, contemplating his next move. “You won’t tell?”

  “By Zeus and his wrath, I won’t.”

  A very brief smile appeared on Justin’s mouth. “You’re not like other adults, Mr. Eros.”

  Eros winked. “Better not tell anybody, or they’ll send me back to school, huh?”

  “Yeah, school. I hate it.”

  “Why’s that? Don’t you like learning?”

  “I do.” He paused. “It’s not the school stuff. It’s, you know, other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “The other kids, they make fun of me.”

  So, there it was: bullying. He should have guessed. Many kids went through this at one time or another in their lives. “Why do they make fun of you? I thought I heard your mother praising you for bringing home an A in math.”

  Justin made a dismissive hand movement. “Ah that! Who cares about that? I never get picked for any team.”

  “Team?”

  “Yeah, in sports. Nobody wants me on their team. Cause I’m not good at it. I never catch the ball, I’m the slowest runner, I can’t jump far or high enough. They hate me. And now the sports festival is coming up, and everybody has to choose a sport for it. And I’m not good at anything!” The words fairly tumbled over his lips. “What am I gonna do? My parents will be so embarrassed.”

  “Oh boy,” Eros murmured to himself. In addition to his own pain, Justin was worried what his parents would think. There had to be a way to help the kid. A bit louder, he said, “I hear you, Justin. It sucks. So tell me a little about the sports festival. What kind of disciplines are they offering to compete in?”

  Justin kicked a stone off the deck, and it landed on the grass below. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Soccer, basketball. You know, the usual, like sprinting, high jump, all those things they do at the Olympic Games. I’ve seen it all on TV before.”

  “There must be something you’d enjoy,” Eros said gently.

  “What’s the point? I’m not good at anything.” Disappointment was written all over his body. His shoulders had dropped forward, his head was bowed. He’d shoved his hands into his front pockets. “I’m just gonna lose anyway.”

  “Not if somebody coaches you before the event.”

  Justin huffed and tipped his head up for a moment. “Dad doesn’t play any sports either.”

  “I can coach you.” The offer was out before Eros even knew that he’d made the decision to help the boy.

  “You can?”

  Eros nodded. “Sure. Why not?” Why, for Hades’ sake, not? After all, he was a god and gifted with many skills.

  “What sports do you do then?” Justin asked eagerly.

  “Uh…” Shit, what sports did he do? Because he was a god and immortal, he didn’t have to work out in order to stay in shape. And there wasn’t exactly a football or soccer team on Mount Olympus that he could have joined. Running wasn’t his thing: he preferred to teleport if he wanted to get somewhere fast. And even though he enjoyed the occasional fist fight with his fellow gods, Justin’s parents would be appalled if he tried to teach him boxing.

  “Mr. Eros? What sport can you teach me?”

  “Archery.”

  “Archery?” Justin asked doubtfully.

  Had he really said that? Well, he couldn’t take it back now. He was the expert in it. Slowly, he nodded at the boy. “Yes, shooting a bow and arrow. It’s an Olympic discipline, isn’t it?”

  Justin shrugged. “I think it was on the list they gave us. But I don’t even have a bow.”

  Eros winked at the boy. “I do.”

  “Really?”

  Eros nodded. “Let me get it and set up a target so we can practice together.”

  Justin took a few steps toward the fence. “Now?”

  “You doing anything else right now?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then…” He motioned to the end of the fence. “There’s a gap in the fence, if you want to come over.”

  Justin hesitated only for the briefest of moments, before he ran toward the spot.

  “I’ll just go and get my stuff out of the storage room,” Eros said and marched toward the house.

  He let himself into the storage shed next to the garage and closed the door behind him so Justin couldn’t observe what he was doing. The shed contained only a few gardening tools and soil. No bow, arrows, or target. But that wouldn’t stop him.

  Eros teleported into his bedroom. He’d moved the bow from the guestroom into his own room after Psyche had moved in. Now he retrieved the bow and the quiver containing his arrows from the closet. He looked at the items for a moment, feeling their weight in his hands. It had been a long time since he’d held them. He shouldered the leather quiver. The bow was made of wood with only a few decorative carvings adorning it. No gold, nothing that would give away its importance to the world.

  He sighed. Zeus would probably have his hide if he knew that he was letting a mortal boy play with it. But Eros knew that Justin couldn’t do any damage with it. An arrow shot by a mortal, even if it hit another person, wouldn’t cause that person to fall in love. Only if the arrow was shot by Eros, would the magic unfold.

  He walked downstairs and opened a hallway closet, where he kept a target. It was round and set up on a tripod of sorts. He grabbed it, squeezed it under his arm, and teleported back to the shed.

  Justin was already waiting at the other end of the garden when he exited the shed. The boy watched almost impatiently as Eros set up the target at one end of the garden, before motioning the boy to meet him at the other end from where they would shoot at the round disk with the blue, black, and red rings, and the yellow center

  “That looks far away,” Justin said, a worried look on his face.

  “It’s the perfe
ct distance for you. You’ll see,” Eros promised. “Now, first I’m gonna shoot an arrow, and you’ll watch me. And then I’ll show you step by step what you need to do. And we’ll practice. Okay?”

  Justin nodded. “Okay.”

  Eros pulled an arrow from his quiver and set up for the shot. It was an action so ingrained in him that every movement was fluid. The bow felt right in his left hand, the string pulled taught with the fingers of his right, his eye on the spot where the arrow would hit. He pulled back his elbow and released the string. The arrow shot upward and forward, producing a hissing sound as it parted the air and found its path. It landed in the yellow, the center.

  “Bulls eye,” he murmured to himself. He hadn’t expected any less, even after not having touched the bow in over a year.

  “Wow!” Justin called out in awe. “I wanna do that!” He jumped up and down. “That’s so cool!”

  Eros lowered the bow and turned to the boy, chuckling. “Then let’s get to work.”

  It took a while to explain the basic safety precautions to Justin, before Eros could start to show him how to hold the bow correctly, how to stand in relation to the target, and how to aim. To his own surprise, Eros enjoyed teaching the boy. He knew it would take many hours of practice until Justin could hit the bulls eye, so for now, he was just hoping to get him to hit the target at all. Not an easy thing for a beginner. But with every shot, Justin got better.

  “Lift your elbow a little higher, and press your shoulder blades together,” he instructed, standing behind Justin.

  The boy made the adjustment in his stance. “Like this?”

  “Very good, Justin. Now concentrate on the target. Close your left eye.”

  Justin breathed evenly, standing entirely calm and relaxed. A natural. Eros smiled to himself, proud of his pupil.

  “When you’re ready,” he said softly, “release the string.”

  The boy let go, and the arrow shot forward and lodged in the target, this time not in the white area around the rings, but in the black, the outermost ring.

  “Excellent!” Eros praised and patted Justin on the shoulder.

  The boy turned his head and smiled proudly. “I did it!”

  “Yes, you did! That was a great shot! And you know why?”

  Justin shook his head.

  “Because you relaxed and let the bow speak to you.”

  Justin tilted his head to the side, a doubtful look on his face. “The bow doesn’t speak.”

  Eros crouched down, one knee in the grass, and took the bow. He lifted it to his ear and closed his eyes. His godly ears heard the melody of love this bow bestowed on humankind. “Of course it speaks, but only to those who listen.” He lifted the bow so the thickest part of it was next to Justin’s ear. “Here, listen.”

  Intently, Justin pressed his ear to the wood. For a moment there was silence.

  “I can’t hear anything.”

  “Close your eyes and concentrate.” Eros suggested. When Justin did so, Eros used his godly powers and sent the melody through the wood of the bow so only Justin could hear it.

  Justin jerked back, eyes and mouth wide open. “Wow!”

  Eros chuckled. “See? It’s made of wood. It’s alive. So as long as you listen to it, it’ll help you with your aim.”

  “I wanna shoot again!”

  “I’m out of arrows. Help me get the ones from the target.”

  While Justin ran toward the target and started picking up the arrows that had landed in the grass, Eros followed him with the bow.

  “Justin?!”

  The raised voice came from the other side of the fence.

  “Uh-oh!” Justin gasped and cast a look back at Eros that indicated that he expected to be in trouble.

  Eros had recognized the voice, too: Justin’s mother.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered to Justin, then turned toward the fence. “Mrs. Clayton,” he said, much louder and with a pleasant smile pasted on his face.

  She walked down the deck toward the fence, an apprehensive look on his face, while Eros stopped at the fence.

  “What’s my son doing in your yard?” she asked. She looked him up and down like he was a criminal, then cast a look in her son’s direction.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Clayton. I know I should have asked your permission to have your son over, but he said you were out grocery shopping. And you know how kids are. Justin saw me practicing with my bow and was curious how it works. So I invited him over.” From the corner of his eye he saw Justin come closer. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, your son is very talented. I don’t think I’ve ever taught a kid who was able to hit the target in the first hour. You should be really proud of him.”

  A tentative smile washed over Mrs. Clayton’s face. She glanced at Justin, then back at Eros. “You said he’s talented? My son?”

  “Oh yes, he’s a natural!”

  She blushed a little, pride suffusing her cheeks now. “I hope he was no bother. I wasn’t planning on being gone for long, but the supermarket was so busy, I—”

  “He was no bother at all,” Eros interrupted. “I’d be happy for him to come over and practice anytime he wants to.”

  “I don’t know.” She hesitated. “I mean it’s…”

  Justin came to the fence and looked up at his mother. “Oh, please, Mom! It’s fun. And I’m good at it.”

  She looked at her son, meeting his eyes. “But, we can’t really bother our neighbor…”

  A disappointed sigh came from Justin.

  “I really enjoyed teaching your son. If you’re concerned about him getting hurt, I can assure you I’m a master in the sport.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about that. But we don’t really know you.” She suddenly stopped herself. “I mean, uh…”

  Eros nodded.

  “But he’s our neighbor!” Justin protested, not understanding what his mother was referring to. But Eros knew only too well. Mrs. Clayton knew he lived alone, and any man living alone was suspect. Too many creeps roamed this world, and a parent had to be careful whom to entrust their children.

  “I completely understand, Mrs. Clayton. Maybe you want to come with Justin? You can have iced tea on my terrace while you watch us practice in the afternoons.”

  “Oh,” she said slowly as if warming up to the idea. “You don’t work?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “Well, if it’s really no bother…”

  “No bother at all.”

  She nodded. “Well, then thank you. We’ll take you up on it, if that’s really what Justin wants.”

  “Yes! Yes!” Justin said excitedly.

  His mother chuckled softly. “Okay then, but for right now, let’s go in, I’ve gotta prepare dinner before your dad comes home.” She nodded at Eros. “Thank you.”

  Eros watched Justin join his mother. The two of them disappeared in the house. Happy with the way his day had turned out, he turned around. His eyes were drawn to a movement on the balcony.

  Psyche stood there, watching him, smiling.

  14

  The next evening, Psyche strolled down one of the main streets of Charleston, Eros by her side. It was time to put on a performance. She’d donned a casual dress for the occasion, and Eros wore dark blue slacks and a casual Tommy Bahama short sleeve shirt. They looked like the perfect young couple.

  Eros had chosen a small French bistro and requested seating outside so that they could easily be seen by any passerby. There weren’t many other diners: an older couple and a group of businessmen, two giggling Japanese girls who were clearly tourists, and a single middle-aged woman reading a book while eating her French onion soup.

  The tables outside were arranged very much in the same way as on the streets of Paris: diners looked out on the street for optimal people watching. This meant that Eros wasn’t sitting opposite her, when Psyche took her seat, but over the corner of the small square table, much closer than she’d expected.

  “Is this okay?” Eros asked.
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  “Yes, sure, great,” she said, not knowing why she was suddenly nervous. This wasn’t a real date. She cleared her throat. “Have you eaten here before?”

  “Many times. The food is good here. But that’s not why I chose it.”

  She met his eyes. “Do your friends come here?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “So you think they’ll eat here tonight?”

  “No. I checked the reservations.”

  “Then why—”

  He bent closer. “Don’t look now, but across the street, four buildings to your left there’s a wine shop. It belongs to the wife of my friend Dio. Most nights he picks her up when she closes the shop.” He winked mischievously. “He has to walk by here to get to the shop.”

  She laughed quietly and shook her head. “So you’re going to make it look like they’re catching us in the act.”

  “Something like that.” He sat back again and looked at the menu. “You have to understand what my friends are like. If I were to just bring you along to a party or a dinner at their house and introduce you as my girlfriend, they’d smell a rat. But if they think I’m hiding the fact that I’m seeing you, they’re more likely to buy it.”

  Psyche took the menu into her hands. “It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of trust between you and your friends.”

  “Believe it or not there is—when it counts.”

  “When it counts?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “The four of us have known each other since childhood. But that also means we know each other way too well. We’ve played a thousand pranks on each other, and we don’t expect that to change.”

  “Boys,” she threw in.

  Eros laughed. “Yep, boys. But sometimes we go too far. And in this case it’s my friends who’ve gone too far, trying to change me. I have to put my foot down. Or they’ll run roughshod over me.”

  “I understand that. But is this really the way to do it?” She made an all-encompassing hand movement. “By pretending you have a girlfriend?”

  “If you knew my friends, you wouldn’t ask that question.” He put his hand on her forearm and leaned in. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” He removed his hand and pointed to the menu. “The duck is very good here.”