by Jasmine Walt
Hestia’s phone beeped. She turned her back on us and faced the group of individuals behind her.
“We just landed the bid with the World Bank,” she said. “Ari, can you take it on?”
A debonair-looking older man tapped on a handheld. His eyes were the dark ovals of a Chosen. “If Thag can lend me Hypatia to work on the numbers, then yes, my goddess, I can get right on the Euro crisis.”
“Let’s get to work then.” Hestia went into motion, and the group fell into step. She turned and tossed over her shoulder, “Oh. Tia. Good to see you. Welcome back. Et cetera.”
I gazed after the group. Something looked vaguely familiar about the bunch.
“Hypatia?” Loren mused. “Wasn’t she a famous Greek mathematician?”
She was. And those other two nicknames—Ari? Could that be Aristotle? And Thag—perhaps Pythagoras?
I turned to Demeter. “Aristotle? Pythagoras? Hypatia?”
Demeter nodded. “They’re her Chosen. They run a number of think tanks the world over, solving political, economic, social, and technological problems.”
I looked after them as they clustered around a table in the far corner of the terrace. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers had, in fact, cheated death and were still solving the world’s problems. I couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or thrilled. My feet made to go after them to ask a million and one questions, but I was tugged in the opposite direction.
“I want to know about you, darling.” Demeter looped her arm around my elbow and swooped me away from Loren. “What have you been doing these last thousand years? Come tell me everything. No, no, dearie, you stay here with the humans. There’s a good girl.”
Loren was too stunned to speak. I mouthed, Chill, to her. Luckily, Baros came up beside her. He looked amused by her ire as he tugged at her attention.
Demeter and I went off to the corner of the terrace. A man and woman stood near a fire under a mantelpiece with no chimney. The man’s coloring was much like my own, but the hair on his face and chin was ginger. He clenched his fist, and the flame extinguished. Then he snapped his fingers, and the flame ignited. He was talking to a woman who sat beside him looking out at the monuments. It didn’t look as though she responded to the man, and it didn’t look as though he noticed.
“Desi, Hera, look who it is.” Demeter gave me a shove forward.
The two looked up from their one-sided conversation.
“Tisa, my dear,” the man, Desi, said. “How long has it been?”
“I’m not sure?”
From his casual playing with fire and the nickname, not to mention the devilish grin, this had to be Hades.
“I brought you a homecoming gift,” he said.
He presented me with a ruby the size of my fist, and I nearly passed out. “I can’t accept this.” I almost added that it belonged in a museum, but I cradled it in my palm as it sparkled.
Hades shrugged. “It’s no skin off my back, you know. There are millions more in the earth.”
“You’re a miner?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Why would you think that? Because mine is the realm of the underworld? I suppose next you’ll assume I have dominion over all the souls cast down to Hell?”
“You don’t?”
He cocked his head to the side. “I’m a film producer.”
“That, and Desi has dominion over the minerals of the earth,” Demeter said. “There are many precious jewels deep in the core, more than there are talented actors on the world’s stage.”
“But if I remember correctly,” Hades said, “Tisa was never one to be impressed with shiny objects, unless it had some historical significance. This gem, I’m afraid, has no story. It is untouched by time.”
“It’s Nia now,” I corrected.
“Nia . . .” Hades tested the name on his tongue. “I like it. I go by Desi now. Goes with the new image.” He struck a pose in his dark jeans and Armani jacket.
“You’re not what I expected,” I said.
“Let me guess?” Desi grinned. “No horns.”
I laughed.
“Come.” Demeter tugged me to the table. “Sit. You must be hungry.”
Zeus grabbed a seat next to me. “I think it’s great we’re starting with a clean slate.”
Down at the end of the table, Hera, the only Olympian without a nickname, sat. She hadn’t spoken a word to me but shot daggers down the table. She had blonde ringlets, like Zeus. But unlike Zeus, her skin was delicate, porcelain, near alabaster, as though she was the type to burn in the sunlight.
“That woman . . .” I asked.
Zeus poked his head up. “Oh, that’s just my wife.”
I cringed. “I forgot you married your sister.”
He shrugged. “We were young. We’d just lost our parents. We took comfort in each other. It was a childish thing to do.”
“That’s still incestuous.”
“Incest is a human concept. We’re gods. We’re not made like them. We don’t share blood or genetics.”
I looked around the table at this ragtag group. They were all beautiful, but none of them favored the other. Not Poseidon with his dark skin or Hestia with her bone-straight, black hair. Nor Hades with his ginger beard and Demeter with her wheat-colored hair. Nor Zeus with his golden good looks or Hera with her delicate ivory skin.
“Besides, we have an understanding, don’t we, Hera?”
“If by understanding, you mean that you will screw a horse if you mistake its tail for a woman’s long hair, then yes, I understand you completely, you ass.” Hera turned her chair away from everyone.
Thunder crackled overhead as Zeus’s jaw tensed.
“Speaking of family,” Demeter said, “how is your brother?”
“My who?”
My heart arrested at the thought. We Immortals did not ever call one another siblings. Some of us did favor a bit. Vau and I had favored. Tres and Zane could be cousins.
“I haven’t seen Bet since the Greco-Turkish War last century,” Demeter said.
“Oh. Him. He’s . . . good.”
“In the Americas, last I heard?”
Demeter pulled her plate to the edge of the table. Her eyes were focused on cutting her meat, but I could see that her ears were perked up, awaiting any news of Bet. Unlike him with her, she appeared to have no aversion to saying his name. But there wasn’t much I could tell her. Immortals didn’t speak to one another like family. I may have seen Bet just a couple of days ago, but I didn’t know how he was doing or feeling or what he thought any more than the next person. And that wasn’t saying much.
Hestia joined the table, saving me from fumbling through an answer. “Let’s do the accounts before we eat, shall we?”
“Sorry, darling,” Demeter said to me. “Just a bit of family business.”
“Should I leave?” I didn’t want to be parted from the food being placed before me. Or the company, if I were honest. I spent most of my time around humans, and there was something different about being around other Immortals. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“Of course you’re not intruding,” Demeter said. “You’re one of us. Well, not a Titan god, but an Immortal.”
I settled back in my chair. I cast a look at the other area, where the humans had clustered, and wondered how Loren was doing. But no one was screaming for their lives, so I had to assume she was fine, especially if she had Leonidas Baros to occupy her short attention span.
“What’s your take this month, Desi?”
“Twenty new initiates and two Chosen.”
Demeter nodded. “Good haul.”
“Fifty new initiates,” Zeus said. “Ten Chosen.”
“Zuzu, that’s more Chosen than you’re allotted.”
“But I want them all.” He pouted. “I got the MVPs of both the American Football League and the World Cup. Not to mention five Olympic gold medalists.”
“You’ll need to make a choice.” Demeter’s tone was stern, like a mother’s.
> I leaned over to Poseidon, who sat on the other side of me. “You’re choosing who will become demons?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I mean Chosen.”
Poseidon nodded.
“Why not take everyone who is willing?”
“If we took everyone, it would lessen the value of the offering. Scarcity makes people want it more.”
“And you take their souls for . . .?”
“Sustenance.”
I jerked back, horrified. “You eat people?”
He chuckled. “No.”
I settled.
“Not their flesh. Only their souls. The consummation of a soul is powerful, but the charge it gives us lasts but an instant. Worship, given freely and continuously, is perpetual energy. People praising our names in words and deeds is what fuels us. That is why Desi is in Hollywood for much of the year, making movies about Greek gods. Tia keeps our names alive with the great thinkers of the world.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
A sheepish smile crossed his handsome face. “I write books with our likeness for children and teens, to keep our names on the next generation’s lips.”
“Books? What books?”
Psi shrugged. “The most popular is the one where a child steals a thunderbolt from Zeus. Desi made that one into a film a couple of years ago, and it has done quite well.”
I could only nod as I remembered seeing that series of books take over the bestselling walls of bookstores. And then I remembered little kids going wild at the opening weekend of the film.
Beside me, Poseidon shrugged again, as though it wasn’t a big deal. “A god without a following of devotees simply ceases to exist.”
“I don’t have any worshipers or devotees,” I said.
“You are not a god. You are something else.”
“What? What am I?”
He smiled, but it was a sad one. “I don’t know.”
I got the feeling I’d asked him this before. I also got the feeling he was telling me the truth. He didn’t know what I was any more than I did.
“How do you take a Chosen’s soul?” I was too curious not to ask.
“You can come and see for yourself. The next rite happens in two nights.”
I turned back to Demeter’s accounting. She was now on Hera. “What is your take, Hera?” Demeter’s tone was delicate, as though she were speaking to an invalid incapable of caring for herself.
“I have nothing to declare. I have no one.”
There was silence around the table.
“That’s nothing to worry about,” Demeter soothed. “You are worshipped the world over. Women, mothers, wives lay wreaths at your temples daily, asking for your favor.”
“They ask for my favor, but they do not choose to spend an eternity with me.” Hera rolled her eyes, landing her gaze on me.
Well, not exactly on me. It was on the hand that had snaked around the back of my chair. I backed away from Zeus, whose fingers were entwined in the ends of my hair. Hera shot me a death glare before she turned away and picked up her silent seething once more.
Great. I’d made an enemy of a vengeful Greek goddess.
13
The fabric slipped down my body like butter on a warm croissant. Warm fall colors were my best complement. This dress wasn’t quite red. It was hot and soft at the same time. Like fuchsia.
I eyed my phone, which sat in my purse pocket on the dressing room bench. There were no missed phone messages, no texts, no calls. I turned away from the silent device and faced my reflection.
“You look good enough to eat in that, darling.” Demeter turned from her corner of the dressing room to take me in. Coming over, she twisted my body left and right. “You can go without the brassiere. Perpetually erect headlights are one of the more useful gifts of immortality, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know how to respond. She was touching me as though we’d been friends for years. And true, we had, but I couldn’t remember. We were out at one of the most exclusive boutique shops in Athens for some girl time. Loren was back at the hotel. She’d pitched a fit when I told her where I was going, and worse, that she wasn’t invited.
So far, the memories of Demeter were not coming back to me. The feeling of familiarity was present. From our easy interactions, it looked as though we had been good friends once. But she brushed off my attempts to delve deeper into our past connection, preferring to start fresh. Like Tres. And Zane. It left me feeling suspicious about what had gone down between us that she didn’t care to resurface.
“Modern clothes are so confining, don’t you think?” Demi slipped out of her dress. She wore no bra or panties. “I miss the days of peplos and togas. I nearly died the first time someone strapped me into a corset.”
I laughed, remembering my first time in one of the confining medieval torture devices. I’d stayed out of civilized society as much as possible for most of the nineteenth century simply to avoid them.
A saleslady handed Demeter another dress, and the goddess slipped it on. Often salespersons wouldn’t let people try on their wares au natural. But this woman just beamed at Demeter as her lady bits made a direct impression in the garments.
“Oh, Your Worship, you look stunning,” the saleswoman gushed.
“Yes, I do. Don’t I?” Demeter turned left and right in the mirror, admiring herself.
The lady eyed Demeter with wonder and admiration. I felt a buzzing fill the room, like one would feel as churchgoers sang hymnals or rose their voices in prayer. I didn’t frequent many churches, but I remembered that feeling. The power of it was unsettling to me.
“Oh, don’t worry, darling,” Demeter said. “That’s just a side effect of a devoted.”
“A devoted?”
Demeter nodded as she slipped the dress off and tossed it into a pile. “We’ll take them all. Hers, too,” she said, pointing at me.
I looked down at the price tag on the dress I wore. The scrap of fabric was more than an annual middle-class salary. I could afford it, but it was more extravagant than I usually spent. “I can’t let you pay for this.”
“Oh, I’m not paying for it, darling.” Demi laughed. Then she gasped, bringing a hand to her heart. “Don’t tell me you’re paying for things now?”
I pulled the dress over my head. Unlike my old bestie, I was wearing underwear. “We’re not stealing anything.”
“Of course not. I’m not a thief. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. Except a husband or two, but I gave them back after I was done.”
The saleswoman came back and began folding the garments, then placed them in boxes and bags.
“These are gifts from our devoted.” Demeter began putting her clothes back on. “A devoted is someone who praises the gods, but they aren’t keen to go through initiation or the rites. The dressmaker is devoted to my sister Hera for her conception. Hera has many devotees but few Chosen. Most of Hera’s worshipers are mothers, as she has a special knack for making babies. New mothers tend to want to keep the gift Hera gives them, even if it means they die within the century. Not everyone wants to live forever.”
As I took in this tidbit of information, I followed Demeter out. Though we were both stronger than the two males helping us, they carried our packages outside to a waiting car.
“Is this what you do all day?” I asked, trying to get a little more information from her. We stood on the sidewalk, and I looked up at the cloudless sky. “Go shopping and get worshipped?”
“No, darling.” She chuckled. “Not anymore. You inspired me to do more with my life. Now I sit on many boards to preserve culture, history, and identity. And I send out devotees and Chosen to recover much of Greece’s lost antiquities.”
“You sent Baros to get those artifacts from the Nazis?”
“Nasty group, them. Those and the Persians. The world would be better off without either of those lots.”
I had no words. We could’ve been the same person. I spent my days uncovering and rescu
ing ancient artifacts, too. I’d never met a Nazi that I liked. But I didn’t have a problem with Persians as a race, culture, or nation. Though there were a few who had gotten on my bad side over the centuries.
“But no,” Demeter continued. “Baros did that on his own. He has a particular ax to grind against those who have done Greece ill.”
I could imagine. The man had been king of this land once. He had watched it fall into the hands of many conquering and looting nations over the centuries.
Demeter looped her arm with mine. “Tell me what’s going on in your love life. Are you still monogamous?”
She said the word like Loren would, and I chuckled. But then I realized who she was talking about. Tres had mentioned she had a preference in my lovers.
“Zane and I aren’t . . . we . . .” Why couldn’t I bring myself to say it?
“Really?” Demeter didn’t seem to need a completion to the sentence. “He was utterly devoted to you. What did he do?”
“How are you so sure it was his fault?”
She frowned at the question, her brows screwed in incomprehension. It appeared she didn’t even think for a second that I could have done something wrong. I could see why I liked her in the past. She was growing on me here in the present.
“I’m dating someone new now,” I said. “Well, he’s a past paramour.”
“Don’t tell me? Is it the Arrogant Architect?”
I laughed. First, it was the Broody Billionaire, and now, it was the Arrogant Architect. “What’s wrong with Tres?”
“Is that what he’s calling himself these days? Nothing’s wrong with him, darling. He’s a perfect specimen of man. Just too bossy for my tastes. The type who thinks he knows it all. Tia told him the columns of the Parthenon needed to be adjusted by two inches or it would collapse in two millennia. She was right. But dally with him again if it pleases you.”
If she was being tight-lipped about our past, I wondered if she might loosen them about my past with Tres. “Do you remember when he and I were together? Before?”
“Just the end of it, I think. About a thousand years ago or so? You and I only saw each other briefly. We had a bit of a falling out back then.”
“We did? Why?”