by Amie Gibbons
“She doubles over and wings, yes wings,” I said to Mom’s wide eyes, “come busting out and rip her shirt.”
“They were huge.” I held my arms out. “Like a ten foot wingspan, and she’s tinier than me so that’s twice her height. She had no clue she was magical before then. She beats the wings and takes off in the middle of Broadway, her top hanging on by her sleeves and maybe an inch of fabric below her wings. People were snapping pictures and screaming and running. It was ridiculous.”
“Oh dear,” Mom covered her eyes with a hand like she couldn’t picture it with them open. “Did the ex notice, or realize it was her?”
“No clue. She’s never asked him. And we were too busy trying to figure out how to get home without our driver and watching the crowds panic to pay attention to one guy.”
I shrugged. “We hit a diner, got some greasy food and lots of water and I drove. When she asked for her car back since I live down south, I told her to fly out and get it her damn self.”
“That’s terrible!” But Mom laughed. “Did she?”
“No, Kelsey and I drove two cars up and she took me home. Millie couldn’t fly that far. She’s built it up since then but she still can’t fly more than about half a mile.”
“What does she do? Just walk around with wings folded on her back all the time?”
“No, they’re collapsible. They sink into her back and disappear. But even now, she gets upset or scared, they pop out. And those things have muscle. She accidentally got me once when she was scared and I had a black eye for a week. Oh, side note, never go to a haunted house with a siren.”
Mom laughed. “That poor girl.”
I fake gasped. “Poor girl? Poor me!”
“I don’t know.” A voice from the hospital room’s doorway made me whirl in my chair.
I froze, heart rate jacking up like I downed adrenaline coated crack.
“From what I saw, you can take quite a beating,” Ravena said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ravena straightened from where he’d been leaning on the doorjamb and walked in, closing the door behind him.
I jumped out of the chair, pulling my gun from its holster under my jacket and pointing it at him before he could take another two steps. Apparently Apollo wasn’t sucking my speed dry yet.
“When did you get a gun?” Mom asked and I turned my back fully on her, keeping me between her and Ravena.
Ravena shifted his eyes behind me, looking at my mom. I clicked off the safety, very clearly aiming right between his eyes.
“You do know that won’t kill me,” Ravena said.
“You know, I’m not sure. I’ve got it on good authority that a demon like you is about as powerful as me. So I’m thinking it will.”
“You’re making an assumption, psychic.” His smile and tone said the stressed word wasn’t supposed to be mocking, but I couldn’t figure out what else it could mean.
“What, that you’re here to hurt me or my mom? I think that’s a reasonable leap of logic.”
“Well, yes, that too. But you’re assuming being shot would kill you.”
I’d be lying if I said my arms didn’t sag a little as my jaw dropped. But come on! Can you say shocking revelation?
I shook it off. “You really think I’m going to believe a word you say?”
“I hope so, otherwise my tracking you down was a waste of magic.”
“You’re here to talk? Righhhhht, and I’m a dancing coffee bean.”
He gave me a look. With his grey pinstripe suit and salmon button-down shirt, he looked like any other professional human today, the brilliant pink with little white elephants tie the only thing wild about him. His hair was slicked back and his shoes were shined so well they reflected the florescent lights. He looked good, presentable… hell, he looked downright hot.
“Is that an American expression?” he asked.
“No, I just said the first ridiculous thing that came to mind.” My arms were getting tired. “If you’re not here to show me why I chose so badly, what the hell do you want?”
“Merely to tell you why your choice was the wrong one.” He held his hands up in the universal signal of ‘I’m harmless.’
I wasn’t buying it.
“I swear I will not harm you or your mother during this visit. I just want to talk.”
“And we’re back to the dancing coffee bean. Why should I believe anything you say?” I asked, not lowering my gun but relaxing my arms. “You already proved your word isn’t worth the air it’s breathed into.”
Ravena sat on the plastic, gaudy orange chair next to the door, looking every inch the professional businessman as he crossed his legs, resting an ankle on one knee.
“We shouldn’t be discussing anything in front of my mom.”
Come to think of it, she’d been pretty damn quiet the past minute.
“We’re not.”
What?
It took everything in me to keep my eyes on him as I shifted around the hospital bed until I was behind it and could see my mom and keep an eye, and gun, on Ravena. She was curled up against the tilted up bed, eyes wide and mouth open. I took a deep breath and walked around to put me back between him and her.
Hatred burned, begging me to shoot him for putting that look on her face.
“Is this like what you did to me Friday night?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
He smirked. “Alone time. I promise, you are perfectly safe.”
“Because you can’t hurt me when we’re like this or because you don’t plan on?”
“The latter.”
I filed that knowledge away for later.
“Okay, what do you want to tell me?”
“Blunt.” He looked me in the eyes. “I want you to join us. No tricks. No lies. I didn’t know what you were until I saw you on the field. I would have asked you to join us before if I had.”
“Thank you for the offer. No. Get out.”
“You’re a smart girl, highly educated, obviously driven to have gotten through law school, which I’m given to understand is very difficult.”
“All things I already know.” I gave him a charming smile, finally lowering my aching arms.
“Then why haven’t you realized you’re being lied to?”
Annnnnnd there it was.
“Seriously? You came here to try to convince me I’m working for the wrong people? That they aren’t telling me everything? That the Greek Gods in all their wisdom and power are arrogant enough to think they don’t have to spell everything out for a mere mortal?”
Ravena opened his mouth.
“No shit, Sherlock!” I couldn’t help but laugh as he frowned. “I pepper them with questions and I get nuts back. I’m not joining their cults and following them with a dopey grin to drink the Kool-Aid. I work for Apollo. That’s it. End of story.”
He raised his eyebrows, pursing his lips. “Really? You’re not lending him your power, being treated like a biological battery?”
He smirked at my silence. “I thought so.”
“Still not ideology based. I’m being paid for that, too. I also already made the deal, and unlike yours, my word means something.”
“See, you are being led to drink the Kool-Aid, you just don’t realize it yet.”
“Fine, I’ll bite. What is the big, bad thing they aren’t telling me that will apparently end up killing me?”
“I would say they are lying about needing your powers, but I suspect you already know that.”
The gun was the only thing keeping my hands from talking with me. “Knew that. And getting bored. Next?”
“And you have far more power than they led you to believe.”
“The whole a well-placed bullet wouldn’t kill me thing, yeah, got that. And?”
“They don’t need your magic because there is more than was originally calculated.”
“Yeah, they mentioned that. I have no idea what it means, but they weren’t hiding it.”
I struggled to keep my face blank but he must’ve seen the surprise because he smirked again. What, was that his natural expression? Smirking bitch face?
“Ask them why there’s so much extra magic out there. Magic doesn’t change the basic laws of science. There is more energy in this universe than before.”
“That’s impossible.”
He held up a finger and pointed it at me. “Exactly.”
Well I walked into that one.
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’ll bite again. How is that possible?”
“No idea.” He smiled, bland as cheap apartment carpeting. “None of us know.” He paused and I didn’t have to be psychic to know what was coming next. “Except the Greeks.”
“No, they don’t.” Wouldn’t be the first time Apollo lied to me… hell, wouldn’t be the hundredth probably.
Ravena chuckled. “Not so sure of that anymore, are you?”
“Good for you, you’ve got me wondering. Why would any of that make we want to join you?”
“Because I’m not lying to you and they are. Because this is the only point in history we have had to rise up, become more than our birth status. You’re new, you do not know what lesser gods were put through in the old world.
“We are less to them. You and I, many of my followers, are less. Status by birth is not something Americans believe in. I understand that is a foreign concept to you. But after the alignment, when the gods stop playing nice, you will see how little they think of our kind.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could just shoot him.
But I kept my arms down because let’s face it, getting shot would slow him down for all of five seconds, and it’d damage my ears. And if he wanted to do something, he would’ve by now. So I stared at him, trying to see something.
Nothing popped up.
“I can’t betray people trying to save my own at their expense. I get what you’re saying, and you may even be right. But they are risking their powers for humans. You keep saying lesser gods are second class citizens with the gods. Maybe they are. But humans have to be even less to them and the gods are working damn hard to protect us. So I’m saying no, at least until I know more.”
“You require proof?”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that.”
I paused. “In law, like when a case is being dismissed, we have this thing where we assume all the facts you’re saying are true, and then say, even assuming those as true, under the law as it is, you still can’t win. So that’s where we are. Taking everything you say to be true, I still can’t join you, because they are trying to save my people.”
He squinted at me. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
He leaned forward, clasping his hands and resting them on his knee. “You keep referring to humans as us. You’re not human. You do know that?”
I scowled. “Okay, you can leave now.”
“I don’t understand; is this denial?”
“Get the hell out.”
“Of course,” he said, sounding so smug I wanted to shoot him on principle.
He got up and grabbed the doorknob, pausing. “That wasn’t the, are we sticking with the Kool-Aid metaphor?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “The Kool-Aid I was referring to. Ask your new boss what happened to the Native American spirits who should’ve been the ones to claim this land when we awoke. There’s a reason I want to keep my full powers, Cassandra. You should, too.”
He disappeared.
“I’m calling security!” Mom shrieked, making me jump so high it was like I had wings for a second there.
I turned and holstered my gun, covering it back up with my jacket.
“Where did he go?” Mom asked, hand halfway up on the nurse call button on the side of her bed. “Did you scare him off with your gun? Why do you have a gun? Are you okay, sweetheart?”
I blew out air, making my lips puff out.
This whole thing was so unreal. How the hell did my life get here? My mom awake, which I truly had given up hope of happening. And worrying about me even though she was scared and confused and not strong enough to walk.
A magical conspiracy. A hand delivered offer by a supposed enemy. And me so sure I was right about the gods wanting to help us, even though I had been wondering the same thing about the Native American gods not two days ago.
Had it only been two days?
I had to talk to Apollo. Ravena was trying to shake things up, to rattle my psychic chains.
It worked.
# # #
I left Mom with an apology and instructions to the nurses to keep an eye on her. I didn’t think Ravena would go after her tonight, it’d undermine his case too much.
I knew things I knew I didn’t know, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
“You know?” I whispered, drawing my cell out of my purse on the passenger seat as I pulled onto the freeway.
I felt like a heel for leaving Mom so soon after Ravena’s visit, but I did have a trial tomorrow and I had to practice my opening and go over my notes for questioning the witnesses.
You don’t read from a script in court. Jurors tend to frown on bad memories for some reason. Makes them think you don’t know what you’re talking about or something.
I hit Apollo’s name once I was safely in a lane and prayed he picked up.
“Cassandra?” Apollo said a moment later.
I hadn’t even heard the phone click on. It rang and paused and there he was. Weird. I shook my head.
“Is something wrong?”
I smiled, letting his concern wash over me, feeling better with just his voice. Oh, I was in such big trouble here.
“Ravena paid my mom a visit. He wanted to talk. We’re fine. He was there for all of five minutes and just wanted, I don’t know, to stir the pot. He was trying to recruit me.”
I took a breath to slow myself down. “Any idea why he’d come bug me? I’m not a god. I’m not a main character in this drama. I’m supporting cast; the person who has maybe a line or two in the play and is in the chorus line with a dozen others the rest of the time.”
Apollo didn’t say anything.
“Hello? Can you hear me now?”
“Sorry, Cassandra. I’m thinking. I don’t know why he would go after you specifically, except to get to me. But I’m not exactly a main player in this plot either. Except for giving the others a few minutes warning that Ravena’s group was going to defect, I’m secondary. Going after one of my father’s women would make more sense.”
One of? So not important right now.
“Maybe he’s covering his bases? He was only there a few minutes. Maybe he’s stirring the pot all over the place and I was just one, er, swipe? Swirl? He could be trying to undermine your base of people to weaken you overall, and that’s why he’s not talking to you gods, because you already believe in your cause, and he’s just talking to magical people.”
“Possibly.” I could practically see him shrugging. “Still, I don’t like you being on your own.”
I didn’t say anything, because maybe if I didn’t try to get it out of him, he’d let it go and not ask.
I wasn’t sure I could say no if he asked.
“You could stay in Olympus for the night.”
No such luck.
I had a reason to say no. I was sure of it. Just couldn’t remember what it was.
Oh yeah. “I have a trial tomorrow I have to prep for. And if he wanted to hurt me, he could’ve tried. He didn’t.”
“You could prep here.”
“We both know if I’m there, I won’t be working. I will keep my gun and phone handy. If he shows up, one of those should help me do something about it. Oh yeah, Ravena said I wouldn’t be killed by being shot. Is that true?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a firearms expert. But knowing your power now, I’d say you’re more likely than a human
to survive it.”
“I am human.” Damn I was getting sick of saying that.
“Of course. I misspoke.”
“Uh-huh.” I raised my eyebrows.
“What else did he tell you? What did he want?”
“He said he wanted to keep his powers and I should too because of what you guys did to the Native American gods.”
I waited.
“Anything else?” he finally said. “It may tell us why he went after you.”
“That’s it? Nothing on that revelation?”
“I can’t tell you what happened there. Physically can’t. We were all bound from speaking of it by my father.”
“Your dad’s a real peach.”
“Not the word I would use.”
“Sarcasm. Get used to it.”
“I suppose I will have no choice with you by my side.” I could hear the smile in his voice and it made me grin.
“Now you’re teasing me.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“So you guys did something to them. Something bad.”
“It’s complicated.”
“We aren’t on Facebook, Apollo. Come on, there has to be a way to get around your father’s binding.”
“This from the lawyer.”
“Yeah, I am a lawyer and we’re huge believers in the loophole.”
“There isn’t one here.”
I sighed. “Fine. You can’t tell me. I’ll let it go.”
“Thank you. What else did he tell you?”
“Just that you guys were lying to me and using me. Ummmm, oh yeah, that there’s more magic than there’s supposed to be and nobody knows why except the Greeks.”
Apollo snorted, actually snorted. “There he’s wrong. None of us have any clue. We’ve been conferring with other pantheons of gods since we woke up, and all we know is nobody knows what happened. If they do, they’re doing a great job hiding it.”
“So he was lying about that, but not about you guys doing something bad to the Native American gods to get America?”
