by Nicole Thorn
Callie blushed, looking down at her knees. “Really?”
I nodded. “You bounce around a lot too, which I like for some reason.”
Her smile spread across her face, lighting up the girl’s expression. I liked that about her too, but kept it to myself. I didn’t want her to get freaked out by all the things that I liked. Or worse, think that I had lied so that she wouldn’t leave me.
I rubbed my forehead, staring at her door.
“We shouldn’t tell my parents,” Callie said, looking at the door as well. “They’ve still got a lot to adjust to, and honestly, I think they would freak out if they learned that I liked you in that way.”
I frowned. “They would boot me out of the house for sure.”
“They can’t!” Callie said, flailing so hard that she fell against me. “If they did that, then you’d have to go back to living with that awful mother of yours! You can’t live with her, she hurts you!”
“You’re starting to sound like my Dad,” I said.
Callie cocked her head. “Apollo never sounds concerned to me.”
“He does to me,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “He says something along those lines every time he sees me, actually. That’s why he comes by so often.”
“What do you mean?” Callie asked.
I sighed, pulling her against my side again. “The first time I met my dad was because he wanted to take me away from my mom. He said something about putting me into the foster care system with a couple of other demigods around my age. He said that I’d be safer that way. I told him no, and for some reason, he actually listened to me. He could have easily taken me against my will.”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to resent him,” Callie suggested.
I found it hard to believe that a god would ever care about something like that, let alone one of the Olympians. “He started dragging me out on adventures so that he’d have an excuse to get me away from Mom. I think he just wanted to give me a chance to ask for him to take me away.”
“Why didn’t you go?” Callie asked seriously. Her brow furrowed as she chewed on the corner of her lip. “Like, no offense, I’d get protective of my mom too, but yours is a bitch. I’ve met her twice, and she spent the entire time putting you down, twice.”
I winced at that, looking away from Callie. “She loves me.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that she doesn’t!” Callie said, sitting up on her knees. I turned to look at her, watching as her eyes scanned my face. “I’m sure that most mothers love their children very much, and yours is no exception. I just meant that she doesn’t act like she loves you all that much. Which sounds just as bad.”
“You’re starting to sound like me,” I said.
Callie lowered herself to the ground again, sighing. “I wish that your mother would treat you better. Like she actually cares about you, you know?”
I rubbed my eyebrow, glancing away from her for a second. “She has a reason for the way she treats me.”
“I don’t know if she could have a reason that makes it better.”
I shifted around, debating. Part of me wanted to tell Callie, so that she would understand better. So that she would see why I hadn’t left my mother in all these years, even though she always hurt me so badly. I listened to the words coming out of my mouth on a daily basis, and it felt disjointed. I felt disjointed. My father’s blood ran through my veins, telling me that I should be confident and cocky. But my mother’s words stayed in my head, letting me know every flaw that I had and dragging it into the light of day so that I couldn’t hide from it.
I swallowed thickly.
I didn’t know if I could say anything that would help Callie understand, but I still wanted to try.
“Dad says that Mom used to be the sweetest girl he ever met,” I said, shrugging.
“Well, she’s a harpy now,” Callie said, shifting around so that she could sit comfortably in front of me. She took one of my hands, running her fingers along the knuckles. “Not that I should be insulting your mother or harpies.”
“Well, that’s what I always wondered, when I was really little,” I said. “I’d wonder why Apollo would pick someone as mean as my mom to date. The second or third time I met him, I finally asked, and that’s what he said. That she was the sweetest person he had ever met, and that she had a smile like cotton candy. I don’t know what that means, but he seemed to think it described her pretty well.”
“Probably just that she looked bright and cheerful.”
“Maybe,” I said, shrugging. “And Apollo said that she changed the second I was born. He said that Mom seemed happy all throughout the pregnancy and that she kept going through baby names every time he saw her. I guess he stuck around for most of it, but I didn’t meet Apollo until I was eight.”
“That’s a long time for Apollo to not see his children,” Callie murmured. “I don’t know why he would do that.”
“I always got the impression that Mom asked him to go away,” I said, honestly. “I’ve only ever seen them in the same room three times, and each of those times was . . . painful.”
“Did they yell at each other?”
“No,” I said. “They didn’t even talk to each other. They stared at one another, and I got the impression that there were a thousand things that they weren’t saying to one another. Then Dad would leave, Mom would go to her room, and I wouldn’t see either of them again for a few days.”
Callie frowned. “Do you think he did something?”
“No, I think Mom did something,” I said. “I think the way she treats me is one of the issues, but I think she did something when she left Apollo, something that he didn’t like. If he had been any of the other gods, I kind of wonder if he would have done something to hurt her.”
“Like turn her into a plant?”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Anyway, I almost went with Apollo once, but he actually talked me out of it on accident.”
“How so?”
I shifted, frowning. “He explained my mother to me. This is the same time that he told me she was the sweetest person until the day I was born. He told me that she would never get better, that she’d always be hard on me, she would always rip me to shreds, and that I needed to leave.”
“I get why you wouldn’t want to leave her, but if a god is telling you that your mother is bad news, then why wouldn’t you listen to him?” I looked into her dark eyes and saw how innocent she was in them. Callie had a full understanding of the world she lived in. The gods constantly talked in her head, so it would be hard for her not to understand. But she had good parents, and kind friends, and never had to worry about what would happen to her if she stepped out of line. Her parents would always be there for her.
“Dad said that the second she looked down at me, she got scared.”
Callie frowned, a little line forming between her eyebrows. “Scared?”
I nodded. “She was scared of how hard demigods’ lives are. We have the intense emotions from our godly parent, but we don’t have the power or control that the gods have. We get into fights easier, the gods make us do things more often, we get hurt or die more often than she felt comfortable with.”
“So instead of keeping you safe, she decided to make you second guess yourself at every turn?” Callie asked, frowning.
“No,” I said. “She decided to make sure that I never got overly confident, so that I never did the stupid things that other demigods do. Like get into fights, or take on challenges that we shouldn’t, or go off with our god parent on some fun adventure that will almost certainly get us killed.” The last one I said with a bit of sarcasm.
Callie frowned some more.
“And if not for Apollo, I wouldn’t have done any of those things,” I said, shrugging. “I’d be home all the time, safe and sound. And her treatment had another benefit.”
“Which is?”
“She never blinded herself to my faults, which means that she never loved me too mu
ch. So that if I do die, she doesn’t have to feel as much pain.”
“That’s . . . so fucked up,” Callie said.
“It makes sense, though,” I said. “When I was born, she got so scared of losing me that she freaked out. And when Apollo tried to take me away, he was going to make all her fears come true. I didn’t want to do that to my mother.”
“Maybe you should have,” Callie said.
I blinked at her. “What?”
“Do you want to go home, ever?” Callie asked. “I mean, you’ve been here for days and you haven’t talked about going home, your things, or even your truck. I know how much you like cars.”
“It doesn’t matter if I want to go home,” I said. “I can’t disappear on my mother. It would be cruel.”
“She’s been nothing but cruel to you,” Callie said.
I couldn’t find the words to explain to her the way I felt when Apollo told me all of that about my mother. I’d spent most of my life thinking she didn’t love me and had only kept me because of my demigod status. Pissing off the gods was a dangerous thing, and Mom wouldn’t want that.
But when Apollo explained the way she thought to me, it felt real in a way I couldn’t express. It meant that my mother did love me, under all the insults and anger, she cared about me a lot. And I couldn’t leave her behind, because I didn’t have anyone else that cared about me like that.
Apollo hadn’t even been in most of my life, and what would he do with me given half a chance? Throw me into foster care. I would have kept going, knowing that no one loved me, or I could stay with my mother, who I then knew did.
It had been a simple choice for me. It still felt like a simple choice. My mother might not have been a good person, but she did have a heart. She did love me. And I had to stick around, because I didn’t think anyone else would or could.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
Ghosts and Kisses Are Pretty Neat
Callie
CHAINS WOULD HAVE been mean, so I didn’t trap Aster to my bed like I wanted to do. If he thought he needed to go see his bitch of a mom, then I wouldn’t stop him. Actually, it would have been almost funny if I tried. Not that Aster ever would, but he could break all my bones with little effort. A human had no power over someone with god blood.
Luckily, Aster hadn’t left in the couple of days that passed. I suspected it had something to do with the fact that Micha hadn’t come back. I started to get worried, so I’d been listening out for godly conversations that might have been involving him. Each time I tried, it felt like someone had shoved cotton balls into my ears.
“You look peeved,” Aster commented as we sat on my bed.
My nose twitched. “I am. Micha hasn’t called or popped in, so I’m assuming something bad happened. He’s not dead though. I’ve decided he’s not allowed to be dead.”
I turned to glare at the sticky notes on my wall, more organized than they had been last week. I’d managed to throw away some that I’d figured out led nowhere or were about something irrelevant to me. I didn’t need to worry about giant politics in Greece. I needed to know what was going wrong at home.
“He’s probably fine,” Aster assured me. “If something happened to him, I think Dad or Artemis would have either told us or sent more protection.”
Worry started carving away at my certainty. “Would they? Because I’ve been without the protection of a Hunter for days, and they haven’t done anything about it. So, in their heads, I must not need protection. Which of course I do, because there’s someone after us. But if they don’t think I need it enough to send backup when their Hunter has been missing, then they probably wouldn’t send more if he died. And they wouldn’t think I needed to know he died. So, he could be dead and we don’t know!”
Aster took my hand. “He’s not dead. He’s just busy.”
I huffed, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t like how everything feels calm and stressful at the same time. Like, things have been okay for a little bit, but Micha is missing and we have no idea what’s going on. Maybe this is over and no one bothered telling us.”
“Dad would,” Aster said.
“Maybe!”
I threw myself back on the bed, glaring harder at the ceiling. I had nothing to take my frustration out on, so I would lay there all angry until it went away. I didn’t spend a lot of time being huffy about things, so it made me twitchy now.
Aster laid next to me, being all sweet and cute as he tried to make me feel better. It would have been easy to stop worrying with him there, but I needed to worry. If I didn’t, then it would’ve been like pretending nothing was wrong.
“I mean . . . I know this isn’t the case,” Aster said. “But . . . you aren’t upset he’s gone because you’d rather be hanging out with him, right?”
I rolled over onto my boyfriend, unwilling to show him any mercy. I folded my arms on his chest so I could rest my head there and properly stare at him. “No, that’s not why I’m upset. I like hanging out with Micha, but you’re my favorite.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
I grumbled, then slithered up his body. I kissed him kind of roughly, hoping it would distract Aster from the awful thoughts that shouldn’t have even been in his head. I knew why they were there, and I hoped that I would find a way to push them out eventually. Showering him with love and affection would at least give him something he didn’t have before.
Heat crawled up my body when Aster’s hands slipped under my shirt. He didn’t go too far, stopping at my waist. I was happy to feel his skin on mine.
Fun thoughts entered my mind, and I had to smother them with the reminder that we weren’t home alone. I couldn’t get Aster naked with my parents in the house, and maybe I shouldn’t have tried to get him naked at all. If we did that sort of thing too quickly, he could convince himself I had been impulsive and regretted it. I wanted him to know that I knew exactly what I was doing when the time came.
“We’re gonna get ourselves in trouble,” I said, my lips hovering over his. “I could kiss you all day long and forget that there are other things to do.”
Aster’s fingers pressed against me, drawing me closer. “We’d probably be okay spending a few more minutes on this. We’re stuck without any new information anyway.”
He had a point, and his shirt started to bother me anyway. It would have annoyed me less on the floor, and I wholeheartedly believed that I had enough self-control to remove the shirt and stop there. Maybe inappropriately touch his chest a little, but certainly not rip his pants off or anything. Nope, no pants off. Didn’t even want his pants off.
I tugged Aster’s shirt up, and he helped me pull it off of him. It went off to the side somewhere as I plotted out what I would do if my parents wanted to come into the room. I’d shove Aster onto the floor and roll him under the bed. As long as I kept my clothes on, we were good.
Aster got the tiniest bit growly when I kissed him hard, rocking against his lap. I sat comfortably on him, forcing my hands to stay still on his chest so I wouldn’t get carried away. I found that to be difficult anyway, given the little jolts of pleasure I got every time I moved against Aster’s lap.
Someone knocked rapidly on the door before pushing it open, and it startled me enough that I fell right off of Aster and onto the floor. It startled him too, because he fumbled to grab his shirt and sit up.
“Whoa there,” Micha said, a massive smirk on his face. He pointed at us. “Y’all were about to boink, huh?”
“NO!” I squeaked, sitting up from the floor. I pushed the curls out of my face, staring at the open door as I commanded him to close it with an angry point of my fingers.
Micha snickered as he did what I wanted, and Aster apologized six times for me falling off the bed. His shirt had been rucked up over his head, and it hung around his neck while he focused on making sure I was okay.
“I landed on my butt,” I told him. “If you wanna make me feel better . . . ” I turned and wiggled it at him. I got none of the butt touches I
desired.
Micha clicked his tongue, sauntering over with his hands on his sides. “I leave you people alone for a little while, and I come back to this. Can’t say I’m shocked or even especially dismayed. I’m proud of you little horndogs.”
I pulled Aster’s shirt down, dressing him as he mumbled to himself, eyes closed. I smoothed the fabric out, then patted his cheek before he got a kiss on the forehead.
“I have to kill you,” I told the Hunter. “You were gone for days without a word, and then you walk in here like nothing happened, teasing us for our pre-snuggles. Rude.” I shoved at his chest. “Where the hell were you?”
Aster was at my side pretty quick, putting his arm around my waist. “No one told us anything. Dad took that guy away, you left, and no one has said a word to us since.”
“You seem like you were fine,” Micha commented. “What, have you been making out for three days?”
“What’s it to you?”
I put my hand on Aster’s chest. “Micha, can you just tell us what’s going on? The gods didn’t bother with that, and I can barely hear anything going on with them. Someone put a block on my hearing and I don’t know why.”
Micha’s tone stayed casual, making me think of the gods. I didn’t much like it. “Artemis wanted to talk with me about some stuff, so I was home for a little while. Then Apollo brought the Newall guy to Olympus for . . . questioning. They wanted to know who he was working with, and any other information that could be useful to the search.”
“Were you there for that?” Aster asked.
“Only when they took Newall out of Olympus. They thought bringing him back to Earth would give him the illusion that he would be let go after it was all over, and if he gave us the info we needed.”
I got a little shiver at the insinuation that the gods would kill him once they finished torturing him. Though the man had tried to kill me, and I knew he would have done the same to my friends. I wasn’t so much upset for him, but for other people that might not have deserved something so intense. The gods only knew how to be intense, and they didn’t valued life all that much.
