They Will Not Be Silenced

by Nicole Thorn

  Dad took a deep breath as he ran his hands down his face. “I feel like I’m upset for a different reason than your mother. Callie, you cannot be doing what you were doing. We let Aster stay here, and that doesn’t give you permission to mess around with him.”

  “We were only kissing,” I said.

  “That could lead to other things.”

  “I have self-control,” I said. “So does Aster. I know that we haven’t been together for very long. Believe it or not, I have rational thought. I know when to say no and when to stop.”

  “Forgive me, but it didn’t seem like you were planning on stopping.”

  “Okay, but you didn’t know for sure. You can assume all you want, but that doesn’t change what I would have done if things started going too far.”

  “You didn’t have a shirt on,” Mom pointed out. “It was already going too far. And again, we let Aster stay here with us. You took advantage of what we did for the two of you, and that’s not okay. If you’re dating a person that lives in the house, then it would be a lot easier for things to get carried away. We don’t want you doing something you would regret.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Frankly, no. I don’t trust two teenagers to be completely responsible when it comes to a bunch of new and overwhelming emotions. Bad things could happen, and I don’t think you would be good at dealing with them. You’ve never dated before, and it’s intense that your first boyfriend is a demigod.”

  I scoffed at her. “Why? He’s a normal person who happens to have a god for a father. He also has a crazy bitch for a mother, and I’m not letting you send him off to keep getting abused by her. Aster is staying.”

  Dad stood a little straighter, his stare turning more serious. “You can’t force us to let him stay here.”

  “No, I guess I can’t. But Apollo doesn’t want Aster back with his mom either. If I talked to him, then I bet I could get him to set Aster up with another place to stay.”

  “Fine,” Dad said. “I just don’t want him here.”

  I held a finger up so he wouldn’t cut me off again. “Aster came here because I made him come here. If it wasn’t for me, I think he would go back home. Meaning he would need something keeping him in that new place. I would have to go with him.”

  “Are you threatening us now?” Mom asked. “This isn’t like you. Is this what we have to expect if you start dating that boy?”

  “I’m already dating that boy, and no, it’s not a threat. It’s me telling you that I’m going to do what I have to do to keep someone I love from being abused. It’s the right thing to do, and living with Aster isn’t going to shove us into bed any faster.”

  Dad cringed. “You’re seventeen. You can’t leave.”

  “Age doesn’t mean much when the gods get involved. In a fight with Apollo, you guys aren’t going to win. I’m sorry, but this is how it is. I’m staying with Aster, and I’ll follow him if he gets booted out.”

  I tensed when the room stayed silent for too long, but I didn’t regret anything I said. I didn’t feel like this was a direct threat to my parents. I wasn’t angry at them for their reaction, and I hadn’t done anything wrong with Aster. We were seventeen and a fresh couple. We could have been doing a lot more than kissing.

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. “I think it would be inviting trouble if we let Aster stay. You’ve had a parade of god-like people in our house since he showed up.”

  “Before he showed up,” I corrected. “You just weren’t paying attention. You didn’t listen to a word I said, because you decided I was crazy. This is my life and it has been for years. It’s going to be like this for the rest of it, no matter what you want for me. So how about the two of you come to terms with that while I go make sure Aster isn’t having a panic attack.”

  I left my parents in the office, hoping they would come to the right conclusion. I hurried up to my room, sure Aster would have been steeped in his own misery and fear of rejection. Eventually, that would stop. I believed that. We couldn’t be together for a decade with Aster still assuming I would move on. It broke my heart when he thought that even now.

  I found him in my room still, sitting on my bed as he twiddled his thumbs. I sat on the edge of the bed, folding one of my legs under the other. “You look upset.”

  “I’ve been better,” Aster said. “Should I get packing now? Probably won’t take very long.”

  I wanted to growl at him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Your parents said that?”

  “No, but they eventually will. I refuse to believe my mom and dad are going to send you back to that devil woman.”

  Aster’s jaw tensed as he stared at his knee. “She’s not all that bad. I wouldn’t want you to worry if something happened and I did have to go back there.”

  It wouldn’t happen, so I refused to spend time worrying about that. “You’re going to stay here. We’ll just have to make sure we don’t give in to the temptation of surprise sleepovers.” I sighed. “Even though it would be lots of fun to sneak into your room at night for a cuddle. Especially one where you didn’t have a shirt on. Have I mentioned lately that you’re very nice to stare at?”

  He smiled crookedly. “You might have, but it isn’t bad to hear.”

  “Then I’ll start saying it a lot more. I’ll make it weird.”

  “Please do.”

  I got up to peek out my door. I couldn’t hear anything from my mom or dad.

  Aster opened my door all the way, insisting it would make sure my parents had nothing to worry about. Micha appeared not two minutes later, yawning and holding a crossbow.

  “You sleep with that?” I asked.

  He glanced down at it. “I sleep with it on the nightstand. I’m not a weirdo. I have a knife under my pillow for protection.”

  “Wonderful,” Aster muttered.

  “You never know when a werewolf is going to come crashing into your place and trying to tear your throat out.” Micha stopped himself, blinking. “Sorry, that was rude of me. Werewolves are people too.”

  “So, I’ve heard,” I said. Moving on, I asked, “Did you hear any new instructions from Artemis? Or are we still stuck without a clue where to go from here?”

  “Nothing,” Micha said. “Though your cute friend got me thinking about where those souls are.”

  “And what do we do about it?” Aster asked him. “The ghosts aren’t in Washington, so it’s not like we can ask them anything. We’re probably going to find out the hard way what’s going on.”

  Mom called my name from downstairs, but I didn’t worry until she called Aster’s as well. The two of us looked at each other for a second, only breaking eye contact when Micha asked why we looked twitchy.

  “Rude!” he called when we walked away without answering. Micha followed anyway, intent on getting the scoop.

  Mom and Dad sat on the couch in our sun/rain room while they waited for us. The three of us stopped in an unbreakable cluster at the door.

  “Your father and I have been talking,” Mom said. “I’m sorry that you felt so disrespected, Callie. We didn’t mean to do that. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t worried about you doing . . . things.”

  “We’ve come to a decision,” Dad said. “Namely, one your mom decided, and I okayed. It’s the best thing we can come up with, since you and your boyfriend had to go off and be teenagers.”

  Mom put a hand on his leg, silencing him. “Calm, remember?”

  “Fine.”

  Mom smiled, gesturing to me and my friends. “Callie, your father and I aren’t going to stop you from dating Aster, and we’re not sending him away.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed.

  Aster nodded. “Thank you. I promise that I won’t do anything that would be considered disrespectful to your daughter. I care about her very much, and I wouldn’t go over the line.”

  “We’re going to make sure of that,” Mom said. “Micha, sweetie, you’re their new babysitter. Since it’s you
r job to protect Callie, it only seems fitting that you’re there to make sure she and Aster are responsible.”

  My jaw dropped open in shock and horror, but Micha lit up like I’d never seen before. Glowing, he pressed his hands together. “Thank you so much for this honor. I will do my duty diligently and with all the purpose of a warrior. Mark my words, your daughter will die a virgin.”

  Aster and I both turned to glower at him. “You wanna die?” I whispered at the Hunter.

  He put his hands on his sides. “Threaten me all you want, but I’ve been given a mission by your guardians. I have to respect that.”

  “More than you respect Callie?” Aster asked him.

  “I respect everyone equally. I just think it would be fun to frustrate you guys for a little while.”

  “Forever,” Dad corrected. “I might change my mind if Aster and Callie ever decide to get married. Maybe.”

  I shook my head, sighing to myself. I thought my parents would have been calmer about my dating when I finally started, but I should have known better.

  Mom stood from the couch. “Oh, Micha, one more thing. We’ll be going out of town soon for a wedding, so you’ll really have to keep a close eye on the kids while we’re gone.”

  “No problem,” he said with a nod. “I’ll keep them chained up.”

  I didn’t know what changed, but I felt something tugging at my insides. My head snapped up, and I saw that everyone else in the room stared out the glass walls of the sunroom. If they felt the same thing I did, then they didn’t show it. I moved forward, my feet carrying me to the door that led out to the backyard.

  “I feel something,” I whispered when the door swung open. “Power pulsing in the air. It’s warm and dark. Do you hear it talking to you?”

  “Callie . . . ” Aster’s fingers brushed my back, but I walked outside anyway. I could hear the others coming with me. Micha had his crossbow in his hands as he looked around.

  Heat burned at my fingertips, making me look up. I saw blurry edges around my world, but I couldn’t tell how far away they were. It became harder to breathe as the feeling of being locked away, trapped, bore down on me.

  I turned, my hands finding Aster. “Do you feel it?” I panted at him, my eyes desperately searching for understanding. “It’s pushing in on us. We’re locked in. No way out.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Dad asked. “Callie, what’s going on?”

  Micha put a hand on Dad’s shoulder, keeping him from moving forward. “Don’t. She might be having a vison or something.”

  I shook my head. “No, not a vision. How do you not feel that? It’s like bricks closing in on us. We’re . . . we’re about to die.”

  A throat cleared before I heard, “Very dramatic. I’m into it.”

  Aster shoved me behind his back as the rest of the crowd turned. A woman sat on a rock only fifteen feet away from us. I knew her face. She had soft features framed by long curls reaching her hips. But it was the eyes I knew. They looked like ice, but with a slight gray tint to them. They watched me, a smile on her face.

  “Go inside,” Micha ordered my parents, raising his bow at the woman. “Go now!”

  “Callie,” Mom called to me, her eyes stuck on the woman. “We need to leave.”

  I couldn’t move.

  Micha let an arrow fly, but it only made it a few feet before the woman waved her hand. The thing turned to dust. “Your toys won’t work on me,” she said as she rose up to her feet. “Now, killing that demigod might cause me some extra, unwanted trouble. But I have no problem killing some Hunter.”

  The earth shook as Aster shoved me backward and into my father’s arms. He grabbed me, dragging me away from the boys as they went for the woman I couldn’t name. I screamed to be put down, but I had no chance of fighting my father off.

  I grabbed a leg of the pergola. I held it with both hands, foolishly fighting Dad’s hold. I couldn’t go inside while my friends fought. It would have been wrong to leave them in danger.

  When the ground shook again, my parents and I all ended up tumbling down. I looked up in time to see Micha far too close to the woman. He’d abandoned his crossbow, and had a knife in his hand instead.

  “Nope,” the woman said, snapping her fingers.

  Micha shot back ten feet, rolling on the ground. When he stopped, the knife had sliced his arm, hand, and middle open enough to have his shirt blood-soaked in seconds.

  Light rose around Aster, but I still wanted to scream for him to get out of the way. It didn’t matter to me that he was a demigod, because I could only see his death.

  I couldn’t fight, but I refused to be defenseless. The moment the woman’s hand went to Aster’s throat, I screamed out as loud as I could. His light dimmed while I tapped into the only power I had.

  She only had me waiting for three seconds before the earth split open. Branches clawed their way through the dirt, separating Aster from the woman. Half the branches carried Aster out of the way, stopping to scoop Micha up from the ground. The others wrapped around the woman, squeezing so tight that she grunted.

  Persephone and Medusa appeared out of thin air, dropping into my backyard as a team. Persephone was ready when the woman’s magic exploded, freezing the branches. They caught fire, vanishing in seconds as the woman landed on her feet.

  “Nice trick,” Persephone said. “You wanna see what a real goddess can do?”

  The earth opened again, only, nothing came out of it. Those branches sprang to life as they dragged the woman under, the dirt sealing above the body. My parents couldn’t keep hold of me when I shot forward, leaping over branches to get to the boys. They had barely gotten up when I started pulling them away from the action.

  I’d barely reached them when the branches started to curl around the open ground. The strange woman shot out of the hole, hovering out of reach. The branches came for her, breaking before they could touch her skin. Persephone growled, then nodded to Medusa before getting some distance.

  “Eyes shut!” Persephone yelled to us as she ran our way.

  It took me a couple seconds to register her words, but I knew what to avoid. Medusa didn’t look like herself anymore. Or, not the version of her that I knew. I could only see her from the back, but her hair had morphed into its true form. Beautiful white and yellow snakes writhed on her head, hissing with fury at the woman above them. Stupidly, she looked down.

  The woman tried to screamed, but the sound cut off as her skin started to turn gray. She fell through the air like, well, a stone. The statue crashed into the ground, but she didn’t break. Instead, she sank halfway into the damp, soft earth.

  “Shit,” Persephone sighed. “That was interesting.”

  “What the hell was that?” Dad screamed, his hands over his eyes.

  No one answered, but I saw Medusa back to her other self before she turned around. She cleared her throat, running her fingers through her hair before futzing with contacts she’d pulled from her pocket. She put them back in without much trouble, so she was fine. My parents were fine, and then I needed to know the boys were fine.

  Micha hunched over, still bleeding. He breathed heavily, but it didn’t look like his wounds were so bad that I would have to worry for his life. Aster looked perfectly fine, already healed before I even got to him. He stuck close to my side.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Medusa told my parents. “I’m all humany again.”

  Reluctantly, my parents uncovered their eyes. I saw my father’s hands shaking, and it sent a tremor through me. I’d never seen him like that before, and I couldn’t help but take some of the blame. They had been in danger like never before, and that wouldn’t have happened if not for me.

  “Are we safe?” Mom asked. “What was that?”

  “Something bad,” Persephone answered. “I’m not sure you really wanna know all the details.”

  Before they could ask, I heard cracking. The others didn’t seem to notice at first, but I sure did. The cracking echoed in my
ears like the sky itself broke open. Then stone started to fly, and I ducked in time to miss a piece that struck Aster in the arm, cutting him open. A body busted free of the rock, and then vanished into thin air.

  “No,” Medusa said. “She couldn’t have . . . ”

  “She did,” Persephone sighed before cursing. “Yeah, I was worried about that one. Well, super. Hades is gonna be so fucking annoyed.”

  Aster tapped on her shoulder, making the goddess turn to him. “What are you talking about?” He grasped the healing wound on his arm, blood getting on him before it sealed fully.

  “There’s only one person I can think of who can do that,” Persephone said. “It’s my unfortunate duty to let you know that Hecate wants you dead.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:

  They’re Going to Put Her in a Bubble

  Aster

  “HECATE?” CALLIE ASKED, throwing her arms up in the air. “What the hell did I do to piss her off?”

  Persephone brushed some of Callie’s hair out of her face. “Well, dear, you went to the underworld and exposed her plot, and now she’s blaming you for all the shit that’s happened.”

  “I didn’t even do anything!” Callie shouted, flailing hard enough that I almost had to catch her.

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Harold shouted over everyone else.

  Persephone turned to look at him. “Oh, well, Aster’s father forced Hermes to take Callie and Aster down to the Underworld a few weeks ago. You remember that, I’m sure. That’s when the floating incident occurred.”

  “You know about that?” Mrs. Harold asked.

  “Everyone knows about that,” Persephone said. “Hermes is a terrible gossip. Don’t worry, though, you come off in a good light. Anyway, Callie tried to help us get some information about these souls that have gone missing, and it appears that Hecate, she’s the goddess of witchcraft, is involved. She also got one of Hermes’ kids involved, which isn’t a surprise since the two of them like to do the nasty every now and then, but whatever. Anyway, we accidently killed that demigod, which might’ve upset her some, but we really had no choice. Now she’s trying to kill Callie, because she has the potential to give us more information.”