I found myself in Callie’s bedroom before I even envisioned going. My stomach churned with guilt, feeling I shouldn’t be there invading her privacy, despite the fact that I did it all the time to others. She wasn’t in bed, even though the nightstand clock read two o’clock in the morning. I had been working longer than I had anticipated. I pulled back a little to survey the entire apartment. She was in the master bathroom with her father, so I entered.
Her father was being sick over the toilet. Callie, clad in her bathrobe, held a cold compress on his neck.
“Oh, Callista, just leave me. It’s just the medicine.”
“I’m staying right here, Dad, until I get you back in bed,” Callie told him, trying to hide the fear in her voice.
“Go to bed, Callista.”
“Is there anyone I can call? The doctor? Raphael?” she pleaded.
He was sick again. Her frown deepened.
“It’s part of the side effects. It should only last a couple of days.”
“A couple days! You need more fluids.” She stood up and padded out into the kitchen in her slippers and a fluffy purple bathrobe. I followed her, entranced. I had to know more about her.
She took a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with water. Instead of returning immediately to her father, Callie put the glass down, pressed her hands on the counter for support, and stared into the sink.
Her frame shook violently with silent sobs, her eyes squeezing shut to prevent the tears from coming. But Callie couldn’t stop them, and the tears rolled down her cheeks anyway.
I tried to empathize with what she must be feeling. What was it like to live in fear and pain that you may lose the person you loved? I couldn’t fully fathom it. My family and my friends were all immortal. I’d had loved ones die, and I understand the human emotion of grief too damn well, but each instance had been so sudden. It was the fear before the loss that I couldn’t quite fathom, seeing someone slowly dying, where there was nothing one could do to stop it. We don’t fear Death because we know him personally. But this fear, actually knowing a loved one is leaving the world soon, intrigued me.
Before I realized it, my curiosity took me further than I wished to go, and I invaded Callie’s mind. What I felt made me dizzy. Callie was envisioning her father’s pain, his upcoming death. She felt alone, helpless. His pain was her pain. She wished she were a normal, carefree teenager and then regretted the thought. She loved her father. She’d give him every ounce of energy she had until he was gone. Forget friends—Emily and Linda popped up in her mind. Forget boys—and I saw myself.
Then I was somehow ejected from her mind. I saw all that in a millisecond. If only I could have stayed in her thoughts a moment longer to see what she was really thinking about in reference to me. But there were more important concerns than me.
I didn’t understand it. How was I pushed out? What force propelled me from her mind? I had never had a mortal push me out before. Callie searched the room, staring right through me. She rubbed her arms, quivering to rid herself of the chill I had given her, then wiped her tears away with conviction, took up the glass, and marched back toward her father’s room.
She was so strong, handling something so heavy at such a young age, at the precipice of adulthood. I admired that fortitude.
I opened my eyes, finding myself in the dark of my own bedroom, feeling alone, desperate, and in pain. I took on everything Callie was feeling and now felt what I had been curious about—the pain and fear of losing a loved one—and regretted facilitating my abilities to see more than I wished for.
I had made a deal with myself. Dan was the furthest thing from her mind, so I wouldn’t make her love him. But it didn’t seem fair to force him to love someone else just because I had a little crush on his object of desire. And part of me wanted to see where Callie’s heart naturally would lead her without help or hindrance. I was unfairly testing her, but if I were ever to take the plunge again, was it wrong for me to be positive first?
I decided to do nothing but get some sleep, wondering what tomorrow would hold.
The next morning, I woke feeling rejuvenated and actually hopeful. I walked out into the kitchen, slipping my shirt on over my head. Aroha was talking to someone. There was an elderly lady in the kitchen, clad in an apron, writing down instructions as Aroha dictated them. Another maid.
I gave the woman a nod, gathering my things for school. Breakfast was now a nuisance with a mortal lingering about. I rushed into the bathroom, hearing the woman ask about our parents. I wonder what lies Aroha fed her: a workaholic father, a mother who was in Paris with her new boyfriend, or perhaps both.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and ran some leave-in conditioner through my hair. Gods forbid that I embarrass Ma if I wasn’t the image of perfection; no really, she was murder, so it was easier to obey. I didn’t feel like waiting for Ma, who was going to be late for school again, so I went down to tell Rupert, our driver, to wait for her. I could drive my car, but then again, why not use a cab? I hated being the driver in a standstill of traffic.
When I made it downstairs and out onto the street, I told the doorman Thomas I needed a cab. He walked out to the street to hail me one. I zipped up my jacket. It was the first cold morning in the last couple of weeks. Perhaps next I’d move to somewhere incredibly warm, like Ecuador or Hawaii, somewhere like that.
I saw Callie exit, her face haggard. There were black rings under her eyes from lack of sleep, but she was still utterly beautiful. She was helping her father into the car. He looked on the verge of death. I surveyed the area, but I did not see Thanatos—the god of death—nearby. Callie’s father would live for now.
“I should come with you,” she protested.
“Raphael is going to the hospital with me. He’ll take care of me. You need to go to school, Callista.” Her father endearingly touched her cheek. “Go to school.” He shut the door, and the car drove off.
She stood there motionless, watching after the car even after it was lost in the traffic.
“Mr. Ambrose, your cab,” Thomas announced. Callie turned on hearing my name, and her almond-shaped eyes met mine.
I offered her a ride, nodding toward the cab without uttering a word. I was afraid to ask her anything, afraid of the bind, because I felt so much. She nodded and came over toward the cab. I opened the door for her and offered my hand, but she climbed in without it. I kept forgetting how modern girls don’t expect chivalry. I slipped in behind her.
Callie was quiet for a few moments but finally noted in a small voice, “Where’s your car?”
“Aroha’s running late. I don’t feel like driving. Felt like a cab ride,” I mused.
“Thank you for letting me tag along.”
I shrugged. She said nothing more to me the entire way. Her thoughts were with her father, and it would’ve been terrible of me to take her from them. There were so many things I wanted to say to her and so many things I wished I could do to alleviate her pain, but it was futile. It was odd how I felt so drawn to her, how her emotions had become my own. After the epiphany of my feelings surfaced, I no longer felt at ease around her, and I became tongue-tied. She had become so important to me almost instantly, and the part of me that knew how to relate to women was long gone, dried up, frozen. Sure, I’d had my fair share of innocuous flirting, but when it came to true feelings, I was at a loss. It had been so long—thousands of years—since I had felt that wonderful human emotion: love.
Chapter 6Aroha
Mankind proclaims men are straightforward beings, and we ladies are the ones who use arts and manipulation to get what we want. Well, I tell it straight. I could sum this whole problem up with one word: Callie. Yet others will be much more diplomatic, I am sure.
Did I know Callista Syches would send a ripple through my life when I first saw her? No. She was nothing. Inconsequential. Mortal. But she was pretty—in an unconventional way, of course—and I didn’t like that. I mean, she was nothing in comparison to me. I was beauty in
carnate, the most beautiful being in existence. This fact, and being forever young, tends to fluff one’s ego. At the same time, since we do not age, some of us tend to mature slowly over time. Perhaps this is the reason the myths gave us all a flaw: pride, adultery, or greed, for instance. Archer was led too much by the heart; Lucien was overly obsessed with truth; Ares loved conflict and war, and not much else; Zeus loved women, too many of them—flaws everywhere. However, not all of us fell victim. I had no shortcomings whatsoever.
I tried to be nice to this Callie, especially because it seemed my son liked attending to her. I didn’t wonder where he spent his time nor how he got to school. We lived together, but our lives had become completely disjointed. I could hardly understand him. He, despite how he would disagree, was his father’s son, or at least nothing like me. Perhaps there was something flawed in his makeup. Some said he was a spoiled brat, but I didn’t agree with that. He had always been such a peculiar child: a dear, loving child when he wasn’t being naughty or disobedient, but peculiar in that he was always serious about his duties concerning the mortals and their affairs. It was true he had an important job, but those simple beings would fall in love without his help…eventually, and with the wrong people as they do anyway with their fickle, fragile hearts.
There were too many concerns crowding my mind these days. I longed for the simple times to return, when love didn’t have to be managed, beauty distributed correctly; before the ex-husbands, one of whom had the baggage of wars to deal with, another who obsessed over me still; oh, bigger, more powerful gods breathing down my neck for me to get things done. My life was far from simple, and now things were much more complicated and irritating with the emergence of that awful mortal girl wedging herself between my son and me. Something had to be done about her. It wasn’t natural for a mortal to be so beautiful. Even some goddesses weren’t as pretty as she. There had been some mistake. I hadn’t given this mortal beauty, for that is part of my job, and if I had, I would not have given her enough beauty to make her my rival—not that she could rival me—but still, where had it come from?
I could barely stomach my lunch, with Dan paying attention to her instead of me and the traitors, Lucien and my own son, being highly civil. I had decided only yesterday that Dan probably was the most attractive mortal in the school. It had been Todd until he got too clingy.
“We’re all going to the coffee house. You should come,” Dan told the hideous usurper of my attention.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Callie said simply. She wasn’t flirting back. Ugh. I wanted more of a reason to hate her.
“No, do come,” Archer insisted. He was in a weird somber mood, the same with Callie. If neither of them cheered up, it would be a drag at the coffeehouse. What on Mother Gaia was wrong with my son? He isn’t exactly victim to bouts of melancholy—not like Lucien was. I did not like the way he salivated over the little mortal. He was almost genuinely lovestruck, which is something that does not happen to him or me. We give love much more than feel it ourselves, a defense mechanism or something, an inverse of the power we exude.
“Bunch of college kids hang out there. Archer and I like to put the pretentious NYU students in their places. Pedantic sycophants,” Lucien muttered the last part.
“Yeah, it’s a good laugh,” Dan interceded. Dan leaned in closer to Callie to say quietly, “Those two are like wicked smart.”
“So, what happens when you become NYU students?” Callie shot Lucien a reprimanding side-eye. The clever, coy little girl was able to get under his skin. She was a bit more interesting than I’d first supposed, but I refused to entertain the idea of liking her.
“I’m not going to NYU,” Lucien said. Wasn’t he? Archer, Lucien, and I had said we would give Manhattan eight years, the high school and college circuit. And that little booger can’t lie. He was changing his plans. We had hit NY before, a hundred years ago, and even though NYU did admit women back then, we ladies couldn’t earn degrees. It had bothered me—like a crush that slipped away—so I decided it was time for me to get a degree from the first place I’d ever attended. Now he dared to change our plans? He was the one who’d wanted to leave Germany a couple years early to come to the US. Some stupid prophecy told him to. It was always weird that he listened to them.
Archer and I exchanged a look, him catching the same thing as I had. Then my son refused to hold my gaze. He was planning to forsake me as well. Just great. The eight-year plan was drawing to a close after four, it seemed.
But what had I expected? Son or not, he needed his space every century or so. A mother always needed to know when to let go. I’ve had to several times throughout my existence, but it wasn’t so bad when I was sure I’d be reunited with him again one day.
“I still don’t know,” Callie whined.
Give it a rest already, sweetheart. I took the “interesting” compliment back.
“Why don’t you check in at home, and if everything’s all right, then meet up with us?” Lucien offered. Oh yes, I’d forgotten the little mortal lived in our building, and her father was ill. Thomas had babbled on about it this morning outside. I had hardly listened to what the peon said. After all, the doorman was always full of useless mortal gossip, like I cared about them. Ha!
Dan gave Lucien a glare, but why? Was Dan so wrapped around Callie’s finger in the three days she had been here that he was jealous? He should’ve been wrapped around my finger, like he had been before the little trollop reared her wretched head. I did not like Callie Syches, not at all.
“I’ll take you, if you ask me to,” my Archer said quite charmingly, showing off the perfect smile he had inherited from moi. What was my conniving little brat up to, though? He was careful with his words, being sure not to directly ask the wench questions, which meant he actually was afraid they may bind him, and that meant the asinine child was falling for this girl. I thought he had learned his lesson much earlier in life not to fall in love with a mortal. That was an utter disaster. Little witch Psyche got between my boy and me. Then, after all was said and done, his grandfather gave her to him, which I found unbelievable. Spoiled him really, gave his love immortality, and what had she given my son in return? Six hundred years, if that? Then she went off with that mortal man, taking my dear granddaughter with her. Oh, she came back, of course, but Archer had learned his lesson and divorced her. I never got to see Hedone again after her mother stormed out for good that one evening in what, the six hundreds? Five hundreds BC? It was hard to keep time straight. Then, after her first mortal died, she picked another and then another, always choosing mortals instead of immortals. Stupid, fickle Psyche. And then I had to nurse my broken-hearted boy for years. Archer had never been the same since he lost his daughter. Hedone didn’t make it halfway through her third millennium, which is still fairly young for us. I had been celebrating my first millennium for millennia, but a goddess never reveals her true age.
“I can drive you in my new Cayman,” Dan blurted out desperately. When Callie didn’t respond, he added quite pathetically, “It’s a Porsche.”
“Oh, Dan, have you completely forgotten about me?” I called out, using my charm and wiles to gain his attention back. “It’s a two-seater, and you promised to take me for a spin.”
The goddess thing came in handy. I had to hold back my extraordinary powers among mortals. It wasn’t hard to do, almost as easy and involuntary as breathing. Just to reel Dan in, I slipped out about one percent of my charm, which snapped his little mortal neck in my direction, and those of a few other boys nearby as well. I have the power to attract everyone to me. If my charm were let out full throttle, then I’d have to run for my life from thousands of mortals, men and women alike, who would want to literally and figuratively love me to death. Whenever I used it, most male gods called it cheating the system.
Lucien gave me a look of contempt. He had noticed.
But it worked. Dan’s gaze flew to Callie, then to me, and he smiled sheepishly. “I forgot.” Then he came back over, s
miling, and sat down next to me. He slipped his arm around me.
Ha, I still had an edge over that silly mortal girl.
“Which gives me a car,” Archer said to Callie, “and you in need of a ride.” He was crafty. He had learned that from his father, who was extremely gifted at telling people what to do in such a way that they didn’t realize they were being cornered into an agreement. That was how he’d cajoled me into leaving poor Heph—my first husband. When that didn’t work for Ares, he’d unleash his temper. I couldn’t live with Ares, but I couldn’t imagine a world without him in it.
“Do you mind stopping at my house first?” Callie asked. Point to Archer—he had forced Callie unknowingly into asking him.
“Not at all,” he said triumphantly. I hated when he acted so much like his father. That self-satisfied, smug smile—ugh! Ares always claimed I was overly confident, and Archer inherited it from me, but I beg to differ.
Callie and Archer showed up at the café a half hour after we arrived. They both looked happy. Too happy. And they weren’t the only ones. Dan sat up excitedly in his seat when Callie entered, like a puppy whose owner had just returned. His eyes narrowed at Archer again. This had to end. I couldn’t endure losing my prized pet’s affection and attention for the likes of a measly mortal. I would ask Archer for another favor tonight. He’d do it as well. Archer is very obedient. He has to be. I couldn’t leave this week to go to Zeus and come back and find my little Danny-boy gone.
Callie sat in the only open seat, sandwiching Dan between us in the cozy booth. This would be the true test of Dan’s love for me. Archer pulled a chair up to the table next to Callie. She gave him a shy smile that gave no real feelings away, and he gave her the same. Like playing poker, they didn’t want to reveal how high the stakes had gotten.
Dan began speaking to Callie right away. “So how are you liking Manhattan?”
Quiver Page 5
