by Nicole Thorn
“We wouldn’t have known about you if you hadn’t bothered us,” I pointed out. “You think I go looking for creepy spider ladies in my spare time, because I don’t. Until recently, I’ve stayed pretty much off the radar.”
Arachne spat something at me. I jumped out of the way, and watched as the grass the spit landed on died, like it had been some kind of super poison. All the blood drained from my head, leaving me dizzy. Zander pointed his sword at Arachne’s throat. “Do not do that again.”
“The Oracle didn’t have anything to do with this,” Jasper said. “Why kill her?”
“You kids are so naïve about how the gods work,” Arachne said, sneering. “They would have had her tell you. You think it’s a coincidence that you met that girl in the park?”
We all stared at her. I didn’t know what we would have said to that, because someone started clapping behind our wall of Charmed people. I thought they did it to be sarcastic, but then all those people started collapsing. Until they laid in big piles around us. I couldn’t tell if they were sleeping or dead.
Athena stood behind them, still clapping. “Bravo, Arachne. You almost got away with it. Too bad a group of humans and two demigods bested you. That has to sting.” She shook her head.
Arachne screamed something in a language I didn’t understand. I blinked at her, and then looked at Athena as she wandered into the circle of bodies. She said something back in the same language, just as harshly as Arachne did. Then she sighed, and shook her head. “I knew giving you a second chance was a dumb mistake. Never mind. I’ll fix it now.”
A cage appeared at her feet. She looked at Arachne. It was all she had to do. The woman suddenly began to scream, and her body started to change. The vines that had been keeping her captive shrank away, like they something scared them as Arachne slowly started to compress. It looked grotesque, and happened slowly. I found it hard to describe. By the end of it, Arachne wasn’t a woman anymore, but a large spider.
Athena picked the spider up, and said, “There. That’s better.” And put her in the cage at her feet.
CHAPTER THIRTY:
Around Every Corner
Zander
I wanted to know what the hell Arachne had been rambling about before Athena cut her off. It sounded important, and one look at the goddess let me know she wouldn’t fill us in on it. Arachne seemed to be under the impression we faced danger from more than just her. I didn’t want to believe it, but I could feel when someone lied.
Arachne hadn’t.
Jasmine held onto my arm, and stared at the spider in her cage. Her eyes narrowed. “I need a can of bug killer right about now.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Athena told her. “I’m going to take very good care of little Miss Muffet.” Her eyes squinted. “Well . . . I guess she’s not really Miss Muffet. Whatever, you get what I was going for.” She waved her hand lazily.
My sister cleared her throat, and smiled. “Um, ma’am . . . can you tell us something really quick?”
“What?”
Kizzy bit her lip as she deliberated. “What the hell is all this?” She gestured to the area around us. “Why is this here, and why did Arachne say that meeting Callie wasn’t an accident? What’s going on here?”
I watched the goddess carefully, and I could feel little echoes of her emotions as her eyebrows pushed together, making her perfect face looked concerned. “Ya know what, kids, you should probably just head home,” she said gently. “Get some rest. You’ve earned it.”
“But—” Kizzy started.
“Thank you,” Athena said. “Thank all of you for helping with this. I won’t forget.”
The woman took up the cage, and vanished in a blink.
“Well fuck me,” Kizzy sighed. “We’re not getting a single damn answer, are we?”
Jasper looked worried as he shook his head. “No. I don’t think we are.”
***
It unsettled me, having walked out of that area to see the cleanup crew that Athena sent. I mean, I guess it was cool seeing a bunch of satyrs running around, getting rid of chimera bodies, and handcuffing those fighters. Why satyrs? Hell, if I knew. I felt too tired to think much of it, and the goat legs distracting me.
When we all got back to the house, Juniper went right upstairs to take ten showers, and burn the clothes she wore. I didn’t even see where Jasper and Kizzy went off too, because I took Jasmine upstairs to make sure that she hadn’t been. She made it out alive, and that was more than I thought I’d get.
Jasmine got a little banged up, but she looked okay for the most part. She did stab someone, and I knew that had been an odd feeling. Other than seeing things that normal people didn’t, she lived a very human life up until a few months ago. The change had been so rapid that I worried about what it would do to her head. So far, she took it like a champ, but we all still rocked some hardcore adrenaline.
“She didn’t tell us anything,” Jasmine said as she drifted off to sleep when night fell. “What if it’s something bad, and we have no clue? We could all die, Zander.”
I shook my head, and she snuggled up under my chin in bed. “No. Athena wouldn’t have done that to us. If it was important, I think she would have told us. She thanked us.” Surely that had to mean she felt grateful. A god wouldn’t have made an effort if they didn’t actually care. Most of the time they didn’t make an effort even when they did care.
Arachne had been an insane woman who wanted revenge, and she went to great lengths to get it. It failed, and that was the end of it. So, what if we met Callie in the park? Lots of people went to that park, and we went there all the time. It didn’t shock that we would run into her. Maybe some kind of magic worked in us to draw us together simply because we were magic beings. We happened to randomly run into Jasmine too, and no one ever questioned it.
“I know she did,” Jasmine said quietly. “But I saw the look on her face. Something is wrong, and she didn’t want to tell us. None of this is making sense. And what about the thing that Callie couldn’t figure out that the gods were saying? It sounded important. I feel like we’re missing something big, and we can’t see it.”
I rubbed her hip and kissed her head. “Just sleep it off, baby. It’s been a really long day.”
“Zander . . . ”
“If something bad was going to happen, the gods would tell us. My mom and Kizzy’s wouldn’t hang us out to dry.”
I didn’t know if I won the fight, or if Jasmine became too tired to keep going, but she closed her eyes. I listened to her breathing as it evened out, and she went under.
I had faith that my mother wouldn’t let us all scramble down here in danger if she knew about something coming for us. But . . . they knew what happened to Kizzy when she was a kid, and they didn’t say anything to us. We saw them in between when it started and when it ended, and they said nothing. They did nothing. Only when Kizzy came to me, did I found out, and they still didn’t do anything when I made those fuckers kill each other.
Maybe I had too much faith in the gods.
Jasmine slept, but I couldn’t seem to follow her. My head turned with the day, trying to figure out what Arachne had been talking about. They could have been the mad ramblings of a mad woman, but I still didn’t feel a lie in her when she said it. All that meant was that she believed it, and that didn’t count for much. Every bad person thought that they did the right thing. A villain never thought themselves evil.
My brain kept going until I finally fell asleep in the late hours of the night. The sleep had been dreamless, but it didn’t feel solid to me. Like I knew I slept, and stayed on the edge of waking up the entire time. When I woke up again, I didn’t feel rested.
I didn’t want to disturb Jasmine’s mumbly sleep, so I decided to carry her around the house. She got all angry when I tried moving her hand from my shoulder, or her teeth from my arm. She didn’t bite hard. Mostly little nibbles in between coos. I smiled and stood with her.
Jasmine curled up to my chest, an
d started talking in her sleep about either Jedi or jet skis; I couldn’t tell. She seemed happy with it either way.
Jasper and Kizzy sat in the living room when we got down. They had her phone out, poking at the screen. They didn’t say what they were doing, but Jasper glared when he saw the way his sister clung to me.
Jasmine rolled over in my arms, and started kicking her legs in the air. I couldn’t believe her eyes stayed shut for this motion, but she kept going.
“Jasmine?” I said softly with a smile. “What are you doing?”
In between mumbles, I heard the words swimming and Cheetos. Something about the Cheetos chasing her. Well . . . I picked the right person to love.
Jasper watched her without any surprise at her odd activities. At least she slept peacefully, and didn’t have nightmares about spiders or that little battle from the day before.
“Whatcha doin’?” I asked.
Kizzy looked up from her phone and left it in Jasper’s hands. “We were attempting to see if anyone reported funny business around town. The three of us decided that it was really odd that the camps were both so close.”
“But this was where Arachne came, and she was here for Athena.”
“Yes.” My sister nodded. “And doesn’t it strike you as odd that Athena was here? And Callie, and your brother a few doors down, selling a house? Come on, Zan. I know you want everything to be fine now, but you can’t ignore this.”
I sighed. “Eros goes all over to sell houses, and it wouldn’t be all that weird if Mom sent him to keep an eye on us.”
“What about Callie?” Jasper asked. “Why did her dad get transferred here? Why are the only three seers in the world in this town, right where two demigods lived?”
“We were told to come here,” Kizzy reminded him. “Aphrodite told us to move closer to Seattle.”
“But you weren’t that far in the first place.”
I stopped them both. “Mom is the goddess of love. She probably knew you and Jazz would be here.” I looked at the sleeping girl in my arms. “She probably wanted us to meet you.”
They both looked at me like I grasped at straws, and they rose at the same time. “Zander . . . ” Jasper said, glancing at Jasmine. “This is just too many things at once.”
I handed him his sister, and she didn’t stir even once. “You’re all paranoid. We got past the bad stuff, and we’re in smooth sailing.”
The words came out of my mouth, and they sounded like a lie hitting my ears. I knew better than what I said, and my family knew that. They were kind enough not to point it out.
Jasper put his sister on the couch, and returned to us as Juniper came out of the kitchen, looking crisp and clean. “So, what do we do?” I asked. “What the hell do we do if we’re right?”
Kizzy shrugged. “We do what we’ve always done, Zander. We fight.”
Fight . . . Did we keep living like this? Living with death at every corner? “They’re human,” I said to Kizzy, trying not to look at Jasper and Juniper. “Human. We can’t keep this up. We’re going to lose them.”
“Right here, Zander,” Juniper deadpanned. “Yeah, we’re human, but we’re not helpless. We stayed alive yesterday, and that was all us.”
“Do you want us to run?” Jasper asked, crossing his arms. “Like Arachne said we should. You want us to live in fear and hide in dark corners instead of living. We are indeed human. That means we get one life to live, and I don’t want to live like that.”
That sounded more than fair, and I couldn’t deny them all the lives they deserved. I rubbed my jaw and looked at Jasmine on the couch. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Mom might know something,” Kizzy said. “We can summon them if you want. They can help us.”
My foot tapped on the floor, but I only had to think about it for a second. “No. If they were going to help, then they would have. Athena would have. No one came for us, Kizzy. We have been and we will always be on our own. We have the five people in this house. Fuck the rest of the universe.”
She blinked at me in astonishment. It blossomed in her soul, along with a mix of other emotions. Doubt, then acceptance, and anger. Betrayal for the women meant to love us. The question was, why didn’t they love us the way they were supposed to.
In the end, orphans filled this house.
“I should start on breakfast,” I muttered to myself.
Kizzy grabbed my arm, and stopped me midstride. She was the only one strong enough to do it, and she looked at me with hard eyes. “Don’t worry. Our moms wouldn’t screw us over.”
I didn’t know if I believed her.
I went to the kitchen, and Juniper followed me. She started in on cutting fruit for her breakfast, and I decided to go all out for everyone else. I made sure to keep my workstation perfectly clean so that she wouldn’t get twitchy about it. Juniper didn’t need more stress in her day.
We worked around each other in the kitchen, used to our patterns enough that we didn’t get in the way. Though we both stopped dead when we heard Jasmine sleepily shout, “THE CHEETOS HAVE EYES!”
Juniper made a face, and sighed. “I don’t even know what to think anymore.”
I patted her head, and went on with my business.
It felt odd to do while I fried eggs, but I thought about the wolf I killed again. I hoped that he didn’t have a family waiting for him, but I couldn’t ever be sure. I shouldn’t have felt bad, because they all would have hurt Jasper and Jasmine if given the command. I did nothing wrong, and that wolf had it coming. Same as Kizzy. The fact that she took a life seemed to roll off her back. Not that she didn’t care, but she had always been smarter than me, and could be okay knowing she didn’t have a choice. She killed a person, but it had been her life or his.
“You’re getting worry in the eggs,” Juniper said as she did a drive by to steal the knife I hadn’t cleaned yet.
I sighed and flipped the eggs over. “Lay off me, woman.”
She cocked her hip and glared at me. “Woman?”
“Woman,” I repeated.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m telling Jasmine to cut you off.” The sink turned on, and Juniper began running the knife under water, getting the schmutz off it.
I laughed at her. “She couldn’t handle that. Not with my wooing game so on point that she trembles from my love for her.”
Juniper beat out my laugh with a louder one. “Your cockiness is almost entertaining.”
I pointed to her, and pretended to squash her head between my fingers, closing one eye to focus. She wouldn’t have it.
Jasper and Kizzy came in to set the table just when I finished cooking. I passed Jasmine on my way up to change clothes. Her hair looked like a mess and her eyes had barely opened, but she waited with pursed lips for a good morning kiss that I gave her. I threw on a pair of jeans and a new shirt, skipping the shower since I took one seven hours before.
Jasmine had made my plate up by the time I got back down, and I gave her another kiss to show my thanks. Jasper glared at me, and I glared right back, because Kizzy sat on his lap. I mean . . . come on. We messed around with each other’s sisters, but at least I didn’t let Jasmine do that to me in front of him.
Unless she really wanted to.
“Can we go see Callie?” Jasmine asked me around a fork. “She should know that everything is pretty much taken care of.”
The key words being pretty much . . . “That’s a good idea. We can all go, since we don’t have a house to put back together this time.”
“Thanks the gods,” Juniper sighed.
Jasmine reached out to scoot the bacon plate closer to her, and she grinned when she got it. She loaded her plate up, and nibbled on a piece while staring off into space.
“Do you think the voices calmed down for her?” Kizzy asked. “Since all this stuff with Arachne is over, I bet Callie’s head is a lot quieter.”
“You’d think,” I commented. “For all we know, it’s worse than ever.”
The kid did
n’t exactly win the lottery. She was kind of stuck with the worse job you could have when it came to the gods. Callie had to hear them yap on and on, and she could barely understand it. I couldn’t fathom why they thought she should hear it all.
After breakfast ended, Juniper and Jasper started on the dishes while Jasmine went to shower, and I helped Kizzy with some stuff in the backyard. She wanted to plant a new flower, and she needed me to help her reorganize her pots.
“You and Jasmine doing okay so far?” she asked me as I set her pot down.
I wiped my hands on my pants. “Good, I think. It’s been like no time, but I think we’re gonna be okay.”
She crossed her arms. “And you’re not gonna start freaking out when she starts aging?”
I didn’t lie. “Of course, I am. But I’m going to stay with her for the rest of her life. When the time comes where I lose her . . . I’ll just . . . ” I didn’t tell Kizzy what I had been planning to say. It would kill me when Jasmine died, and I would want to go right along with her. I liked to think I wouldn’t do that to Kizzy, but I honestly didn’t know.
I went back into the house with Kizzy, and we decided to get the mail. I had time to kill before Jasmine got out of the shower anyway, and I wouldn’t mind getting a little time outside before it snowed again.
Kizzy laced our arms together for our walk to the mailbox, and we started down the sidewalk, chatting about what we would do when Valentine’s rolled around. I obviously had to destroy Jasmine with my present, but Kizzy would want to do something sweet for Jasper.
“We should get something for Juniper too,” she said. “I don’t want her left out. Maybe we can get her a really nice cleaning thingy or something.”
That sounded terrible. She should get candy and stuffed animals like the rest of us. “Something else,” I said as I saw my brother leave that house a couple of doors down.
Ohno.
Eros grinned like a dope as he slipped a little red sign into the top of the for-sale sign, indicating that it indeed had been sold.
I laughed. “Eros.” He looked over, and waved as we approached. “You got a sucker to buy this place? What poor soul did you have to Charm?”
