Except it isn’t. The strength in these fingers is like the strength in Aidan’s fingers.
But it wasn’t Aidan. If it was, she wouldn’t still be tense, ready to grasp the railing should whoever it was decide to throw her down the steps like she was a pile of rags.
“I’m not doing anything. Just making introductions.” His grip loosened, and she twisted to look behind her. She found herself staring into a white harlequin mask, the cheek painted with gold glitter tears. Green and purple feathers adorned the head. It was something you’d see at Mardi Gras, or Carnival in Rio.
“You were watching me,” she said. The eyes behind the mask regarded her without blinking. She didn’t recognize them. When they swept up and down her body, the movement was unnaturally quick, curious. “What? What are you looking at?”
“I’m not sure. To be honest, you aren’t quite what I expected. I thought you’d be taller. Or that you’d be sparkling.” He smiled, revealing beautiful white teeth. The movement highlighted the gauntness of his face. His clothes were slightly loose and the mask was the only costume piece he wore. The rest of him was clad in jeans and a navy-blue t-shirt.
“Who are you?”
He leaned close, gave her a sniff. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Or maybe you would. Odysseus did.”
When the door opened behind them, his hands were on her faster than she could blink. He drew her down the stairs until he hit the wall at the bottom. Glass clinked and rattled. He’d run up against a rack of wine bottles. More bottles lined the walls of the small room to their left. They were in a wine cellar.
Aidan stood on the stairs above them; the cape of his costume swayed against his knees.
“Let go of her.” The way he said it left no question that he knew who he was talking to. The grip on her shoulders tightened slightly, but a soft bark of laughter shot past her ear.
“Look at you. I don’t believe it.”
“Shut up. Let her go.”
He did, and backed down the stairs, farther into the cellar. Cassandra found herself farther inside too when Aidan walked forward. The staircase was narrow and didn’t allow room for her to pass. The boy who’d grabbed her still smiled, and he reached up to push the mask off his face.
Cassandra looked from one to the other. The stranger was thinner, and his hair was chestnut brown, but the bone structure of his face and the shape of his eyes were the same. Even the way they stood. They could have been brothers.
They are brothers. They’re family. This is Aidan’s real family.
Aidan held his hand out and drew her toward him, putting himself between her and the stranger. A ripple of fear coursed down her spine and she tugged on his hand. They should run. Whoever he was, he was dangerous, even if he did look like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
“Get out of here, Hermes,” said Aidan.
“Hermes?” He smiled. “So she does know. That’s excellent. Big sister will be very pleased.”
“Who’s ‘big sister’?” Cassandra asked. She stepped out from behind Aidan. Their voices rang loud against the stone walls. The slightest shuffling of her feet was loud, even over the muffled music coming through the cellar door.
“Don’t talk to him, Cassandra,” Aidan whispered. “Please don’t.”
Hermes looked from one to the other, eyes narrowing. “You haven’t just gotten here. You haven’t been looking for her like we have. What are you doing?”
“Shut up, Hermes!”
“You’ve been living here. Like one of them.” His eyes traveled over Aidan. “And you look so healthy.”
“You don’t. And I gather that she doesn’t either.”
“She looks good. Sturdy. Just like always.”
Aidan smiled. “Jumping to her defense? She must be worse off than I thought.”
“That smile. There’s the Apollo I remember. Cocky and vain.”
Cassandra held her breath as the two verbally circled. The wine cellar felt tighter by the minute. Beside her, Aidan seemed taller suddenly. Stronger.
“Cocky and vain. And stronger than you.”
Hermes shrugged. “It was a mistake to grab her; I see that now. Athena told me not to. She warned me. Stay back.” He jerked backward as Aidan leaned forward. “Tsk, tsk. If I get my limbs torn off now, I’ll never hear the end of it.” He took another hasty step backward and knocked against the bottles. Glass rattled like a nervous titter running through a crowd. “I was just saying hello.” His eyes darted to the staircase.
“You should have stayed away.”
“Do you know what’s happening? You should be glad I got here first.”
Cassandra grasped Aidan’s arm. “Wait. He knows what’s going on?” Aidan shook her off like he hadn’t heard. “Aidan.”
Hermes’ brows knit. “Aidan?” He grinned. “It’s nice. I like it. And I can see that you love the girl, so I’ll be on my way.”
“And you’ll never come back?” Aidan’s arm shot out and grasped a bottle by the neck, then dashed it against the wall. Red liquid and green glass exploded and splashed onto the floor; the sharp smell of alcohol flooded the air. He still held the neck of the bottle; the jagged edge dripped wine.
Adrenaline went through Cassandra like a gunshot. He was going to kill him, or at least try. “Aidan—”
“Go upstairs, okay? Find Andie and your brother. Take them home.” He edged her out of the way.
She looked at the glass in his hand. “No.”
Hermes had lost all traces of levity. He stared at Apollo with dread and more than a little exhaustion.
“Are you choosing sides?” he asked.
“There are no sides,” Aidan replied. “Not for me. There’s only her.” The shard of glass twisted in his grip.
“What’re you going to do with that?”
“I’m going to slice you open. Bleed you out onto the cement. That ought to slow you down for awhile.”
Hermes’ mouth opened and closed. “I can see that nothing I say is going to matter. Whoever you are, you’re not the brother I hoped for. No ally. Nothing but a traitor.” He looked at Aidan with disgust. “And from the look of it, you’re not even dying.”
Light flashed on the glass in Aidan’s hand. “Maybe I am. Come closer and find out.”
Hermes glanced toward the door and Cassandra nodded slightly.
Go. Get out of here before you ruin everything.
He smiled. “Uh-uh. It’s been a few thousand years, but if I remember correctly, I’m no match for you on my own.” He looked at the sharp glass. “If I come any closer, most of my spleen is going to end up skewered on the end of that bottle. I can almost feel it already, sliding into my guts. No thank you.” He looked at Cassandra. “Sorry, sweetheart. You’re sort of a pretty girl, very nice I’m sure. You’ll forgive me for this later.”
Hermes pulled a wine bottle from the wall and threw it at her head. Cassandra screamed, but Aidan jumped in front of her and caught it. It gave Hermes just enough time to rush past them and leap over the railing onto the stairs.
“Big sister’s on her way,” he said. “I’m going to love watching you explain this to her.”
Aidan growled and leapt for him. The tip of the broken bottle sliced through the back of Hermes’ shirt and into the skin but went no farther. He was out of the cellar and fleeing before Aidan even regained his balance.
Aidan ran up the stairs and out into the party.
“Aidan!” Cassandra shouted. She vaulted up the stairs and caught him at the open front door, staring into the night. “Don’t!”
He looked at her frightened face and dropped the bloody shard of bottle, then pulled her close.
“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She shook her head, and he felt her arms and down her back. “But he was one of them, wasn’t he? One of you. Where is he?”
“The fast-footed prick is probably a half mile away by now.”
She glanced over his shoulder. Andie and Henry had heard h
er yell; they were coming through the crowd, their faces concerned.
“I have to go after him,” he said.
“No.”
“I’m stronger than he is. I promise.”
“What about your sister? The big one he talked about.”
“I’m stronger than her too.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Come on. It might not be a lie. She’s dying, after all.” He kissed her quickly and ran out the door, black cape flying ridiculously behind him.
“Hey.” Sam poked his head out beside her. “What’s up? Where’s he going to so fast?”
“Family emergency,” said Cassandra, and walked down the front steps with Andie and Henry not far behind.
* * *
Andie snored. It was loud on a regular night, worse after having her lungs shoved into a corset for three hours. She slept in Cassandra’s bed while Cassandra lay on the floor in a sleeping bag, watching the pale light from the bulb over the driveway basketball court float up through her window. The dull thud of a rubber ball hitting pavement assured her that Henry couldn’t sleep either. She stared at the glowing red numbers of her alarm clock. They hadn’t advanced much since the last time she’d looked. Aidan hadn’t called, but she thought he was okay. She hoped he was. No certainty of his death had leaked into the dark space between her ears, anyway.
Cassandra sat up and threw the covers back, then grabbed her bathrobe and went downstairs to join Henry by the basketball hoop.
“Can I play?” Cassandra asked, closing the front door softly.
“Sure.” He tossed her the ball and she almost dropped it.
Basketball wasn’t their game. They were both surprisingly bad at it. But chasing down missed shots seemed like just the thing to tire them out and hopefully drive them to sleep. Cassandra made it all the way to S in a game of HORSE before either one of them brought it up.
“I still don’t think he is what he says he is.” Henry took a shot and made it off the rim. “I mean, I know he jumped out that window, and he’s definitely strong. Superhuman, even. But a god? Come on.”
“You didn’t see them tonight,” said Cassandra. “You didn’t see the way Hermes moved. Or hear the things they said.”
Henry scoffed and threw a shot up into the backboard. It bounced off and Cassandra chased it down the driveway. She took her own shot, missed, and blew into her frozen hands. Touching the cold ball was starting to hurt.
“So what do you think he is, if not a god?”
Henry shrugged and dribbled absently. “A government experiment maybe. And now he’s got amnesia about it, or paranoid fantasies or whatever. It happens all the time.”
“Where?”
“TV.” Henry smirked. “To be honest, Cassie, I’m trying not to think about this too much.”
That was well and good for him. But she had to think about it. Because big sister was coming, whoever that was, and she was coming for her. “Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“You know how I won’t be psychic for much longer?”
Henry bounced the basketball, nodded. “Sure. Eighteen or whereabouts you always said. It’d just go up like a puff of smoke.” He drew up and took a shot; the ball dropped through the net and bounced off the driveway into the dead grass. “What about it?”
“Well, what if I was wrong? What if that dark spot in the future isn’t me not being psychic anymore? What if it’s me not being around anymore? What if I just—” She held her hands up and let them fall. “Die?”
Henry took a breath and let his shoulders slump. He still had traces of pirate eyeliner under his eyes and it gave him the look of a cartoon villain.
No. A dark, reluctant hero, maybe. But never a villain. Henry doesn’t have a villainous bone in his body.
It didn’t surprise her that he was the one having the hardest time accepting Aidan being what he was. He was always so grounded, solid, and practical. A six-foot-tall rock people leaned on. Sometimes Cassandra wondered if he believed in her psychic stuff at all, or if he just said he did because he loved her.
After a second, Henry retrieved the ball from the grass. He shook his head.
“Nope.”
She smiled. “Nope, what?”
“Nope, that’s not going to happen.” He dribbled and passed her the ball. The impact stung her fingers.
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” he said, and took a defensive position, trying to get her to drive past him. “Maybe I’m psychic too.”
* * *
Aidan stood in the backyard of his parents’ house, leaned against one of their pine trees and listening for movement. The only thing he heard was a gentle wind and the soft squeak of his mother’s porch swing swaying slightly back and forth.
His adopted mother. The mother who was thousands of years too late to be his real mother. He’d never thought of her that way before. She’d always been Gloria, the woman who loved him enough to call him her son. And Ernie was always just his dad. But everything was coming unraveled. The way that Cassandra had looked at them through the window that day; he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
There wasn’t much time left. He’d fought against believing it ever since Cassandra’s visions had started. But denial didn’t do anyone any good. Not even a god. Especially not a god, when Athena was on her way. A fight was coming to him, and he had no idea whether he could win, no matter what he said to the contrary.
He looked down at his clenched fists. For the first time, they seemed pathetically weak. Maybe he’d been hiding for too long, passing as a human when he was anything but. He used to be one of the strongest gods to walk on Olympus: the god of the sun, the god of prophecy and the arts. But he was out of practice. Not so long ago, he would have had that little rat Hermes skewered and roasting over a pit with a snap of his fingers. He flexed his fists again. Maybe he really was growing weaker. Maybe he hadn’t escaped the curse that was killing the others after all.
“You’re not thinking of taking her away from here, are you?”
Aidan turned, ready to rip Hermes in half, but his anger dissipated as quickly as it came. It wouldn’t have been possible anyway. Hermes peeked out from behind another pine, his legs loaded on springs. If Aidan so much as pulled his fist back Hermes would run, too fast and too far to ever be caught.
“It would be a waste of time,” Hermes warned. “And she wouldn’t be safe.”
Aidan smiled ruefully. “Is she safe here?”
“She’s not safe anywhere.”
He looked at Hermes. The god of thieves had changed over the centuries, but not much. He wore his hair shorter, and he dressed like he’d fallen out of a Hilfiger catalog. And he was thin, so painfully thin. The kind of thin that eventually killed you. But the mischievous light in his eyes was familiar and so was the curve of his mouth. The stance too, edgy and tense, was so much the same that he might as well have had wings on his feet.
“You look like shit,” said Aidan, and Hermes smirked.
“You’re one to talk. What are you supposed to be, anyway? A seventeen-year-old Bela Lugosi?”
Aidan pulled the cape off his shoulders. It did seem ridiculous now, standing before his eternal half brother. Like playing at children’s games. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you.” He looked up in time to see Hermes’ quick shrug. “But you can’t have her.”
Hermes crossed his arms. “I think Athena’s going to have a different opinion.”
Aidan clenched his jaw. Athena. Always proud and haughty, always Daddy’s favorite. She was used to being strong and getting what she wanted. But the gods were dying. He knew that much. If Hermes was any indication, Athena would be weaker than she used to be. She’d be fading. He wondered what her death was, whether it made her angry, or crazy, or both.
“I’ll fight you,” Aidan said quietly. “I’ll fight you with everything I can.”
Hermes nodded, considering. “You know, Apollo,” he said finally, “Athena would like to save you. B
ut if you make it come down to a choice between her survival and yours, I think we both know which way it’s going to go.”
Aidan looked down. Resignation weighed on his shoulders. The stance felt unnatural. The god of the sun should never hang his head.
“What’s it like?” Hermes asked. “Living with them? Loving one of them? It’s been quite a while, for me.”
Aidan smiled a small, regretful smile. “It’s amazing. I never thought anything would matter as much as she does. Just one mortal girl.”
“One mortal girl,” Hermes repeated.
“Hermes.”
“Yeah?”
“Please leave us alone. I’m asking you, if we ever really were brothers. Get her to stay away.”
Hermes blinked. For a minute Aidan thought it had worked. That hearing him beg and say they were family had shocked Hermes into compliance.
Hermes sighed.
“We are brothers,” he said gently. “So I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you that I wish that was a choice we had.”
A soft rush of air passed Aidan’s cheeks. When he looked up at the tree, Hermes was gone.
12
WHAT HAPPENS ON THE ROAD
“Shouldn’t we leave this thing somewhere farther off the beaten path?”
Athena looked over her shoulder at the silver Taurus. It stared back sadly, like a dog being left at the pound, parked in the rear of the lot of the travel plaza just outside of South Bend, Indiana. She shrugged.
“Well, shouldn’t we take the plates off or something?”
“Don’t see why.” Athena shrugged again. “We’re going to be long gone before anybody finds it, and the trucker probably didn’t get the plate number anyway.”
“You’re wrong there,” Odysseus said as they walked. “He was probably on the radio as soon as we started swerving over the lines.”
“What are you worried for? We’ve already crossed a state line, and the car was probably stolen in the first place. They can’t tie it to us, and even if they could, we’ll have disappeared. We don’t have time for this. Let’s just get something to eat and catch a ride to New York.”
Odysseus sighed and shut up, and Athena looked at the travel plaza. It was made up of a Shell gas station-slash-souvenir shop, a very large set of restrooms, a McDonald’s, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. Both of the restaurants were greasy. One was greasy and sweet. She pulled open the main door and looked in both directions. The whole place smelled like hot oil and diesel fuel.
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