by S. E. Babin
Hecate blinked and whistled low. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Zeus is fine,” I said quietly. “And Atlas is here with me.”
She gave me a long look but turned back to Atlas after a moment. “It’s a pleasure to see you,” she told him. “I’m assuming you know of my daughter’s plight?”
Everyone knew of my plight. The games were being advertised all over Olympus and the buzz spread everywhere. It was the first time in millennia something of this magnitude had occurred.
I growled in annoyance and shoved a cup of coffee at her. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” I asked her.
My mother grinned and took her cup. “I’m here to offer you assistance,” she said.
That didn’t tell me anything at all. I stared at her suspiciously over the rim of my mug. “Assistance for what?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Really, Abby. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Artie is helping me.”
Hecate scoffed. “Why you insist on calling the Huntress Artie, I shall never know.” Her lips sneered in distaste as she spoke the nickname. “She’s an all-powerful goddess. Such a nickname is...degrading.”
I narrowed my gaze at my mother. If she only knew what Clotho and Artie were doing upstairs at this very second, I’m sure the nickname would no longer be a problem. “She’s my friend. I can call her whatever I want to.”
She waved a ringless hand at me. “Regardless, I don’t know if Artemis will be able to provide you the kind of assistance my power would.”
I had to agree with her on that, but since I had no desire to kill everyone involved with the games, I stayed mum. We both knew where her power came from and what she usually used it for. I didn’t want to kill anyone. Rather, I wanted to be free to make my own relationship choices.
“This Typhon boy,” she continued, though I snorted at her description of the immortal monster, “he is powerful. But he is not without his weaknesses.” She set her mug down and leaned forward to peer at me. “You are one of those weaknesses.”
I rolled my eyes. “Duh, Mother. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in this mess, right?”
She waggled her index finger at me. “You misunderstand. When a person truly cares about another, they care about how they feel.” She rolled her eyes. “And you feel something very intense for the Lord of the Underworld, do you not?”
I sipped my coffee as I regarded her. I would not resort to manipulation to win over Typhon. At the heart of it, I considered him a friend. “I do.” My mind was spinning with her words. If I wasn’t going to resort to manipulation or favors, what did I have left?
“Then you should appeal to that side of him.” Hecate produced a small vial filled with a potion of swirling silver and purple. “And slip this into his drink. It will make him more...amenable to your desires.”
I set the mug down with a clunk. “No. If I win it will not be through cheating!”
My mother sighed. “Honey, we’re Olympians. That’s how we win.”
She wasn’t wrong. But I felt like I was better than that. My friends were better than that.
I held out the hand for the vial having no intentions of using it. Better to placate her now then deal with her meddling.
“Wait for a few breaths after he takes a sip of it to speak your proposal.”
“Anything else?” I asked her.
Hecate grinned. “I’d like a house tour, please.”
I groaned inwardly but stood from the table. “Fine.”
My mother’s eyes sparkled with amusement. She knew how irritating she was.
Let’s just hope Artie and Clotho were finished with whatever havoc they were wreaking up there.
A few hours later I’d shoved my mother out the door with the promise she could visit again soon. As soon as I saw her shimmer into the ether, I collapsed into an immortal puddle against the back of my door. Atlas’ amused chuckle met my ears.
“No matter who it is, mothers are always exhausting,” he said.
I groaned. “She even critiqued my hair! Does she not know who I am?” Even as I said the words, I had to laugh. She knew exactly who I was and she didn’t give a crap. To her I was the daughter she’d missed years bossing around. It was weird for both of us. I never thought I had a mother, much less it being a dark goddess.
Life was seriously weird. Even weirder when you were immortal.
Atlas slid down the wall beside me. “You going to use that vial?”
My lips thinned. “Doesn’t seem right. I’m not opposed to trickery, but outright cheating?” One of my shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t think I’m okay with that.”
He stayed silent for a moment. “Do you think you can win without resorting to cheating?”
The back of my head thunked against the door in frustration. “Probably not.”
Atlas reached over and patted my knee. “I’ve heard stories about you, Aphrodite. If anyone is able to see a way out of this, it would be you.”
I sighed. “Thanks for your vote of confidence. Artie wants to enlist a favor. A big one. I’d rather figure it out on my own.”
I slid a glance his way and watched his face clear as he realized what I was talking about.
“Ah. Tyche,” he remarked. “Favors from her do not come cheap.”
“I’d rather not owe any debts. It never seems to work out for me.”
“I suppose this is one you should consider as a last resort in your bag of tricks. If you get to the point where you realize you can’t win, perhaps you pull it out.”
He stood up and offered me his hand. I allowed him to pull me up and we trudged back into the house. I hadn’t heard a peep from Artie and Clotho lately so I waved at Atlas and headed up there to check on them.
I really wished I would have just gone back to sleep.
Chapter 5
“Holy Rocky Mountain Oysters,” I breathed as I stepped into the room.
Something was...off with Artie.
My stunned gaze raked over her, then speared Clotho with the kind of look a mother gave her child when they’d set the curtains on fire. “You didn’t.”
Artie spun around, long hair flying, and grinned at me. “Oh. She did. She definitely did!” Her eyes no longer sang with magic. Once a vivid, glowing purple, her gaze was now borderline lavender. It was weird, and I stared at her completely freaked out.
Her hair was still the same. Mostly, but the deep chestnut shade was dulled just a little. Her skin was a little more tan and her figure a little more wiry.
She was Artie. But not.
She was holy freaking moly mortal.
“Balls,” I muttered to myself.
“Can this be reversed?” I shrieked to Clotho. “Oh my gods, Artie. You’re going to have to ...get a driver’s license. Pay a mortgage.” I shuddered in horror. “Go on speed dates,” I whispered.
Artie snorted in amusement and put her hands on either side of my arms. “Breathe. Abs. Breaaattttthe.”
“How can I breathe when you’re aging right before my very eyes?” I squeaked as I pawed through her hair. “Is that a gray hair? Oh my gods. It IS. Artemis, you’re going to shrink in a puddle of mortal goo!” I collapsed to the floor, my hands over my face.
Dead silence was all that rang in the room for the next few seconds until peals of laughter and delighted snorts were all that I heard.
“Goo,” Clotho crowed. “Gooooo!!!!”
I dropped my hands from my face and frowned at her. “Clotho, you’ve ruined my best friend!”
Between her snickers of laughter, she was shaking her head. “This is temporary, Abs. The spell will dissolve in four days.”
I blinked. “Oh thank the gods,” I murmured. She’d be back to normal by the games. I clamped my lips shut tight before I blurted that out. This was not about me. This was about my friend and her current mid-life crisis that wasn’t really during mid-life. Immortals didn’t have those kinds of identity meltdowns. No
t really. We tended to get uber-violent or super melancholy and hermit-like. We didn’t suddenly decide to try out being mortal. It wasn’t like test driving a car.
I stared at her for a moment gathering my thoughts. “How do you feel?” was the only thing I could think of, even though there were a million other questions floating around in my head. “Does it hurt?”
She grinned at me like a mother does when her kids ask something completely asinine. “No,” she said. “It feels...weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Weird like I know if I hit my leg on the corner of the table over there it would hurt like a bitch. It feels like I’m fragile,” she said, awe tingeing her voice.
That’s because humans were fragile. If they fell the wrong way or hit their head in a certain way or ate the wrong kind of food, boom. Shuffled off the mortal coil and right into the afterlife without so much as a how do you do.
I didn’t like this. Not one single bit.
“Four days?” I asked as I gave Clotho the hairy eyeball.
She nodded, even as her eyes glittered at me with annoyance. “Unless she wants it to go longer.” Clotho looked down at her feet. “In which case, she will have to take a period of waiting. I won’t immediately grant that wish.”
I pressed my lips tighter together to keep from railing at her. Why she would even think about granting a wish of that caliber to my friend anyway was completely beyond the realm of my understanding. She couldn’t take a wish like that back, could she? I asked Clotho.
Her gaze flicked over to my friend as she pondered my question. The longer she waited to answer, the more I knew what she was going to say.
“No,” she admitted. “Once she makes the decision to strip her immortality, I cannot give it back. It goes back into the pool for distribution to another immortal.”
I blinked. “Another immortal?”
“A child,” Clotho explained. “There is no massive pool of immortality to be handed out, Abby. It’s strictly controlled. When an immortal dies or...in Artie’s case, chooses to give up their immortality, it goes back into the Pool of Fate. Then, when a child is conceived, a spark of that immortality is given to the child in question.”
I mulled this over. “So...it’s like magical genetics?”
Clotho rolled her eyes which was pretty common when she was speaking to me. “No, the Pool merely deals with the immortality aspect of it. It’s sort of like food rationing, except with immortality. There’s only a certain amount of it so there’s no chance of overcrowding the world with immortals.”
My eyes widened as I finally understood. “This is why it’s so difficult for immortals to have children!” I frowned. “But it is kind of like magical genetics.”
Clotho’s brows gathered together. “Over the years we’ve become more peaceable. Thousands of years ago the Pool brimmed over with immortality because gods died all of the time.”
She was right. We used to be a pretty bloodthirsty bunch. We still were, but we’d toned it down quite a bit.
“But now,” she continued, “there hasn’t been a true death since Cupid. Athena and Eris are still alive.” Her eyes sparkled as she grinned. “Barely, but their immortality holds.”
“So you’re suggesting we need to start killing a whole lot more people so we can start having children again?”
Clotho sank into the couch on my office and sighed. “No, dummy. I’m just saying that’s the reason why it’s been so difficult and why there haven’t been any new immortals lately.”
I thought back to several months ago and the whole demigod debacle.
Clotho nodded. “Yep. Every single demigod conceived dipped into the pool. It’s nigh unto impossible for a child to be conceived right now.”
My heart sank. Was it possible the Fates’ vision was wrong?
“We are never wrong, Abby,” she said reading my mind.
I shook my head to clear it. Plenty of time to worry about that later. Back to my friend. I slapped on an excited smile even though I didn’t feel terribly excited. “So what’s your first order of business?” I asked Artie.
She was studying the new freckles on her arm. “Not sure yet. Maybe I’ll go meet some people and make a friend.”
I stared at her open-mouthed. It took me thousands of years to find only a few friends and she thought she could do it in a day? Maybe it was easier to be mortal.
“Good luck with that,” I told her.
She gave me a jaunty wave, pulled Clotho in for a quick hug and left us sitting in the office.
“I’m not sure how I feel about this,” I told her.
Clotho shrugged. “It wasn’t your decision.”
“You don’t think it’s a horrendous idea? What if Zeus finds out?”
Clotho stretched out on the couch and smoothed her brightly colored skirt out over her legs. “Zeus isn’t due back in power for another week or so. She’ll be back here begging for her immortality by then. Plus, she only has four days. Don’t worry about it.”
Those were the words I hated to hear. Anytime someone said it wasn’t a big deal or not to worry about something, things got real, real fast. “You just totally cursed it,” I warned Clotho.
“You’re so superstitious,” she said with a snort.
My jaw dropped. “Oh my gods. Are you high right now, Clotho? You’re a Fate. Superstition is your bag. Your wheelhouse...your everything.” I waved my hand at her. “Why are you playing so fast and loose with the rules right now? In the past I had to jump through hoops to get anything from you!”
Her eyes flashed that silver freaky color they normally did when she was about to go full on Fate and start spouting some prophecy. But instead of her voice going all weird, she merely stared at me and calmly said, “Artie’s fate will diverge from yours in a catastrophic way -” Seeing my expression, her face softened. “You must realize what is due to come is no fault of your own. But your fates...they will diverge. You are two very different people on two very different paths, friend. And I know in your heart, you’ve known this for awhile.”
I sighed. I had known it for awhile. It didn’t mean I needed someone else to point it out to me though.
“This will give her the chance to see what life is like on the other side. To experience the things she’s always wondered about. And...it will give her the opportunity to see on what side of it she wants to be. Does she want to stay with Olympus and her people?”
At Clotho’s long look I stuck my tongue out at her.
“Or does she want to stay here. On Earth. And maybe experience a normal life span?”
Where had all of this come from? I knew the answer to this. Artie had started up a business downtown. She moved away from me.
But...so had Clotho, and now she was my roommate. I rubbed my temples with my fingertips.
“Exactly,” my friend said. “Allow her this time, Abby. Do not pass judgment. She is at a crossroads. Just as you are.”
I stood. “Fine,” I said as I dusted off the back of my pants. I really needed to get this floor cleaned. “Fine,” I said again. “I won’t say another word about it.”
“Good. Now go away and let me nap.”
I swatted her on the foot as I passed by. She was a good roommate most times, but her wisdom kind of got on my nerves.
Chapter 6
I ignored Atlas as I passed by him in the living room on the way into the kitchen, but I didn’t miss his curious look. There was no way in hell I was telling him what just happened. If he got a good look at Artie before she went out the door he probably already knew.
For so long I wanted to have what she had. Or...at least I wanted to be left alone. Having magic was pretty darn cool so it would be difficult giving that part of it up. Artie had taken this to the extreme in a pretty serious way, and I hoped for her sake...no, for all of our sakes, she came back to us in once piece.
Now, whether she wanted to remain mortal was something I couldn’t think about right now. I had too much of my own chaos
to worry about.
I’d just spent some very yummy time with Hades and there was no way I wanted to be sold to the highest bidder at the games. I had to figure out how to win. The sooner the better.
Hopefully without resorting to trickery, but I’d do it if I had to. It was in my veins, after all, and I didn’t doubt for a second anyone else would hesitate to use it.
Right now I wasn’t going to owe Tyche any favors, nor did I like the idea of using my mother’s potion on Typhon. I liked the guy even as much as I disliked his proposal. But you had to hand it to him. Dude knew how to take advantage of a situation and he had me bent over a barrel. I wanted to make sure I knew all of the participants of the games before I solidified any plan. Knowing who was in would give me the chance to pick who I needed to focus on the most and who I wouldn’t need to worry about.
Five days were now slowly trickling down to four. At the end of day three, all of the names should be in and I was entitled to get that information. The only bad thing was sometimes people would enter under assumed names.
I shoved a cup under the coffee maker and turned it on. As the dark brew flowed, a plan began to form. If others could use assumed names, then why couldn’t I? Most gods didn’t bother with it because they were too vain to want to assume someone else’s identity even if it did give them a huge advantage.
I was no longer that vain, and since I was entitled to choose a champion, it would be in my best interests to ensure no one else knew who they would be.
A grin spread over my face as I pulled the mug out from underneath the machine. I chortled to myself while pouring the cream.
There would be the small matter of convincing him, yes. But he had an interest in me not marrying Typhon or anyone else.
I’d have to bargain, and it would be difficult, but I thought I might be able to pull it off.
For the first time in a long while, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. I sat back in my chair nursing my coffee and my thoughts.
This was going to be okay.
