"It's a small thing, really." The Oracle wrinkled her nose. "I've had this itch at the end of my nose since yesterday. I cannot be released from my shackles until the end of my term, and the imps that throw the trance-inducing mixture from the stream of Apollo on those hot coals have claws that are too sharp and clumsy. Would you mind scratching my nose for me?"
"That's it? I can't release you?"
"I serve my purpose, young human, just as you will serve yours. Please just honor my request. You promised."
Audrey looked at Maggie, who shrugged. "We can't do anything else for her. I once wasted a question finding that out."
Audrey climbed the black marble steps, and the Oracle leaned forward. Audrey delicately scratched the end of her nose, and the Oracle sighed with satisfaction.
"Thank you. That will make my days and nights much easier."
"No problem. Thanks for the answers. I wish I could say the same."
"Any time."
With that, they turned and descended through the passage, which seemed a lot shorter than Audrey remembered.
"Did that do us any good?" Audrey asked.
"Only you will know whether your answer was helpful or not. From what she said, it sounds like we've got a lot of work to do before we find our true answers."
"Were you disappointed with my question?"
Maggie wouldn't meet her eyes, and Audrey knew it was more than Maggie protecting her from her Truth-Spelling. "I was hoping you'd ask something more relevant to our quest," Maggie admitted. "But you're human. Your intuition told you what to ask, and there's no way to know how it all ties in until it does."
Audrey's cheeks heated, and shame tightened her chest. "You were human once, too. Have you never pondered the question of love?"
Now Maggie's pause made Audrey all the more curious for her answer. Finally, she said, "All the time. But there are considerations that keep me from pursuing it."
"Like what?"
"Well, I'm over a thousand years old. I outlive my lovers, or they leave me for a mortal subject of affection who can provide more predictability. Each assignment brings me to a different place, and I get very little down-time, so it's hard to build long-term relationships."
"That's what your previous question was about, wasn't it?" Audrey couldn't resist asking even though it seemed to be a sore subject.
Maggie sighed, but she answered, "I thought I had found someone, a recruit to the Truth Seekers, but he couldn't handle it, and there were other considerations I can't talk about right now. So, it's moot."
"What about Charlie, 'Ms. Margaret 'MacKenzie'?"
Maggie shook her head, but her cheeks turned pink. "He's just like all the rest of them. He'll be attracted to the adventure and the otherworldly quality of the whole affair, but then he'll bail when he finds I can't make certain promises or when I refuse to leave my calling for him."
It wasn't unlike how Audrey felt about dating cops, but from the other side. She'd never ask anyone to leave his passion for her. "Do you ever think about quitting and living a normal life?"
"Almost every day, but I won't do it, at least not anytime soon."
They came to the entrance of the cave, where the young dryad returned Maggie's glasses to her. "See you again soon, Truth Seeker."
"Probably not that soon," Maggie muttered so that only Audrey could hear her. "Which way is the path downhill?"
The girl pointed toward the view of the city, but Audrey saw something at the corner of her vision.
"Hey, look. Isn't that the door we came in?"
Maggie squinted at the door that had appeared in the side of a boulder. "I think so."
"Shouldn't we go back the way we came, then? Ames will be gone, and you said you wanted to find out what was in the cage."
"I don't know. There's something odd about this."
"Come on, Maggie." Audrey didn't know why, but she felt pulled to the door. "I know this is the right way to go."
"Well, then, I'll trust your gut on this one." Maggie sounded skeptical, but she followed Audrey.
As she suspected, the door led back to the building. When they stepped from the stairwell to the fifth floor, they found it deserted and silent.
"All clear," whispered Maggie. Audrey nodded, and they tiptoed down the hall to Ames' office. The late afternoon sun slanted through the windows and made golden squares on the floor. "I'll keep watch, you look."
Audrey lifted the sheet that covered the large rectangular object and saw a child with white and pink feathered wings. He tried to squeak a message through the bandage that gagged his mouth, his brown eyes wide with urgency. His arms were bound in front of him with another rag.
"What? Wait. Hang on!" Audrey reached her arms through the bars and untied the gag.
"I said, it's a trap, you dimwitted mortal."
"Audrey, run," Maggie disappeared from the doorway, but before Audrey could follow, a large cage fell over her with a resounding clang that burned the inside of her ears.
"Maggie, help!" But she didn't hear an answer.
"Maggie's gone," said a familiar voice—Zeus. "A pity, too. She would have made a good addition to my collection."
"What is this?" Audrey shook the bars of the cage, and they rattled but didn't part.
"This, my dear, is your new home." He chuckled. "Oh, that was good. I gave you enough time to escape, but you were just too curious."
She mustered her courage and looked him straight in the eye. "I'm not one of your mythical creatures, Zeus. Let me out."
"I can't do that. The information you have is too valuable."
"But Maggie has it, too."
"And you will serve as bait to capture her as well."
Audrey opened her mouth to reply but shut it before she gave too much away. Hopefully Zeus didn't know about the guys.
"Told you," said a small, young voice behind her. "Now we're both stuck."
"Who, or what, are you, anyway?"
"Some call me Cupid, some Eros." He put a chubby hand over his heart and bowed while he hovered in mid-air. "I am the one who is responsible for love at first sight, for that flutter of the heart as you look at your lover, for—"
"All right, all right, I get it." She turned to look at Zeus, but he was gone.
"We're alone now," said Eros. "I can tell when they're invisible. I'm a god, too, you know."
Audrey didn't have time to deal with another godly ego, especially not from a being who had caused her so much trouble. "Really. That's fascinating."
"Yep, and I could make you fall in love with him."
"Don't you dare." She glared at the impudent creature and wished she could smack him, god or no, but he'd probably just flutter out of reach. "You've caused enough trouble for me today."
"Not as much as you've caused yourself, Missy. How could you not figure out that was a trap? They put the freaking door right in front of you."
Audrey's cheeks burned. He had a point. That's what she got for jumping into something without preparing. "I don't recall asking for your opinion, Chubby."
"Nope, but you're stuck here, and you took my gag off, so you're going to get it."
"No good deed goes unpunished. Why don't we just figure out how to get out of these cages?"
Eros floated to the floor and looked up at her with sorrowful puppy-dog eyes. "I've been trying, but they're solid gold dream-metal, which means that their effects carry over to the waking world, too."
Audrey's heart dropped into her stomach. "What does that mean?"
He reached one small hand out to her. "It means that if you stay here, your body will go into a coma and die."
She ignored the hand. This little cherub thing is emotionally manipulative like his mother. "And then what will happen to me here?"
"You will be trapped forever, and Zeus will make you into one of his playthings. He fancies you. I heard him say so."
Audrey set her jaw and ran her fingers along the joints between bars. "Then I'm going to have to get out of t
his mess. How long do I have?"
"Hard to say, but probably not long enough."
The sound of bars clanging shut made the muscles around Damien's heart seize. Nothing in Charlie's car could have made the noise, so he gasped, "Hurry up."
Charlie, who drove out of the hospital complex, asked, "What? Where?"
"Something's happened to Audrey. We have to get to Maggie's." Damien rattled off the address she'd given them the night they’d found Persephone.
The ride from the hospital to downtown Decatur took less than five minutes, but to Damien, the air had turned into gel, and every second was a struggle. They finally pulled up outside of Maggie's building, ran into the foyer, and rang the bell.
"Hello?" The Truth Seeker's voice trembled like she'd been crying.
"Maggie? Thank gods. Are you all right?"
Damien raised his eyebrows at the relief in Charlie's tone. "What about Audrey?"
"I'm fine," she said. "But you guys had better come up."
The elevator rose, but Damien's heart sank further with each floor. His suspicions were confirmed when a tear-stained Maggie let them in. Damien immediately focused on Audrey, who lay on the sofa farthest from the door, her breathing shallow, and her skin cold and clammy.
"What happened?" Damien lifted one of Audrey's limp hands and held it. It weighed almost nothing, like her bones were hollow. He sat beside her and smoothed her hair back from her face. She slept with a little frown line between her eyebrows.
"We got caught in a trap. Well, she did. She got led right to it—I should have stopped her." Maggie's voice caught in a sob, and Charlie put his arm around her.
"It's okay, tell us what happened."
Maggie hiccupped. "I got away. I thought she was right behind me."
"Wait, start from the beginning." Charlie gently sat her on the other couch, and she gave them a summary of their visit to the Greek city and the Oracle but not the details of Audrey's question or answer. Damien wondered if it could have been about him.
Charlie held Maggie tightly, and Damien felt the emptiness in his arms where Audrey should be. Her already thin form seemed to grow less substantial with each breath.
"She's fading fast," Damien told them. "We have to do something."
"The only thing I can think of is to return to the C.U. and try to rescue her, but they'll be on the lookout for me and try to trap me, too. But I can't put you guys in danger."
A knock on the door startled them.
"Who could that be?" Maggie got up and looked through the peephole. "Lucia?" She opened the door.
"Margaret." Lucia—Damien recognized the psychic—enveloped Maggie in her hug. "I've been meaning to visit you, and then I felt something terrible happen. What is going on?"
Lucia spotted Audrey and crossed the room in three long strides. She put her hand alongside Damien's face, tilted it up, and looked into his eyes. His cheek grew even warmer beneath her cool touch.
"You've been touched by something from the Other Side," she said.
"What?" he asked around the lump in his throat. Touched. That's what they'd said about his grandmother, why she'd been locked away. While he’d accepted that all the supernatural stuff was real, he still wondered what it would to do his mind. Would it affect him like it had her? DeMarco’s words echoed in his mind—No one trusts a cop who’s gone off the deep end.
"I see it in you. But some good may come of it." She looked down at Audrey. "Ah, child, have you found your spirit guide yet?"
Maggie put her hand to her forehead. "Of course. If she has her guide to strengthen her, she may last longer. Damien, when you were in the C.U., did you see any animals?"
"I had one weird dream where I sat on a rock by the river and waited for Rizzo, and I saw a black wolf. He said he was mine."
"And what about with Rizzo?"
"An owl, which I think belonged to Arthur, and a little silver dragon about this big." He held his hands about a foot and a half apart.
"A dragon, albeit a little one, is a powerful guide." Lucia caressed Audrey's check. "This one was born for great journeys."
"The dragon told Arthur she was lost."
"She needs to be led to Audrey." Maggie stood and walked to the window, which showed the streetlights below strung out like amber beads. "The question is, who to do it?"
Damien opened his mouth to volunteer, but the grief over what had happened to Rizzo twisted his words. "I… I can't. When I went there with Arthur, something horrible happened to him. I can't risk Audrey like that." And then after his dream about her, he'd felt things he promised he'd never allow himself to, and his feelings were magnified in the hospital. He saw himself for the coward he was. He dropped Audrey's hand, which bounced softly on the sofa cushion, and buried his face in his hands, his cheeks hot with shame.
"I have seen a man who is not a man," said Lucia. "In one form, he is a little older and has a long beard and round glasses. He may be able to help us."
"Arthur?" asked Damien. Lucia's description sounded a lot like the doctor.
"That is his name?" Lucia smiled with brilliant white teeth against her mahogany skin. "Is he the one you saw in the company of the dragon?"
"Yes." He took a deep breath. "I…can go. Try to find him." But he didn't sound certain even to himself.
"This one is not ready," Lucia said to Maggie. "He has too much fear to overcome, and with whatever spell that is on him, the Olympians would sniff him out quickly. We need to communicate with this Arthur and lead him to her."
"Is it safe?" asked Charlie.
"I have seen your spirit guides, and they are here with you. They will protect you from harm that may try to cross over."
"You can see them?" Damien looked around reflexively, the hairs on the back of his neck on end.
Lucia chuckled. "Indeed, you have the wolf at your heels. Your golden-haired friend is guided by the spirit of a hawk."
"And Maggie?"
"I'm my own. Immortal privilege."
"What about you, Lucia?" Charlie grinned. "Don't tell me yours is a black cat."
"A panther. Now, let us sit in a circle and link hands."
22
Lyle pulled his car into his garage around nine o'clock. He'd thought about sleeping at the office again, but he wanted to show someone—maybe the P.I., maybe himself—that he was capable of going home and weathering domestic storms. Plus, Zeus had told him to shore up any potential information leaks. That left Amelia, who knew a little of his plans and was organizing Saturday's gala for Aphrodite's debut, although she didn't realize that was why. He needed to make sure she didn't talk to anyone between now and then.
The smells of garlic, shallots, and a rich, meaty aroma assaulted his nose when he entered the kitchen from the garage, and his stomach clenched, then growled. When had he last eaten? Hard to say. He'd been satiated by Aphrodite's beauty and company all day.
When he walked into the dining room, he saw his dinner, a despondent pair of lamb chops sitting in cold, congealed gravy beside haricots verts with almonds, a dinner roll that had dried out to beyond crusty, and garlic mashed potatoes. His fork stood handle-up in the mashed potatoes, which had been shaped into a face. He didn't look closer to see if the likeness resembled him; he suspected it did. He took a sip of the Rhone blend that she'd poured for him, wondering too late if it was poisoned. He pressed his lips together.
This is childish. I'm a businessman about to launch a lucrative new project, and she can't expect me to just appear at her whim. I get enough commands from Zeus during the day—when I'm home, I'm king of this castle.
He stopped in his tracks to the living room or wherever she hid, his heart still pounding. He couldn't get the image of that young woman—what was her name?—Audrey out of his mind. Trapped forever in the C.U. to be Zeus' concubine. Guilt joined and fueled his anger.
Amelia has no idea what I'm dealing with, so she could be a bit more understanding.
She was not in the living room, nor in the TV room
, the master bedroom or any of the other five, bathrooms, sauna, sun porch, or parlor. He found her downstairs in the finished basement she used as her work room. She stood behind the table with a stack of R.S.V.P. cards and marked names off a list. She used only one desk lamp, and for a moment, she reminded him of Aphrodite, how Her Radiance seemed to glow. But Amelia's blonde hair stood out in frizzy clumps from her head like she'd been running her hands through it, and mascara tracks ran down her cheeks.
Anger at her for making him feel guilty made his face grow hot, and he strode across the room.
"Lyle." She looked up at him, and her eyes glistened. "Your dinner is on the table upstairs."
"I saw it. Could you not even keep it warm for me?"
"I did. Until eight-thirty. Then Marin left, and I didn't want to leave the oven on while I was down here."
It would have been a logical reason at any other time. Now he clenched his fists. "Don't you understand that what I do is important?"
She recoiled and crossed her arms. "Of course I do." She put a hand up to her suddenly flushed cheek.
"And don't you get it that sometimes I need to work late? I can't just be at everyone's beck and call. And when I get home—with time I can't afford—I expect for my dinner to be warm and ready to eat."
She looked at him, open-mouthed. Why doesn't she say something? Why doesn't she argue? Oh, he was ready for an argument. His mind flashed back to an encounter with Aphrodite that afternoon, when he'd almost succumbed to her charms and ripped her clothes off. When he pulled away, she'd laughed at him and looked at his crotch with a comment that it probably wouldn't be worth it anyway. That's what he liked about her—she was a challenge. Unlike meek little wifey here.
He crossed his arms. "Well?"
"Well, what?" Her spark of anger encouraged him. "You're the man of the house. Obviously it's too much to ask for you to actually come home once in a while."
She stood, and he noticed for the first time that she had put on the little black dress he liked so much. She wore a blue and white work shirt over it to keep her shoulders warm. In two strides, he was beside her, looking down into her blue eyes, where there was a new emotion he'd never seen before. Fear.
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