Sophie rushed toward him. He held her tightly, his chest visibly heaving. After a long moment, his gaze met Selene’s. He left Sophie with a reassuring kiss and crossed to his sister, falling into her arms. Selene stiffened and didn’t return the hug, but she didn’t push him away either. Sophie watched them with a hand pressed against her chest, obviously moved by the touching reunion.
As usual, Selene seemed to have no idea how to console those in distress. She patted Paul’s back awkwardly.
Over her shoulder, Paul saw Theo and stood upright. He wiped a sweaty lock of hair from his face. “Hey,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t just cracked in front of six hundred fans. “What’s up, Theo?”
“Great show,” he replied without thinking. What else does one say backstage to a rock star?
“Thanks, man,” Paul said, massaging his throat as if to rub away the strain. “You know what I always say about the power of music—under the spell of pulsing notes, the eagle sleeps on the scepter of Zeus, relaxing his swift wings.”
You always say? Theo thought. You mean the Pindarian odes always say. Mentioning Paul’s plagiarism, however, seemed about as tactless as pointing out his cracked voice. Selene, of course, didn’t see it that way.
“No eagle could sleep to that racket,” she said with a single raised brow. “You sounded like shit out there.”
Paul’s attention snapped back to his sister. “Well, you look like shit.” He spoke with all the vitriol only a twin sibling was capable of, but the finger he reached toward the bloody cloths on her forehead was gentle. “What happened to you?”
She dodged his hand, her eyes darting to Sophie and the bustling roadies crowding the wings. “Let’s not discuss this in front of your entourage.”
Paul nodded, his face suddenly gone vague. “Yes, yes … it’s coming …” he murmured, before heading off down the hallway without another word of explanation.
“What the hell is he talking about?” Selene asked, staring after her brother.
Theo could only shrug. He was far too tired to understand much of anything anymore. “He’s the God of Prophecy, right? The oracles are supposed to be cryptic.”
Selene followed her brother into a small dressing room that reeked of cigarettes, sweat, and whiskey. Her nose wrinkled, but the room was warm and dry and a far sight better than roaming dank underground tunnels in the middle of the night. Theo slumped into a patched armchair.
Her twin went straight for a row of bottled water on the counter. After downing one without taking a breath, he started on another.
Selene couldn’t believe it. “Aren’t you even going to ask about Hades?”
“Hades?” Paul looked completely bewildered.
“He’s dead! Weren’t you listening on the phone yesterday?”
“Oh shit.” He rubbed his face. “Yeah, of course I remember. I just …” His eyes looked glazed. “I thought maybe it was a dream.”
“A dream? What are you on? Coke? Speed?” Selene demanded, ready to slap the sense back into him.
Theo leaned wearily forward in his chair, chin propped in his hand as if he couldn’t hold up his own head. “I wish tonight were just a dream. But I’m afraid the man with a gun who chased us out of Selene’s house was very real. Normally he wouldn’t have been a problem for the Huntress, of course—except for the whole he could fly thing.”
“He wore Dash’s cap,” Selene said, her voice tight. “Which means the Messenger sent someone to kill me.”
“No, no.” Paul shook his head as if trying to clear it.
Maybe he’s drunk, Selene thought. Or just whacked out from centuries of hanging with musicians—isn’t that how rock stars’ stories always end?
Paul crushed the empty water bottle in his hand. “This can’t be Dash’s fault … but something’s coming.”
“What do you mean, ‘something’s coming’?”
Paul closed his eyes for a moment. “I’ve been having …”
“Prophetic visions?” Theo asked, sounding hopeful.
But Paul shook his head. “My prophecies were of the future … these are visions of my past. I’m not sure how to explain it except …” His voice slowed, as if dragging forth long-forgotten memories. “I am an ouroboros, a snake eating my own tail, forced to move always in circles, never forward. Yet something stands ready to break the cycle. A release from pain, a destination as stygian as death itself.”
Selene wondered if his break onstage had caused his overwrought melancholy—or vice versa. Either way, she needed him lucid to help defeat the new cult, not meandering through poetic flights of fancy. “You’ve always been overdramatic. Comes from being the Leader of the Muses. Get over yourself—you’re just having the Christmas blues.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He moved to a sink in the corner and splashed water on his face. He cupped his hands, took another long drink, and smoothed the hair from his forehead. When he turned back to them, his eyes were clear gold once more, as if he’d pushed away his despondency by sheer force of will.
With a tentative knock on the door, Sophie appeared with a first aid kit. She put it on the scarred coffee table and then went to her boyfriend. She ran a hand through his damp hair, her eyes glued on his. “You all right?” she murmured.
He kissed her in answer, hugging her so hard that her feet came off the floor. She wrapped her legs around his hips and he placed both hands on her ass. Selene winced but couldn’t look away. Finally, Paul put the woman down and whispered something in her ear. Sophie cast a glance at Theo and Selene. “Okay, pookums, whatever you need.” Then she kissed his cheek one more time and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
Theo, seemingly unfazed by the public display of affection, popped open the first aid kit and removed a few adhesive bandages and some antiseptic. “Okay, Selene, you might heal a little faster than a mortal, but I’m not sure you’re immune to infection.” He reached for the bloody T-shirt strips on her forehead, but she raised a hand to stop him.
“No complaints,” he insisted. “The Rambo look is very 1982. And not in a good way.”
As he worked, Selene peered around his arm to look at her brother. He’d picked up an electric guitar and begun to pluck out a melody. Without amplification, the sound thunked flat and muffled, but she recognized the tune: an old dancing song, once played by the light of a midnight pyre as she and her nymphs spun in joyous circles beneath the stars. I grabbed Apollo by the hand, she remembered suddenly, and he threw down the lyre to join us. We didn’t need the music anymore—it rang in our bones. But right now, she had no time for such memories.
“Would you put that down and listen to me?”
He didn’t look up. “I can play and listen at the same time. I haven’t grown that weak.”
“You said Dash wasn’t involved in the attack. How do you know?”
The melody altered—a simple shepherd’s tune, like the kind Hermes once coaxed from a bundle of reeds.
“How could you think our little brother would want to kill you?” He looked up, his eyes sad. “Do you trust us all so little?”
“He’s the Dissembler,” she insisted.
Paul shrugged an acknowledgment. “He stole my cattle once, do you remember?”
“Vaguely.”
“He was just a kid. I found him lying on a cow’s back, grinning and totally unrepentant. He offered to give me the pipes he’d carved from reeds and a lyre made from a turtle’s shell in return for my golden cattle. A good trade.”
“Your point?”
“Dash might lie or cheat or steal, but he’s always been the Giver of Good Things.”
Selene couldn’t help picturing Hermes as he’d been—hair a wild black halo, bright eyes always filled with laughter. He hadn’t changed that much over the centuries. Whenever she’d needed a new identity, a new job, a new place to live, he leaped to her aid. When they’d confronted Orion, Dash had made sure she had a new bow to replace the one that had broken, and then he’d shown up himsel
f to fight at her side. I don’t actually want him to be guilty, she admitted to herself. But out loud, she scoffed. “He’s also the God of Eloquence. And you’ve fallen for his rhetoric. How about I hold an arrow to his throat, and then we see what tale he tells?”
The door to the dressing room burst open. Dash Mercer himself stood framed in the doorway, a flannel fedora tilted rakishly over one eye. “Did someone say ‘telling tales’?” he asked nonchalantly. “Because I’ve got a good one. Did I ever tell you all—”
Before he finished the sentence, Selene had launched herself at her younger brother, one hand reaching for his throat—the other gripping the shaft of an arrow.
Chapter 12
MESSENGER OF THE GODS
With a speed that rivaled Selene’s, Dash leapt nimbly out of her path and onto the makeup counter, pulling two pistols from beneath his coat as he went. He stood above her, bouncing on his toes, both guns pointed straight at her.
“So much for the happy family reunion,” he said without losing his smile.
From the corner of her eye, Selene saw Theo leap to his feet and grab a pair of wooden drumsticks off an end table, wielding them like the least effective nunchucks ever.
She growled low in her throat. If I throw an arrow at Dash, he’ll just dodge it, she reasoned, and his bullets are too fast for me. But if I tackle him, I can use my superior strength to wrench away his weapon. I just have to be fast enough—
“Moonshine!” Paul cried. “What are you doing?”
“Getting some answers,” she replied, her eyes still fixed on Dash. “About why our brother sent a man to kill me and then tracked me to this club.”
“Track you?” Dash spluttered. “Paul invited me.”
“You did what?” Selene demanded, sparing her twin a glance over her shoulder.
“I’ve been a little out of it, okay? But it’s true—when I got your message about Hades, I called Dash for help. He knew our uncle better than the rest of us. And if there’s an Athanatos reviving a cult, he’s the only one who knows where everyone lives.”
“I didn’t tell you to do that!”
“You needed help. We all promised to stop another sacrifice cult. What did you expect me to do?”
Before she could retort, Theo interrupted, “How about we all put down the weapons and talk calmly?” He twirled one of the drumsticks awkwardly. “Before I’m forced to knock you both out Ringo Starr style.”
Dash spun his pistols around his index fingers with far more grace and gave an insouciant grin. “Just as soon as your girlfriend puts away that arrow.”
Selene scowled at his choice of words. “I’ll put it away once you explain why the man who shot me flew into my house wearing a winged cap.”
Dash stared at her, uncomprehending, before spluttering, “My cap? Round gold thing, little dent in the side, pretty metal wings?” He looked genuinely shocked. “No, no, no. It stopped working soon after the Diaspora, the same time my winged sandals stopped flying and the rest of our more conspicuous powers went kaput. Turned into nothing more than a very silly hat. Last time I dusted it off was for a particularly fetching Carnival costume in eighteenth-century Venice. I dimly remember falling off a gondola after one too many proseccos, the hat went into the Grand Canal, and I haven’t seen it since.”
Selene kept the arrow pointed at her younger brother. “So you didn’t have anything to do with Hades’ murder?”
“I wasn’t even here!” he protested. “Tell her, Paul. Hades was kidnapped three days ago. I was still in L.A., at a movie premiere! I swear it—you can check my Twitter.”
She glanced at Theo, thinking, What the hell is a Twitter? He’d already pulled out his phone and swiped to something or other.
“Dash is telling the truth.” Theo turned his phone to show her a photo of her brother standing on a red carpet with a blank-eyed woman on his arm.
Selene still wasn’t convinced. Dash wouldn’t know the “truth” if it were wearing a name tag and shouting hello. “If you were in Los Angeles, how do you know when Hades was kidnapped?”
“Because his wife told me.”
“What?” Her head was splitting trying to follow Dash’s story. There was a reason he was called the Many-Turning One. “When did you talk to her?”
“I called her as soon as I heard about Hades, of course!” he said, looking mildly surprised. “Didn’t you? Didn’t you wonder if she was okay?”
Selene lowered her arrow and sat heavily on a rickety wooden chair, a bit ashamed, a bit relieved, but mostly just tired. “I guess I assumed she made it out, otherwise we would’ve heard.” In truth, she hadn’t bothered to think about Persephone at all.
“Well, you’re right about that much at least,” Hermes said, holstering his pistols and hopping easily off the counter. “She fled to Peru, completely hysterical, of course, but she’ll be in good hands with her mom.”
Selene sighed in exasperation. “I thought she hated her mother.”
“She might hate her, but she loves her too.” He pulled off his fedora and gave her a winking bow. “That’s what family’s for.”
Selene could feel Theo’s “I told you so” from across the room.
“Fine. So she’s safe in the Southern Hemisphere, but we’re still targets. And we don’t even know who’s after us.”
“We know one thing,” Theo said. “The man who attacked Selene called her Diana, not Artemis. And when he spoke about his superior on the phone, he referred to him using the Greek and Latin word for ‘father,’ but he said PA-ter, not pa-TEER.”
“Pater …” repeated Paul. “That’s the Latin pronunciation.”
“Exactly. So what Athanatos would use Latin instead of Greek?” Theo looked at Selene, suddenly alarmed. “Don’t tell me there are Roman versions of you running around. Am I going to bump into some woman named Diana who looks just like you?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “When the Romans incorporated us into their pantheon, most of us just … expanded a little. It’s hard to explain.”
“You could say that again.”
“Diana’s just a part of me—or at least she was. When I don’t just think of myself as a New Yorker, I think of myself as fundamentally Greek. But some Athanatoi gained so much power in the Imperial Age that they embraced the Roman incarnation of themselves above all others.”
“Good, that should narrow the search,” Theo said, clapping his hands. “What about Helios? The Romans worshiped him as Sol Invictus, the personification of the Invincible Sun.”
Dash buzzed him like a game show host. “Eaahhh. Helios kicked the bucket sometime in the sixteenth century. No real worship after the fall of the Roman Empire. Sorry, Makarites.”
Few mortals in history had ever been dubbed Makaritai, or “Blessed Ones,” and most of them bore names like Heracles and Perseus. In more recent millennia, a select few artists and scholars—like Theo—had earned the title for their extraordinary insight into the gods. But the honor clearly wasn’t helping the professor now.
“Okay,” he said, turning from one god to the other, clearly exasperated. “Then who did you all have in mind?”
“Don’t bother reasoning this one through, Theo,” Selene snapped. “Someone in this room already knows the answer.” She turned her withering glare on Paul. “Because one of my supposedly loyal brothers must’ve told someone about Orion’s cult. Maybe not on purpose, but they did. Even though they promised not to.”
Her twin held up his hands. “I swear on the dropping water of the Styx, I had nothing to do with this.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. In the past, he’d freely admitted to a fear of fading, and with the way he was acting, she doubted he’d even remember what he had or hadn’t said to someone. But that song … she couldn’t believe he’d attack her.
“And don’t look at me,” Dash insisted. “Trust me, darling, if I still had that cap, I’d be wearing it, not giving it to some mortal to dick around in. Private jets aren’t half so
fun.”
Theo yawned and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so if it wasn’t either of you, and you still insist there’s definitely an Athanatos behind this, then you think the God of Wine tattled? In one of his drunken stupors?”
Selene shook her head. “He’s usually so high that he’ll tell anyone anything, but he’s too isolated.”
“And Hephaestus the Smith?” pressed Theo. “He looked pretty grizzled when we saw him this fall. Maybe he couldn’t resist giving himself a little extra power.”
Dash chuckled. “The Smith with a band of mortal acolytes? Running—or should I say limping—around the Financial District? No way. Too social. Too public. Not to mention, too desperate. If he wants to make himself more powerful, he just devises some clever gadget to do it for him. He resigned himself to fading years ago, and now he never talks to any of the other Athanatoi unless he’s got no other options—a little like you, Selene,” he added with a wink. “Trust me, when the Smith showed up in person to help you take down Orion, I wondered if he’d been sniffing too many volcanic fumaroles.”
“Well, whoever it is,” Paul interrupted, “if they have your cap, they’re going to be very hard to defend against. I don’t know about you guys, but I lost my flying chariot a long time ago.”
“The man stole my gold arrows,” said Selene. “The cult probably took Hades’ helm as well when they kidnapped him. And I know from experience that it still works—at least underground.”
“Great,” Dash said with a dramatic sigh. “There’s probably some invisible murderer sitting in this room right now.” Paul gasped, and spun to look behind him.
Dash flipped his fedora up his arm like Charlie Chaplin. “Kidding! I’m sure our Huntress here would sniff him out.” He paused, his grin fading. “Right?”
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