“Good luck with that,” Lachesis put in.
“Lachesis!” Crusty scolded.
She hmphed. “Look, I vote no, okay? Tori’s life is way too interesting to cancel mid-season.”
“Addict,” Atropos accused.
“Sister, I share Lachesis’s view,” Clotho said. “The thread is intriguing. It strengthens the weave.”
“Fine,” Atropos grumbled, “then we’re agreed?”
“Yes. Besides, we’ve got to get back to work on these those costumes. Full dress rehearsal is tonight.”
I gasped in a breath that felt like a chainsaw unleashed in my chest. My eyes snapped open. I expected to see a bright light or a dark and desolate hell, depending on whether I’d been judged naughty or nice, but my own room swam in front of me. At least, I thought so. I’d never seen it from this angle before—an unlovely view of the dust bunnies and dried, boxed sea life beneath Lau’s bed.
I was alive. Like Scrooge, I wanted to throw open my window and shout it out to the world. I had some vague retreating memory of the Fates discussing my life or death as if I was some sitcom they’d be sorry to see canceled. It seemed I’d been picked up for another season. Either that or I was in some bizarre version of Tartarus and the dust bunnies were about to swarm.
I tried to roll to my feet, but my eyes were the only things that moved. That was when the panic hit. What if I was paralyzed? How long would it be before someone came to check on me? Long enough to dehydrate? Starve to death? No, dehydration would come before starvation. And hey, if that wasn’t comforting…
I took a few deep, jagged breaths and put everything I had into pressing my arms to the floor to raise my upper body. I felt…nothing. At all.
Terror choked me, my vision swam, my breathing went so shallow in my panic that no actual air exchange was going on. No feeling was bad, I knew that much. The fact that I could breathe on my own, no machine required, didn’t mean much if I was to be locked inside an immobile shell for the rest of my life, able to see and think but not respond. Helpless. My own special hell.
Then suddenly—
“UNG!” An inarticulate cry ripped from my lips as my entire body arched off the floor in pain. It tore through me, shredded my mind, burnt out the nerve endings that had just reknit. Possibly my spinal column had just mended itself. Gods bless—
“Arrrrr.” Agony stole my breath again, chased my awareness to a dark little corner and told it to stay put as it took over everything.
Mercifully, I blacked out.
Chapter Seven
“You keep saying ‘twisted’ like it’s a bad thing.”
—Cousin Tina Galanos, contortionist for the Rialto Bros. Circus
Distantly, I was aware of the ringing of a phone but it didn’t seem to mean much to me. My consciousness kind of dog-paddled to the surface, in no rush to arrive. Equally distant was the cry of pain from one shoulder and a numbness in the arm that signaled I’d fallen asleep in a bad position. For some reason I was soaked to the bone, hot and cold at the same time. Clammy. It was the taste of blood that snapped me awake.
Blood in my mouth was bad. Bad, bad, bad. There were probably other adjectives, but I couldn’t think of them right then. I tested my body, and it moved—sluggishly, because that numb arm didn’t want to cooperate, but I was able to sit. My tongue was swollen. Probably I’d bitten it at some point and the blood was only the result. Panic began to retreat.
I fumbled for the phone on my bedside table and answered, “’Elo.” Something like it anyway.
“Oh my God, Tori, are you okay? Did you oversleep? It’s almost nine o’clock.”
Christie. Right. We had plans.
“’M okay,” I said, clearing my throat between words. “I’m just…groggy. Give me a little bit? My alarm didn’t go off.”
“No problem. Do you want me to meet you at your place?”
My bedroom looked like something out of a slasher film. “No, I’ll be there to pick you up as soon as I can. Sorry.”
“No prob—”
I hung up maybe a syllable early, but the shakes had set in with a vengeance, and the only thing I could think of was getting to my fridge and getting help. I didn’t want to want it, to need it. But if I died or went insane, Hades would win, and that so wasn’t happening. I pulled myself upright and did the zombie shuffle into the kitchen. The sight of my bloody arms as I lifted them for the handle of the fridge didn’t do anything to put me off my feed. I hadn’t asked Apollo about dosing, but inside the Tupperware container with the sky blue top was a scoop. I was going to guess one would be enough. If not, I’d try two—
I ate it standing. As the ambrosia touched my lips, my mouth flooded with saliva. The flavor burst over my tongue like…like ambrosia-flavored champagne and Pop Rocks. It seemed to fizz and tingle all the way down as my body came back on-line, leaving me hyper-aware, hyper-alive.
It made me wish Armani was here. And naked. And standing at attention… Okay, so a cold shower before dashing off to pick up Christie. At the rate I was going, the car was optional. I felt like I could run to San Francisco myself and be back in time for lunch.
Clearly the ambrosia had side effects—delusions of grandeur, mistaking oneself for an Indy 500 car.
The shower was…oh no, I was not going to wax poetic about the feel of the crisp, incredible water flowing over me. Except to say that it did nothing to cool my jets. It was almost enough to wash away the horror of my near death experience, though. Priorities. I left Armani an X-rated text message—very life affirming—dumped all the ice from the freezer into a Styrofoam cooler I found in Lau’s pantry, and gently placed the tub of ambrosia on top of it. Side effects or no, I couldn’t afford the withdrawal while traveling four hundred miles from home.
I wondered how I’d convince Christie that the tub was off-limits. Maybe I’d make up an incredibly high caloric content. It might even be true.
Twenty minutes later I sat in front of her apartment building, calling for her to come down, since I was double-parked. I had time to download a GPS app onto my phone and program in the address of the Residence Inn before Christie arrived, matching Coach luggage slung over one shoulder and rolling along behind.
I popped the trunk and got out to help her. “Jeez, Christie, how long do you think we’ll be gone?”
She flashed me the smile that had gotten her the teeth whitening commercial last year. “I don’t know, but I figure it’s my Girl Scout training kicking in. I like to be prepared.”
“You were a Girl Scout?”
“Well, a Brownie, anyway.”
She tossed the big bag into the trunk, not needing my help after all, thanks to her personal trainer. Then she dug around in her shoulder bag and came up with a matching hot pink iPod. “Tuneage,” she explained, as if I might not get it.
We plugged in, buckled up, fidgeted with settings and mirrors, and hit the road. Christie produced a thermos out of her clown car of a bag, and two stainless steel cups to go with it.
“Not pink?” I asked.
“Can you believe the pink only came in plastic?”
I refused to comment on the grounds that she held exclusive access to my caffeine options.
“I hope you like Kona,” she added.
“Love it.”
She produced some kind of frou frou liquid sweetener. “Sugar?” she asked.
I gave her a look.
“Okay, sugar-like substance,” she amended. “Kid tested, FDA approved.”
“Hit me.”
She doctored my cup and handed it back to me. I took an immediate sip. It was no ambrosia, but it wasn’t bad either.
“Thanks.”
“De nada. And Tori, thanks for letting me come with. And for not saying ‘I told you so’ about Jack.”
I bit my lip.
“I Can’t Drive 55” by Sammy Hagar blasted out of the stereo.
“Really?” I asked her.
It was good to see her grin. “Like I could leave that o
ff the ultimate road trip mix. Just wait, there’s more.”
“Come Monday” by Jimmy Buffett
“Little Red Corvette” by Prince
“Sleep While I Drive” by Melissa Etheridge
“Take it Easy” by The Eagles
“Highway to Hell” by AC/DC
“Please Come to Boston” by Joan Baez
“California” by Joni Mitchell.
Christie’s tastes ran a lot more folksy rock than mine, but she’d put so much effort in, I didn’t have the heart to tell her so.
I’ll skip over the next eight hours of girly stuff, pit stops, smoothies and half-caf, skinny, grande, ridiculously overpriced foamy goodness. But for almost an entire day, no one tried to kill me, torture me with crime scene photos or entice me over to the dark side with six-pack abs, dreamy azure eyes or snickerdoodles. The sun was shining, the AC was working, and Christie, who was as tone deaf as me, didn’t give a damn when I tried to sing along with the CD.
Ah, this, I thought, was what it felt like to be a real girl. Nice.
The warm fuzzies lasted until the outskirts of San Fran, when the traffic slowed to a crawl, the clock flipped past five p.m., and I was suddenly concerned that I’d have to go another full day without finding out Uncle Christos’s fate.
“Hey, you all right?” Christie asked, seeing my smile dim.
“Yeah, just…tired. Hungry.” No need burdening her with my problems when she had her own.
“You’re kidding—you can eat again after that mondo burger you had for lunch?”
What could I say? Apparently, ambrosia gave me the munchies.
“In one point two miles turn right on ramp onto Restin Boulevard,” the GPS on my phone piped up. The voice had gotten fainter as my battery wore down. Any time now I was going to have to locate my car charger.
“That’s our exit!” Christie perked. She’d not only mastered the obvious, she had it eating out of the palm of her hand.
It took us eight minutes to go one point two miles, but once we took the turn off, we could see the Residence Inn from the ramp. Two seconds later, maybe three, we were parked.
The kid behind the counter looked up as we entered, nearly hyperventilated at the sight of Christie, and quickly tucked the magazine he was reading beneath the counter.
“Can I help you?” he asked, voice breaking only once.
Christie gave him the thousand-watt smile that still sold that tooth whitening system to the masses, and I thought he would keel straight over.
“Uh, one room or…uh, two?” He gave me a once-over and turned straight back to Christie. If my ego were dependent on barely post-pubescent desk clerks, I’d be crushed. As it was, I let her handle the room thing while I looked around. In a Plexiglas stand by the register was a menu/advertisement for a pizza chain that would apparently deliver. Farther on down the counter was a second stand for something called The Rustic Potato. I picked up a menu out of curiosity before wandering over to the wooden rack of pocket-sized brochures for everything from whale watching tours to dinner theatre. Oddly, no pamphlet for creepy cult tours. Huh.
I wandered back to the desk around the time the clerk was telling Christie about the breakfast buffet and handing over two keys.
“Oh wait,” I said, stopping Christie as she reached to accept them. “Is that the quiet side of the street?”
“The what?”
“My uncle stayed here a few months ago, and wherever his room was, he said the traffic noise was just terrible. The big trucks rumbling by at all hours… I think you’d better make sure we’re not near there. His name is Christos Karacis.”
Christie leaned in with her smile and added, “I do need my beauty rest.”
The clerk nearly swallowed his tongue. He clacked away on his computer. “I don’t see a record of him. Um, how do you spell it? Maybe I’ve got it wrong.”
I spelled Karacis for him, but he came up blank again. He looked at Christie, really anxious to impress. “Maybe he registered under another name. Sometimes guys do, you know, for…” he turned rose red, “…uh, privacy.”
“Oh!” she said, playing flustered really well. “Tori, what do you think? Did your uncle have any, you know, aliases?”
Hell’s bells, I didn’t know. He’d gone off on his little Odyssey without so much as a forwarding address. The whole thing was weird all the way around. I felt a zip go straight through me and froze, waiting for it to repeat. It wasn’t exactly the zing of forewarning. What then? Okay, think back—Christos, alias, Odyssey, zip. Something about The Odyssey then? I wondered if this were some kind of manifestation of my oracular powers. One zip for yes, zilch for no. Definitely it was trying to tell me something. I just wished I had some idea what on earth it could be. Clearly something to do with the Odyssey. I thought back over Odysseus’s adventures…what I could remember anyway. Suddenly, I had it! Odysseus had used an alias when he and his men had been trapped on Polyphemus’s island. When he asked who was there, Odysseus had told him “No one,” which in Greek was—
“Try Outis.” I said, not quite believing it was going to be that easy.
“Let me check.” The clerk clacked away again. “Bingo. He was here—C. Outis. But if he had problems with his room, he never complained. He was in the same one the whole time.”
“We’ll take that one,” I cut in.
“But you said—”
Christie leaned in and whispered something in his ear. The clerk went from rose to beet red and gave me a half-frightened look. “Sure, no problem.”
He gave us two new keys and made clear to Christie that she could call if she needed anything…like a cabana boy for herself or a psych referral for her friend.
“I’m pretty good at this undercover stuff,” Christie murmured to me as we turned for the door. “We’re like good cop, crazy cop.”
I gave her a smile. We had already gotten closer to Christos than I had on my own. “Let me guess which one I am.”
“Aw, don’t take it personally. You’ve just got it goin’ on. You’re tough. I’m…not so much. We use what we’ve got. So, where do you want to eat?” she asked more loudly.
“How about The Rustic Potato?” I asked.
Because I’d just looked—really looked—at the menu, which advertised Gourmet confections, featuring organic, farm-fresh produce grown locally. I had a feeling, subtle but there. And if that wasn’t enough, I recognized some of the pics on the cover as the same ones from the Back to Earth website.
“That the new hippy-dippy place way out on Green Hills Road?” the clerk asked, overhearing.
“Is it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t go in much for rabbit food, but the boss says it’s to die for.”
Interesting. And hopefully not apt.
Chapter Eight
“Food of the Gods? Which—that hippopotamus-headed one across the way? Sure enough this ain’t people food.”
—Pappous on the trendy restaurant Yiayia had insisted on for their 50th wedding anniversary
The Rustic Potato was, in fact, “that hippy-dippy place” on Green Hills. At least, it was a hippy-dippy place. This being California, it wasn’t like there was any lack of restaurants fitting that description. I wondered what kind of signage a “Rustic Potato” would have. It turned out to be a vivid blue background with an overly cheerful sun looking down on aggressively green fields. I was almost inspired to burst into a song featuring words like zippity doo da, and twittering about the blue bird on my shoulder.
“Cute!” Christie gushed.
“You don’t think it’s a little…much?”
“Sourpuss,” she said.
“Hey, you knew this road trip was dangerous when you took it.”
Christie stuck her tongue out at me. “Jeez, you’d think you were the one who just got dumped.”
“Sorry.”
“No, no—with you doing all the brooding, there’s hardly any room for me in the role. I’m left with perky side-kick girl. That’s kind o
f why I love you.”
She said things like that, kind of why I loved her.
Christie had taken twenty minutes back at the hotel to freshen up. Her golden blonde hair was high on her head in a thick ponytail that managed to look cool and classy. Her sundress was hothouse orange. Her fingers and toenails were a fuchsia that should have clashed with it, but instead were tied to the whole outfit by the chunky, beaded tri-strand necklace she wore, full of bright, tropical colors. It would have taken a crack team of stylists to make me look half so good, but I gave it a shot. Black capris, a honey-gold silk tank, and some dangly gold earrings, exposed by catching my unruly hair up into a twist with just a few loopy strands framing my face. No one would mistake me for a starlet, but with my Mediterranean skin tone and amber eyes, I didn’t need much but liner, mascara and lip gloss to look as good as I ever got.
Beside the sign was a drive that looked like it was paved in clam shells, which we turned onto with a crunch—a cacophony of crunching, actually. The Potato itself looked like a Tuscan vineyard—all pink stucco and light wooden slats with vines curling up and around light fixtures and lattices. Herb bundles hung from rafters. Waitresses in white pleasant blouses, black gypsy skirts and colorful scarfs and waiters in white collarless shirts, black chinos and those same headscarves tied about their waists bustled about. None of them were above the age of twenty-one or two…tops. All looked to be about bursting with health.
The hostess who met us at the door was styled like the mistress of the hacienda in a wrap dress the same punch-me yellow as the sun on the sign. Her hair was as black as mine, but glossy and as straight as I’d always wished mine could be, hanging in one long, dark curtain to the small of her back.
“Your first time here?” she asked.
Christie nodded enthusiastically.
“Well, welcome!” The wattage from her smile probably could have lit a whole Tuscan town. “Right this way.”
She led us through the packed restaurant to a small, two-person table at the back under a stained glass hanging lamp made to look like bundles of grapes and leaves, and left us with menus to study.
Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) Page 7
