Maybe the outhouse fumes were getting to me.
Before I left, I dashed Christie a quick text so she wouldn’t call out the cavalry for me. There was one already awaiting from her.
Made contact. Off to a rally or seminar or something. Yippee? More soon.
I didn’t feel the least bit bad for her. She’d had the chance to be on a plane back to La La Land. She’d given it up for the glitz and glamour of undercover work. As evidenced by my current surroundings. I used the hand sanitizer attached to the wall before letting myself out. I hadn’t actually touched anything but the door, but it was enough to make me feel unclean. Or maybe that had been Dionysus’s touch.
Gracelyn was waiting for me when I got out, smile still in place.
“All set?” she asked.
“Yes, thanks. Do you suppose we’ll be getting a tour later? I’d love to see the grounds. It’s so peaceful here.”
“Isn’t it?” She took a deep breath of air and managed not to gag. It had the effect of inflating some rather prodigious…lungs. I wondered if Apollo had noticed, then reminded myself I didn’t care.
The two men were bent over the table as we approached, going over promotional plans, I guessed.
“We’d really like your guy Randy Vargas to direct,” Dionysus was saying as we reseated ourselves.
“I thought we were here to discuss on-screen talent.”
“Well, for that we have one of our own in mind. We want someone truly committed to the Back to Earth lifestyle, a spokesperson with no skeletons in her closet—no drugs, affairs, cosmetic surgery, clothing lines sewn in sweatshops…”
“Vargas is very particular about who he works with, and he doesn’t like amateurs,” Apollo said apologetically. “He likes to deal with a certain stable of his own. Plus, he doesn’t do commercial.”
“We have a budget in mind,” Dionysus said, flipping a page of the portfolio.
Apollo’s eyes nearly telescoped right out of his head like an old Tex Avery cartoon wolf at the sight of a foxy lady. I wondered what it took to so impress a god. I wondered if he’d tell me. “He might consider it,” Apollo said, face back under control. “And the talent?”
“Come, I’ll introduce you.” Dionysus grabbed the bottle of wine from the table and waited pointedly while the rest of us picked up our glasses. “We can’t let such a wonderful vintage go to waste,” he said as a prompt. His eyes fell to my untouched glass. “You don’t drink?” There was unfeigned horror in the question.
“Acid reflux,” I lied.
“Ah, you want white.” He snapped his fingers, and Gracelyn flitted from his side, presumably to find me another varietal. Dionysus waved away my protest as though it were a polite fiction. I wondered if he viewed the word “no” the same way.
I took Apollo’s arm before Dionysus could claim me again. In contrast, Apollo’s arms were rock hard and invited caress…not that I took them up on their invitation. I thought about Armani and his nicely muscled arms. And blue eyes that went dark and depthless when his interest…intensified.
“What are you thinking about?” Apollo bent to whisper in my ear, no doubt believing it was him.
“Nick,” I answered.
“Liar.”
I let it stand. It was much safer that way. Historically, women who thwarted Apollo’s will didn’t fare so well. Like Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy, who’d been given the power to see the future but not to change it. It always came back to Cassandra. It was better than a cold shower, at least my hair didn’t frizz. As long as Apollo felt he still had a shot with me, I was probably safe from his wrath.
And doesn’t he have a chance? my inner minx asked, dying to rub up against him.
I told her to go play in the street. I was not going to be one of those battered women, attracted to danger thinking it would never turn on me.
People change, my minxy-me purred.
Gods don’t, my sane-brain responded.
As evidenced by Dionysus, back in the minions and massacres game after all these years. He was going on about fields and yields, fertilizer and other loads of crap, but I only paid a cursory amount of attention. After all, I was only along as Apollo’s “good friend”. I wasn’t expected to buy what he was selling. Anyway, I had way more important things to do, like mentally mapping the complex, trying to identify the various buildings based on what I saw going in or out and trying to get a sense of the number of residents.
The mapping was easy. As I looked back over my shoulder, the buildings appeared to be arranged in a rough semi-circle like the talk-therapy grouping around the fireplace at the first building we’d visited, only here the centerpiece of the complex was the circular drive we’d driven up. Patterns. People had preferences—circular, square, oblong, symmetrical or asymmetrical. Often people weren’t even aware of their predispositions.
The purpose of each of the buildings was a lot murkier. From where I was I couldn’t see a lot of the movement between the structures. Hard to determine functions.
I turned back around, surveying the fields, pretending to be awed and interested. The rows were not nearly as high or as dense as the orchard, so it was easier to see the people here. And there. And…everywhere. If they were all cult members and not hired labor, we were in some serious trouble. Crossing a god was bad enough. Crossing one with his own fanatic army was nothing short of suicidal.
Ambrosia didn’t make me invincible or insane. Not completely anyway. But I was between a smarmy rock and a hellish hard place. Besides, there was Uncle Christos to consider, and that guy back at the morgue. I didn’t know if he was the first, but I didn’t think he’d be the last.
My heart rate must have sped up, because Apollo patted my hand and squeezed it against his chest. I smiled up at him and realized our footsteps were slowing. We were in a row like any other, and Dionysus had been going on about what wine they made with which grapes and the kind of year it had been, but he stopped now. I heard Apollo’s breath catch and looked to see what we were stopping for.
Not a what. A who. And she was stoopid gorgeous—like glossy, airbrushed cover model perfection. Like Selma Hayek, Catherine Zeta-Jones and pure, unadulterated sex all merged into one. My heart almost skipped a beat, and I didn’t roll that way.
Seriously. Instead of the wheat-colored clothing the others sported that covered pretty much wrists to ankles, she wore a white sports bra bandeau-style across her breasts, which if not melons were at least well-rounded apples. Her waist was tiny, but flared into real hips reminiscent of an old-time starlet. In short, she looked like every conception ever of Eve straight out of the Garden of Eden, except that, thankfully, she wore a pair of khaki shorts instead of a fig leaf, though those shorts were small enough to reveal indecent amounts of sleek shapely leg.
It took me that long to even work up to her face with all the other flesh revealed, and I had a split second of sympathy for men, who we expected to meet our eyes at all times…not that it was generally a problem in my case. Her face was arresting enough on its own—beautiful almond eyes framed with dark, absurdly long lashes. Her hair was held down by a bandana matching the color of her shorts, but I could see that beneath it her black hair was not unlike mine on a very good day—thick, wavy, untamed.
Apollo let my hand drop as he stepped forward to greet the girl—woman?—Dionysus was introducing as “Sinestra, the spokesperson I told you about.”
“Sinestra” raised those stunning almond eyes to Apollo, blushed and quickly dropped them again. She’s shy, I thought, shocked. Somehow I’d expected such beauty to come with a certain amount of arrogance, but all I saw in that brief glimpse was knowledge, and maybe avoidance. Then I realized just why that face was so unlined and why, perhaps, she was dressed so differently from the others. All that flesh on display was nearly as pale as her bandeau, cartoonishly pale, like a cinematic Snow White. I’d bet my life that here was our missing goddess—Persephone, born Kore, daughter of Demeter and runaway wife of Hades. I could hardly bl
ame her for wanting to feel the sun on her skin after the chill of the underworld.
I realized then that Dionysus was introducing me and watching my reaction very closely. Luckily, I’d already put on my game face.
I stepped forward to take “Sinestra’s” hand, which she offered with the flutter of eyelashes, her gaze there and then gone. “Karacis,” she said, rolling it around on her tongue. “A good Greek name. Where are you from?”
“My brother and I were born here, but my family comes from Kalambaka.”
“Oh, the outskirts of Meteora, the holy city,” she said.
“One of them,” I answered, watching her. Meteora was a place of extremes—rocks shot straight up out of the earth, mountain-high but with sheer cliffs all around, atop of which now sat monasteries and churches dedicated to a religion a lot less ancient but no less influential than that which sprung from Mount Olympus to the north. How the monasteries had originally been built was anybody’s guess. Word was that hermits retreating from the ever-expanding world finally climbed the cliffs, finding nowhere else to go to escape but the inhospitable pillars of rock at Meteora. I guess with enough determination and religious fervor, one could free climb almost anything, but erecting structures…without roads or ramps or the means to build them, it was nothing short of miraculous.
“Sinestra,” I said, throwing the focus back where I thought it belonged. “It means left, doesn’t it?” It was a cultural bias that sinister/left got associated with evil.
“You know your Latin,” she said, sounding surprised.
I let her think so. Truly, I had no idea where I’d picked up the tidbit, but if it made me seems smarter than I was, so be it.
Since Sinestra was looking away, studying the fields and no doubt the work still to be done, I did the same. Yiayia had said that Demeter, Persephone’s mama, the earth-mother goddess of the ancient Greeks had joined the movement, but if she was present, I couldn’t spot her.
“Having met you,” Apollo said, stepping into the conversation now that I’d left it, “I can certainly see why Dionysus feels you’d be perfect for his marketing campaign.”
Sinestra blushed even more deeply, the red of her cheeks the only color beyond her ridiculously dark lashes and mane of hair. “Thank you. My mother and I are so dedicated to the Back to Earth ideals. I’m happy to help, though I’m uncertain…”
She never said exactly what she was uncertain about, but I think we could all guess it was the idea of all the attention focused her way.
Apollo turned to Dionysus. “I’ll present your proposal to Vargas. If he should want to meet your spokesmodel?”
“We can arrange that, of course,” Dionysus said, slapping him on the back. “Now, let us drink to our new potential partnership!”
He steered us away from Sinestra, away from the fields and his followers, and back to that shaded verandah to finish off the bottles of wine and one more before we were allowed to leave. Perhaps allowed was a little strong, but his patter was so constant that we’d have had to churlishly interject in order to leave. Since I was at Apollo’s mercy and had no urge to explain that I had my own wheels waiting at the bottom of the hill, I took my cues from him. I excused myself once in the meantime to use the facilities in order to text Christie that I was still alive and kicking.
Shopping, she responded in return, by which I knew that all was right in her world and that no one had managed to brainwash her as yet into thinking that consumerism was bad and that wheat-colored clothes were the new “in” thing.
That froze me. In my dream I’d been standing in a wheat field waiting to be torn apart. It seemed telling.
I kept all that on the inside as we took our leave. I tolerated Dionysus kissing me again on both cheeks and even sliding his hand down my back until he could nearly cup my other set of cheeks. He stopped just at the on-no-he-didn’t point, which meant that I had no excuse to put the hurt on him and demand the whereabouts of my uncle. Considering that I was surrounded by followers who’d bought into his “charm”, that was probably a good thing. But I’d be back. Tonight, under the cover of darkness.
“I feel like I need a shower,” I said as I got into the car with Apollo. Our driver, Alonzo Rayez, according to his card, hadn’t gone far, it turned out. He was at a coffee shop about ten minutes away.
“Need someone to wash your back?” Apollo asked suggestively. Fresh from Dionysus’s clutches, it kind of just gave me the creeps.
“Gah, the two of you…no wonder you’re BFFs,” I said, exasperated.
“We are not BFFs,” he said, sliding away from me on the seat, clearly offended. “When I said we shared a sanctuary, I meant that he was there when I was not. It was best that way.”
“Come again?”
“He has a dark side,” Apollo responded.
“No one else at the compound seems to notice.”
“They’ve all fallen under his spell.”
“Didn’t work on me.”
“No,” he said bitterly. “If it were that easy, you’d already be mine.”
That caused a stupid little flutter somewhere in the vicinity of my heart, but he looked away before I felt I had to respond. In fact, he gazed out the window and didn’t say another word to me as the Town Car cruised down the hill and I instructed Alonzo to pull over and drop me at my car. Was Apollo lost in his own deep thoughts or had I inadvertently hurt him?
“Are we…still on for dinner tonight?” I asked as I popped open my door to the continued sound of silence.
Uncomfortable with his admission, I hoped he’d say “no” and let me off the hook. I was surprised at my relief when instead he answered, “I kept my part of the bargain.”
“Oh, uh, all right then. Where should I meet you?’
“I’ll pick you up at six.”
I didn’t like the idea of being without my own getaway vehicle, but it seemed petty to protest, and it appeared I’d already offended him once, so I told him where I was staying and that I was looking forward to seeing him. It should have been a lie. Sadly, if the flutter in my stomach was any indication, it wasn’t.
I had to look away from him then, afraid he’d see it in my eyes.
“Hey, kid,” the driver said, breaking the spell. “You need me, you call. For any reason.” He gave me another card, and I took it, even though I still had the first.
“Thanks, Alonzo,” I answered. “You be safe.”
“Back atcha.”
They drove off, and I got into my car, sitting there for just a second too long before it occurred to me to turn the key and start the AC so I didn’t swelter to death. I jumped when my phone vibrated and nearly fumbled it in my haste to answer.
“Christie?” I asked, recognizing the number of her burner phone.
“Oh. My. God.” It came out just like that, staccato. “I am shopped out. You won’t believe the stuff I got. So cute! Meet me for dinner?”
Ah, retail therapy. I wondered if Jack knew he could be so completely erased by the purchase of designer duds. I mentally kicked myself for that. There was way more to Christie and way less to Jack. Good for her if the only thing hurting was her credit card balance.
“Um…I have…plans?”
She was as quiet as Apollo in his snit. “Huh? I thought you were going out there for recon. You didn’t make contact, did you?” She drew in a sharp breath. “You haven’t been sucked in?”
“Worse,” I said solemnly. “I bumped into Apollo.”
“Apollo Demas? Here? Wait, you said I have plans. Not we. Do you think that’s smart, going out with him alone?”
“It’s…complicated.”
She mulled that over. She only knew Apollo as an aging actor and new-ish talent agent, the heir to the Circe Holland—aka Circe the enchantress who’d turned Odysseus’s men into swine—empire that had been built on the backs of dreamy young stars and starlets who hadn’t read their contractual fine print. Luckily, Apollo, being an immortal rather than a witch who had to steal her etern
al life, offered much better terms. But I don’t think any of that was going through her head at that moment. It was more the way he’d looked at me the one time she’d met him…like he was the Big Bad Wolf and I was Little Red Riding Hood. That brought me straight to thoughts of the one and only mind-blowing, sense-stealing, earth-shattering kiss we’d shared that night.
“Well then, I guess I’m not through shopping for the day then.”
“What—why?”
“Because wherever Apollo plans to take you, I’m fairly sure you don’t have anything appropriate.”
“You think he’ll want to go someplace fancy?”
“Oh, honey.” She said it with such pity. “Hollywood types do not eat at Taco Bell.”
Chapter Eleven
“Infiltration is like invasion…you want to go in clean and under the radar.”
—Christos Karacis
At 5:57 I sat on the toilet seat in the bathroom at our little Residence Inn letting Christie work her magic on me. It was the only way she’d agreed to let me forgo the shopping and borrow one of her new couture pieces instead. I had to do it justice…or else.
I wasn’t short by any means, but the same race-car red wrap dress that hit Christie at mid-thigh and made her look like a Nordic Helen of Troy caught me just above the knee and made me look…okay, smokin’ stoopid hot. Or maybe it was what she’d done to my hair that was transformative. Somehow, she’d enticed it to lie in gorgeous waves rather than crazy interlocking curls. Or maybe it was the smoky eyes she’d given me. Or the “Kiss Me Quick” red lips. No kidding, that was actually the name of the color.
Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) Page 13
