"And ask humbly that he accept this offering, worthless though it is, and unworthy though I am, as my sacrifice to his greatness."
I felt a tingling in my palm, as if I was holding hundreds of tiny insects. Looking up, I saw the sapphire grow even brighter than before, then a swift breeze blew across my hand and the gem seemed to be blown away like sand in the wind, dissolving and vanishing before my astonished eyes.
I looked at Nico.
"He accepted it?" There was still part of me that worried the jewel we had selected might not live up to Zeus's standards of “best and brightest”.
"Looks like it. You want to check the scroll?"
Whether because of the breakfast or the excitement of the moment, my hangover seemed to have vanished as Nico and I scampered through the apartment to the lounge, where Alexei and Christoph were seated, drinking coffee.
"Oh, you're up?" said Alexei as I entered. "How's the head?”
"Where's the scroll?" I asked hastily.
Christoph handed it to me.
“She offered the sapphire to Zeus?" asked Alexei.
Nico nodded. "All good, I think.”
He seemed confident but I wouldn't believe it until I'd seen a new task on the scroll. As it had before, the old task vanished in a plume of smoke as I stared and a new one scrawled across the paper to take its place.
"It worked."
I dropped the scroll before even looking at the new task and hugged the guys, forgetting myself in the euphoria of the moment. Another one down, another one we had solved together.
In the next moment, I got control of myself and returned to business. Hugging them was relatively harmless but the thoughts and unwanted emotions a hug seemed to bring up in me were anything but.
"Next task," I said, all business as I grabbed the scroll up again and unfurled it. I frowned.
"What is it?" asked Alexei.
"Convince a siren to give you her song," I read.
The guys' blank faces were a mirror of my own.
"That's a tough one," said Nico, finally.
“Yeah. You’re not kidding,” I said, blowing out a sigh of frustration. I don’t know what I’d expected…maybe a softball once in a while? But these clearly weren’t going to get any easier. “I'm going to grab a shower and get dressed. Maybe something will come to me."
Besides, I needed a break from the relentless sex appeal and testosterone. I was trying hard not to sweat it and not to show the guys any vulnerability that they could use as an excuse to cozy up to me. I knew I was sending some mixed messages, but every time I tried just to be nice and friendly, it turned into flirting - faults on both sides. I had to try and be hard, not to give them any sort of an opening. And not to give myself one, either.
In the shower, as I tried a few of the more creative settings, I let the latest task play through my head. The problem was that “siren” was not a term open to a great deal of interpretation. In the first task, I had been able to take the word “Queen” in a different fashion to that intended by Zeus, but “siren” was a bit more cut and dried. I might be able to get him the siren off a police car but I had a hunch Zeus wouldn't accept that since the scroll had clearly stated “her” song. An inanimate object hardly qualified. Because, the last thing I needed was the po-po on my tail and breaking into a cop car seemed like a terrible idea.
A siren was a mythical sea creature that lured sailors to their doom with their beautiful song. At least, I assumed they were mythical - once you accepted the existence of ancient gods you had to open your mind a bit - but whether they were mythical or not, they didn't hang about Manhattan.
After showering and getting dressed, still with no ideas, I told the guys I was going out for a walk and a coffee to help me think. Nico immediately said he could make coffee better than any shop, Alexei pointed out the danger I was in and Christoph just frowned. They all had good points, but I needed to think clearly and that was difficult with them around. My thoughts kept going in the wrong direction.
Very wrong.
I needed some time alone and, after some cajoling, I finally got them to agree to walk me to a coffee shop and hang at a book store across the street so I could get a little alone time. An hour later, I found myself staring into the foamy surface of a latte, at a loss.
The siren problem still refused to resolve, possibly because, even without the guys around, clearing my head was next to impossible. A person tasked with saving the world shouldn't also have to deal with a mother in the hospital slowly retreating from the real world and a father making an unexpected return into her life. You need a clear head to save the world.
When this was over - assuming it ended my way - I would visit my mom in the hospital and say goodbye, which would likely mean nothing to her. Then I would return to Mount Olympus to confront my father. I could not predict how that confrontation would turn out, but it seemed best to prepare for the worst. At least, I had a plan for that.
As the thought passed through my mind, a bus stopped outside and I stared at the advertisement emblazoned across its side “CONEY ISLAND MERMAID PARADE!”
A small smile crossed my lips.
Eureka.
Chapter 8
The following morning, rested, refreshed and raring to go, the guys and I walked through the busy streets of Coney Island. At peak tourist season the place is unbelievably crowded with out of towners, anxious to give their money away to whoever takes it first. Needless to say, Remi and I used to come here every year - if people are going to throw their money away, then we might as well be there to catch it.
But it wasn't money I was after today.
"I can't believe I've never seen a parade before."
Nico was way more excited than any man his age - whatever that age was - had a right to be. Alexei and Christoph shot him exasperated looks.
"What? I don't get to have some fun as long as we're here?"
"You're a strange man, Nico," judged Christoph.
"Do you think it'll work?" I asked, for perhaps the tenth time since we had arrived. Yesterday, after staring into a coffee cup for a few hours, it had all seemed so simple and logical. Now that the day itself had come, the idea that an ancient mythical creature was interchangeable with an out-of-work actress in a cheap wig, plastic tail and with shells over her tits seemed more like a caffeine-fueled delusion.
"I can't think of anything more likely to work," said Alexei with a shrug.
"That doesn't fill me with confidence."
“Check it out! Cotton candy. I’m told it’s like human ambrosia.”
It was hard to be downbeat with Nico around, acting like a child hyped up on sugar.
"We're looking for mermaids," said Christoph.
“And eating some cotton candy will prevent that, how?” Nico growled.
He had a point.
I looked about me and began to surrender to the Coney Island spirit. Much as I tend to look at this place as nothing more than a grifter's paradise, there is something uniquely wonderful about it, in a sticky, disposable, primary-colored kind of a way. It was super-kitsch and super-tacky, but deliberately, so that was okay. Everywhere you looked there were people having fun.
There were stalls where you could buy toys or food or T-shirts that declared how much you had enjoyed Coney Island in bright, excitable capitals. Unicyclists interwove their way around tourists, juggling as they went and irritating the magicians who were trying to get people to focus on their close-up magic. There were ring tosses, coconut shies, whack-a-mole, shooting galleries and many more games that rewarded violence with an immense stuffed giraffe that somehow no one ever won. There were face painting booths, caricaturists, and people would put your picture on a T-shirt for a dollar or a mug for five bucks. There were children everywhere - far more than you would have thought the adults present could have accounted for - running around, screaming with excitement, every second finding something to do that was better than what they had found the previous second so they never actua
lly did anything, and yet seemed to be enjoying themselves all the same. There was music, there was laughter, there was color, and there was a symphony of smells from the multitudinous food stalls that made you hungry at just one sniff.
Nico returned, holding a bundle of rainbow cotton candy and a caramel apple in one hand, a hot dog in the other, and a stuffed alligator under his arm.
"We have to save the world so I can come here again next year,” he declared as he tore into his hot dog with a groan of satisfaction.
If Remi and I had been working today, then Nico might as well have had the word “mark” tattooed on his forehead but I couldn’t help but grin at him.
"What now?" asked Alexei, turning to me and trying hard to ignore the embarrassing antics of his comrade.
"The mermaids should be down near the water," I replied. "I guess we just find one who can sing and take it from there." As we walked, I continued to talk to Alexei. "Were sirens ever real?"
"Oh yeah," he nodded. "The girls themselves are still around, although they're not 'sirens' anymore because they don't do the 'luring sailors to their doom' thing like they used to. Poseidon decided that there were enough ships dumping oil into the sea without his girls giving them a hand."
"So what do they do now?"
"What do any of us do? They live their lives. I mean, they still do a fair amount of luring men - Christoph had a thing with one a few years back - but now they just lure relationships onto the rocks rather than ships." He shook his head. "They've been around so long, you'd be surprised how many people have a bit of siren DNA in them. You ever know a person who could never just find their own boyfriend, they’re always after other people's partners?"
“Yeah, sure. Buddy-fuckers.” I recalled Jenny Guthrie at school, a drop-dead gorgeous redhead who had stolen more boyfriends than I could count.
"Chances are, they've got a bit of siren in them," Alexei continued. "They can't help it. Men are just unavoidably attracted to them, particularly if they sing. Oh, Nico, for goodness sake; you'll make yourself sick." He headed off to help Christoph drag Nico away from a donut stall.
"Fortunes - only a dollar."
The strange tinny voice made me turn to see an ancient Fortune Telling machine with a stylized gypsy head on top of it, its mouth shuddering open and closed in vague mechanical time to the words.
"You, Miss," the machine grated. "I can tell your fortune."
Although, I knew the machine was automated, it felt oddly directed at me. I glanced back to the guys to see them still arguing.
Well, why not?
I went over to the machine, inserted a dollar, and stuck my hand into the open slot so it could read my palm.
The machine went through a series of odd noises, which either meant it was producing my fortune or about to explode. Then, with a rattle, a small card dropped into my open palm and I took it out to read.
“Give up before it grows too late
Or regret it evermore.
For though you may the battle win,
You'll never win the war.”
I felt a slight shudder run through me, and not just because of the Yoda-esque syntax in the third line. It was one of those fortunes that could be extremely general, applying to anyone, but still felt as if it was applying specifically to me. We've all read our horoscope in the paper and been blindsided by how accurate it seems, before remembering that this is supposed to apply to one twelfth of the population and that yesterday's was way off the mark. Still, it's always creepy when it happens and this was entirely the wrong time for me to be getting creepy omens. It also seemed odd for a fortune machine to have such a negative fortune in it. Surely, the whole point of such a machine at a place like this was to keep everyone happy and buying stuff.
"You alright?" Alexei asked, as he returned with Christoph and a guilty-looking Nico behind him.
"Yeah. All good." I crushed the fortune in my hand and tossed it aside, determined not to think about it again.
Down at the waterfront, the mermaid parade was in full swing and they were all singing. It looked like I would be spoiled for choice, and yet, I could not shake the doubts that I had been feeling earlier, now exacerbated by the fortune. All these women were as close as I was likely to get to a modern-day siren but I couldn't help recalling something Alexei had said earlier about the girls who had been the sirens of old; that they were not “sirens” anymore because they no longer lured men to their doom. That was an essential part of being a siren, otherwise, I could just dress up as a mermaid myself and sing a song.
I watched the mermaids. They put a lot of feeling into their performance, singing directly to the children - mostly little girls - who had gathered to see them. As my eyes travelled down the line, I stopped on one particular mermaid. It wasn't that she was better-looking than the others - they were a very good-looking bunch and she was probably about average for the group - but she stood out. It took me awhile to work out why she looked different - it was because her eye-line was different, it was higher. It took me another moment to work out why; she wasn't singing directly to the kids the way the others were, she was singing to their dads. Specifically, she was singing to a group of three fathers who looked as if they had brought their daughters along to this event on sufferance because their wives had told them to, and now could not believe their luck. They hung on her every word, listening to no one but her, catching each syllable as it dropped from her ruby lips.
When the song ended, the mermaids got down from the fake plastic rocks they were seated on and waddled into the crowd, handing out stickers and flowers and other treats to the children who seethed about them. My mermaid didn't move as her three men, dragging their daughters behind, made a beeline for her. From the way she tossed her hair and smiled sweetly, I could tell that she was enjoying the attention and there was no way I would be able to pry her away from the male adulation. Fortunately, I had three secret weapons.
"Guys, can you get that mermaid to come over for a quiet chat?"
It would have taken a stronger woman than my mermaid to resist a three-pronged attack from Alexei, Christoph and Nico, who were as much sirens to women as she was to men. A few minutes later, she was at my side, with three crestfallen men behind her, wearing expressions that said “we don't think we'd have cheated on our wives but we'd have liked the opportunity to find out”.
"What's going on?" asked the mermaid, hotly, irritated that she seemed to have walked away from three sure things.
"I'm Marietta Martin.” I held out a hand, going into full grift. "I'm sure you've heard of me. I just heard you sing and I was, frankly, blown away."
The mermaid frowned. "You heard me in amongst all those girls?"
"When you've been in the biz as long as me, you get an ear for it. You are sensational; beautiful voice, beautiful body. Men want to be with you, women want to kill you. That's what I'm looking for. What's your name?"
“Antonia,” she said, flushing, and adjusting her breasts surreptitiously.
"Perfect." I pulled out my phone. "Sing for me, Antonia. Sing like I'm the man in the crowd you've got your eye on."
Antonia had the grace to look away with a self-conscious chuckle, realizing that I had spotted her little game.
Then she cleared her throat, opened her mouth, and sang.
The next two minutes went by in a daze as her clear soprano filled the air.
"Are you okay?" Antonia asked, after the last note faded.
I shook my head and remembered to stop the recording. "Yeah. Yeah. That was..."
I couldn’t deny it, she got me. In fact, if she had asked me, I would have run away with Antonia and never looked back. But now that it was over, the spell was broken, leaving me feeling off-kilter and sort of stupid.
"Thanks," I mumbled. "I'll let you get back to work."
"Don't you want my number?"
"Why would I want that?" I blurted out defensively.
"So you can call me about my singing career?"
&nbs
p; I took her number and headed back to the guys, feeling a little guilty, but only a little as the woman had been picking up married men for kicks.
"Got it." I held up the phone.
"That's amazing."
"You're amazing."
The effusiveness of their congratulations was not the first time today I had noticed them acting a little odd. Maybe not “odd”, exactly, but over enthusiastic, over protective, and over the top towards me. Their guilt at what they had done, the genuine contrition and desperation to get back in my good books was obvious. Probably, they had similarly noticed my forced coldness towards them. Except in those moments when I forgot myself, I had tried to keep things all business - no wonder they felt as if they had done something wrong.
But of course, they had done something terribly wrong.
Something they’d literally been forced into doing, a little voice in my head piped in.
There was no sense in getting back on that merry-go-round. I didn't want to forgive them, but it seemed as if they weren't forgiving themselves, either. The situation was what it was, and whatever they had done in the past, they had been loyal friends to me in the present. Maybe they deserved to be let off the hook, just a little. At the very least, I could lighten up enough for us to enjoy ourselves together today. After all, we were at Coney Island.
"How about we stick around here for a bit?"
My suggestion was welcomed by two slow smiles, and Nico's beaming grin.
Chapter 9
For the next few hours, we ate unhealthy food that somehow smelled amazing when it was on the stall and yet tasted like warmed up cardboard and sugar-flavored tumbleweed, rode on a bunch of spinning, dipping and whirling rides, screaming like mad things and hoping that the food would stay where it was.
We ran from one ride to the next, competing with kids for places in the line, laughing all the time, mostly at how childish we were for doing any of this. I was reminded again, as I had been at the Irish bar, just how much I liked these guys, how much I enjoyed their company and how much fun we all had together.
Her Immortal Harem Book Two Page 6
