by Nicole Thorn
“You know what doesn’t make sense to me about this entire thing?” Kezia whispered.
“What?”
“Why didn’t they leave us with our fathers?” she asked, looking over at me. “If they were just going to abandon us into the world, so that it could do what it wanted with us, why didn’t Mom and Aphrodite leave us with our fathers? I don’t know anything about the man. I don’t know if he has a family, if he would have loved me, if he would have protected me. I’ve never given him much thought until now. I don’t think Zander cares much about his father one way or another. I certainly never have. What did it matter to me, what a human my mother chose to have a one-night stand with looked like? Sounded like? Would’ve been like?”
“Are you thinking about it now?”
Kezia shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s never mattered, that man. What if he has four children that he loves, a wife that he’s been married to since right after I was born, a house . . . a life that he would’ve welcomed me into. I’m not sad with how things turned out, because I have you. But I’m starting to wonder, ya know?”
“Not really,” I said. “My mother abandoned us to our father. It’s hard to wonder about a woman that would do that kind of thing. She had to have known what he was like, and she still did it.”
Kezia sighed and sat up. “We both got screwed over in the parent department, huh?”
“I suppose so,” I said. “But I’d like to think my father would’ve warned us if we were about to lose you.”
Kezia smirked. “I don’t know. He hated me quite a bit.”
“That’s only because we ruined his front yard, and then refused to pay him,” I said. “Oh, and because you hated him and made no effort to hide it.”
“He deserved worse,” Kezia said, crossing her arms over her chest. “He deserved to be thrown into the pool with Nemo.”
I actually laughed at that. “I don’t think Nemo would do anything to him. He’s like a big cat. He doesn’t do anything but laze about, get food, and wait for someone to pet him. And eat Cheetos, still. Always with the Cheetos.”
“That can’t be healthy for a hydra,” Kezia said.
“What is healthy for a hydra?” I asked.
She didn’t have anything to say about that, obviously. Who did one ask when they had pressing questions about their two-headed sea monster’s diet? Poseidon seemed like an ass, so I didn’t want to ask him any questions, and we didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it.
I looped an arm around Kezia’s middle and dragged my hand down her hip. She smiled at me, and said, “I’m fine. Really. I’ve just been thinking about these things for a while. It really does surprise me, that I made myself think that the gods cared about me, when I have this overwhelming pile of evidence that they don’t. Every chance . . . Every chance that they had to save me, they looked the other way. At least, my mother did. It seemed like some of the others would have been on my side.”
“We can’t choose our parents,” I said, shrugging.
“Gods, I wish,” Kezia responded. “I’d give you a rich mother and father that doted upon you nonstop and wanted nothing but to give you everything in life. They would have let you sleep in your own bed, instead of a pile of blankets on the floor. Jasmine would have gotten a dog when she was three, and they would have told Juniper that she was smart and capable her entire life.”
I smiled and kissed her. “That sounds nice. We’ll just have to be better parents to our children than their grandparents were to us.”
Kezia’s face flushed, and I wondered which words made the blood rush to her face. She lifted her hand, and covered her face, as if she didn’t want me to see the blush that had risen.
From downstairs, Zander called us.
We left the safety of our bedroom and headed down to find our family gathered in the living room. Jasmine sat in Zander’s lap, with her arms crossed over her chest, and a pouty look on her face. Juniper and Verin shared the loveseat, sitting hip to hip together.
“Something wrong?” Kezia asked.
“Yeah,” Verin growled. “That arse, Argus, is still alive. I need him dead, immediately.”
Juniper patted his knee. “We’ll find him again. Maybe Erebus will be willing to help us with that a second time. We got unlucky last time, which is why he got away. We’ll be more careful this time.”
“Are we supposed to go around making chaos again, until Erebus shows up to cheer us on?” Jasmine asked. She didn’t sound all that upset with the idea, though I wanted her to stay in the house for the safety of everyone else. If Jasmine hurt someone, I knew that it would destroy her.
“No,” Zander said, shaking his head. “No offense. I love you, but I’d rather you not.”
Jasmine frowned at him. “You’re no fun,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
Zander rolled his eyes, and then looked at us. “How do we want to do this? We have to find Argus somehow.”
Juniper lifted her hand. “I could try to find his location, but with nothing to focus me, I’m not sure that I can. I assume that you guys still don’t want us to do the group vision, even though we can’t be hurt by it anymore.”
“No,” Zander said.
“Well . . . ” Kezia had started but stopped when Zander looked at her. He tightened his arms around Jasmine, pulling her in against his chest. “It can’t hurt them, and they’d recover immediately,” Kezia finished.
“No,” Zander said.
Verin leaned forward. “I wasn’t here for the shared vision, so I’m willing to let Juniper do it. If something goes wrong, I could also fix it.”
“No.” The finality in Zander’s voice made us all drop it. We could have done the vision with or without him, but sometimes it felt easier to let Zander have his way. This happened to be one of those times.
Jasmine sighed and looked around the room. “Well, Hera said something about our powers growing. Maybe we could try to find him that way. I don’t know if I can trigger a vision now, but Jasper and Juniper probably could. Maybe they should try something like that.”
“I don’t have anything of his,” I said.
Jasmine shifted around and glanced at Kezia. “I mean . . . that wire is still in the garage, right?”
Kezia’s face drained of color, and I looped an arm around her shoulders. She hunched into me, and I rubbed her arm. “I think so,” I said to my sister.
“Maybe you could do something with that? It might help focus you, if nothing else. But, I mean, Hera did say that our powers would be different now. Maybe I can even learn to control mine.”
“What did Hera say, exactly?” Zander asked.
“That things should be interesting, now that we don’t have our mortal trappings,” Jasmine said. “Or something like that. I know that she used the words mortal trappings because it sounded really dramatic, and like she thought it was this awesome thing, meant to get our attention. It worked too. It totally got my attention.” My sister nodded, her eyes looking worried.
“Right,” Zander said. “I’m not sure we should be playing around with that kind of power.”
“They have to do it eventually,” Verin said.
“But—” Zander started.
“Technically,” Juniper interrupted him. “You can’t stop me from trying. You aren’t my significant other, and if Verin has no objects, then neither do I.”
“None,” Verin agreed.
I glanced at Kezia, and she bit the corner of her lip. “What if all you see is how you died? I don’t want you to relive that.”
I didn’t want to relive it either. The memory of my sisters’ corpses made me sick, and had my mind spinning in circles. It had been so easy to lose them, and if I thought about that, my mind would’ve burst. I didn’t want to be reminded of how close I came to spending the rest of eternity in the underworld.
But if I didn’t do this, then Argus could still be out, hurting people. I wrapped my hand around Kezia’s and squeezed her fingers. “It’ll be
all right,” I told her, and silently vowed to lie if I ended up reliving my own death.
She breathed out and nodded. “All right.”
I got up and went into the garage. Kezia and I hadn’t stepped foot into the studio since I’d died in there. Eventually, I’d want to come back, but not until Kezia felt better about the whole thing. She mattered the most to me. If that meant I had to build a shed in the backyard that could be my studio, then I’d do what was necessary.
The evidence of my death still lingered in the room. The bookshelf that she had broken, the cord that had been wrapped around my throat laid on the floor, and the feel of the space crept down my spine. I walked into the room and picked up the cord. It felt like a normal thing in my hands, but it still whispered to me. When my hand closed over it, the whispering got worse, like it wanted to crawl into my head, burrow through my brain, and make a home there.
I returned to the living room, to find my family all waiting for me. Juniper had moved away from Verin, sitting on the floor, with her hands on the coffee table. When I sat down next to her, she offered a worried smile. “Are you ready to do this?” she asked.
After I nodded, her eyes went distant. I closed my own, and focused on the whispering, until I couldn’t hear anything but the story that the cord wanted to tell me. The sound of it surrounded me. Images started to appear behind my lids, and I allowed myself to sink into those images.
Argus stopped outside of the house and looked up at the front of it. Fury burned in his chest, making him want to rip things apart. He stayed his hands, though, because he knew that he’d get what he wanted, if he just waited. Those seers would be alone eventually, and he would kill them for what they did. He would kill them for interfering where a human should’ve stayed away.
The demigods left the house, all smiles and relaxation. They didn’t know what their leaving would mean for their beloveds. Argus could feel his smile stretching across his mouth. The demigods would get their own punishment, when they came home to find everyone dead.
Argus only wished that he could have been there for that.
(No, I don’t want to see this.)
As they drove away, Argus started to come toward the house. His feet crunched through the gravel, grinding bits into the dirt. He stopped outside the house, listening to the seers inside. They talked and laughed with each other, unaware of everything that would happen to them. Argus listened, letting their amusement fill him up, fuel his fury. It would take nothing for him to kill them.
(I don’t want to see this. Something else.)
Argus grew tired of listening to the seers laughing and talking. He reached for the doorbell . . .
(Don’t want to see this.)
The image froze and started to shift. Argus still stood in front of a house, but everything else changed, shifted, moved. The street seemed to stretch oddly, and the house’s shape changed. the color faded from the soft beige of our house, to a light blue that seemed to add to the dreariness of Washington.
The house stretched tall, and I knew it immediately. It had been up for sale for a long time, before Verin bought it. He still owned the thing, and would randomly go over, for reasons I didn’t know.
Argus stood on his porch, reaching for the doorbell. His fingers looked the same as when he had been reaching for our door. They curled slightly at the tips, and they looked ready to grab something. His eyes had changed, though, and the feeling of the world had changed.
The giant’s eyes looked softer, less filled with anger. I could feel the emotions running through him. They burned hot but didn’t incinerate everything around us. He wanted to hurt something, he wanted to punish, and ward off. He didn’t want revenge, though.
The vision continued. He depressed the doorbell, and I heard a woman’s voice from inside the house. Moments later, Verin’s mother answered the door. Gwen tilted her head back to look at Argus. She had a smile on her face, until she spotted the eyes that surrounded his body. The smile faded, and she tried to close the door.
Argus pushed it open. Gwen stumbled inside the house, tripping over her own feet. She hit the ground on her bottom and bit her tongue. As she landed, Argus closed the door behind him, gently. As if this didn’t affect him at all. He turned back to Gwen and smiled. “I’m sorry about this. I would’ve left you alone, normally. Even knowing how fond of you that Hades is.”
Gwen climbed to her feet, and stood steady, strong. She lifted her chin, and said, “You’re going to die, you know.”
Argus snorted. “You think that you’re going to kill me?”
“I’m certain that I will not, actually,” Gwen said. “But you will die all the same. If my son doesn’t kill you, then one of his friends will, and if they don’t it, then someone else will come along. Do you know why?” Gwen smiled when she said this, her eyes still sparkling with amusement.
“Why?” Argus asked, bored.
“Because you think you are more than you are,” Gwen answered. “You think that you matter, and people hate when others get above their station like that. Eventually, someone will see you for the weak, pathetic, small man that you are, and they will realize that you are nothing. That you mean nothing. They will come after you, and they will kill you. You will be pathetic when you die, just like you are in life.”
Argus grabbed Gwen by the throat.
I could feel her fear, and her sorrow. I could feel Argus’ fury, burning through everything. And I could remember how Verin had reacted when he found his mother. I could remember the pain that had run through him when he realized that he had lost something, all because the gods moved him in down the street from my sister.
Fire hit the pit of my stomach, and I wanted to reach out and break Argus. I could do that, I realized. Break him. I had the strength of a god in me. I could snap his spine in two, and leave him writhing on the ground, trying to heal from that while I tortured him. A little at a time. Not that I would torture him. I didn’t have that kind of viciousness in my soul. I never did. I’d settle for him dying.
Argus slammed Gwen against a wall, and then he laughed. “It’s never made sense to me, how people like you always feel the need to fight to the end. Why can’t you just die with sealed lips.”
“Because I want you to remember the moment that you signed your own death warrant,” Gwen whispered.
Argus lost the smile. He put his hands on either side of her head, and I tried to rip myself free of the vision. I wanted to go back to the real world, where Kezia probably held my hand, prepared to make me feel better if I needed it.
Gwen’s neck snapped with a hollow crack, and her body went limp. Argus rolled his shoulders, and then lifted her up. He started to carry her up the stairs. I still struggled against the vision, because I knew what would happen next. Argus would leave, Verin would come home, and then everything would get so much worse. I didn’t need to feel Verin’s pain, like a poison that ran through my veins. He didn’t need to be violated like that, either.
Argus left the house, and I still struggled, fighting with everything that I had. I felt something inside me rip, and . . .
I jerked up from the floor, looking around me, panting. The vision had ended. I felt the disconnect . . . yet, I still sat in Verin’s house, in the front room. My heart started to race. I climbed to my feet and jogged up the stairs. I didn’t want to see what I suspected that I would, but I had to check.
Gwen laid on her bed, dead. I closed the door and went back downstairs. I walked over to the computer that Verin had on a desk and turned it on with a wiggle of the mouse. The date was four months in the past, and the time several hours later than the when I had left.
My mouth went dry, and I looked around the house. Don’t touch anything, I thought.
I heard something outside and did the only thing that I could think of. I hid in the closet, so that Verin wouldn’t see me. Coats and other things hung around my head, suffocating me. I tried to breathe shallowly as Verin came into the house. He started talking immediately
, calling for his mother.
My heart pounded harder, and I whispered, low enough that only the gods could hear me. “Okay, so if you’re paying attention, I’d appreciate it if you fixed whatever it is that I did. Please.”
Nothing happened. The coats still hung around me, and I could hear Verin’s voice from upstairs, as he found his mother. He sounded so . . . broken and lost.
“Dammit,” I said.
I felt something touch my skin, and I jerked hard enough that I banged my shoulder into the wall. A voice whispered form the darkness, one that I knew well. “You’re a little lost, aren’t you?” Erebus asked.
“I don’t suppose you could help me out here?” I asked.
“Of course, I could,” Erebus said. “He thought that it would be better if I retrieved you, rather than sending you back himself.”
“Who’s he?” I asked.
Erebus laughed, and since I couldn’t see him, the sound sent a little shiver through my spine. “Just another one of my kind. Don’t worry about him. Now, hold your breath.”
The world whooshed around me, knocking all the air from my lungs. When I opened my eyes again, I stood in my living room. A second later, Kezia had attached herself to me. “Oh, thank the gods!” she shouted. “Where did you go? I was so worried.”
“I . . . ” Didn’t know how to explain what happened to them, or even begin to figure out how it happened. All words seemed stupid, or inadequate.
“And where’s Juniper?” Verin asked. “She vanished at the same time that you did. She wasn’t with you?”
“No,” I said, looking at the man, and picturing his mother dying against a wall in a house down the street.
Panic started to fill his eyes, but then his phone began to ring. He snatched it up, and said, “Hello, Juniper?”
“Um,” my sister said. “Could you give me a ride home?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
To The End
Kezia
JASPER AND I went with Verin, while the others stayed home. We didn’t have enough room in the car anyway, and we didn’t all need to go. Verin drove, getting instructions from Juniper on the phone. It didn’t take long for us to figure out where she ended up.
