by Nicole Thorn
“What the hell?” I asked myself.
“Magic,” my mother declared. “Magic, luv. There is something here, and that’s why your dad wanted us to come.”
I smiled tightly. “Sure, Mum.” I handed her back the flower. “Magic.”
She nodded and reached up to kiss my cheek. I had to bend quite a way to get to her. Then she hurried inside the house, where she would be safe.
I stayed outside, watching the people around me living their lives. I saw mothers coming outside with their children, rushing them to the car before they could get wet. Humans always seemed so worried about getting sick. Fragile and oh so brief.
How long does she have? Forty years or so. Time wouldn’t stop moving. I’d already stopped aging, and she wouldn’t slow down. She ran and jumped and lived life like that teenager that met a man that she thought had been an angel. I couldn’t say if my dad had ever been in love with her, but he loved her as much as a god could love a human. I thought he admired the way she saw the world, and how she didn’t fear things she should’ve. He told me I had to keep her safe, and I’d been trying my hardest.
I heard someone shouting from a few houses down, and it fell into background noise. Something about a thing called Nemo, and water on a carpet. It sounded like two girls, and one seemed keen on getting the carpet dry. Well . . . put a towel down . . .
With four of us on the job, our things got moved into the house fairly fast, and the dolts could go home. They left me to my mother and our belongings.
I started on the kitchen so that Mum wouldn’t have to wake up without tea in the morning. She sat up on the table with the flower she found, asking it why it looked so odd. Strangely enough, the flower didn’t answer her. I still smiled while she interrogated it.
Mum said that something made her want to leave home. She didn’t like to stay in one place too long. While staying in Yorkshire, we moved several times in my life. This was obviously the biggest yet, but she wanted it too badly, and I couldn’t say no. I had nothing to hold onto on this earth but her, so we packed and left. I asked once why Mum wanted a place so far away, and she told me that a kind woman with yellow hair told her that the mountains would’ve been worth the move. Mountains . . . we moved because of mountains.
“What do you want for dinner, sweetheart?” Mum asked when the sun began to set. Everything felt off in my body, adjusting still to the time jump. We’d been in America for weeks, and I barely woke up on time. “Maybe pizza?”
I nodded. “Anything you want.”
She jumped from the table and skipped out of the room to make an order.
I folded up the boxes once I got the room all in order, and I went to put them in the bin. Next, I would need to fix up Mum’s room so that she would be comfortable. She brought the pizza up and sat on her bed while I unpacked her clothes. She sang to me while I loaded up her dresser.
When I lifted her book box with ease and then stacked another in my hands, she laughed and clapped. “So strong. I remember when you were just a little boy, and all you could lift was me.”
I shrugged as I moved the boxes to her shelf. “This is why more people should drink milk.”
Three seconds before the bell rang, Mum stood from the bed, alert. “I’ll be back!” she declared, leaving me. I asked my father a few times if she was entirely human, he promised me she was. Her odd senses for things like this had nothing to do with magic.
She came back with a black letter in her hand and a very big smile. “Daddy left me a note,” she said.
I turned from the shelf as she opened it. “Is he not coming by today? I thought he was.”
She sat on her bed, ripping the letter open. “Your father is a busy man, luv.”
I knew that, but this had been a big day for Mum.
“Dear, Gwen,” Mum started, reading her letter. “I hope that all is going well. If those moving men do anything out of sort, let me know and I’ll have them mutilated.” Mum stopped to laugh. “Oh, your father is so sweet.” She went on, “Make sure that Verin takes care of you and gets you more of that honey you like. I had a few cases shipped to you. Should expect them in a day or so. Keep our son well, and yourself. There’s wind coming, my love, and I need you both to stay standing.”
My eyebrow arched. “What the hell does that mean?”
Mum made a sound of confusion. “I never know what your father is talking about. There’s more.” Her eyes went down to the page. “I must be off. Souls to guide and that sort of thing. Tell Verin I’m sorry for ducking out today, but I’ll be around soon. I have some money for the two of you, and I’ll send more should you need it. Hades.” Mum sighed. “That’s all.”
“At least he’ll be by soon.”
She looked so happy at the thought of that. “Yes,” she said with a smile. “Oh, I should make him some cake!”
CHAPTER THREE:
New Neighbors Also Aren’t Neat
Juniper
“Why do you hate me?” I asked both Zander and Jasper. They tried to bring in a giant beanbag chair. It looked like the size of a twin bed. It also had the most atrocious shade of pink that I had ever seen. I just knew my retinas would start bleeding, if I had to stare at it too long. They wanted to bring that into my house. My house, which didn’t have anything half as pink as that atrocity.
“She’ll love this!” Zander said, looking at me from underneath the beanbag chair. He had it on his back, so that he could haul it up the stairs. He looked ridiculous, and I wanted nothing more than to point that out to him, with a little bit of scorn thrown in for good measure.
“I don’t care if she’ll love it,” I said. “I don’t want that thing in my house. Look at it. It’s disgusting.”
“I’m trying to convince her to get rid of the ugly chair,” Zander said. “This beanbag chair accomplishes two goals. One, I will win this wooing war with her. Two, I won’t have to stare at that ugly green chair ever again. Don’t you think pink is better than green, Juniper?”
“I think they’re both hideous, and neither one has any place here,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the demigod. Four months ago, I wouldn’t have been brave enough to do that, but I knew that Zander wouldn’t kill me. He might glare at me, and make a huge mess, but he would never actually hurt me. So, I glared at him, and then at Jasper for good measure.
My brother shrugged. “Don’t get angry with me. I’m not the one who bought the thing. I’m just helping him bring it in, so that he doesn’t make a mess of all the pots with dirt, and plants in them. Broken glass everywhere.”
I felt all the blood drain from my face. I didn’t know if his goal had been to distract me, but it worked. We had potted plants all over the house, so that Kizzy could take care of them. They took over my backyard as well. I chose where they went, but she chose what went in them. It had been a compromise that I felt proud of myself for making. Everyone else had to tiptoe around me, because of my crazy.
While I still contemplated the horrors of having to clean up the potted plants, Jasper and Zander got up the stairs with the ugly beanbag chair. I didn’t even fight them. I wouldn’t have to see the thing, and if I remembered that, then good on me.
Except, I would have to see it. All the time, because Zander and Jasmine still fought about who should move into whose room, which meant their stuff constantly switched back and forth, and my opinion didn’t matter.
I walked away from the chaos, and went into the laundry room. I had all my whites in the basket, ready to go. I carefully measured out the cleansers and dumped them in one by one, making sure not a drop got anywhere else. When I finished that, I turned the washer on and leaned against the wall. One pink chair. It hardly mattered in the long run. It would be in one of their rooms for the entirety of its stay. I could live with that.
It took five minutes of repeating that to myself before I actually believed it. At that point, I could hear Jasper coming back down the stairs. I had to get myself together before he walked in. I got tired of relying on
my brother to put me back together whenever anything went wrong. It didn’t seem fair to him. He should have a life beyond gluing me into one piece again.
He didn’t even have to do that with Jasmine anymore, because she had Zander. He seemed more than happy to take care of her too. I did nothing but hinder everyone. Sure, I paid the bills and kept the house clean, but I didn’t do anything else. Jasper and Kizzy did all the shopping because I couldn’t handle stores.
I went into the kitchen, opened up the cabinet, and looked at the cups. Eighteen cups. Six white, six gray, six black. All of their handles facing left. I breathed out. I could use some tea. I filled the kettle at the sink and set it on the stove. It was white, too. All of our dishes had the same three colors, aside from the silverware. While the water boiled, I opened up the silverware drawer. Big forks, little forks, big spoons, little spoon, butter knives. I fixed the butter knives, picked out a little spoon, and closed the drawer.
My kettle whistled. I poured the warm water into the white mug—which I only used for tea—and sat down to mix it. No sugar, no cream. Just tea. The spoon helped squeeze the liquid out of the bag when it finished mixing with the water. I sipped my tea contently. Letting the warmth steal away the unpleasant thoughts that seemed to circle my mind relentlessly.
When the calm had finally leaked into me, I realized that I didn’t do anything. I wasted away the day. I cleaned the cup out in the sink, and placed it in the dishwasher with the spoon. The kettle went into the cabinet that I kept it stored in, and then I could leave. I went into the most organized room in the house, other than the kitchen. My office. Only I used the office, and I could feel that peace as I sat behind the desk and powered up the computer.
I had bought it only last year, and had been using it for six months. It took me that long to accept that the old computer needed to be put out of its misery. I pulled up the spreadsheet with all of our expenses and began going through it methodically. It calmed me down. When I felt ready, I switched over to the bills. I didn’t like bills. They could change at the drop of a hat, and I hated that. It always messed with my spreadsheet.
After that, I went to a third document. This one looked much more organized. A timetable. My and my siblings’ lives, the demigods’ lives, and everything that had happened had been set up in a nice, neat little row. I had done it in the hopes that it would help me figure out what the gods hid, because they definitely hid something. It hadn’t helped. It just highlighted how strange everything had become.
It could be a coincidence that two demigods just happened to find the only seers in existence when their lives had been put in peril, but I didn’t think so. Nothing I had seen thus far pointed at the gods being that haphazard.
I tapped my fingers on the desk, looking at the damn spreadsheet, until I heard the washer go off. I rushed to change it before someone else did in the hopes of being helpful. They never helped. It only gave me anxiety. As I put my colors into the wash, my phone pinged, telling me three o’clock had rolled around. Time to check the mail. I grabbed my keys, and stepped out of the house just as I heard Jasmine upstairs.
“I love it!” She shouted, followed by the distinct sound of something crashing. I paused by the door, and breathed. Nothing broke. It would be okay. It would be just fucking peachy. I stepped outside, popping my umbrella open to protect me from the light drizzle.
The mail lady pulled away from the boxes as I started toward them. She started to look at me, so I took out my phone, and pretended to be interested in it. Like I got texts, or something. Everyone I knew waited in the house behind me, aside from the Oracle, but she never talked with me.
I thought I acted too weird for her, and what the hell did that say about me?
So focused on not drawing the mail lady’s attention, that I didn’t stop in time before plowing right into someone. My phone went skittering out of my hand, to land on the sidewalk corner first. The umbrella also got knocked askew, and rainwater immediately hit me. I fixed the umbrella first, because I wore a white sweater. It might be thick enough not show anything, but I wouldn’t take my chances with that.
Then, and only then, did I realize that someone cursed in an English accent. I blinked, and stared at the man that I had run into. I had never seen him before, and I certainly would have remembered seeing him. He was huge, for one thing. Not as tall as Zander, but maybe about Jasper’s height, even if he didn’t have Jasper’s bulk. He had the messiest black hair, and dressed in all black. Just looking into his face informed me that he had an attitude problem. And that accent would’ve been pretty hard to forget. I couldn’t even tell what he said. I thought he used the word bollocks. I didn’t realize that people in real life did that.
The man turned to glare at me. I didn’t shrink away from the glare, but met it with my own. “Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t sound very sorry. I sounded put out. Which would’ve been stupid. I ran into him, and now his mail sat in the middle of a rain puddle, slowly getting soaked.
He went to retrieve it just as I grabbed my phone. When I saw the screen, my heart sank. It had shattered. I had never seen a phone look so broken before. I tried the side button, and the screen lit up . . . Briefly. It had been face-down in a puddle of water. The phone had clearly been damaged, and the way it kept flickering on and off only advertised that fact.
“As sincere as that was,” the man said, “You are not forgiven.”
My phone had been shattered, and with it my mood. I stared at him like he had been the one to do something wrong. I should’ve been nicer, but that wouldn’t happen. “Oh no, however will I live now? The strange man won’t forgive me for running into him. My entire life is in disarray.”
That last part felt truer than I wanted to admit. I couldn’t live with my phone like this, which meant I had to find a way to repair it, which meant changing the budget so that I could repair it. We had money in spades, but I liked the budget. It felt neat and controlled, and I had just ruined that. It wouldn’t be neat anymore. It would be a mess. It would look how I felt.
My heart tripped against my ribs, and I tried to control the urge to hurl everywhere. That would be messy. That helped control my stomach.
The man still stood there. “What?” I snarled. “Something else you wanna make me feel guilty about, because it’s not going to work.”
“What the fuck?” he said. “You run into me, and I’m the one getting yelled at. Is that any way to welcome someone into the neighborhood?” He threw his arms out, sodden mail held in one hand. If I didn’t feel like I had started spinning out of control, those wet papers would have bothered me more.
My eyes narrowed. “You’re the new neighbor?”
“Is there another way to interpret welcoming someone to the neighborhood?” he asked. “A bit dense, are you?”
“Don’t even start with that,” I said. “You can’t upset me. Why don’t you scamper on to your squirrel suicide mansion, and leave me be?”
That threw him off. “What?”
I rolled my eyes, and started walking towards my own mailbox. The guy stayed right on my heels. “What does that even mean?” Great, now I had to tell him, or he wouldn’t leave me alone. This day just kept getting better and better.
“The real estate agent didn’t tell you?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him. Glaring, really. I wanted him to know exactly how put out I felt. He seemed amused much to my annoyance.
“Tell me what?” he asked.
“He chased some people away because apparently there was a squirrel mass suicide in your house. They looked ready to vomit, according to my friends, who saw them running away. That house has been empty for months, and we’ve seen more people run from it screaming than not.”
The most concerning thing about that was Eros, Zander’s brother and full god, had been the one selling the house. I tried not to freak out over that, but found it hard because . . . Eros . . . In my neighborhood . . . Selling a house.
The guy behind me looked intrigued. “We
were not informed of squirrel suicides. I feel so left out now. I wonder why they did it. Were they tired of their lives, or were they doing some kind of squirrel ritual that would gain the next generation something they did not have?”
I scowled at him from over my shoulder. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Why don’t you go on home, call the real estate agent, and ask what happened? You’ve already bought the house. It’s not like you can change your mind now.”
He grinned. “You’d be surprised.”
He wouldn’t go away. Why the fuck wouldn’t he go away? “Why the fuck are you still here?” I asked, figuring hostility would get him to walk away faster.
The man rocked back on his heels. “So angry, already. I haven’t even given you a reason. I could give you a reason, if you want.”
“I don’t need a reason,” I said. “I need you to leave me alone.”
“You are the one that plowed into me, remember?” he asked. “Why are you so angry with me? If anything, you should be apologizing, and asking for forgiveness. Not snapping at me.”
I jammed my key into the mailbox with more force than necessary. Only two envelopes waited in there. I pulled them out, making sure they stayed under the protection of the umbrella. I also didn’t answer the man. I figured that if being openly hostile didn’t get him running, then ignoring him might do the trick.
Turning around to leave, I ran straight into his chest for a second time. “What the fuck!?” I demanded. “Why don’t you back up, buddy?”
He laughed. “Again, you ran into me. You don’t pay very close attention to your surroundings, do you? Maybe you should look where you’re going, and then we could avoid this kind of incident in the future.”
I glared at him. He had no idea how much I paid attention to my surroundings. I’d give almost anything to not pay attention to my surroundings. Instead of saying any of that, I crossed my arms over my chest, and made sure my glare stayed in place. “Or you could not crowd me like a creep.”
“What is your problem?” he asked.
