We Will Heal These Wounds

by Nicole Thorn

  Juniper eyed me.

  Zander cleared his throat, moving Jasmine back. “No one is killing a god. But if you have any ideas on how we can track Hermes down to find Cerberus, we can do that. Maybe he can be reasoned with, and we don’t have to get murdered.”

  “Maybe,” Dad said lazily. “Well, I don’t know where he is. I can’t see him. I don’t think he would come to me or anyone else if he was summoned, so . . . not great.”

  “There has to be something,” I said. “Hermes had to have known you would find out he took Cerberus. He’d be crazy to think not.”

  “Oh, he’s crazy,” Dad said. “Obviously. Now, while I can’t hear him, that doesn’t mean that someone else couldn’t. Like . . . a little ginger girl for example . . . ”

  “What ginger?”

  “Callie,” Jasmine said with a big smile. “We haven’t seen her in weeks!”

  Dad patted her on the head. “My, you are a little bundle of pep. Refreshing.” Straightening his shirt, he sighed. “All right. Go find my dog now.”

  And he left us in another puff of smoke.

  Juniper stared at me like it had been my fault that he did that. Is she really upset with me right now? After what happened? I wanted to believe she just acted the way she thought she needed to. I didn’t like our current arrangement anymore. Not after what I saw happen to her. I wanted . . . I wanted peace.

  Jasmine patted my arm, getting on her tiptoes. “Oh, I bet Callie will love you so much. She’s so sweet.”

  We piled into Zander’s SUV for the trip, and I sat beside Juniper. Her arms crossed, and she wouldn’t say anything to me for the ride. How am I supposed to make this better if she isn’t willing? I’m not a total monster all the time. Most people liked me just fine. She didn’t like me. I had been funny, charming, and nice, and none of that mattered to her. Maybe it had become a lost cause.

  I didn’t want it to be.

  I spent the ride trying to figure out what I needed to say to make her less upset. Perhaps just leave it alone for a while. She had a horrible day, and I only ever made it worse for her. Something about me filled her with aggravation.

  I left Juniper alone, instead thinking of what I learned. Going over what happened with her father, playing out what I should have done in my head. I should have stopped him sooner. When he started digging around for things, I should have slammed his fingers into the drawer. Would that make Juniper hate me even more? Probably. But it was too late to change what we had. She didn’t like me, and honestly, I didn’t like her all that much.

  We got to a house that’s size managed to impress me. Several levels, and with two nice cars in the drive. On the way over, Jasmine told me that the Oracle was a teenaged girl named Callie, and she had gone mad. Of course she had, hearing the gods all day and night.

  Zander rang the bell while Jasmine waited happily for the girl to answer. A woman got the door instead. Her eyes looked kind and soft as she greeted us all.

  “This is Verin,” Kizzy said, pointing to me. “He’s my . . . cousin.”

  I shook the woman’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  She smiled. “Oh, not from around these parts?”

  “Across the pond,” I told her. “Is your daughter home, miss? We need to speak with her.”

  The woman looked to Jasmine, wrinkling her nose. They also informed me that the parents didn’t buy any of this god stuff, but they still tried to be nice. They worried for their daughter, and thought that friends would help her. Even if Callie thought those friends were demigods and seers.

  “How is she today?” Jasmine asked softly.

  “Better,” the woman said. “She said that she’s been dealing with chatter, but she hasn’t had an . . . episode, in a while.”

  A vision, I suspected.

  I didn’t like the way Zander tensed at that, or the way Kizzy turned her head away from the rest of us. I couldn’t feel people the way her brother could, but I didn’t need to, to know that something was wrong. This family had a secret around every corner, and didn’t want me to know them.

  The woman invited us into the home, and looked like thought it would. Nice furniture, clean, expensive art, and things lying about. No animals around, and as far as I knew, they only had the one child.

  “She’s in her room,” Callie’s mother said. “She should be just fine when you go up.”

  Kizzy thanked her, and I followed the group up the stairs and to the bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Sure enough, a short ginger girl answered the door with a big, warm smile. She must have been sixteen or seventeen, and already with a job that could make most people twice her age up and die. But no, she handled it with . . .

  Sticky notes all over her walls . . .

  “This is Verin,” Jasmine repeated to her after we entered and greeted the girl. “He’s the son of Hades.”

  Callie gasped, jumping once, and then grabbing both of my hands. “A demigod! I knew you would come. But it’s not time for it yet.”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  Her smile faded. “I promise that it will be okay, Verin. She’ll help you, and you won’t be alone anymore.”

  I smiled at the girl. “I’m not alone, luv,” I said kindly. “I have my mum, and my new friends.”

  She looked around at the crowd. “Yes . . . you do . . . Very nice to meet you.” She shook my hands, and then dropped them. “You just moved here, right? A few weeks ago, from Yorkshire?”

  I didn’t like that she seemed to know that . . . but could listen to the gods. My father must have been talking about it. “Yes.”

  “Son of the king of the dead,” she said, as if she tested the words. “Do you hear them? Do they whisper to you, Verin?”

  I shook my head. “Only when I whisper first.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  Olive Branch

  Juniper

  Whispering to the dead? If there had been a clean surface in that room, I would’ve sat down and put my head between my knees. Alas, clothing and sticky notes covered every inch of every surface. It became hard not to twitch about that. The only thing that kept me from doing so was knowing that Verin had already seen one breakdown, and I didn’t want him to witness another.

  It had hardly been his fault, what happened, but I found it hard to act normal around him . . . my version of normal anyway. I had to talk to him about it. I knew that, just like I knew it would be the last thing I wanted to do. Finding a nice dark hole to crawl into and never come out again would be easier than making myself talk to Verin.

  Callie smiled at the man, and sat down at her desk. “What can I do for all of you?” She twirled in her chair, so that we couldn’t look at her while she spoke with us. Her orange hair stuck straight out of her head, so the twirling did absolutely nothing to make her look sane.

  “We have a favor to ask,” Jasmine said happily. She sat on the bed, heedless of the mess. Zander plopped down right next to her, while I tried not to squirm at the thought of what could be in that bed. Callie acted like a sweet girl, and she probably tried to keep her room clean, but if rotting food had been stashed in her mattress, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

  “Ooh,” Callie said. “I like favors. Well, not so much like them, but find them interesting. Well, interesting is not the word that I would use for them. The gods like to trade favors, and they talk about it all the time, and—” She shook her head. “I’m getting off topic. Favors. What favor can I do for you? I owe you after all, since you did stop that car from squishing me.”

  “Huh?” Verin asked.

  I sighed. If he kept tagging along, we couldn’t leave him in the dark. “Jasmine and Callie met a few months ago when they kinda almost killed each other at the park. After that, Jasmine had a vision of Callie getting hit by a car, so my incredibly stupid sister decided that she would make a better object for the car to hit, and went to rescue her.”

  “Hey,” Jasmine said. “My goal was to knock both of us out of the way. I did not ge
t hit. That was Zander.” She glared at him, even though he healed instantly. No offense to him, but I’d let a dozen cars hit Zander before letting them touch my sister. It only made sense, because he could heal from it.

  Verin looked at the two of them. “Okay, then. So, you saved her from a hit and run.”

  “Mmm. Not so much,” Jasmine said. “You see, there was this whole thing going on with Arachne, you know Arachne right, and she wanted to kill Callie to keep her from telling us something, and then she wanted to kill us because we kept getting in the way of her evil scheme.”

  “What was her evil scheme?” Verin asked.

  “She was making a camp and training fighters to take out Athena,” Zander said. “At least, we’re pretty sure that’s what it was. There was a lot going on at that camp, and no one would answer our questions.”

  Verin blinked, and looked at each of us until he determined that we had been serious. “Right. I’ll have questions about that later, but for now, I really need to find my dad’s dog.”

  “Cerberus is missing?” Callie shouted, like her entire world came to an end. “That explains so much. I thought they were talking about skeletons dancing, or something like that, but they’re talking about Cerberus.” She shook her head, and tapping her forehead with her hand. “I shouldn’t jump to conclusions like that. They only make skeletons dance on Halloween.”

  “Um, what?” I asked.

  Callie shook her head, and then zeroed in on Verin. She looked at all of us, and grinned. “Oh! I just got it! You’re finally complete.” Her face crumpled. “Oh, you’re finally complete. Oh, no. You have to be careful!”

  “What?” Verin asked, now frustrated. A scowl present on his face. His arms crossed over his chest, and he glared at everyone.

  “We’ll have a sit down when we get back home,” I told him. “We’ll explain everything, since you’re so determined not to leave us alone.” The last came out sounding sour, even though I didn’t mean it like that. I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts to line up with the words coming out of my mouth lately.

  Verin stared at me with enough confused hurt that I felt bad. I didn’t intend to do this kind of stuff to him. Somehow, I thought telling him that would only make it worse.

  “Callie, we were wondering if you could maybe check in on Hermes, and see what he’s doing,” I said, finally.

  “Hermes?” Callie said. “Of course, Hermes. Do you have any idea how many times he prank-calls me?”

  Before we could answer, she closed her eyes, and scrunched her face up. It made her look so much younger than she already did. A teenager’s life shouldn’t have been this. Not that I knew the way things should’ve gone. When I had been her age, I got locked in a dog kennel when I didn’t listen to my father, who forced me to spy on people.

  Callie cocked her head. “Not right now, Hephaestus,” she whined. “I’m trying to do something for my friends. I’ll talk to you later . . . No . . . Noooooo . . . Fine, I’ll make you cookies. Go away.” She shook her head, sighing heavily. When Callie opened her eyes, she looked at us again, “Sorry. Let me try that a second time.”

  Kizzy smirked. “I hope you have a lot of cookie dough available. Hephaestus can eat you out of house and home. But he’d probably rebuild it for you, so there is that.”

  “AH!” Callie said. “I think I hear him. Hold on, the others are chatting about tea or cookies, or something.” Her tiny face scrunched up even more. Her brows pushed down so far that could barely see her closed eyes at all. “Portland?” Callie said. “Why would he go to Portland with Cerberus?”

  “That . . . makes a lot of sense to me,” Verin said thoughtfully. “Just, a ton of sense to me.”

  I snorted, rubbing my forehead. “That’s not too far away, though. We could leave tomorrow and maybe be home before nightfall.” I couldn’t keep the hope out of my voice. I didn’t want to be away from home for too terribly long. Or at all, but I didn’t think I’d get that lucky.

  “What did Hermes say exactly?” I asked, looking at Callie.

  She shrugged. “Something about hipsters, and being annoyed that Portland was filled with them. I barely caught what he was saying. I think he was just talking to himself, honestly.”

  Right. I wouldn’t ask any more questions. Dealing with the gods felt akin to taking some good drugs. We stayed at Callie’s house for a little while longer, talking with her about this or that. She and Jasmine spoke on the phone regularly, but otherwise, Callie didn’t get much interaction with other people. Her parents liked us okay, but I thought we also weirded them.

  Jasmine promised to take Callie out for some pie and cake when this all blew over. She gave the girl a tight hug, saying, “We have to go get Cerberus before this gets any more out of hand, but if you need anything, call right away.”

  Callie smiled that halfway gone smile, and said, “I’ll be fine. You are the ones that need to worry. Promise me that you’ll be careful.” She snatched Jasmine’s sleeve, squeezing it tightly between her hands so that she couldn’t pull away from the girl. “I don’t have many friends. I’d like it if the ones I found didn’t get lost so quickly.”

  Jasmine smiled at her, and patted the air above her hand. “Don’t worry about it,” Jasmine said. “We’ll be absolutely fine.”

  The girl frowned at my sister. “No. No, you won’t.” she released Jasmine’s sleeve, still staring up into her eyes. She looked kind of haunted. “I hope you don’t take offense to this, but can you not come by for a few months? I don’t want to get closer only for you to float away.”

  Jasmine blinked. “All right. If you need anything, I’d still like for you to call. I want to make sure that you’re okay.”

  Callie smiled. “I’ll call if something goes wrong with me.” She worded it carefully, so that she didn’t have to call just because she got in trouble. We left her without arguing the point. She had started acting weird, and that was usually our key to get the hell out of there.

  Her mother met us at the bottom of the stairs with a huge smile on her face. “It was so nice to see you all again. Please come back soon.” Despite the friendly words, the door closed a little harshly behind us. I began to wonder if anyone in that house wanted us to stick around.

  “What was that about?” Verin asked.

  “We’ll explain later,” Jasmine said. “For now, I think we should leave before Callie tells her parents that we aren’t coming back.” We all piled into the car and headed back home. The sky opened up before we got there. Not with the lazy rain, but a downpour that had the windshield wipers going a mile a minute. As we pulled into the driveway, I hesitated a second before grabbing Verin’s sleeve.

  He glanced down at me, and I whispered softly enough that Zander and Kizzy wouldn’t be able to hear me from the front seat. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  “Sure,” he said, not bothering with whispering.

  I didn’t want to make a show of it, so I dragged Verin into the office instead of lingering in the kitchen or living room. Jasper and Kizzy immediately went to his studio, to put everything away until we got back. Jasmine and Zander headed upstairs, but I still felt safer in the office. No one but me ever went in there.

  Sitting behind the desk felt too formal, but sitting on the brown couch in the corner felt too familiar. I settled for moving my chair so that I perched in front of the couch, where Verin had lounged and watched me like a hawk. I resisted the urge to squirm, and fought off the feeling that I needed to apologize, and then tell him to never come back into my house again.

  I messed with the hem of my skirt, wishing I had picked out a pair of pants that day. It would have been better than this. More like armor, than this flimsy skirt.

  “First of all,” I said. “I’m sorry that you had to see what happened with my father. He’s not usually like that. He’s been . . . ” I trailed off, not because I couldn’t finish that sentence, but because it sounded like I defended him. Most of my life, I had defended him, and all the shitty thin
gs that he had done. I’d stuck my head so far into the sand that I could never pull it out again.

  Until that time with Jasmine. Where I had stood there as he struck my sister.

  Clearing my throat, I tried again. “He’s not usually like that.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” Verin said. “If I had realized what was happening sooner, I would have stopped him.”

  I shrugged, not looking at him. “It’s not your fault that you didn’t understand. To you, it probably seemed obnoxious and rude. That’s all it was, really. I shouldn’t have freaked out like I did, and I’m sorry that you had to be here while that happened. It must have been awful for you, having to feel obligated to stay.”

  Since my eyes still wouldn’t lock on him, I sensed more than saw him stiffen. “I didn’t feel obligated, Juniper.”

  I brushed that off. It had been nice of him to say, but I knew how much of a burden I was to my family. They always had to walk a tightrope to make sure that they didn’t upset me, put everything away just so, clean everything carefully, and make sure they didn’t come into the house dirty. So many things, and only sheer force of will kept me from freaking out when they did something wrong.

  Not that I had a ton of will at my disposal.

  I knew what I was. Verin had been kind for saying he didn’t feel obligated to stay, but I knew he would have happily left if he thought I would’ve been all right. “Secondly,” I continued, as if we hadn’t said any of that stuff. “Thank you, for not leaving. And for not letting Jasper find me on the floor like that. He would have been very upset, and he’s already done so much for me and Jasmine.”

  Verin put his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face. “You don’t have to thank me, Juniper. I just want to know what’s going on.”

  It seemed like a fair desire, but I didn’t know how much could be revealed. I kind of owed it to him, didn’t I? “We’ll talk with the others later. I don’t want to give away their secrets, but a few months ago, we cut my dad off.”

  “Huh?” he asked, not following the rapid subject change.