“We don’t have that kind of time.”
* * *
If this guy looks at my chest even once more, I’m going to crack his rearview mirror into a thousand pieces. She stared at the reflection of the driver, a middle-aged man with a tan, fading widow’s peak of hair, hair that looked as fragile as strands of sugar. The backseat of his ’90s model Caprice Classic smelled like stale aftershave and dirty socks, but it was comfortable. Soft, cinnamon-colored velour, with their packs sitting on either side of her, serving as armrests.
Hitchhiking had been Hermes’ idea. A fast, comfortable way to travel, but as soon as the maroon sedan had stopped for them on the shoulder of Highway 40, she’d gotten an uneasy feeling. Not a feeling of danger, but rather of sliminess. The driver welcomed them in with a coffee-stained smile, yellow to match the old stain spots around his collar and armpits. His name was George, and he was in sales for a company that manufactured air filters. Athena had jerked her head for Hermes to sit up front, and when she made herself reasonably at home in the backseat, George had adjusted his mirror to roughly the level of her breasts and his eyes had lit there like flies ever since.
In times past, a mortal caught ogling would have been treated to a fairly nasty fate. The loss of all his teeth, perhaps. Or his eyes turned to stone inside his head. But times weren’t what they once were. Her power over mortals had dwindled to the point of near nonexistence. She couldn’t even give him a migraine.
Hermes chatted away in the passenger seat, asking lots of questions about George’s travels and the air filter business. It took a few minutes, but gradually, George’s attention shifted from Athena’s rack to Hermes’ curiosity. As he tried to explain the complexities of the perfect air filter sales pitch, Hermes snuck Athena a wink. She smiled and leaned back, trying to cool, trying to relax, trying to think of what exactly they were going to do once they found this girl, Cassandra.
To be honest, Athena barely remembered her. It had been so long ago, and she’d been sort of preoccupied managing the entire Greek Army. Back then she had fought for the other side, hadn’t cared whether Cassandra lived or died. An image of the princesses of Troy rose through the mists of memory: two girls, one tall, one shorter, both graceful in fine woven robes. Trojan gold sparkled around their necks and on their wrists. One had dark hair, the other a rich honey color. One had to be Cassandra, and the other the eldest, Polyxena. She had no idea which was which.
Doesn’t matter, she thought. When we find her, I’ll know.
“You kids got parents waiting?” George asked with his eyes again in the rearview mirror, this time finding Athena’s face. “I’ve got a daughter not much younger than you, and I think I’d have a heart attack if I knew she was out hitching.”
“We’ve just got our dad now,” Hermes said. “And he’s pretty liberal.”
“Besides.” Athena smiled. “We’re older than we look.”
“Can’t be that much older.” George took a moment to scrutinize each of them. “I’d say you’re barely out of high school. Am I right?”
Athena and Hermes exchanged a look. “According to our fake IDs, we’re twenty-one.”
George laughed. “I don’t want to know about any of that. Though I can’t believe—” He looked from Hermes to Athena in the mirror. “They must be some pretty good fake IDs.”
Athena smiled. If he’d look into their eyes for more than a moment, he’d see their true age. The forever behind them. But he didn’t.
George would take them as far as Kansas City. From there they might catch a bus. A bus to the witches, and from there on to a prophetess. Unless of course they were too late and arrived to find her already taken. Or worse, arrived to find ragged pieces of her strewn across the floor of her house.
Would she have been my friend, Athena wondered, if we had fought on the same side all those centuries ago?
It was a strange question, one she had never thought she would ask. In any case she couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t imagine them having been on the same side. Back then her anger had been so fresh. Her disgust had been for all of the Trojans, all of the royal house of Priam and every god who opposed her will to stomp Troy into the bloody sand.
It seemed stupid now. Such a battle, such alliances, and for what? For pride. For pride and for vanity. She should have been above it. But then, none of them had been. Only her father had remained neutral, and as the war progressed, original wrongs and causes were overshadowed by the play of gods. Gods wanting to see who was strongest, using humans like chess pieces, like avatars in a video game.
I actually allied with her. It was hard to believe, even so many centuries later. It had been one of the few times that they had been able to stand in the same space and not spit daggers. Hera. Her stepmother. She had fought at her side against the Trojans, against Aphrodite, Ares, Poseidon, and Apollo.
It all started on a quiet hill on the slopes of ancient Mount Ida. She remembered how she had seethed and how ridiculous she had felt, done up in her best gown, her hair, usually hidden beneath her warrior’s helmet, flowing in dark plaits and curls down her back. Hera had been there too, wearing a crown of peacock’s feathers, her cheeks creamy white, breasts thrust out proudly, angrily. Together they watched Aphrodite study her prize: one golden apple, marked, “To the Fairest.”
“I suppose you’ll both be sour now,” Aphrodite had said in her high, girlish voice. “But you can’t dispute the judgment.”
Paris, the younger prince of Troy, had been the judge. His task was to award the apple to the fairest of the three goddesses. Of course they had all offered bribes. Aphrodite, golden goddess of love and passion, had offered him access to the most beautiful woman in the world. Hera, Zeus’ queen and goddess of marriage, offered a fine kingdom and a world of power and riches. Athena had tried to ply him with promises of glory on the battlefield. And then, as Paris sought to deliberate fairly, Aphrodite had let her robe slip.
What was a boy to do? At the time, Athena had thought him the stupidest of men. But the passing centuries gave her more perspective. He’d been a seventeen-year-old boy, staring at the most beautiful naked woman in creation. Thinking with the brain below his belt was only natural.
But back then, she hadn’t taken the rejection kindly. She couldn’t remember ever having felt more jilted, more insulted, or, frankly, more stupid. There she was, done up like a debutante in her finery, when she’d never cared about finery. She’d put on their costume and danced to their tunes, and she’d paid for it. And then all of Troy had paid for it.
“Enjoy your little piece of fruit,” Hera had said acidly, glaring at Aphrodite. “A pretty trinket to add to all your other pretty trinkets. Let it comfort you, that you have nothing else.”
The sweetness left Aphrodite’s face. “Nothing else? I have everything that this apple represents. And you are angry, because you are second to me.”
If Hera is second, that makes me third, Athena remembered thinking. It had been difficult to hold her head up. She’d never wanted to be more beautiful than them. But she had always known herself to be smarter, and standing in her gown, staring at the golden apple and still ridiculously wanting it—she had failed herself.
“Leave her be,” she said to Hera, and turned her shoulder to Aphrodite dismissively. “What can she know of our worries? What can she know of kingdoms and battles and glory? She’s a silly, braided harlot. Good for men’s dalliances, then tossed aside. Is that apple anything to compare to our legacies? Of course not.”
Hera’s eyes flashed electric blue. Then they calmed and adopted a mighty, motherly quality.
“You are right, stepdaughter,” she said, her voice throaty and deep. “We should have tossed that bit of gold to her the moment it rolled into the hall.” She had reached out then and lifted Athena’s hair gently off of her shoulder. Such an actress. The gesture had seemed so genuine; it had almost fooled Athena herself.
“You hateful witches,” Aphrodite had spat. Angry tears had welled in
her eyes. “You’re jealous, that’s what you are.”
“Jealous?” Hera asked innocently. “Jealous of what? Your ability to sleep with men?” She made a soft scoffing sound. “I sleep with Zeus, the greatest of all. Athena—” She laid a hand on Athena’s shoulder. “Athena sleeps with no one, and has no wish to. So go. Go on, Aphrodite. Let your prince dip his little wick into some beautiful woman. What can it matter to us?”
Aphrodite had no response other than to burst into tears and flee. Athena and Hera had watched with catlike smiles. With acid and malice, they had planted the seed of the Trojan War. Aphrodite had cried to her lover, Ares, and he had pledged his allegiance. So she had stolen the Spartan Queen Helen, rather than merely allowing Paris to sleep with her, and Greece went to war with Troy, battering it to the ground, and Cassandra and all of her family with it.
It had been easy. Hera’s cleverness and natural wickedness lent itself to the plan. No one in the world could pull a double-cross or lay a trap like Hera could. A trap like the one she’d set for Athena and Hermes in that bar in the desert.
Athena had known almost immediately. The whole setup reeked of her so-called stepmother. Though she hesitated to impart this hunch to Hermes, who feared Hera above all other goddesses, and with good reason.
Athena leaned her forehead against the cool window glass, and watched the scenery flow by. In the front seat, the conversation stopped in favor of a low and off-key sing-along with Bob Dylan. George had his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow and tapped his stiff fingers against the steering wheel in time to the music. It made her smile, watching him and Hermes sing with their heads thrown back. When he didn’t have his eyeballs plastered to her chest, he seemed like a nice guy.
Hera orchestrated the trap and Poseidon sent his Nereids to do the dirty work. The glamour, though, she thought lazily, the spell to make those ugly Nereids look like people. That’s what gave you away, Aphrodite. That part of the trick was yours. The tables had turned. Allies had shifted. Two thousand years ago, the three of them had made the world burn. Now it seemed they would do it again.
* * *
“Tell me more about these witches.”
Hermes shouted at her from the shower. He was still in the shower, and had been for the last thirty-five minutes. Steam was beginning to curl out in ghostly fingers from beneath the door.
“What more do you want to know?” Athena asked, raising her voice over the noise of the jets of water. She stood at the mirror that stretched over the large basin sink, combing her hair.
“What do you mean ‘more’? You barely told me anything, yet.”
Which was true. They’d slept most of the bus ride up from Kansas City, causing curious titters from the other passengers as they eventually began to wonder if the two ever needed to pee. A couple of fourth graders traveling with an aunt had briefly entered into a very serious double-dog-dare situation regarding which of them would hold a mirror under Hermes’ nose. Then Hermes had started to snore.
“They’re Circe’s witches,” Athena called. “You remember Circe, don’t you? She led a coven on the island of Aiaia.”
“What?” Hermes barked, and she rolled her eyes.
“Come out of there already! Do you know how much water you’re running through?” She tugged at a tangle in her water-blackened hair. “And the inside of that room must look like a sauna.”
Moments later the shower shut off and he emerged, letting out a massive cloud of steam. He ruffled his hair with a towel and smiled, looking pampered in a white Holiday Inn bathrobe. They had rented a standard room after Hermes flashed his puppy-dog eyes. He’d had enough of hoboing.
“Check out the fog,” he said. “It’s like a Van Halen video.” He air guitared, and she smiled in spite of herself. “Nobody uses fog machines anymore. Except I saw the Foo Fighters do it last year. Mostly as a joke.”
Athena tossed her combed hair back over her shoulder. A large, wet stain had soaked into the front of her gray t-shirt. She tapped at the antique silver buckle that adorned her brown leather belt.
“Nice,” Hermes commented. “Where’d you pick it up?”
“Thrift shop in Albuquerque,” she replied. “Now try to focus.”
“Fine,” he said, and left the room. “I remember Circe. Of course I do. She was a sorceress, had a habit of enchanting men and turning them into beasts. But unlike you, I haven’t stayed in touch with the descendants of times gone by.” Sounds came of him rifling through his pack, pulling out clothes and putting them on.
“I haven’t stayed in touch with them either,” she said. “But it doesn’t hurt to stay in the know. Circe herself is dead, obviously, but her island remains, in an altered state. Witches of her tradition have lived in covens through the centuries, in Greece, then later France, and now here in Middle America.”
“Chicago’s an underrated town,” he observed. “Or maybe I just like the wind.” He popped his head back into the bathroom, dressed now in a brown hooded sweatshirt. “They’re not still turning men into animals, are they?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Athena said, and smiled.
* * *
The witches had gone corporate. They occupied two floors of a warehouse on the lower east side. The sign on the building read THE THREE SISTERS, but in truth, over twenty women lived and worked within. Athena and Hermes entered the lobby, which was done up chicly in marble and brushed chrome. The receptionist, one of those bookish, sexy types with carefully pinned hair, glasses, and a low-cut blouse, gestured to the elevator at once. She watched them calmly. Athena barely saw her pick up the phone as her view was reduced to a slit by the closing doors.
Good, she thought. They know who we are. It would make things easier; eliminate annoying explanations and demands for proof. It also lent faith to the fact that the witches still had power, a question that had plagued Athena since her decision to come to them. A millennium was a long time to foster a mystical thing. The reduction in her own strength was evidence of that.
The elevator reached the upper level, and the doors opened on a wooden crate-gate, the type often found in warehouses. The rest of the interior had been completely redone: impressionist art hung on the plastered and painted walls, and marble columns stretched to the ceiling, but apparently the wooden gate had been left for ambience. Athena bent down and lifted it with a soft whirr, and they stepped into the center of a very large reception area. A circular brushed-chrome desk sat ahead, and behind it a receptionist so similar to the girl downstairs that one might have been just a hologram of the other. On the wall, a row of plush, cushioned sofas in shades of cream and gray rested. In them sat not customers but girls, beautiful girls in tight, attractive clothing, who looked at them with expressions of curiosity and obvious welcome.
“Holy shit, it’s an escort service,” said Hermes.
“And not only that.”
They turned to find a girl nearly as tall as Athena standing beside them in a finely cut black suit. Hermes jumped, and she smiled at him warmly.
“I am Celine,” she said, and Athena recognized a name passed down through generations. She offered her hand, and both shook it. Athena was surprised to see Hermes blushing. Celine was strikingly beautiful, with shining red hair, peach skin, and legs that seemed to stretch for miles beneath the elegantly tailored skirt, but Hermes’ tastes rarely ran toward women.
“Do you know who we are?” Athena asked.
“I know only that you are of the old ones,” Celine replied. There was a trace of a French accent in her voice, as soft as an echo. “Mareden, the girl in the lobby, is one of the strongest telepaths in the world. She phoned a moment ago to say that two visitors were here whom she could not see into. Only those among the old ones could be so strong. We know only that.”
Athena scanned the room again. Celine had come from a doorway to their left. The girls on the sofas had ceased to stare and had gone back to posing with lithe, languorous grace. Beauty was everywhere. The very air was perfumed wit
h some soft, floral scent. The room was meant to seduce, to comfort, and to quicken the pulse. When Hermes went to introduce himself, she stopped him with a hand on his forearm.
“Have you seen many old ones?” Athena asked casually.
“Never in my life,” Celine replied. That gentle smile, the graceful squaring of her shoulders. “Until two days ago. When one showed up on our doorstep, beaten nearly to death. Is it he whom you are looking for?”
Athena and Hermes exchanged a look. “Can you take us to him?” they asked together.
Celine laughed softly. “But of course. However, you may find him … indisposed.”
* * *
They were led down a long hallway, through a conference room with a high-tech projector and glass walls, and into the back area of the warehouse, which was a system of cubicles, what looked like an office kitchen with a sink and refrigerator, and several closed doors. While they walked, Celine talked to them of The Three Sisters.
“We are, as you so quickly observed, an escort company,” she said. “But not only that. Twenty-three girls live and work in this space, performing a variety of tasks, including high-end mystic consultation for many businesses you would know by name. Others manage our worldwide distribution department of occult supplies and books, most of which are written here, in house.”
“High-end mystic consultation?” Hermes asked skeptically.
“Oui.” Celine smiled. “Those who have the most power are the most inclined to believe in more power, in endless power. They are also the most desperate, the most fearful of losing everything. And so they pay us—for spells, for charming girls, for feng shui, in some cases.”
“And you have twenty-some girls, all living and working here?”
“Oui. Vingt-trois. Twenty-three. Our apartments and quarters are downstairs, and in the basement. We are all coven members, all descendants of Circe and her clan. Everything you see here”—she gestured around her, to the walls, the floors, the art and sculpture that adorned it—“comes from the coven, and everything we make goes back into it.”
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