Antigoddess (10 page)

“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.”

Athena listened with half an ear. Her mind raced ahead, scrutinizing every closed door. This old one, who was he? Who would they walk in and find? Every muscle in her body was tensed and ready for the possibility of a trap. Her eyes and ears tuned to every movement, every sound. Beside her, Hermes chatted with Celine, but she knew he was ready as well.

This reeks of Aphrodite. He feels it too.

Celine moved slightly farther ahead of them and pivoted. They had come to the end of the warehouse, to another elevator. She crossed her arms over her chest as they waited for it.

“Will you not tell me your names?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “We are your hosts, you our guests. It is my right to ask this question, is it not?”

The elevator arrived with a soft ding. They stepped inside.

“Who do you think we are?” Athena asked. She was genuinely curious. No mortal should recognize her, or Hermes either. They looked nothing like any of their paintings and statues. No vacant eyes or marble butt cheeks.

The question, when Celine posed it, had an innocent ring, but her face darkened, becoming almost trancelike. Her pupils dilated and for a moment her hair swayed back and forth like a dancing mass of red snakes. She looked at neither Athena nor Hermes for several seconds. When the elevator doors opened on the basement level, her eyelids closed. When they opened, her eyes were back to normal.

“Please,” she said, and motioned for them to leave the elevator. “This is our personal level. We do not conduct business here.”

“But this is where you’ve taken the old one?”

For a moment Celine hesitated and seemed almost fearful. “You must understand,” she said carefully. “He was very badly injured when he came to us. He had been traveling for such a long time. He was weary; he needed comfort and care.”

“Comfort?” Hermes asked with a cockeyed expression. He looked around at the hardwood floor and leather furniture, the long oak bar along the west wall. In one corner a fireplace sat dormant, with what looked like a rug made from an entire polar bear laid before it. “I can imagine what kind of comfort you can provide here.”

“We can provide such comfort for you as well,
cher
.”

Hermes swallowed.

“In the elevator,” said Athena. She’d have shoved an elbow into him had Celine not been looking. “You never answered my question.”

Celine inhaled deeply and smiled. “I do not know who you are. They do not tell me.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Hermes asked.

Celine shrugged, confident and charming. “They,” she said and laughed. “I do not know. They who spoke to the Sibyl, I suppose. They who whisper in dreams.” Her head cocked at him for a moment. “You seem so thin to me,
monsieur
. You look so very frail, so very human. It is a good disguise. Had it not been for Mareden, we might never have known.”

Hermes looked away uncomfortably. It’s no disguise, that look said. No disguise and not of my power. Athena’s jaw clenched. He should be more careful. If they didn’t know, then they didn’t need to.

“And what about me?” Athena asked.

“You are flawless,
mademoiselle
. But then, so many women are, in these times.”

It was true. Thanks to creams and collagens and nips and tucks, goddesses walked the earth in abundance. Celine herself was, to many eyes, much more appealing than Athena. Celine, who wore beautiful clothes and cared for her body well.

Athena glanced at Hermes. He was dying for an introduction. Revealing who he was to mortals was probably one of his favorite pastimes. And there was no more point to putting it off.

Athena held out her hand, and Celine grasped it.

“I am Athena,” she said, and felt the pulse jump beneath the other woman’s skin. “And this is Hermes.”

“Athena,” Celine said carefully. Her eyes darted down the hallway; the flicker of movement was almost too fast to notice. It had probably been unconscious. “And Hermes. We are honored to have you.” She turned and resumed walking.

“She took that well,” Hermes muttered, probably disappointed there hadn’t been more of a starry-eyed reaction. But Celine was so collected and precise. Her response was exactly what Athena had expected.

They were being led to a room at the back, toward a dark mahogany door at the end of a long hallway lined with doors of a lighter chestnut color. The sound of Celine’s high heels clicking on the floor was distracting and loud, but Athena could still hear soft strains of music coming from behind the wood. There were also other, more animal noises: laughter and soft moans.

My eyes must be bulging from their sockets, my ears grown elf tips.
Her heart too was in overdrive, and she shoved the tip of her tongue up hard against the sore feather in the roof of her mouth to bring herself back down into her shoes. They were there. Celine’s hand rested on the silver doorknob. Then she withdrew it.

“Perhaps you would wish to wait at the bar,” she offered. “I could bring him to you very quickly.”

Athena said nothing. All of her attention was focused on the door and what lay behind it. Her heart hammered for an ally, for hope, for any help at all.
Let it be Hephaestus,
she thought wildly,
reasonable, sturdy Hephaestus. Let it be Apollo, strong and brave.
But maybe she shouldn’t hope for either. Both of them had fought with her, but they’d also fought against her on various occasions. And Hephaestus was Hera’s son, and Aphrodite’s husband.

It doesn’t matter. He’s always had a mind for reason. He’s always been my friend despite them.

The door opened in her imagination on a dozen different scenarios. In her mind’s eye it opened to reveal Hephaestus, twisted and mangled almost beyond recognition, suffering and useless. It opened on Poseidon, flashing jagged coral teeth behind his mossy beard. Water ran in rivulets down his bare legs; in his hand he held a black trident with razor-sharp points. She saw Ares of the smoldering eyes, saw him leap like a wolf for her throat. All of these possibilities flashed through her in an instant, but she said nothing.

“As you wish,” said Celine, and turned the knob.

There were four of them on the bed. Three beautiful girls, one blond-headed, one black, and one red. The fourth was a young man with wild brown hair. They were half-dressed at best. The boy in the center leaned into the arms of the softly laughing blonde, while the others knelt by his knees, kissing his chest and fingertips. His eyes were closed. There was a glimpse of gauze on his neck, and more could be seen peeking around the sides of his ribcage. Athena knew him immediately. His angular face, the infuriating, exhilarating confidence that came off of him in waves. Flashes of memory rose across centuries and pasted seamlessly onto the moment, flickering in her eyes like tiny electric sparks. She smiled wryly.

“Odysseus.”

7

DYING GODS

Cassandra’s mother hummed as she moved between the stove and the table to place a platter of bacon down next to a steaming stack of pancakes. The smell made Cassandra’s stomach turn, but she tried to smile. There are times when your parents’ best intentions feel almost ironic in their complete and utter wrongness, but it doesn’t do to hurt their feelings. Really it was Henry’s fault; he’d mentioned that Cassandra looked sort of pale. Their mother had grabbed the skillet without another word.

Two days had passed since the dream. She kept expecting it to fade, to be chased away by waking life. But her head was still full of blood, of monsters that smelled like clay and moved like bugs. If she didn’t eat for a week, that’d be just fine.

Henry and her mother buzzed about the kitchen, talking about the day, trying not to trip over each other as they coordinated eggs and toast. A crack preceded a sizzle as an egg hit the pan. Henry inhaled hungrily.

“Mmm. They’re so much better when you fry them in the bacon grease.”

Cassandra’s stomach rolled.

“Cassie, why aren’t you eating?” Her mother motioned to the food, so she took a piece of bacon off the platter and forced her teeth to bite through it, then fed the rest to Lux when nobody was watching. The spread of food grew by the minute: Henry plunked down a pitcher of orange juice to join the platters of bacon, toast, pancakes, and cubed cantaloupe. Just one piece of bacon wasn’t going to satisfy the breakfast police. Cassandra wondered if pancakes were good for dogs. Lux certainly seemed to think so.

She was still in her pajamas, and her bare feet rested on the cold kitchen floor. The sensation felt flat, less cold than the frosty grass of the field she’d stood in two nights ago. Except she hadn’t really stood in that field. But the kitchen she sat in now felt no more or less real.

She’d seen someone die. Someone she’d known, only she wasn’t sure how. She remembered his eyes, the steady way they’d faced down the attack. He’d been confident, right up to the end. Cassandra wasn’t so brave. If she closed her eyes the creature’s face jumped up behind her lids. She heard the clicking of malformed jaws, louder than Henry and her mother’s voices. And the screams. Of the boy being killed. She swallowed hard. The dream wasn’t receding. Instead it folded over, stretching into the world where she was awake, where things like Cyclops didn’t exist.

Cyclops. Even though they weren’t anything like what she would have described if someone had asked what a Cyclops was, she knew their name. Why didn’t she know his? Was she supposed to do something? Had she been meant to save him? Could she still?

I don’t want to save him. I want him to stay away.

But she didn’t want him to die.

“Cassie. Do you want a ride to school, I said.” Henry sat beside her at the table, halfway done with his plate of food. He looked frustrated. He must’ve asked twice already.

“It’s nice out,” she replied. “I think I’m going to walk.”

*   *   *

It wasn’t, truly, that nice out. But the chill on the tips of her nose and fingers felt better than the claustrophobia of Henry’s front seat. And she hadn’t been in the mood to deflect his worried questions. He would have known that something was off. Anyway, in that way she had of knowing things, she knew Henry was going to hit a chunk of concrete on Meyer Road and stop to check his car for ten minutes. Annoying.

Cassandra was showered and dressed, with her hair brushed and lip gloss on, but she felt vacant, distracted, like she might walk into traffic at any moment. When she’d gotten ready, first in front of the bathroom mirror and then at her antique white vanity, it had all been on autopilot, a lucky thing that she’d done it so many times and that she never varied her makeup and rarely her hair.

Her feet stepped along the sidewalk, quick and indecisive, the walk of someone running from something without knowing where they were headed. Kincade High School was only another ten minutes away. Maybe she wouldn’t go. If she took a right on Birch she would head farther into town. Left and she’d eventually find herself on the highway, and if she followed that as it wound northwest, she’d hit the state park. There didn’t seem to be enough ground in either direction. Her feet slowed, then stopped.

This was supposed to happen. The visions changing. All the little things led up to this.

What part of her thought that? What part of her felt it? But part of her did. And if she was honest, part of her thought it made sense. Something was starting. Something was happening.

Maybe this is the point. The reason I’ve been a little bit different all this time. Maybe this is the start of whyever I was given this—

“Curse,” she whispered. Curse. She didn’t know why that word passed through her head. She’d never thought of it that way before.

When she finally walked into the school, she was fifteen minutes late. The building was always kept at what felt like several dozen degrees too hot, and it melted the frozen tips of her fingers and ears too fast, so by the time she got to her locker on the second floor her face and hands tingled and stung. Aidan was there waiting and had the locker open before she reached it.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” She skinned out of her jacket and stuffed it inside.

“I was getting worried. Didn’t you get my texts?”

“Huh?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket but didn’t really look at it. “Yeah.” She flexed her fingers. “Cold hands. Figured I’d just see you when I got here.” Textbooks with frayed edges and laminated folders slid through her clumsy grip. The blood inside her hands hurt and felt slushy, like if you tore them open it’d look like a red ICEE.

“I shouldn’t have come.” She pressed the books back into the locker and let them drop; they boomed against the thin metal and fell in a heap of open covers and bent pages.

Aidan looked at the pile and cocked his brow. “Not up for English this morning?”

Cassandra shook her head.

“Music to my ears.” He took her jacket out and helped her back into it.

*   *   *

“You look better already.”

She smiled. “I don’t feel better already.” But she did, a little. With her hands curled around a mug of hot chocolate and a half-moon cookie in her stomach, she felt close to okay.

Aidan sipped his coffee. “Well, maybe if we got you something besides sugar. Do you want a sandwich?”