DISTRACTIONS
The next morning, the entire Olympian Council had a meeting near the edge of the forest to discuss the plans for the day. After a few minutes, we all went our separate ways to accomplish various tasks. To be specific, Connor, Camille, and I headed back to my house to hang out while all of the other gods (except for Haley and Shane, our smith) headed into the woods. The A Team had been given yet another morning off and we planned on going back into the forest later on.
Once inside my empty house, Camille, Connor, and I collapsed on the old lumpy couch in my living room and turned on the news, setting it on mute. I took my walkie-talkie off my belt loop and set it on the coffee table in front of us before turning the volume all the way up. This way, we could at least stay informed.
Currently, Hermes was hanging out back at the army base camp, helping Pan teach the younger nymphs and satyrs some more advanced defense skills than the ones they already knew. Somewhere near the meadow, Ares and Aphrodite had just taken out the Minotaur and an undead warrior with their signature moves— Aphrodite using her beauty as a distraction, leaving room for Ares to suddenly attack from behind. Poseidon and Zeus also seemed unstoppable as they drenched the Python in seawater and then electrocuted it to death, killing it in record time. Meanwhile, Hera, Demeter, and Dionysus were using guerrilla warfare and ambush techniques against a small troop of undead warriors.
Feeling restless, I shifted in my seat for about the fifth time in five minutes. Artemis just snickered next to me and asked in Greek, “Is something bothering you?” Since neither of my parents was at home, it was safe to be our godly selves.
“Yes. I have a disease called pinus ponderosa deprivation,” I answered her blandly, using scientific names just to sound even more intelligent than usual as I fixed my long, wavy hair into my signature ponytail.
When the blonde twins only exchanged confused glances and Apollo raised one eyebrow, I laughed. “Basically, it means I’m feeling deprived of our wonderful forest out there,” I replied with a shrug. “But then again, I’m pretty sure I’ve already spread the disease to you guys so it doesn’t really matter.” They nodded in agreement, sharing an identical smirk.
“Want to go out back? I have an empty soda can begging to be shot at,” I suggested after a few dull moments of idle silence. Apollo nodded eagerly and grabbed the black BB gun sitting by my back door. He ran out into the yard without another word as Artemis just rolled her eyes.
A few minutes later, Apollo and I were taking turns shooting at the can, sending it flying back a few more feet each time with a small pinging noise. Artemis was watching us from the porch as she munched on a red apple she had stolen from the fruit basket on my kitchen table, guessing as to which one of us would be able to hit the soda can the most times. But Artemis was probably the second smartest out of all the gods (at least intellectually) so she picked the goddess of wisdom, war, and skills and won the bet against herself. Apollo didn’t seem to care about the loss, since he knew he could have beaten me in a shooting competition with a bow and a few arrows at any time or place.
After about an hour, Apollo and I had shot the poor aluminum can to smithereens, and it was now lying under the big tree where the Monster Watch used to meet to discuss the day’s events in the week after we had first gone into the forest, back when we didn’t have other ways of communicating and life was simpler. He and I joined Artemis in the antique rocking chairs on the porch to take a break and stared blankly out into the thick fog. The skies were cloudy and gray due to Zeus’s involvement in the war, but there wasn’t much besides houses to look at anyway.
We were still listening to the radio, but not much was happening in the mysterious forest. To be honest, I had a feeling that the so-called “battles” would be more like random skirmishes between one or two monsters and a god, at least until Alec arrived with the reinforcements. I kept checking my watch, waiting for his call to come, but it never did. Meanwhile, I was silently mulling over recent events in the forest when something suddenly occurred to me.
“Hey!” I exclaimed, bolting upright in my chair. Artemis and Apollo just looked at me with their hazel eyes, eagerly waiting for me to explain. It’s safe to say they were used to me having these random moments of realization. In fact, the pieces of the puzzle were still putting themselves together in my brain when Apollo broke in impatiently, “Well, are you going to tell us or not?”
“The helm of invisibility,” I whispered, lifting my chin. Because, really, it changed the whole freaking equation. Artemis and Apollo apparently agreed, since they both smacked their foreheads at the exact same time, as if they too should have thought of the helm earlier.
In a war against the Titans, a cyclops had given the original and most famous Olympian brothers tools to defeat their enemies—Zeus received the master bolt, Poseidon his golden trident, and Hades the helm of invisibility or darkness. Until now, we had ignored the helm. Hell, until earlier in the spring, we’d ignored Hades himself—our biggest failure in our duties as gods.
So, assuming that the Hades of our current generation had the helm, the rest of us were in an enormous amount of trouble. An invisible and undetectable Hades could be anywhere at any time, listening to anything we were saying or killing anyone with valuable information. With the helm, Hades was the ultimate spy. Forget all of our planned surprise attacks and secret weapons; we were back to square one.
“But how do we know for sure that he has the helm?” Artemis mused, tapping her chin, her brow furrowed just the slightest bit.
“That’s exactly it. We don’t know if he has the helm, but we have to assume he does, just in case. We don’t want any more soldiers dying than necessary over this ludicrous argument,” I replied and the twins nodded in understanding.
“But the thing I don’t get is why Hades would have let us almost capture him in the forest a few days ago if he does, in fact, have the helm in his possession . . . unless he wanted us to see him for some reason,” I continued aloud, though Artemis and Apollo just sat back and waited silently while I reasoned it out for myself. “But then again, there’s no way of knowing for sure.”
“Maybe Hades was out looking for the helm when we almost captured him,” Apollo offered, running his fingers through his short, sandy blond hair in anguish.
Artemis frowned and shook her head. “It can’t be that simple, can it? I mean, that’s probably what Hades wants us to believe, if he actually has the helm.”
“There’s that ‘if’ again. Everything we do is going to revolve around this helm from now on, so we have to determine whether or not Hades actually has it. And fast,” I added before the three of us lapsed into a short state of silence and deep thought as we tried to think of how to find the helm of invisibility.
“I’ve got it! The antique shop!” I exclaimed and Artemis and Apollo returned their attention to me.
“Of course,” Apollo breathed, beginning to count off on his fingers. “That’s where we found the other major weapons—the master bolt in its metal form, the trident, your shield, bows and arrows, a few swords. Where did your mom even find those things in the first place?”
But Apollo’s question went unanswered when Artemis yelped, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!” And ignoring lunch, the three of us took off down the empty road, racing toward Main Street as if our lives depended on making it to the shop alive. While that might have been true, it wasn’t something to dwell on. By the time we had reached the door of the antique shop, I had filled in all of the other gods via walkie-talkie and they were on high alert, wary of an invisible Hades.
I slowly opened the door, and the tiny bell rang as we stepped over the threshold. Surveying the room, I ordered in English, “You two search that side and I’ll search this side.” Camille and Connor just nodded and split up while I started to sort out the piles of old junk on the right side of the room. Ancient tables and chairs with intricate patterns carved into the legs made the room into one big maze, but I wasn’t taking any chances by skipping over stuff. We had to find Hades’s helm; the outcome of the war depended on it.
Just then, my mother walked out of the back storage room and her brown eyes lit up when she saw the three of us. She clasped her hands together and said enthusiastically, “Are you looking for something in particular?”
“Yes, actually,” I told her, thinking that she might be able to help me for once. “A helmet. Probably bronze or iron and really old.”
“Really, really, really old,” Connor added, as if I hadn’t been clear enough.
My mother immediately raised her eyebrows as if suddenly remembering something then pushed her way through the clutter toward her half-moon-shaped desk. The three of us waited patiently and exchanged curious glances while she rummaged through some old documents for a minute.
“Ah, yes, here it is,” she rasped as she held a few papers up to the light so she could read them better. “A boy about your age came in here—a few months ago, according to my records—and bought it off me. Didn’t give me much money for it, but oh well. I didn’t recognize him so I thought he might be from a neighboring town. Pine Grove, maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe.” I gulped, already knowing the answer to my own question, and tried to keep my voice from shaking with worry when I asked, “Mom, what did he look like?”
“Oh, dear me,” she exclaimed, covering her mouth with one frail hand. “I hope you don’t go around trying to make friends with him. He was a bad sort, you know, looked a bit Goth to me. Handsome, but Goth. Not that I’m against Goth people . . . it’s just hard to describe.”
I know exactly what you mean, I thought to myself with a sigh.
Realizing she was getting a bit off-topic, my mother put her hands on her hips and looked directly at me as she said, “Please, sweetie, just stay away from him. I’ll find you another helmet exactly like that one and you can use it for whatever crazy games you want to play.”
But there is no other helmet like that one, I thought angrily as I gritted my teeth and turned around, sending worried glances to my friends across the room. I waved my mother a quick good-bye and wove through the antiques toward the door, Camille and Connor following close behind.
As soon as we were outside and out of anyone else’s earshot, I whipped out my walkie-talkie. “This is Athena calling in an emergency situation,” I rapidly spoke in Greek, the urgency in my voice unmistakable. “Hades has the helm. Repeat: Hades has the helm.”
At once, the walkie-talkie erupted with the voices of almost all of the other gods. “What? Wait, when? What the hell? How? Why?”
I only sighed in defeat, rubbing my forehead as Artemis took the time to explain what we now knew. But even once she had finished speaking, none of the gods had calmed down. They were even more wound up now that they knew the details and rightly so. After all, this meant that Hades could have seen or heard anything we had done or spoken of in the past months and might know about our usual routes, fighting styles, and most importantly, the arrival of Alec and the troops. This also meant that Hades already had the helm in his possession when we had surrounded him in the forest that day, so he’d definitely wanted us to see him there. We just had to figure out why.
“Athena, can I meet you and your team in your room? I want to discuss some things and I’ve been throwing around so much lightning my hands are killing me,” Zeus asked.
“Of course, Father Zeus,” I answered promptly. “But if it’s not too much trouble, climb up to my balcony. My human father should be home any minute and I don’t want him getting suspicious.”
About half an hour later, the rest of my team and I were holed up in my room, waiting for Zeus to arrive. Just as Apollo was about to ask what time it was for the twenty-third time in the last forty minutes, I heard a muffled noise come from outside. I immediately opened the glass doors to my balcony to see a frowning Zeus, his golden hair messy and dark with sweat and rainwater, his hands rough and covered in golden blood. Breathing heavily, he lowered himself into the leather seat at my desk and I quickly rushed over, yanking out a drawer to reveal a pile of various medical supplies.
“You keep all of this in your room?” Apollo wondered aloud as he grabbed some heavy-duty bandages and alcohol to clean Zeus’s wounds.
I shrugged. “It’s not like anyone else in this house ever needs bandages.”
Just then, I heard the sputtering of an old car engine outside, so I knew my human father was home. Ignoring his arrival for the time being, I reluctantly turned back to watch Zeus wince in pain as Apollo wrapped up his hands.
When Zeus’s eyes finally looked up to meet mine, he whispered solemnly, “This is crazy. Everyone out there is paranoid about Hades and, for once in my life, I don’t know how to calm them down. I mean, he could be in this room right now for all we know.”
Artemis just nodded in agreement, tying her hair in a bun before she started wandering about the room, waving her arms this way and that to make sure there wasn’t an invisible person hiding behind the furniture. “I don’t think Hades is here, but you’re right; if we’re going to win this war, we all need to be a little bit paranoid about Hades in order to keep our plans a secret,” Artemis proclaimed. “We just can’t become so paranoid that we all start turning on each other.”
Zeus opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by the loud ringing of my house phone. The four of us quickly fell into silence, wondering who could possibly be calling and trying to listen for the start of a conversation. You see, in a town as small as the Woods, people often made unannounced house calls, not telephone calls. For a fraction of a second, I wondered if my cousin Katie was calling, but I couldn’t think of a good reason why she would. Frowning, I was about to open my bedroom door and race downstairs to answer the phone, but I stayed in the room when I heard my human father pick up the line. He kept his voice strangely low, however, so I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
No longer seeming fazed, Zeus asked us three, “How are your own injuries?”
Apollo leaned over to inspect the gash on his leg and I quickly slid the sleeve of my purple T-shirt over my left shoulder, revealing my bra strap and the bandages he had put on for me yesterday. I carefully ripped back a small piece of the gauze so I could see the damage and was relieved to find that the wound was almost healed already. There was a bit of dried golden blood on the skin surrounding the dark brown puncture, which was now almost nothing but a scar, but other than that, I was fine.
“Looks good,” I told Zeus. “I expect the scar to be completely gone by tomorrow or the day after.” Most likely, a stab wound like mine would have taken weeks, maybe even months, to completely heal on a normal human and then there would probably always be a scar left as a reminder of the pain. But being reincarnations of the gods, we had found out early on that as well as being stronger than regular people, our wounds healed five times as fast and our skin always appeared unscathed afterward. Such natural gifts were proving to come in quite handy for this war.
Next, I looked at Apollo and Artemis for their own reports and, luckily, they were healing as well as I was. Suddenly, a gruff yell sounded from the kitchen below, “Ashley, get down here right now!” I groaned, giving the others in the room a quick look that meant I’ll be back in a minute. Then I slammed my white bedroom door behind me as I reluctantly headed down the stairs to face my father.
Strangely enough, he didn’t look mad or drunk as usual. He was simply leaning against the doorframe, running his fingers through his thinning light brown hair when I walked into the room. His dark eyes, which were narrowed like a hawk’s, peered down at me suspiciously. “Have you been hanging out with Cole lately?”
Though taken aback at first, I quickly regained my composure and decided to give a diplomatic answer, just to be safe. “Not any more than the Monster Watch or anyone else. Why are you asking?”
My father frowned and stroked the sorry excuse for a beard that was on the tip of his chin. “Cole called to ask you out on a date. He’ll pick you up at seven tonight to take you out for dinner,” he told me slowly, and my jaw dropped to the floor.
Outraged, I glared at him and shouted, “You said yes for me? You didn’t even ask me about it! What the hell is your problem?” I yanked at my ponytail in anger, suddenly wishing that I had never come downstairs and that I had ignored Cole instead of making up with him like Becca had suggested. But cursing under my breath in Aphrodite’s name wasn’t going to help the situation.
My father sighed. “Calm down, I’m not that stupid. I know you didn’t want to go,” he hissed and my jaw dropped for a second time, wondering again why he had said yes for me. I was starting to think even less of him than I had before, but then he elaborated, “You’re going to do this to cheer up your mother. So please, act like a normal teenage girl for once. These past couple of weeks I swear she’s had about five heart attacks from worrying too much about you in the forest.”
I took a deep breath, finally understanding him and his reasoning, although I still wasn’t happy about it. My father was using me to use Cole, just to try to repair my relationship with my mother and his formerly contented marriage with her, which I sometimes thought shouldn’t have happened to begin with (but then again, I wouldn’t be alive without them). Talk about complicated relationships.
Growling, I shot my father one last glare for good measure before I raced back upstairs and into my room where I was met with three shocked expressions. “Did I just hear what I think I heard?” Artemis asked me in Greek, her eyebrows raised and feet dangling off the side of my bed. My only response was an angry nod before I started to pace around my room in circles to try to calm myself down.
“What am I supposed to do? I don’t have time for this! We have a war to win. Oh no, Alec’s going to be so mad when he hears about this,” I huffed in Greek, barely even taking a breath. I rubbed my forehead to try to stop my head from pounding, but to no avail. That was when I saw the movement of Zeus’s head from out of the corner of my eye and turned to face him expectantly. But rather than showing any signs of bewilderment, Zeus just pulled out his own black walkie-talkie and muttered three words into it as calmly as possible: “Get me Aphrodite.”
About an hour later, we helped Aphrodite climb up to my balcony and into my room where we filled her in on my father’s plans. While Apollo, Artemis, Zeus, and I were still slightly horrified, Aphrodite just sat back on my bed and smirked to herself as she absentmindedly braided her gorgeous golden hair. The very first thing she said was, “Let’s find you something to wear.”
For a moment, I felt like punching her. “How do you expect me to go out for a nice dinner when an invisible Hades is running around town?” Aphrodite sighed, her blue eyes settling calmly on mine. “I didn’t say this was going to be fun. Knowing you, I bet you’ll be worrying about Hades the entire night, but it’s better than making Cole mad and suspicious all over again,” she pointed out and I groaned. She stole a glance at the black alarm clock on my nightstand then continued, “We have three hours to get you ready. That should be enough time.”
My jaw dropped for the third time that day (which was quite an unusual occurrence, mind you). “Three hours? I can get ready in twenty minutes. That leaves plenty of time for me to make a quick run into the forest. Artemis, are you coming?” I said defiantly, and the goddess of the hunt smirked wickedly. Meanwhile, Aphrodite just shook her head in wonder and guessed, “You’ve never been on a real date before, have you?” My only response was another glare in her direction.
A few minutes later, Aphrodite had forced Apollo and Zeus to go away while the three of us goddesses had some “quality girl talk” (whatever the hell that meant). I took a short shower then the two blondes tried to help me pick out an appropriate outfit. As a goddess, I was good-looking enough so that I didn’t even need makeup, despite Aphrodite’s repeated efforts to get me to wear a little mascara.
The three of us automatically assumed that Cole was taking me to a fancy restaurant in the next town over where most teens around here went for their dates. Aphrodite tried to force me into a dress, but, luckily, I convinced her that it would seem like I was trying too hard to impress Cole. Eventually, we all agreed on a cute navy blue blazer over a tight-fitting striped top with a deep V-neck. I also traded my ripped skinny jeans for black ones and my combat boots for ballet flats, since Aphrodite adamantly refused to let me out of the house wearing anything I would wear to fight in the forest.
Before I knew it, the time on the clock read 6:30 and Aphrodite and Artemis were just leaving me to wait for Cole. Alone again, I sat on the edge of my bed impatiently tapping my feet on the blue carpet as I mindlessly glanced at the hundreds of books on the tall bookshelves that lined the perimeter of my room. The seconds were ticking by way too slowly and, already, I just wanted the date to be over with.
Unexpectedly, the walkie-talkie on my nightstand crackled to life and Pan’s voice blasted through the small speaker. “This is Pan calling in an emergency situation. I mean, it’s not really an emergency now, it’s just sad—no, horrible.” Pan’s voice continued to rant on and I wished he would get to the point before Cole picked me up. Finally, he said, “We have our first casualty of the war, a fellow satyr named Berry. There will be a vigil tonight. Just thought you should know. Over.”
I hadn’t known Berry very well compared to some of the other satyrs; his presence at Pan’s hideout parties was often placid. But with his death, the war became even more real. For the first time that summer, I was thinking in depth about how many people were going to die because of my fellow gods and me. Was power really worth the fight? Maybe not, but I thought going to a vigil was definitely worth missing my date with Cole.
“I’m not going on the date, Aphrodite,” I whispered through the walkie-talkie.
“No, you’re still going,” Aphrodite hissed back in determination. “We’ll just tell everyone that you send your condolences and that you wish you could be there.”
“She’s right,” came Zeus’s tired voice. “Right now, you have a more important obligation. You just take care of Cole. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said glumly, knowing that I would, in fact, need a bit of luck to avoid thinking about all of the mythical distractions in order to survive the date.
A few minutes later, I heard a car pull up outside and my feet started to move involuntarily toward the door while my mind was still whirling. I remember getting into the black SUV and Cole greeting me, but the long ride to the restaurant was filled with stiff silence. I realized too late that Alec still hadn’t called and even though I had my cell phone in my pocket in case of a true emergency, I couldn’t call him now so I simply cursed myself during the rest of the ride as I stared out of the window.
Cole let the valet service park the car then a nice waiter brought us to a cramped corner of the room where a table set for two stood, empty but daunting. Half of my brain was rapidly working out strategies to use if Hades or a monster happened to attack during dinner while the other half was trying to come up with good topics for conversation with someone Sightless. I knew the hardest part of the date would be trying to focus on Cole and to forget what was going on in the forest.
“You look nice. I mean, you always look nice, but you look especially nice now,” Cole whispered, obviously noticing my outfit. It was like the awkward moment of the first date in every romantic movie, except my life wasn’t meant to be a romance. I barely even took notice of Cole in his buttoned-down shirt and black slacks, squirming nervously in his seat across from me; my mind was still on the wild hero with blue eyes.
Involuntarily, I found myself thinking of what Alec would have said in that same awkward moment. Probably something impulsive, such as, “You look better in battle armor.” And while most girls would have been offended by a concise comment like that, I would have smiled because that was exactly what I thought too.
Forcing the thought of Alec out of my mind, I gave Cole a tight smile and then we ordered our food. If you really must know, I had chicken carbonara and it was delicious. There’s not much else to say; I wasn’t planning to burden you with the details of our insignificant conversations. Besides, it’s Aphrodite’s job to hand out free dating advice, not mine. And this is my book, not hers.
I will tell you, however, that the dinner could not have gone by any slower for me. I kept nervously fingering the belt loop on my hip, the one where I usually kept my walkie-talkie. It was the first time in many days that I didn’t have my walkie-talkie on me and I felt guilty and naked without it. It’s safe to say that I would not have had the upper hand if a battle had suddenly broken out during the meal.
Every flicker of the lights, every draft of cold air blowing, and every shadow moving around me set my teeth on edge as if the lord of the Underworld might pop out to kidnap me at any second. I gripped my chair tightly and told myself that Hades wasn’t watching me, that everything was okay, but deep down inside I knew that everything was not going to be okay.
Blackness seeped into the edges of my vision, like a shadow trying to pull me into a state of unconsciousness. But I was able to resist its temptation. This time, the airflow that tickled the back of my neck and sent shivers down my spine wasn’t frigid but warm—his breath, I discerned. How long had he been there?
Preparing myself for the worst, I closed my eyes tightly and didn’t bother to open them again. Heart rate rising, I could feel his thin, pasty lips press seductively against my left ear as he taunted in Greek, “How does it feel to know you’ve lost?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I hissed back, sliding my chair directly into his side. The invisible god stumbled and fell and Cole jerked his head up, startled by the sound. The waiter walking by our table tripped then scurried off in embarrassment, as if nothing had happened. He didn’t notice that he’d dropped an empty wine glass or that the glass had seemingly stopped in midair about five inches off the ground before being noiselessly set down.
“What was that?” Cole asked.
“The waiter must have dropped something.” But instead of watching Cole or the waiter, my eyes were locked on the front door, waiting expectantly for it to open without being pushed by a visible being. As confident as I could be that Hades had actually left the premises, I looked back to Cole.
Finally, my quiet wishes and prayers were answered when, at that moment, my phone rang. Cole looked up at me in confusion and I just shrugged, pretending it was no big deal. I then desperately yanked the cell phone out of my pocket and pressed it close to my ear. I knew that if Cole found out Alec was the one calling me, he would have gotten mad again so I just pretended the young hero was someone different.
“Hello, Father,” I hissed in English, hoping Alec would catch on quickly. “What do you want? I’m on a date with Cole, remember?”
There was static on the line for a moment until Alec’s voice answered. Unsurprisingly, he sounded extremely hurt and angry. “What? Your father forced you to go on a date with Cole?!”
“Yes,” I answered impatiently, “and I’m not happy about it either.” Seeing Cole’s confused expression, I added randomly, “No, you’ll just have to talk to Mom later.”
“What? Oh, never mind,” Alec said bitterly and I could tell he was still angry. “Anyway—”
“Look, Father, I don’t have time to talk with you right now. You just need to know that he has the helm,” I interrupted. In front of me, Cole gazed blankly at his plate and twirled his fork in circles, not even seeming to try to understand me any longer.
“He? Helm? What helm?” Alec sounded baffled for a brief moment before he regained his composure. “Oh, you mean the helm of invisibility. Wait—Hades has it? When did this happen?”
“A few months ago. We just figured it out,” I hissed back at him and slammed my fork on the table, angered by the mere thought of the lord of the dead. “So he might know where you’re coming from and when you might get here. I have to go now, but good luck and don’t die.”
I hung up the crappy flip phone and stuffed it in my pocket before Alec could say another word. Hopefully he would forgive me for ever going out to dinner with Cole.
The rest of the date seemed to pass quicker, mostly because we just had to wait for the check. Cole offered to pay and even I found that kind of sweet. In just over an hour, I was back on my front porch. Cole awkwardly bid me farewell and I knew that he wanted to kiss me, but, thankfully, my dad was watching so he didn’t.
With that, I raced into the house, not even bothering to stop and talk to my father about my date, and he just raised his bushy eyebrows suggestively at me. I gave him one last glare for the day, and he chuckled softly in spite of himself before I burst up the staircase and into my empty room to get myself ready for bed.
I came out of the bathroom a few minutes later and was about to crawl under the covers when I noticed shadows moving behind the turquoise curtains of my balcony doors. I quickly grabbed my pocketknife and yanked open the door, ready for some monsters to come at me, but was only met with the curious expressions of the rest of the Olympian Council. All eleven of them.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed in Greek at the crowded group of gods on my tiny balcony even though I knew very well that they just wanted to know how the date went. News travels fast in small towns, after all, and especially news about me.
Aphrodite, Artemis, Demeter, and Hestia rolled their eyes at me in unison. “How was the date?” Zeus asked, slipping one arm around my shoulders protectively and Hera narrowed her dark brown eyes to slits. I ignored her and rested my head on Zeus’s shoulder.
“Well, Alec called and I told him about the helm,” I started, my voice trailing off a bit. Sensing my hesitancy, Zeus raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“And?” Apollo coaxed aloud.
“And Hades showed up just to breathe down my neck and tell me we’re going to lose this war,” I admitted in a rush. Nothing traumatic had actually happened so I didn’t want the other gods to dwell on it.
“Are you kidding me?” Zeus hissed, his voice low and angry. He probably would’ve yelled and summoned a full-blown thunderstorm had he not known my father was downstairs. “I swear I’m going to send that piece of shit down to Tartarus myself. Tomorrow.”
The other gods muttered their own impassioned choice words while I just shook my head, doubting the likelihood of that scenario. “We’ll see,” I said, eager to change the topic. “But how was the vigil?”
Poseidon sighed as he ran his fingers through his jet-black hair. “Sad. There was a lot of crying and whatnot, but the nymphs and satyrs seemed glad we were there.”
“We buried Berry next to Alec’s dad,” Ares, the god of war, added quietly, actually showing a feeling other than anger for once in his life.
I nodded solemnly, but after a rather short moment of silence for Berry, I extricated myself from Zeus’s arms and ordered grumpily, “If that’s all, I would like to get to bed and forget this date ever happened. So, I hate to be rude, but you should leave now.”
A couple of the other gods chuckled and groaned in disappointment, but they jumped off my balcony without complaints, one after another. When I finally had some peace and quiet, I locked my doors for the night. Then I walked straight to my bed and tucked myself in, desperately hoping that an invisible Hades wasn’t hiding somewhere in the dark corners of my room, patiently waiting for the right moment to kill me.
It was quite a creepy thought, actually.