“What are we doing?” Lia asked August—she would never get used to calling him Eros—as he put her in his Tesla.
“Indulge me,” he said, then kissed her. “Just one more bit of unfinished business.”
August had made love to her all last night and all morning and even that afternoon. But, by evening, he’d nudged her awake and told her to get dressed in her very best. She reminded him she was under her father’s house arrest.
He reminded her that he was a Greek god.
Lia wore a vintage burgundy gown that had belonged to her grandmother. She pinned her hair in a loose knot with tendrils flowing, and August put a pink rose behind her ear. He’d slipped into a trim black suit, and she was amazed how neatly his wings disappeared when he folded them into place.
“After a couple thousand years, you learn a trick or two,” he’d said.
On the way to wherever he was taking her, they stopped by his house.
“I have to pick up one thing,” he said.
“The Rose Kylix?” she asked.
“Mother’s confiscated that—again. This is something else.”
He ran into the house and emerged minutes later carrying a longbow as tall as he and a quiver of arrows.
Back in the car, Lia looked at him.
“I don’t want to know, do I?” she asked.
“You’re going to like this,” he said.
The next stop was the Attic Gallery.
“It’s a good thing I love you,” she said as he helped her out of the car. “I really do not want to see David again. Trust me, I don’t need closure.”
“This isn’t for you,” he said. “This is for me. And don’t worry. You won’t have to talk to him.”
Funny that no one tried to stop August from entering the gallery with a bow and quiver slung over his back. Either no one could see it, or they simply assumed it was all part of David’s surrealistic art show.
Once inside, Lia paused by a massive canvas. The plaque said the title of the piece was The Forest of Apollo. The painting was nothing but women who were human from the waist up and trees from the waist down. Ah, the story of Daphne and Apollo. Eros had struck Apollo with a golden arrow of love and he’d struck Daphne with an iron arrow of hate... Daphne ran from Apollo as he pursued her, prayed to the gods to save her from the obsessed deity and she was turned into a laurel tree.
“Mum was right,” Lia said, staring at the painting. “Male artists really do love painting horrible things happening to women. And you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“That,” August said, pointing at the canvas, “was not my work. Apollo was royally miffed when Daphne wouldn’t go out with him, and he turned her into a tree to punish her. Then he had the balls to blame the whole thing on me.”
“Really?” Lia asked. She wondered what other myths about him were and weren’t true. “What happened to Daphne?”
“I turned her back into a nymph,” August said.
“And then you made love to her. Right?”
“No,” he said, sounding insulted she’d even suggest it. She raised her eyebrow at him. “I didn’t want to get splinters.”
Lia looked at the painting again, all those poor tortured Daphnes...
“If you were going to paint one scene from any Greek myth,” Lia asked August, “what scene you would paint?”
“You,” he said. “You at the feet of Pan, holding a baby otter in your arms.”
Lia’s heart rose half an inch in her chest.
“I’m not in a Greek myth,” she said.
He kissed her on the mouth. “You are now, my love.”
That’s when Lia knew she and August would be happy together forever.
“Come on,” August said. “Let’s get this over with so we can make love again.”
The Attic Gallery had a mezzanine level that was home to the artworks that were always on display. Most of the guests at David’s show were on the main floor. She and August walked around and around the mezzanine.
“What are we doing up here?” she asked.
“Waiting...”
“For?”
“Perfect justice,” he said, and winked at her. “Ah, here we go.”
Lia peered down at the party below. She saw the crowd parting to let a woman through, a beautiful woman in red, so beautiful one could rightly call her a goddess.
“That’s your mother,” Lia whispered.
“I invited her as a sort of peace offering.”
“That was nice of you,” she said.
“Not really,” August said. “I’m going to shoot her in the heart with a great big arrow.”
“What? Why?”
“Oh, look, there’s our artiste,” August said, pointing out David working his way through the crowd, glad-handing as he went. Though his smile was broad, it appeared forced to Lia. He was likely still recovering from having Aphrodite, in the form of a mafia queen, threaten to kill him in all sorts of gruesome ways. “Cover me.”
Lia glanced around, not knowing how to cover him. August didn’t seem to care. He took off his jacket and laid it over the banister. He rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. This could not be good. Then he reached behind his head and pulled two arrows from his quiver.
“August...” Lia said.
He notched them both on his bow at the same time.
“This is not good...” Lia winced.
He pulled back the string. He wore a look of purest concentration. Two arrows, one bow, and his aim had to be perfect, just perfect.
“I can’t look,” she said.
She covered her eyes but peeked through her fingers.
The string thrummed as he let the arrows fly. Gifted with his sight, Lia saw one burning arrow stream into the chest of David, right through his heart.
And the other arrow, black as iron, struck his own mother, right through her heart.
Then...
“Oh my gods...” Lia breathed.
David looked at Aphrodite like he’d seen the sun for the first time.
Aphrodite looked at David like he smelled of dung.
David started to make his way through the crowd, fast as he could, pushing people aside, while Aphrodite drew away from him even as he took her hand in his and kissed and kissed and kissed it...
“August, you didn’t.”
“An arrow of love. An arrow of hate. Now he’ll know what it’s like to be brutally rejected, and my mother will think twice before interfering in my sex life again. A job well done.”
“You really are the Prince of Mischief,” she said.
“I’ll show you mischief, my lady.” He kissed her. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t just...”
“What?”
“We can’t leave them like that. They’re in love-hate with each other,” she said.
“The arrows weren’t very potent,” August said with a shrug. “The poison will wear off soon.”
“Like...in an hour?”
“For Mother? An hour. For David Bell? More like a week,” he said. “But trust me, he deserves it, and Mother can more than handle herself.”
He slung his bow over his back again and took Lia’s hand. They went out of the gallery, not through the main entrance but through a back door and upstairs to the roof, where they stood and looked out on the lights of London.
“That was kind of sexy,” she said as he slid his arm around her waist. “The archery thing. Good look for you.”
“I’ll teach you how to shoot.”
“Where? Olympus?”
“Is that where you want to go?” he asked.
“What are my options?”
“Let me think...” He nodded thoughtfully and started ticking off places on his fingers. “Olympus. The Underworld. Maybe you can get some weaving tips from Arachne—unless you’re afraid of human-size spiders. There’s Arcadia. Ancient Crete. Elysium. The Land of a Thousand Dances. Delphi. Your pick. We have all eternity.”
“Pan’s Island?” Lia asked.
August looked at her through narrowed eyes. “The real Pan’s Island, you mean? Or the fantasy version from the storybook?”
“The real Pan’s Island,” she said. “If it exists, I mean. But if you exist I suppose Pan must exist, and he must live somewhere.”
“He does,” August said. “On an island, in fact. We’re old friends.”
“He likes you?” Sounded like August—Eros—had managed to piss off most of the Olympians. They had better go somewhere August would stay mostly out of trouble.
“He’s the god of nature and sex is natural. I’m the god of sex and nature is very sexual. We have loads in common.”
“What’s his island like?” Lia asked. She didn’t want to be disappointed if it wasn’t like she’d dreamed.
“Wilder and stranger and more beautiful than you can imagine,” August said as he drew her to him. “You’ll probably go mad there.”
“Can we go there first?”
August waved his hand and suddenly a red curtain hung on the roof of the gallery, a red curtain held by nothing.
“Shall we?”
Lia crept over to the curtain. She put her ear to the velvet, and from behind it she heard pipes playing a tune so lovely and lively that she thought if she started dancing to it she might never wish to stop.
August took her hand in his, and he slowly began to draw the red curtain aside. She spied a river running silver, and a forest greener than any green her eyes had ever seen, and young girls in diaphanous gowns of baby blue, palest pink and sunshine yellow dancing in circles around a laughing bearded satyr.
Lia looked at August in delight. He stared at her with love in his eyes, with unutterable love.
“Are you afraid?” August asked.
“No,” Lia said as she passed through the curtain and into the realms of magic and myth.
And yet.
Oh, and yet...
She was afraid.
Ω