After I found Alec hiding up in a tall tree, I radioed Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo so we could meet up. The five of us headed over to Pan’s hideout to drop Alec off after finishing our round of reverse hide-and-seek. We were about a few yards away when we heard Pan and Persephone bickering, and Alec groaned, looking annoyed. He probably wished he were somewhere else, but he didn’t have any other place to be and knew that he should take advantage of spending as much time with the gods as possible, especially because Persephone had to go back to the Underworld at the end of the summer. That was only a short time away, and we still had to save the world at sometime or another.
Stepping out next to the river pool, we saw Pan sitting on his rock throne, brushing moss off his furry goat legs, and Persephone sitting on a blanket with some nymphs. The nymphs were urging Persephone to divulge information about her relationship with Hades, but the brunette was blushing, shaking her head no. I knew he was a sore subject for her, since she didn’t even like talking to Demeter about him, so I wondered how much she had told them already.
Finally, she admitted, her voice hushed, “We were just friends, really. Then puberty came along, and things got really bad between us. Bad and awkward. I needed a girl to talk with down there, but he couldn’t give me that. So things fell apart. Honestly, there’s not much to tell.”
Here, Persephone turned her head and noticed us standing behind her. Suddenly embarrassed in the presence of Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, and Alec, she shut her mouth and blushed an even deeper red. The nymphs had enough sense to refrain from pressing her any further, and Persephone quickly shooed us away so she could make some dinner alone. The rest of the Monster Watch and I only exchanged confused shrugs and made our way back to our homes, as it was already getting dark. Where had the day gone?
We were passing through the meadow when Zeus, who was leading our single-file line, pointed out something on the other side of the meadow. It was a hooded figure dressed all in black, riding on the back of a huge, well-muscled black horse. The person, whoever it was, was heading our way, and I was pretty sure that he hadn’t noticed us yet. When he looked up, however, we caught a glimpse of his pale face, and I immediately knew who it was. One fleeting moment was all it took to recognize the lord of the dead.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Poseidon muttered angrily in Greek, and I frowned, knowing full well that Hades was supposed to be in the Underworld. Technically, he was allowed into our realm only if he had an invitation from Zeus, or if he was delivering Persephone.
“Let’s find out,” Apollo whispered back to us. He followed Zeus and took another few steps toward Hades, who sat frozen on his horse. His dark, creepy eyes narrowed and locked on us.
“Hello,” Zeus said, raising his voice so Hades could hear. “What are you doing up here on this lovely evening?” I could tell that Zeus was trying to sound as friendly as possible, so he wouldn’t send Hades running in the other direction.
But it didn’t work.
Hades slammed his heels into the horse’s belly, and it turned around on a dime, quickly bolting in the other direction, back under the trees. Without stopping to think about what we were doing, the rest of the Monster Watch and I started racing across the meadow after him. He was obviously avoiding us for a good reason, and we had to know what it was.
Sprinting as fast as we could, we jumped over logs and large tree roots and ducked to avoid low-hanging branches, but even when you’re a god in the best shape you could ever be in, you can’t quite outrun a galloping horse (especially when you’re wearing heavy armor). Unless you’re Hermes.
Still running, I yanked the walkie-talkie off one of my belt loops and yelled into it. “Hermes! If you’re listening, we spotted Hades in the woods. He’s on horseback, heading east toward Main Street. You need to cut him off now before he gets away!”
After almost falling on my face from tripping, I heard a reply from the walkie-talkie: “On it.”
The four of us ran through the dark forest, following the trail of broken branches left by Hades’s horse. Branches whipped our reddening faces as we carried on, unsure when Hades would stop. The Monster Watch and I could only hope that Hermes could find Hades and cut him off in time … and that we weren’t running through poison oak. We were following the trail uphill as fast as we could, but by now the four of us had fallen far behind Hades and his horse, and we still hadn’t heard another word from Hermes.
Eventually we rounded a bend and came up at the top of the small hill, where the trail ended at a small cave just large enough for one person to fit into. The Greek symbol cut into the stone marked the cave as an entrance to Hades’s realm. Unfortunately, Hermes and Persephone were the only other gods besides Hades allowed into the Underworld.
I sat on the grass, defeated, tugging at my ponytail and trying to catch my breath. Poseidon, clutching at a stitch in his side, slammed his golden trident into the ground in frustration, creating a slight tremor in the earth, and Zeus just frowned at him.
“Now what?” Apollo asked once he had caught his breath. Sighing, he used his dirty red shirt to wipe the beaded sweat off his brow.
Zeus ruffled his dirty-blond hair and continued to pace in a small circle as he answered, “Well, Hades is obviously not allowed to be up here on Earth, so we have to know what he was doing.” He paused for a moment to think, but he must not have come up with anything because he looked to me almost right away. “Any ideas, Athena?”
I stopped tugging at my hair and leaned back against a tree. “Before we do anything else, we need to talk to Herm—”
I stopped mid-sentence, as I heard a loud noise that sounded like rock grinding against rock come from the tiny cave, and the boys and I turned around to see Hermes appear in front of us, as if on cue. He was barely even breaking out in sweat, even though we knew he had just sprinted all the way from his house to the Underworld and back.
“Give me a full report,” Zeus ordered immediately.
Hermes nodded. “I got here just in time to see Hades enter the Underworld through the cave, so I followed him,” he explained. “I tried to get him to tell me why he was up here in our realm, but he didn’t answer. Basically, Hades told me to buzz off and then threw me out of there, except he was cursing a lot more.”
The five of us stood in silence while Zeus tried to figure out what to do about our new dilemma. For all we knew, this could be a random event that wasn’t significant at all, or it could lead to the start of a huge war, which could then lead to the end of the world. We really had no idea, but due to the voicing of the prophecy, I guessed the latter was more likely.
At last, Zeus stopped pacing and stood up straighter, glancing at each of us in turn, the way he did every time he was about to say something important. “We need to inform the rest of the gods about what happened today, and from now on we’ll keep an eye out for anything unusual in the forest. Report everything suspicious to me,” Zeus finished, looking pointedly at Hermes.
“I’ll tell everyone,” Hermes confirmed, and then he shot off like a bullet, going east toward Main Street. Even though it was late and he should have been home already, delivering this message was way more important. Saving the world comes before dinner, after all.
Still trying not to worry about Hades, the rest of the Monster Watch and I headed back to our own houses. We had just stepped out of the quiet forest when I heard the familiar sound of yelling come from my house. I sighed glumly, knowing that my parents were fighting again, and that my dad was probably drunk.
Zach squeezed my shoulder and whispered, “Hey, Ash? You can come over to our house anytime, you know.” Luke nodded in agreement, although he was frowning in deep thought.
“Yeah, mine too,” Connor offered sweetly, like any good friend would do.
“Thanks, guys, but I’m fine for tonight,” I assured them. The three of them exchanged dubious glances, not totally believing me, but they didn’t say any more. They knew it was better not to press me.
I reluctantly waved goodbye and then stood there quietly for a minute, just staring at the yellow light emanating from inside the house. I could see the shadows of my parents projected on the wall, waving their arms around crazily, like the vicious monsters I fought fearlessly every day. But now I just felt alone, debating whether or not to go inside the house. After all, I could always just turn around and go back into the forest to find Alec. I knew he would welcome my company anytime.
I must have stood there, in the dark across the street from my house, for five whole minutes before I finally decided to climb up to my balcony and into my room, so that I could avoid my parents’ wrath. When I reached my dark room, I lay back on my bed to try to rest, but instead I found myself listening to my parents screaming at each other from downstairs. It was awfully hard to sleep when they were being so loud. They usually started fighting about money, even though I was pretty sure we had plenty, but their arguing always wound up being about the fact that my father was constantly drunk. Today their fight was different; they were fighting about me, specifically about why I had been staying out so late recently.
“Ashley can do whatever she wants to! She’s been doing that since the day she was born!” my father slurred angrily as I frowned and closed my eyes.
“But she could be killed! No one even knows what’s in that terrible forest,” my mother told him. She usually tried to keep her cool during these fights, but I could tell she was way past that point. I wondered how long they had been at it so far.
“Well, the Monster Watch knows, and they’re obviously fine,” my father retorted in a raised voice.
I raised my eyebrows, not believing what I was hearing. For possibly the first time in my life, I was agreeing with my drunken father. He continued, “Ashley can take care of herself! Hell, she’s probably the smartest kid her age in the entire world! She doesn’t need us! She never did!” Now my father’s voice broke, and there was a long pause before my mother spoke again.
I felt horrible, thinking that my father was right. I never really did need my parents, except for the use of their money and when I was a baby, of course. I had been making my own meals, walking to school, and spending as much time out of the house as I could since I was five or six. Frowning to myself, I wondered what my life would have been like if I were a normal girl, since the forest really was the reason my friends and I found out at such a young age that we were gods. Would my parents have formed a closer bond if they had had to take greater care of me and give me more guidance throughout my life?
“It’s all because you’re such a bad father! Always drinking and disappearing, she never would have gone into that wretched forest with those … those silly boys if it weren’t for you!” my mother screamed. At this, my jaw dropped, and I glared at my ceiling.
Now my mother was ragging on my father about the fact that my best friends were guys? I was partly the goddess of war, for crying out loud! Of course some of my friends were guys! And I had to prove myself to every single one of them, or else they would still be sexist jerks like half of the other guys from outside the Woods that Katie described to me. Hell no, I didn’t go into the forest because my parents didn’t give me the care I wanted. I had first gone in to save my friends, and if given the chance, I wouldn’t have changed anything I had done.
Not in the mood to listen to any more of my parents’ fight, I silently stepped out into the hallway, then walked to the end of it and climbed up into the attic, where I often hid from my arguing parents when I was little. I could always think better up there, without all the noise from my parents’ shouting.
Standing quietly for a minute, I breathed in the musty smell of the attic and frowned at the rafters draped in silver cobwebs. I saw nothing but old, beige bed sheets on the floor, and I figured that no one had been up there in years, until something in the corner of the room caught my eye. It was a shiny golden picture frame that had obviously been dusted off recently, but I couldn’t see what the painting was because it was facing the dark wall. Feeling curious and knowing it was probably one of the many antiques my dad had bought for my mother, I walked over to it and picked it up carefully.
Staring back at me was an old painting of my mother and father standing under clear blue skies in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Minus the beer belly, my father looked pretty much the same—grumpy expression, thinning hair—but my mother was wearing a fancy black dress, and she looked much younger, wearing a big smile, her brown eyes shining. I hadn’t seen her smile like that in years, which led me to believe that my father was the one who had been looking at the old memory.
Suddenly feeling as if I had intruded on my father’s personal thoughts, I quickly put the picture back exactly how I had found it, then started to return to my room. While I was in the hallway, I narrowly avoided running into my father, but he was so drunk that he hardly noticed. He just grunted something unintelligible, and I nervously inched around him, making a beeline for my room, where I collapsed on my bed, ready to get some sleep.
___________________
I woke up and quickly got dressed in jeans and a simple teal V-neck, eager to get into the forest. The appearance of Hades the day before had completely changed the equation, and I still wanted to find out why he had been up in our realm. Therefore, I met up with the rest of the Monster Watch in the meadow, where we all sat on a red-and-white-checkered picnic blanket, to discuss a new plan. Alec, Pan, and Persephone arrived a few minutes later, and we started eating our breakfast of berries and granola bars. It wasn’t much, but it was better than eating with our parents inside on a nice, sunny day like this.
“So,” Zeus started, munching on some blackberries, “what was up with your parents last night?” He was trying hard not to express his deeper worries.
“Yeah, that sounded horrible,” Apollo chimed in.
I shrugged, not really wanting to talk about the whole thing, and answered blandly, “Just my mom complaining about how I’m always in the woods, and how my dad’s always drunk.” Alec shot me a concerned look, as this was the first time he had heard about my parents’ less-than-perfect marriage, but I just bit my lip and looked down at the lush, green grass to avoid his gaze.
I continued eating my granola bar, and thankfully, we switched topics and started discussing what to do about Hades. The rest of the gods were going to sneak into the woods later to meet up with us so we could talk about separating into groups to patrol the forest every day. We knew we had to do something to stop whatever Hades was doing.
After we ate, we all tossed around a volleyball for a while and chatted about different monsters. Eventually, the other gods showed up one by one, and our volleyball circle got bigger and bigger until Hera and Demeter, the last two gods, finally arrived.
Zeus clapped his hands together to get everyone’s attention and waited for Pan to catch the volleyball. When we were all silent, Zeus ordered, “All right, we’re splitting into patrols. Patrol one will be me, Hestia, and Hera. Athena will be leading patrol two, along with Artemis and Apollo.” He paused to let us take in the information, but I was happy with my team; for the most part, we all worked well together.
“What about me?” Ares questioned impatiently.
“Ares will be leading patrol three, with Aphrodite and Dionysus,” Zeus continued as Ares gave a nod of approval, “and patrol four will be led by Poseidon, with Demeter and Hermes. Hephaestus is at home working on … well, whatever he’s working on, and Alec, you can pick whatever patrol you want. Persephone and Pan are heading back to their hideout.”
Alec nodded and, not unexpectedly, walked over to join my team, high-fiving Apollo on the way. “Yes!” Apollo grinned and exclaimed enthusiastically, “We can call ourselves the A Team. Athena, Apollo, Artemis, and Alec—mighty protectors of the forest!” I simply rolled my eyes as some of the other gods chuckled, and then we split up, my patrol heading north.
___________________
My walkie-talkie crackled to life and Zeus’s voice said, “A Team, have you seen anything yet?”
I sighed. We had been searching for almost two hours already, and no one from any patrol had seen anything suspicious. Honestly, the most interesting thing that happened to my patrol was Apollo tripping over a large tree root and falling flat on his face. “That’s a negative,” I replied into the walkie-talkie.
“Patrols three and four?” Zeus asked.
“Nothing here,” Ares grumbled unhappily. I guessed there wasn’t enough action for him so far.
“Hey, how come my patrol doesn’t get a cool nickname?” Poseidon complained. Artemis and I only exchanged disapproving glances.
“Just answer the question!” Zeus told him over the radio.
“You’re no fun,” Poseidon stated bluntly. “But no, we haven’t seen anything.”
Another two hours passed with no better results. We had scoured the entire forest, including around the Oracle’s camp, but none of the patrols had even seen a monster, which was also suspicious. It was as if they were all missing or had disappeared from our forest. Until then, there hadn’t been a single day I spent in the woods when I hadn’t run into a monster. Maybe this too had something to do with Hades. All the monsters did come from the Underworld, after all.
Eventually, the rest of the patrols met back up with mine in the meadow. Since no one had found anything, it seemed absurd to stick around for the entire day. Everyone except the rest of the Monster Watch, Alec, and I went back to their houses to relax, but we agreed to keep our walkie-talkies on at all times, just in case something terrible happened. Long-term emergency protocol, as Poseidon called it.
___________________
Alec, Zeus, Apollo, and I had just found Poseidon hiding by the river in yet another round of reverse hide-and-seek when our walkie-talkies came alive with Hermes speaking in Greek. His deep voice was low and quiet, so I knew he was probably out in public, and he sounded more than a little worried as he informed me, “Athena, I’m here at the Fire Pit for lunch, and apparently your father’s missing. Your mom is really freaking out.”
“Yeah, so?” I said, not really caring. I automatically assumed that my father had just left the Woods again, like he usually did after having a huge fight with my mother. He always came back after a few days.
But I was wrong this time.
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, he packed up all of his clothes and things … and just left,” Hermes restated. “He’s gone, Athena. And I’m not so sure he’s coming back.”