Selene didn’t take well to being ordered about by mortals. Nonetheless, the professor was right—she needed to get inside the hospital. In fact, the sooner she could get more evidence, the sooner she could stop relying on Schultz to pass her information. Even though he wasn’t the killer, she’d rather not be involved with him: too unpredictable, too excitable, too human. Then again, he’d been dedicated enough to get himself arrested. Stupid, but impressive.
She left Theo in the police car and walked calmly along the block, examining the scene while trying to dredge up what she knew of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The first days of the ceremony, she remembered, involved a series of processions in homage to Demeter and Persephone. The rite’s climax, however, had been performed behind the closed doors of the Telesterion. Over the years, a few other gods joined the Mystery—including Dionysus, who was usually so drunk he would tell anyone anything—yet the rite remained secret. The other gods envied the Eleusinian deities their continued worship. Some, such as Apollo, begged in vain to know the secret so he might form a cult of his own. “They’re doing something that they don’t want us to know about,” he’d complained once. “Even my own son Asclepius won’t tell me what it is.”
Artemis had scowled at her twin. “Why would you want to be worshiped by those fools? All that fuss over the goddesses of farming and flowers. Do you really want to spend more time with a girl as insipid as Persephone the Discreet?”
She’d always wondered why the story of Hades’s abduction of Persephone into the Underworld had endured as one of mankind’s favorite myths. Probably, Selene surmised, because men find the idea of kidnapping and raping a virgin irresistibly titillating. No wonder no man ever wants to revive an Artemis cult. In my stories, it’s the man who winds up underground.
Selene moved to stand behind the knot of reporters crowding the police barricade. Over their heads, she watched various uniformed cops coming and going from the hospital. She had no chance of getting into the crime scene while their investigation was under way. She’d have to wait for the press conference like everybody else. The thought galled her. At least I have a lead to pursue while I wait—one no reporter or detective could ever imagine.
She dialed one of the few numbers in her phone.
“Selene!” crowed a voice on the other end.
“Hi, Dash.” Hermes had recently incarnated himself as a movie producer. She could picture him, his curly black hair in a wild halo, his sharp eyes hidden behind completely unnecessary thick-rimmed glasses to make him look older. Once, he’d sported a thick beard, but he’d shaved it off in the first century to look more Roman. Now, he looked about fifteen years old—but he was a master of disguise. Most mortals probably thought him a well-preserved forty-three.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked her half brother. “It’s four in the morning in California.”
“Still at work. What can I do for you? Looking to leave town finally? Realized Hollywood is infinitely superior to that humid gray cave you live in?”
“The New York weather has been perfect recently,” she sniffed. “It’s autumn. Remember autumn? Remember seasons?”
“Don’t miss ’em,” he laughed. A high-pitched chatter distracted Dash’s attention for a moment. His muffled reply: “Just tell him that chickens are funnier than ducks.”
“So what’s up, Selene?” he said, clearly now. “I’m in the middle of a shit-storm of a script crisis.” He was always like that. Mercurial, for lack of a better word. Thrilled to hear from you one moment, rushing you off the phone the next.
“This man and I—”
“Whoa! What!” Suddenly she had his attention. “Selene has a man? Cut! Bobby, get out of here, dear boy. Hold my calls.” More muted babbling, rustling of papers, closing of doors. Then—“Are you telling me that the Untamed One is shacking up with a mortal man?” His delight was clear.
Selene blushed furiously, grateful he couldn’t see. “How dare you,” she seethed. “I barely know the man. He’s just been arrested and he told—”
“Arrested! A bad boy! You always did know how to pick ’em. Orion was certainly no puffball. So this man of yours,” he continued. “Madly in love with you?”
“I told you, I don’t even—”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Or an ‘I hope so.’ Hah! I can feel you blushing over the phone. By Kronos’s gullet, Selene, you’re not still a virgin are you?” Selene could only splutter. “Why? I mean, what’s stopping you now?”
“I’m a virgin goddess,” she managed. “If I lose that, I lose everything.”
“Feh.”
“What do you mean, ‘feh’? That’s the fundamental rule of godhood. You’ve got to hold on to your most essential attributes if you want to hold on to any semblance of immortality. If Ares were to become a pacifist or Aphrodite swore off men, they wouldn’t be Athanatoi anymore.”
“Maybe. Or maybe we just can’t imagine anything else for ourselves.”
That’s where Dash was wrong. She could imagine. She could still feel Orion’s heat against her cheek. And for an unsettling instant, a vision of Schultz, shirtless in his apartment, flashed before her eyes. “There are more important things going on than my sex life.”
Dash shifted topics as effortlessly as always, becoming suddenly serious. “You’re talking about the fading. It’s speeding up. And not because Aphrodite’s become some lesbian. I mean she’s been traipsing across Paris—”
“Is everyone fading?” she interrupted.
“The Goddess of the Hearth. The Smith. Your mother. Not everyone.”
“You?” She was afraid of the answer. Hermes, the eternal child. How could he grow old?
“I’m the Messenger, remember?” he said with a laugh. “God of Communication and Travel and about a dozen other extremely lucrative domains. Between cell phones, the Internet, and jumbo jets, I’m doing just fine. Sure, machines do more than I ever could, but they’re like magic to most people. They’re still in awe of the mysterious force that beams their voices across space, because they can’t possibly understand how the technology really works. I harvest power from their ignorance. And you?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. Her powers were still too new, too uncertain.
“Are some of the Athanatoi actually getting stronger?” she asked instead.
“Stronger? Wouldn’t that be nice! There’s always been a theory that eventually the decreasing number of gods would mean more power for the rest of us, but I haven’t heard of it actually happening. Then again, now that some of the Twelve are threatened… well, maybe. Wait—is that why you’re calling? Selene, you little minx, are you holding out on me?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m calling about the murders in New York.”
“Aren’t there always murders in New York?”
“Not like this. Some killer has revived the Eleusinian Mysteries and is sacrificing women along the way.”
“No shit. I didn’t hear that on the news.”
“I just figured it out.”
“Always the cop, huh? I never should’ve convinced you to join the force back in the twenties—you’ve never gotten it out of your system.”
“You remember anything about Eleusis?”
“Wouldn’t be caught dead there. Too many pigs.”
“Then I need to talk to the Athanatoi who ran the cult,” she said, exasperated. “Where are”—she realized she didn’t know Demeter’s, Hades’s, or Persephone’s current aliases—“the Goddess of Grain, the Receiver of Many, and the Goddess of Spring?”
“Gwenith, Aiden, and Cora.”
Selene shook her head. Just as the gods needed to keep their old roles, so they held on to some semblance of their old names and titles. But they were obviously running out of ideas. Gwenith was Welsh for “grain”—Demeter had been going by some variation of the name for centuries. Aiden sounded more like an Irish poet than a nickname for “Aides,” the Hidden One, one of Hades’ many titles. And Cora? From Persephone’s alternate name “Kore,” I suppose, but not particularly dignified. It’s only slightly better than “Paul” for Apollo.
“Gwenith’s not doing well, I’m afraid. Very weak. All those genetically modified crops and chemical pesticides have really taken their toll on the Goddess of Grain. She was living somewhere in Peru last I heard, with no phone. No way to get in touch with her unless you want to fly to the Southern Hemisphere. You’ll have more luck with Aiden and Cora. Most of the time they live in an old oil well in Houston. He’s working his Lord of the Dead and God of Wealth epithets like a pro. Got it all decked out with plasma screens and a lap pool—the works. But he still keeps a little pied-à-terre in New York.”
“And you know how to find it?”
“That’s my job, isn’t it? Leading people to the Underworld.” Dash chuckled when he said the word, as if it were a haunted house in a cheesy theme park.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me how to get there and I could just go myself?”
“I don’t give out addresses. But as the Conductor of Souls, Aiden’s lair is one place I can take you personally. That’s how it works.”
“Okay, but I need to get this done fast. This cult will strike again, probably tonight. You don’t still have those winged sandals, do you?”
“Sure I’ve got ’em. But they don’t work. Haven’t in a thousand years.”
“Damn.”
“But who needs magic sandals when I can get to you tonight by private jet?”
“Your production company’s doing that well, huh?”
“Sure, but I’d have the jet either way. I’m not the God of Thieves for nothing, darling.”
In front of the hospital, the knot of reporters started shoving one another for position as a young detective in a trench coat emerged from the crime scene. Selene hung up with Dash and moved closer to watch.
As the detective pulled off a pair of latex gloves, a sixty-ish woman in a boxy pantsuit joined him. A badge hung around her neck, but even with her newly keen vision, Selene couldn’t read the precinct designation from so far away. Something about the woman’s blade of a nose and grimly set mouth looked familiar. Uneasy, Selene hid herself in the crowd of journalists who pressed close to the barricades, trying in vain to decipher the cops’ hushed conversation.
Selene concentrated on their moving lips, willing herself to hear the distant whispers. Suddenly, as if popping from a return to pressure, her ears opened and their words were clear.
“How much do you want me to tell them about Sammi Mehra, Captain? Do we say she had cancer?” asked the young man.
“Just the basics. I don’t want to get the entire city in a panic. I’ll check with the commissioner before we reveal anything else.” The woman’s voice was rough with cigarettes and age.
“Do I mention the snakes?”
The captain shook her head. “Not yet. Any ID on them?”
“No, ma’am. But I’ll tell you, I never seen anything like it. One of the guys started screaming like a little girl when we walked in. Uh… no offense, ma’am.”
“None taken. I never screamed like a little girl, even when I was one.”
“You don’t seem too shaken by this. You seen something like it before?”
“Not in forty years on the force. But you cease being surprised after a while. Any other evidence, Detective? Anything that might point to organized extremists?”
“Plenty of hair and fingerprints, but there were dozens of custodians going in and out of that storeroom all the time. It’ll take a while before the lab sorts through it all, but we’ll send the results over to Counterterrorism as soon as we get them back. Our perps left all kinds of stuff behind. Must’ve run off in a hurry. Maybe heard someone coming. Everything’s labeled, but we’ve sealed the room until the animal guy gets here.”
“When’s he expected?”
“’Bout twenty minutes.”
The detective finally approached the reporters to give his statement. He introduced himself then turned to the older woman. “This is Captain Geraldine Hansen with the Counterterrorism Division.” As the reporters clamored to know why Counterterrorism had been summoned to a murder investigation, Selene slipped away.
She’d thought all the cops who’d known her when she was last on the force were surely long dead or retired by now, but Geraldine had been barely out of her teens when she joined the NYPD in the early seventies.
The last thing Selene needed was her old protégée asking why “Officer Cynthia Forrester” had barely aged a day in forty years.