One year later.
The baby in Selene’s arms had hair as black as midnight and eyes as green as new-sprung leaves.
Sibyl, they called her, in honor of Cybele, the Great Mother who’d saved New York from the hand of Zeus. Sibyl Jimenez-Loi.
Her parents had decided it was a fitting name for a baby girl with multiple mothers.
Sibyl screwed up her brow, and for just an instant, Selene wondered what it would be like to see her own expression on a child’s face. Would she scowl all the time? The thought made her laugh.
“She’s trying to poop,” Gabriela said, holding out her arms to take back her child.
Selene relinquished the baby happily enough, averting her eyes as Gabriela dealt with the diaper.
Theo flashed her a grin. “That’s the problem with having preternatural senses, right? The whole baby crap thing is that much worse.”
Minh made an exhausted effort at a smile. “Selene never has to change a diaper if she doesn’t want to.” The astronomer had taken on responsibility for explaining the mayhem on the Brooklyn Bridge to a bewildered city. So far, a description of Einstein’s space-time theories and a claim of mass hysterical hallucinations had done the trick—anything seemed more plausible than Greek gods still wandering the earth. Between working on her latest journal article and caring for a newborn, Minh wasn’t getting a lot of sleep. But she turned to Theo with more humor than weariness.
“You, on the other hand, Spunkle Theo, don’t get that option. Just because Sibyl lives with us doesn’t mean you don’t have to help when you’re around.”
“Right, right,” Theo said, going to help Gabi with what Selene considered a totally unjustifiable amount of cheer.
With everyone’s attention on Sybil, Selene pulled out her baby gift and slipped it onto the coffee table. She wasn’t sure exactly how Gabi and Minh would react to the present; she figured Theo would be better at explaining it to them.
She left the all-too-domestic scene in her living room and went out to her tiny backyard. Ruth and Maryam were working in the garden; Hippo lay on the ground, watching contentedly.
The two women bent over a sapling, discussing something about the interaction between rhizobium microorganisms and soil salinity.
“You really think you’re going to get an olive tree to grow in Manhattan?” Selene asked.
Maryam looked up and gave her a baleful stare. “I can get olive trees to grow anywhere.”
Selene raised her hands in submission. “Okay, okay, sorry. You’re not the Great Mother anymore, but give it shot.”
“Speaking of great mothers,” Ruth said, rolling her eyes. “Please don’t make me go back in there. I can’t keep talking about poop.”
“Huh.” Selene couldn’t help prodding. “You and Steve Atwood aren’t …”
Ruth flushed to the roots of her hair. “He’s very nice,” she said stiffly. “But he’s a classicist. I think I’ve had enough classicists for a while. No offense.”
“None taken.” Selene settled on the ground beside Hippo, who rolled over to lay her head in Selene’s lap.
The dog looked up with big brown eyes that seemed to say, Don’t believe Ruth for a second. She thinks Steve’s dreamy. Selene stifled a chortle. She’d let Ruth figure it out in her own time. Since Philippe and Esme had returned to Paris months before, they were all free to find their own way, safe from love darts. Flint had gone with them. The three of them made an odd sort of family, but no stranger than the one Selene had constructed for herself on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Ruth stood up from the garden and brushed her hands on the seat of her jeans. “I’ll bring some rhizobacteria tomorrow to try, all right?” she said to Maryam. Then, turning to Selene, she added, “If that’s okay?”
Selene shrugged. “It’s Maryam’s house, too. Or, her garden apartment in the basement of my house, I guess. So don’t ask me.”
Ruth gave Maryam a quick hug, uncomfortably returned, and an even quicker one to Selene, then darted back inside.
Maryam, dirt on her hands and smeared across her forehead, looked pensive. “As a goddess, they served me. As a nun, I served them. This …”
“Friendship?” Selene filled in.
“Yes. Friendship. It’s … different.”
“But not bad.”
“No,” Maryam agreed. She turned back to her spindly olive tree before murmuring, “Not bad.”
Maryam had become a strange sort of Queen of the Gods. She’d taken on the mantle as her mother Metis had always intended. With Hera dead and Demeter and Hestia gone, they had all agreed Athena deserved the title.
“Selene!” Theo called from inside. “Your phone’s buzzing!”
Selene snapped her fingers for Hippo to follow and went inside. Theo stood in the narrow hallway, holding out her phone. “I think it’s the same woman who called a few days ago. The one with the boyfriend who keeps threatening her. She just texted you. It looks like she’s finally ready to accept our help.”
Selene reached for the phone, but Theo held it back for just a moment. “Gabi and Minh left, by the way. You should’ve seen their faces when they found the bear-fur onesie you made for Sibyl. I thought Gabi was going to report you to one of her animal rights activist friends right then. But I told them it meant Sibyl would always have your protection—just like the little girls in ancient Brauron. Minh convinced her it was sweet. I left out the part about the obligatory ecstatic naked dancing in homage to Artemis.”
“Probably for the best.” She gestured again for the phone. He pressed it against his chest.
“I’ve got to head over tomorrow around noon to drop off that new crib Maryam made, but besides that I’m free.”
“Are you saying that if I’m about to hunt down a bad guy, you want in on the chase?”
“Uh-huh.” He took a step closer to her, his eyes full of mischief. On the wall beside him hung a round shield. It was no longer blank. A suspension bridge gleamed across its surface, the attribute of a man who spanned two worlds. Who bent in the wind rather than broke. Who played the song that sang in her heart.
She laid a finger in the dimple on his chin. Flint’s necklace, now looped twice around her wrist, glinted in the light. “You just like watching me work.”
“I like tracking down bad guys and keeping our city safe, especially when those bad guys are in no way supernatural,” he said defensively. “If I get to watch you work at the same time … hey, that’s just a bonus.” He rested his lips on hers, just long enough to remind her that for all the pain and violence and heartbreak this world still held, the love and joy were more than enough to make up for it.
She took the phone and called her client.
“This is Selene. How can I help?”