Apollo looked as though he tried to grimace and couldn’t. “I feel like I’ve had Botox all over my body. I can barely move. My heart is struggling to beat. Look for me tomorrow and you may find me a grave man.”
My heart sank. It was a bad thing when an actor began quoting Shakespearean soliloquies. This one hadn’t turned out so well for Mercutio.
Crazy-girl twitched, and I demanded again that she freeze. One problem at a time.
“So what do we do?” I repeated.
“
I’ll
go have a talk with hotel security,” Nick announced, brooking no argument. “They need to know they have a breech in any case. I’ll tell them what we overheard and what we saw, and we’ll get this all worked out.
You two
…” He glared at each of us in turn. I felt like I was back in L.A., facing him across an interrogation table, back when we were more adversaries than anything. It hurt. “Try not to conspire while I’m gone.”
He about-faced and left, sucking much of the air out of the room with him.
Apollo and I looked at each other. He was…less than he had been without his typical glint and smirk to draw you in. His eyes had lost their sparkle. His mouth was set.
“I wish there was something I could do for you,” I said, meaning it wholeheartedly.
“I wish you could too. I guess this would be the time to mention you might have a point about Serena. Apparently, she’s already campaigning to have me replaced.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said, but if this petrification keeps up, I don’t see that they’ll have any choice but to find somebody new. It makes me wonder if she knows something we don’t about my chances of recovery.”
“So she knows your paralysis isn’t limited to…” My gaze dropped somewhere south of the border.
“It’s starting to become obvious.”
I hadn’t liked Serena from the start. It was probably terribly unprofessional of me to feel a little leap of joy at the idea of collaring
her
for the crimes against Apollo.
“I was planning to have Nick interview her. In the meantime—”
“Ambrosia?” he asked.
“How can you tell?”
“You’re shaking.”
I looked down at my hands. I hadn’t even noticed. Not good.
Seriously
not good. I wondered if Nick…of
course
he had. He was a detective. He noticed everything. Crud cakes.
“Do you have any with you, and would it help
your
situation?” I asked.
“No and no. Gods don’t need ambrosia to heal—not from anything natural. As for the unnatural, we can’t undo what another power has done…not unless it’s in our wheelhouse. In other words, Zeus could dispel a storm someone else raised, but he couldn’t return to water what Dionysus had made into wine. Make sense?”
“Sure, clear as mud. I think I need some kind of course in remedial mythology. You say ‘another power’. So it wouldn’t take a god to do this then?”
“Circe could have done it. Or some other enchantress. A few others. No, it wouldn’t take a god.”
“Gah, this just keeps getting better and better. Anything else I need to know? Any other potential players in this drama? Nymphs…banshees…Big Foot?”
“Nymphs, maybe. I’ve, uh, had run-ins with a few of them.” And by that, he meant liaisons, not all of which would have ended well. “Sirens are water divinities, so they’d be loyal to Poseidon. Can’t rule them out. Banshees are second cousins to the sirens, but they only predict the deaths others cause. As for Big Foot, you’ve got me. Maybe one of the giants still roaming the Earth?”
“Really?” I asked, momentarily sidetracked. “
Whatever
. I’ll talk to Serena, but in case we’re barking up the wrong tree—” Apollo gave me a dirty look, “—I need a list of every divinity you’ve pissed off in the last millennium. I can run them past Yiayia for last known whereabouts and find out who’s in the area.”
“Done,” he said.
“And the ambrosia—”
“Ask Hermes.”
“Hermes?”
He stared. “You haven’t figured it out? Tori, Hermes runs a
worldwide messenger service
. The only one as far as the ancients are concerned. Anything imported or exported he’s got a piece of the action.”
“So the Back to Earth movement—you think he
knew
about their secret ingredient?” We’d busted the Back to Earth cult just months ago. It had been run by Dionysus…
the
Dionysus. He’d not only resurrected his fertility cult, but was lacing the food of his adherents with a special additive, trying to turn his own followers into super-humans, essentially his own Latter-Day Olympians. The problem was, not all survived the transformation. He’d been getting ready to distribute Back to Earth produce on a national level.
“I can’t say what he knew about their end game, but their supplies…yeah, he’d have been involved.”
I seethed. I could feel the steam building in my gut, getting ready to burst forth and sear everything in its path.
Hermes
. That dirty, rotten, sleazy, conniving bastard.
“How much can she hear?” Apollo asked suddenly, nodding toward the frozen floozy in our midst.
“Huh?” It was so far off my train of thought that it took me a second to process. Then I knew fear.
“I’ve—uh—never tested it.” I knew there was disorientation after the freezing, but how much would she have heard and understood? “It’s not like anyone would believe what she had to say,” I told him, in a whisper now. “I mean, raving about gods and banshees.”
“They might. Some do believe that sort of thing. Otherwise we’d all have long since faded away.”
There was a knock at the broken door, which seemed to startle the girl out of her paralysis, which was a good thing, because hotel security didn’t wait to be invited before sauntering in.
The girl reeled and looked about frantically. She spotted the man in the suit coming through the doorway and launched herself at him. “These people are crazy!” She started. “Please, you have to listen!”
The whites shone all around her eyes, and she looked like a deer in headlights. The security man grabbed her hands as they reached for his shoulders, or maybe his neck, to cling to him. He took them gently but firmly in his hands and looked her in the eyes. “Why don’t you come to my office and tell me all about it?”
I sensed the steel under the suggestion, but she seemed to feel that she was getting somewhere and sagged with relief.
Security guy looked over her head at the rest of us. “I’ll want your statements as well. Later.”
We all nodded back solemnly. The girl didn’t have a leg to stand on, but the sick feeling inside my gut said that wouldn’t stop her. “You need a keeper,” I told Apollo when they left. Only as the words came out of my mouth did I realize I was echoing Jesus.
“Are you volunteering?” Apollo asked.
Nick growled.
“There’s not enough money in the world,” I told him. Ambrosia? Apparently that was another story.
“Nick, why don’t you talk to Serena, like we planned. Also ask her about trying to get Apollo replaced on the film. Apollo, you get working on that list. I have to see a man about a—”
drug habit
“—suspect.” And so it began…the lies, the slipping out on my own. No, I didn’t have a problem. But apparently it had me.
“Who died and made you boss?” Nick asked.
“No one, yet. I’d like to keep it that way,” I answered.
“Oh the drama. I think you might have missed your calling,” Apollo said helpfully.
I gave him the stink-eye. “Hey, this is
your
drama. I’m just along for the ride. Everyone has their assignments. We’ll reconvene later.”
“It’ll have to be a lot later,” Apollo said. “Sounds like I’ll have to talk with security, and then I have to get into makeup. We’re doing some of the sunset shots tonight. The conditions are supposed to be perfect. With any luck, the half lighting will hide my…condition.”
“You get gorgeous,” Nick said. “Don’t worry, we’ll do all the heavy lifting.”
I rolled my eyes. The testosterone levels were starting to get cloying.
I pushed Nick out ahead of me, but thought of something just as we were leaving and turned back.
“Have you noticed any priestly types hanging around, all dressed in black, none-too-subtle?”
Apollo looked surprised. “You mean like Greek Orthodox priests?” Because they too wore the black cassocks.
“Not exactly. Kind of hermit-y looking, really, like they might only come to civilization now and then for supplies?”
He had his thinking face on, eyes up and to the left, as if he were visibly reviewing his mental files. “I don’t know about the various sects anymore. Back when our sanctuaries were held sacred, each god and goddess had their acolytes. Now…the men in black could be anybody.”
“Well, keep an eye out. Nick and I were followed today.”
“I will. And, Tori,
thank you.
”
I blinked. “Just evening the score.”
“Still.”
“
You’re welcome
,” Nick called from the doorway, a reminder that
he
hadn’t been thanked—for his help or the sidelining of his girlfriend.
“Thank you too,” Apollo called. “I owe you a boon.”
“Just stay away from my girl,” Nick said.
My girl—like there was some ownership involved.
“I keep trying,” Apollo said, “but apparently our weaves are intertwined.”
Before I’d “met” the Fates—Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis, that would have seemed like poetic drivel. But the three sisters wove our destinies. I’d seen my thread nearly cut from the great weave, the pattern more complex than I could ever follow. I knew that what Apollo said was true. If our destinies were interwoven, it was beyond even his power to untangle them. And it was clear to me that Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis had watched
way
too many soap operas in their time. They enjoyed the drama.
I didn’t want to think about that. I finished pushing Nick out the door, followed him through and shut it behind me as best I could
“Seriously,” Nick asked, once we were alone, “what do you see in that guy?”
“I don’t see anything in him. I’m with you.”
“Uh huh. Try telling him that. Anyway, I guess I’m off to interview a gorgeous, green-eyed starlet. But not to worry, I’m with you.”
Jealousy kicked me in the gut even though the interview was my idea. “Fine. Point taken. I’ll try not to be an ass about it if you aren’t.”
Nick smiled, and it lit up those midnight blue eyes of his. “Deal.”
Serena would never know what hit her.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Hermes. “Where are you?” I demanded.
“The hotel bar,” he answered, amusement thick in his voice. “Where are
you
? And while we’re on this path, what are you wearing?”
“I’m on my way.”
“And to the second question?” he asked.
“My butt-kicking boots.”
“Nothing else?” he asked hopefully.
“No, I’m prowling the hotel au naturel.” A cleaning lady I passed looked at me, startled. “You’ll see for yourself in a moment. Stay where you are.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” he said and hung up.
He wouldn’t believe me, as well he shouldn’t, but maybe I’d intrigued him enough to stay put. We needed to have words.
Thank gods
this
hotel bar was on the ground floor rather than the rooftop with a grand view out over the clouds. I still hadn’t managed to catch a full breath, and felt on the verge of hyperventilating or blowing up into a full-on panic attack at any second. If Tina had picked some mountaintop chapel for her ceremony—and, really, what other options were there here at the top of the world?—I was going to lose it. Maybe it wasn’t ambrosia I needed. Maybe it was Xanax. Or a cyber-café where they could just Skype me in for the ceremony.
I found Hermes drinking alone at the bar, two tall glasses in front of him full of clear liquid. Water? Surely not.
He slid one toward me as I sat down on the stool next to him, and I gave him the hairy eyeball. “What is it?” I asked.
“Try it and see.”
I looked around for the bartender, hoping for a straighter answer, but no one was in evidence. I held the glass up to my nose and sniffed. My eyes nearly rolled back into my head at the scent. When I tried to chase down a comparison, the smell seemed to shift on me—jasmine and honeysuckle one minute, then vanilla and sandalwood, cinnamon and cloves… In short, heaven.
“What is it?” I asked again, unable to wait for his answer before tipping the glass back to let just a drop touch my lips.
The taste exploded on my tongue, starting small and then overpowering my taste buds like one of those kids’ toys that expanded exponentially in water. It was—
“Nectar,” he said, the glint in his eyes jollier than Old Saint Nick’s and at least a hundred times more mischievous.
My heart kicked, and I would have spat it back, but it had disappeared, seemingly straight into my being, skipping mundane things like my stomach.
“Nectar as in…
nectar
. Of the Gods?”
“Is there any other kind?”
“But—”
“Oh, the bartender won’t mind. I slipped him a
very
nice tip to assure he wouldn’t notice me pouring from my own flask.”
“But I’m not—”
“A god? Well on your way, I’d say. You’ve survived the ambrosia. And you know what they say—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
My hands trembled as I pushed the glass away. It took all my willpower to actually let it go. I knew,
knew
nothing would ever taste the same again, and considering that everything had already gone to ashes…
I glared at Hermes. “What’s happening to me?” I asked him. He always seemed to know more than he should. Maybe he had answers he shouldn’t.
“You tell me.”
“Why are you trying to suck me deeper in?” I asked.
“Why are you trying to get
out
?” he countered.
“None of your business,” I said. This wasn’t going at all the way I intended. I had to retake control, if I’d ever had it. “Look, I do want to get out, but not until after this whole wedding thing and—” I couldn’t say it. Bad enough going to Apollo, but he was the one who’d hooked me, and I felt that in some twisted way he owed me, even though the ambrosia had saved my life. But this—this was like meeting my dealer. I’d lied to Nick…or anyway left out a critical part of the truth…and I felt like I was about to make a deal with the devil.