Mortal Gods (3 page)

Cassandra’s hands tingled and burned even at the thought of Aphrodite’s name. They’d spent two months looking, Athena and Hermes both. They threw lines out in all directions, and still Aphrodite was nowhere to be found.

Andie said it didn’t matter. That Aphrodite would die eventually anyway. But it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be enough, if it wasn’t at Cassandra’s own hands.

Odysseus sank deeper into his coat. His shaggy brown hair made for poor earmuffs. Cassandra flexed her fingers to drive the burn away, and to drive Aphrodite from her thoughts.

“Cold?” she asked.

“Of course I am. It’s beastly cold.” He stuffed his hands under his armpits. “But take your time. We’ve got a while before we need to nab Andie from practice.”

“We can go. Thanks for coming with me.”

“Anytime. But if we don’t go soon, I’m going to warm my feet on his gravestone. Think he’d mind?”

Cassandra looked at the marker. Aidan Baxter. She’d loved him from the minute she saw him, without ever knowing what he really was. Who was she to say what he’d do, or what he’d feel?

I knew him in two lives, and not at all.

She remembered what he’d done to her in Troy—driving her insane, cursing her to never be believed—and she hated him. But she also remembered the sound of his voice and the last look in his eyes. He was there, underneath the dirt, and she’d give anything to reach down and pull him out of it. Even if it was only to scream into his face.

Damn you, Aidan. You were never this infuriating when you were alive. Come back, so I can tell you so.

“‘Beloved son and friend,’” she read. “If they only knew. That it isn’t the half of it. That they’d have needed a gravestone a mile long to tell the whole story.” She shook her head. “Four words. It’s not enough.”

Odysseus put his arm around her and tugged her close. He took a deep breath, and kissed her head.

“I think he’d say it’s everything.”

*   *   *

Cassandra and Odysseus walked into the ice arena and found Andie waiting on the steps leading up from the locker room. Her hair stuck to her head, steaming with sweat from practice. It wasn’t that much warmer inside the arena than out, but Andie stretched her t-shirt-clad arms happily.

“First one done?” Cassandra asked, descending the stairs.

“As usual.” Andie cocked her head toward the locker room. Inside, the shouts and laughter of her teammates mingled with the noises of packing skates and pulling Velcro. She snorted. “I don’t know what they’re laughing about. They suck. We suck.”

“Still time to turn it around.”

But there wasn’t. February was upon them, and the hockey season neared its end. Andie waved at Odysseus as he talked to the girls running the concession stand. “Hey, heartbreaker! Get me a hot dog!”

The sheer booming volume of Andie’s shout made Cassandra squint. “You’re in a decent mood, considering how bad you suck.”

“Yeah. It’s funny, but I don’t really care that much. Did you know?” she asked Cassandra. “That the season was going to blow?”

Cassandra shrugged. Of course she had. The usual, run-of-the-mill visions were still around.

“Well, anyway. What’s going on in the world of weird?” Andie asked. “Does Athena still want to look for Artemis?”

“So Odysseus says.”

“But you saw Artemis running to her death months ago.” Andie craned her neck and gestured for Odysseus to hurry up.

Had it really been so long? Standing in the hockey arena, it felt like minutes, not months. Cassandra’s eyes clouded with memories of overgrown jungle leaves streaked with blood. The slim girl with brown and silver hair, chased down by a pack of ravenous who knew what. She could almost smell the blood and the rich black dirt. “Yeah,” Cassandra said, taking a breath. “But it’s the only vision we have to go on. And you know Athena. Any chance for another soldier is a chance too good to pass up.”

“Don’t be unfair,” Odysseus said, sneaking up behind them. “It’s about saving her sister as much as it is finding a soldier. And Artemis was Aidan’s sister, too, you know. His twin.” He handed Andie a hot dog in a cardboard shell.

“Finally. What took so long?”

“Sorry. Got caught chatting up Mary and Allie.” He nodded to the girls in concession, who leaned so far over the counter they were about to fall out of it.

Andie batted her eyes. “Odysseus is so witty. Odysseus is so charming! Don’t you just
love
Odysseus’ accent!” She took a huge bite of hot dog and talked through it. “Barf.”

Odysseus had enrolled at school a month earlier. An ancient Greek hero, matriculating at Kincade High so he could dog Cassandra’s footsteps. Athena’s idea, though she probably regretted it now, seeing how popular Odysseus had become with every girl in their grade. But no. Having him there served a purpose, and to a goddess that was the important thing.

“You headed to Athena’s place?” Andie asked, referring to Athena’s new house, a few streets over from Cassandra’s own, where she lived with Hermes and Odysseus. “I’ll come with you if you guys can stop off and let me shower.”

“When’s your car supposed to be fixed?” Cassandra asked.

“Dear god, soon,” Andie groaned.

*   *   *

Athena’s house was a pretty brown cottage with four bedrooms and two stories. A walk-out porch on the second level attached to the master bedroom, Athena’s. It probably made her feel like she could see things coming, but it seemed imperious. If she were home she’d be there now, looking down on them as they pulled into the driveway.

Behind them, tires crunched in the snow, and Andie turned in the backseat. A beaten-up hatchback idled behind Odysseus’ Dodge Spirit.

“Chinese delivery,” Andie said as the delivery guy jogged past their door holding two white bags the size of backpacks. “Did Hermes know we were coming?”

“He didn’t know
you
were coming,” Odysseus replied. “And I wouldn’t expect to get much of that Chinese, either. Athena’s got him on a ten-thousand-calorie-a-day diet. If I were you, I’d order a pizza.”

Ten thousand calories or not, it wasn’t doing any good. The boy who opened the door was painfully thin, the skin of his cheeks drawn, and the bones visible in his wrists and shoulders. Hermes’ light brown hair shone, and his skin was smooth. Everything about him looked healthy, even as his body ate his flesh away. He waved them inside.

“I can’t believe you’re going to eat all that,” Andie said as Hermes set white box after white box out on the kitchen countertop.

“Big sister’s orders.” Hermes dumped an enormous pile of sesame chicken onto his plate and placed six steamed pork dumplings around the edge. When he ate, he used a fork instead of chopsticks, to better shovel everything in.

“Is it helping?”

Hermes paused a fraction of a second before taking another bite.

“I feel better. And Stanley’s Wok has incredible pork dumplings.”

“It smells good,” Andie said. She eyed the boxes, and Hermes’ brow arched possessively.

“I told you,” said Odysseus. “Order a pizza.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Hermes pushed a box of dumplings in Andie’s direction. “Besides, if you ordered a pizza, I’d eat that, too.”

Cassandra snorted in spite of herself. Without Athena standing stone-faced beside him, Hermes was impossible to dislike. He was so much more fragile than Athena, and much more concerned about not being an asshole.

“That wasn’t there when I was here last.” Andie nodded toward the living room wall. A silver sword with a black handle was mounted above the fireplace. The blade glinted, long and thin, in a subtle curve.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Hermes said with his mouth full. “It’s brand new. Just a replica, though I imagine it could cut someone in half if I wanted it to. It reminds me of one I used to have during the Ming Dynasty.”

“Athena will like it,” Odysseus said. “It suits her, to have weapons all over the house.”

“It does,” Cassandra agreed.

“I don’t think she’d care if I put up baskets of posies. She doesn’t give one whit about decorating or style. If you really want to make her happy, we should sell this place and hobo it down by the river.”

Andie stood, chewing dumpling, and walked closer to the sword. “So, you know how to use this? You studied it?”

“I did,” Hermes replied. “Though fighting and killing comes fairly naturally to gods. Except maybe for Aphrodite.” He glanced sheepishly at Cassandra, who shrugged, even as her hands burned. Any mention of Aphrodite’s name made her think of the glee on the monster’s face when she drove the broken limb through Aidan’s chest.

Cassandra rubbed her palms against her jeans and the burning disappeared.

After Aidan’s funeral, she had asked Athena what her power meant. Athena had blinked and replied that it was her purpose. That she killed gods.

She killed gods. Both intentionally and by accident. Hera. And Aidan.

But Cassandra couldn’t believe that. She was no loaded gun, to be pointed and fired. Yet her hands still burned, and her heart raged with a surprising ferocity. Feeling so angry was new, and she didn’t know what to do with it, besides murder Aphrodite.

And maybe Athena for good measure.

She felt Odysseus’ eyes on her as if he could read her mind. But her silent threat wasn’t real. Much as she hated it, Athena was needed.

“Did you get the maps?” Cassandra asked. Maps of every continent known to house a rain forest or jungle that might be the one Artemis ran through. Athena wanted her to use her sight on the maps to figure out which one it was. Probably a stupid idea. She’d never tried it before, and the only thing she knew about her “gift” was that it was generally disobedient.

“I did,” Hermes said. “Do you want to do it now? Or is my eating going to distract you?”

“Well, it looks like you might be eating for the next few hours, so I guess we should go ahead.” Cassandra smiled and took off her coat.

“The maps are in Athena’s room.” Hermes jerked his head toward the stairs. “On her desk.”

“Sure, I’ll go get them.” Odysseus crinkled his eyebrows. “Bossy.”

Andie plunked down on the sofa beside Cassandra.

“Do you want me to light some candles or something? Set the mood for the voodoo … that you do…” Andie trailed off. She sounded like Aidan. Always wanting Cassandra to play the part. Trances and smoke and mirrors. Magic words.

“It’ll either work or it won’t.”

Odysseus returned with the maps and spread them out on the coffee table. A few were rolled and needed to be weighted down with coasters. Cassandra breathed deep. Odysseus, Hermes, and Andie all stared expectantly, but the green splotches of forest stretched out across the maps were just green splotches. Nothing jumped out three-dimensionally. Nothing moved.

“I don’t know what Athena thought would happen,” said Cassandra. “That I’d see a miniaturized Artemis X-ing her way through the Congo?” She looked up at Hermes. “You’re never going to find her. She’s probably dead, and how would you even know where to start?”

Odysseus pushed the maps closer. “Just give it a minute.”

She opened her mouth to say there was no point, but what came out was, “Taman Negara.”

“What?”

Cassandra didn’t know. The words meant nothing to her, but when she looked at the map again her finger struck the paper like a dart.

Hermes leaned in. “Malaysia.” He groaned. “Damn you, Artemis. Why not Guatemala? It would’ve been so much closer.”

“Have you ever been there?” Andie asked.

“I’ve been everywhere,” Hermes replied. “Though not for some time. We’ll have to fly into Kuala Lumpur. Get some guides. It’d be faster if I went by myself.”

“Everything would be faster if you went by yourself,” Odysseus said. “But you know how Athena feels about us going out on our own.”

Only Athena went anywhere alone. The others were guarded and watched, paired up in a buddy system like children. Cassandra, Andie, and Henry most of all. Odysseus and Hermes couldn’t leave until Athena returned to take over babysitting the mortals.

Cassandra watched Odysseus study the map. It was a wonder he was allowed to go anywhere. The way Athena looked at him when he wasn’t watching … telling people he was her cousin from overseas had been an idiotic choice. The minute anyone saw them together, they must’ve thought the pair were incestuous perverts.

“When you get back,” Andie said suddenly, “would you … I mean, do you think you could”—she nodded toward the sword—“teach me how to use that?”

“Since when do you want to learn?” Cassandra asked. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with your old life.”
Your old life.
The words stuck to her tongue. Memories stuck in Cassandra’s head from thousands of years ago. She hadn’t had the choice to remember or not. Athena hadn’t given her one. But Andie was different. And she’d decided to stay herself.

Resentment tightened Cassandra’s throat, but she took a breath. What was done was done, and if she was honest, she wasn’t sure what choice she would’ve made if she had been given one.

“It’s not that I want to be another person. Or the old me,” Andie said. “It’s just that I feel different. Stronger. Almost like my arms remember”—she looked at the sword—“holding something like that.”

“Rumor had it you were better with a bow,” Odysseus said, and to Cassandra’s disbelief, Andie blushed.

“And,” Andie said, “I’m quitting hockey.”

“What?”

“It just doesn’t seem important.”

“Before any of this happened, it was all you thought about.”

Hermes and Odysseus traded a look, like they were about to be stuck in the middle of something uncomfortable that was none of their business. Only it
was
their business. It was their doing. Everything that had changed, and was changing, was their fault.

“Don’t get dramatic,” Andie said. “You’re still you, and there’s another
you
in you. All I want to do is learn to use a sword. What’s the big deal?” She stood and gathered her bag and coat.

“Do you need a lift home?” Odysseus asked.

“Nah. You guys still have stuff to do here. I’ll go to Cassandra’s and catch a ride from Henry.” She walked around the wooden partition and left without another word.