Blood Hunt (8 page)

Chapter Seven

I let myself into my car before calling Yiayia. It wasn't that I couldn't call her from Apollo's office or even from the street, but there were bound to be awkward questions up to and including my sex life with a god, and I preferred to deal with them in private.

“
Anipsi
!” she answered on the first ring. The Rialto Bros. Circus was back in the States. I couldn't remember just where they were at the moment, but at least we were close to the same time zone.

“Yiayia!” I answered, not having to work very hard to match her enthusiasm. Despite her special brand of crazy—or maybe because of it—she was one of my favorite people on earth. “How are you doing?”

“Wonderful! Lenny gave Fergus a job with the circus. He's the new two-headed goat wrangler.”

I had to process that for a minute, since Fergus only had one head, last I knew, but in my world the acquisition of another was not necessarily out of the question.

“Great,” I answered.

“The goat likes to head butt. Twice as much as the normal goat, if you get my shift.” It was
drift
, but I let it go. “They do a little thing where the goat chases him around the ring. The audience goes wild.”

“Can't wait to see it.”

“The left head is very sweet. The right one bites.”

“Um, okay.”

“Fergus has a big old bite mark on his right buttock. It didn't break the skin, but oh, the bruise…”

I did
not
want to think about how Yiayia knew what the bruise looked like. Fergus was her…boyfriend.
Boyfriend!
I knew it was silly of me to be so freaked out by the idea with Pappous two years dead, but somehow I'd anticipated her mourning him forever. Or that the prodigious beard that had earned her a place in the circus sideshow would make dating difficult. But she and Fergus had met at a beard competition and it had practically been love at first sight. For some reason, my over-curious brain kept trying to figure out how they kissed without the Velcro effect. It failed miserably. Probably just as well.

“But enough about me,” she said, saving me from my thoughts. “How are you and that great god of yours. Is he behaving himself? Do I have to come yet to kick his—”

“Yiayia! He's fine. No kicking necessary. But—”

“Ah ha, I knew there would be a butt. I will come kick it.”

“Yiayia, the but has nothing to do with him.”

“There is another butt in your world? Tori, I'm shocked!”

She didn't sound shocked. She sounded intrigued, but I let that go too.

“No! Listen, this isn't about Apollo at all. Or romance. Definitely not romance. It's about murder.”

There was a dead pause on the other end of the phone and then. “Oooh, tell me more.”

“Off the record.” It had to be said. When Yiayia wasn't busy with her bearded-lady duties, she ran the Goddities website, which was basically a gossip blog on the Latter-Day Olympians. She was usually my one-stop shopping on current whereabouts, aliases and who might be consorting with who.

She answered with a heavy sigh. “Always ‘off the record'. I help you, but where is the tit for that?”

“Tit for
tat,
Yiayia. And anyway…” I sighed. “Just listen. As long as you leave the names out of it, maybe there is something you can use. I suppose the gods should be warned.”

“Well then, I'm your girl.”

At nearly seventy, she was a little more than a girl, but she was also eternally young. I loved her for it.

“There have been some murders here in L.A. that might be linked to Set. You know, the Egyptian god of chaos. As far as we know, he's still all chained up and out of the picture—if you hear differently, please let me know right away—but before he was locked away, he left some talismans behind, and one found its way out here. I'm hoping you might know how to find Ichnaea. We could really use her help tracking the talisman back to the killers.”

Yiayia sucked in a breath. “Murders! Are they juicy? You will tell. Anyway, Ichnaea… I think she consults for the Center for Missing and Exploited Children or some kind of law enforcement. She was in the news just last year for the Annabel Jenkins case. You might have seen it. She goes by Naya Frain. Anyway, I'm not sure of current whereabouts, since her tracking takes her all over the country, but I can find out. Have you considered asking Hades?”

“For tracking?”

“For one of his hellhounds. He used them to track down the Titans who escaped during Rhea's uprising. Surely they can help you.”

I let my head hit the back of my seat. It wouldn't be fair to say that I
hated
hellhounds exactly, but we weren't best buds. There had been times they'd been turned on me, and others when we'd fought side by side, but I was never comfortable with them. I'd also never considered them anything but extensions of Hades's will.

“I'll see,” I said with significantly less enthusiasm than when I'd begun the conversation.

“Meanwhile,” she said, “I will see if I can find Ichnaea and you will tell all.”

I rolled my eyes at Yiayia's thirst for lurid details. Then again, given my chosen profession, I supposed I was hardly one to judge.

I left Neith out of it, but gave her everything else. I concluded with, “If you hear anything about Set…anything at all, please let me know. Not to sound cliché, but it's a matter of life or death.”

“I will check in with his jailor. I don't know her personally, but I hear that Sigyn spent some time with her. They had that in common, you know, both cooped up with their imprisoned husbands, although in Sigyn's case it was voluntary. And in Tawaret's case, at least she has help.”

“Help?”

“His other wives—Anat and Astarte.”

Great, an ever-expanding cast of characters.

“Yiayia, I've got to go. It's been great talking with you. Talk again soon. And love to Fergus.”

That cost me to say, but I got it out. Probably only because I was completely preoccupied. I had to get back to Hermes. And Sigyn.

As soon as I hung up, I bellowed, “Hermes!” at the top of my lungs. The sound bounced around the car but had no other effect. Maybe three times was the charm. It always seemed to work in stories—Rumpelstiltskin, Beetlejuice…

I tried it twice more. Nothing.

Then I remembered I actually had his number on my phone. Sometimes the mystical messed with your mind.

Unlike Yiayia, he did
not
pick up on the first ring. Or even the fourth when it clicked over to voicemail.

“Hermes, this is Tori. Call me RIGHT NOW.” I made the caps perfectly clear. “We need to talk.”

There was a great pop of air, and suddenly he was right there in my passenger seat with a great Cheshire Cat grin on his face. His dark eyes lit from within by some kind of mischievous fire and his black hair rakishly disheveled.

“Uh oh,” he said. “‘We have to talk.' You're breaking up with me, aren't you? Hold on, you can't break up with me. We've never been together. But wait! That's it, isn't it? You've finally realized how desperately you love a bad boy and you're throwing Apollo over to be with me. Oh, he won't take it well. There may be fisticuffs. Do people say that anymore—fisticuffs? No matter, I will be fleet of foot and stout of heart. I will—”

“
Hermes
!” I cut in, trying desperately not to laugh. “Be serious. You're with Sigyn. And that's not why I called.”

He clutched a hand to his heart and one to his head. “You wound me. You wound me to my core.”

“I
will
wound you if you don't cut out the dramatics.”

He dropped the hand held to his forehead so he could see me with both eyes. “See, that's why we'd be perfect together. You call me on my bullshit.”

“Again, Sigyn. And if you hurt her again, you answer to me.” Wait, when had I joined the Sigyn fan club? I flip-flopped more than a politician.

“Oooh, will there be whips and chains?”

“Worse, Republicans. No, wait, Tea Partiers.”

He looked stricken. “The horror.”

“Exactly. Have you talked to Sigyn? I really do need to meet with her. It's not just the coin now. Yiayia says she and Set's wife are friends. Or maybe
were
friends, I'm not sure about the tense. You gods are impossible.”

“Oh, I promise you, we're perfectly possible. More than possible. We're highly probable, considering the fact that I'm right here. Unless you think you're talking to yourself, which is also perfectly plausible.”

I gave him a
look
.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “So, Sigyn and Taweret. Lucky for you, I already have everything arranged. Drive.”

“Sigyn is here? In L.A.?” With Hermes, I assumed, but he usually made his home on the East Coast. I'd thought he was popping in from the other side of the country.

“Sure. There's a big movie premiere tomorrow night, and as one of the backers, I've been invited to attend. Sigyn will be on my arm.”

“Wait, the
Dark Reckoning
premiere?” I asked.

“But of course!”

I didn't know how to feel about that. It was the same red carpet event Apollo had inveigled me into. On the one hand, at least I'd see one friendly face in the throng. On the other hand, there was no telling what mischief Hermes might get up to.

“Great,” I said, trying to work up the enthusiasm. I was going to have to practice my game face in front of the mirror for hours. I'd take inspiration from the
Penguins of Madagascar… Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.

“So, where are you guiding me?” I asked.

“A special spa we know. Sigyn treats primping like it's an Olympic event and she's in training. Right about now, she'll be getting paws and claws done. There might even be waxing and threading and…” He shuddered. “I don't even like to think about that.”

I started the car and pulled out into traffic. “Sure, because the old days of sanding it all off with pumice were
so
much better.”

“Don't knock it until you try it. Very exfoliating. Makes your skin feel like a baby's bottom.”

“Just what I've always wanted.”

Chapter Eight

Something hit me when I walked into the Sulis Day Spa. It was a smell—strong, pungent and even…invigorating. I tried to place it, and the closest I could come was lemongrass and, maybe, ginger? Or cucumber? It seemed tart and awakening and soothing all at the same time. I distrusted it instantly.

It should be entirely up to me whether I felt happy or sad…or homicidal, for that matter. Still, I put on my best smile for the professionally perky girl behind the counter with the sleek blonde hair.

“I'm looking for Sigourney Skalda,” I told her, giving the name Hermes had provided.

“And?” she asked, her smile going hard.

“And what?”

“Exactly.”

I took a deep breath, hoping to find the lemongrass-scented zen needed not to knock her into next week.

“Look, her—” How was Hermes representing himself these days? Her husband? Boyfriend? Lover? Best just to use his street name. “Um, Herman Molyvos called ahead. Sigourney is expecting me. I believe we're scheduled for mani-pedis together.”

I displayed my pitiful excuse for nails, which hadn't been done since my cousin's destination disaster wedding and had since survived two near apocalypses. Well,
survived
might be overstating things. They'd cracked, split and been righteously ripped, but the polish on the remaining portions was still glossy as all hell. I figured any self-respecting spa girl would rush me back into the salon stat.

“Doubtful,” she said, unimpressed. “We book up weeks in advance.”

“Well, then, it wouldn't hurt to check,” I answered smugly.

She sighed heavily, rolled her eyes and typed away at her computer, all with the air of doing me a vast, unrepayable favor.

I wasn't worried. Hermes and I had discussed this. If the trickster god couldn't wrangle a little scheduling glitch, then it really was time to give up the title.

“Your name?” she asked, looking up as though to assure herself I wasn't leaning over the counter reading over her shoulder.

I gave it to her.

She froze as if zapped. She hit a key on her computer two or three times as though it might alter the view.

“Um, here you are, Ms. Karacis. I'm so sorry. I was sure…” She looked up at me with pleading eyes, willing me to understand. “Anyway, the changing room is right through that door.” She took a key from her desk and held it out to me. “You have locker number forty-eight. You can leave your things inside and put on the robe. Someone will be right in to escort you.”

“Oh, there's no need for a robe. It's just a pedicure and…”

“I'm afraid that's how we do things here. No clothes beyond this point…except for our therapists, of course.”

“Of course,” I said wryly.

Out in the real world, people were losing their lives. I supposed I could lose my skivvies for the cause.

“When you're ready, Adriana will escort you into the spa.”

Well, I certainly couldn't be left to wander willy nilly among the filthy rich and nearly naked of Beverly Hills.

I nodded and went through the door she'd indicated into a fairly typical if upscale locker room. The paint was the color of sandstone. Supplementing the recessed lighting were antiqued bronze wall sconces molded like vines and laurel leaves, holding up fan-shaped travertine light covers. The locker doors had frescoes on them that looked like they'd come straight from ancient Roman bathhouses. It was a nice affectation that made me wonder whether Sigyn had chosen the spa for nostalgia's sake or whether there was something more to it. Given all the gods, titans, demons, nymphs, djinn, giants and others that had existed over the course of history, it seemed impossible to swing a dead cat without hitting one of them. Of course, swinging a dead cat—sacred in ancient Egypt—might rile up some musty spirit that would haunt you until the end of days. Not to mention, it called up a pretty strange visual.

Anyway, I shed my clothes and thoughts of dead cats, hung the clothes up in the locker I was assigned, frisked the robe in case of anything odd, frisked it again because it felt like a cloud and it was worth another feel, then wrapped it around myself and belted it tightly. I slipped the Set coin into my robe pocket.

No sooner had I done so than a woman appeared out of nowhere. I supposed that in such a fancy spa they'd have calculated to the millisecond the exact amount of time it would take to strip down and belt up.

The woman had mounds of flaxen curls pulled up on top of her head from whence they came tumbling down again. Her spa uniform was stunningly white, the blouse a wrap-around that tied at the side so that it would be an exact fit, the pants wide-legged and free like resort wear. Her face looked naturally bronze, almost the color of her wall sconces, and if she wore any makeup, I couldn't tell…unless it was what gave her those impossible lashes. I could slave all day and still not look like she managed to look effortlessly.

“I'm Sulis,” she said, her voice deeper than I expected it to be.

“Pleased to meet you,” I answered. I debated offering a hand when she hadn't done so.
Sulis
…surely they wouldn't have sent the owner herself to deal with me, unless I'd already been marked as trouble.

“Hermes called to say that you're to get the star treatment. I'm so pleased. Any friend of his…”

“Hermes?” I asked. Surprised she hadn't called him by one of his aliases.

“Oh!” She looked suddenly disconcerted. “You probably know him as Herman.”

“No,” I said, “I don't. Well, I
do
, but… How do you know him?”

“He didn't tell you?”

I shook my head.

She laughed, and it was like water bubbling through a brook. “
Sulis
,” she said. When I didn't register a reaction, she added, “Goddess of the healing waters. Well, at Bath, anyway. I was fairly localized.”

“Oh.” Since that didn't seem to be a suitable reaction to meeting a goddess, at least based on the expectation on Sulis's face, I added a huge smile and asked, “What brought you here?”

“No one believes in the healing waters of Bath anymore—especially not since mankind discovered the dangers of the lead piping! I understand, though, that they still charge a pound or two for people to drink the dreadful stuff.”

I didn't know what to say to that. How could waters through lead pipes ever have been healing? Unless that was all part of the goddess's special magic.

“Do you have healing waters here?” I asked.

“Of course. Mud baths that drain a body's impurities. Herbal baths that do the same. Both leave the skin feeling fresh and rejuvenated. In fact, I'm taking you to the mud room right now. Sigyn is already there.”

“Uh, mud room?” I'd thought paws and claws were bad enough.

She laughed again. “Hermes really didn't tell you. Classic.”

She led the way, and I followed her swishing, pristine pants through the locker room door to the rest of the spa, which followed through on the appearance of an old Roman bathhouse. She used a keycard on a lanyard she'd tucked away inside her top to buzz us into a room that was all frescoed plaster, except for the mosaic tiled floor. A kelpie or something like that—front part horse, back part fish—frolicked beneath my feet. There were three bubbling mud baths set into the floor, looking like freshly turned graves or the La Brea Tar Pits. The fourth was occupied by a figure with cucumbers for eyes…or over her eyes anyway. Her raven hair escaped in moist curls from under a tuque that twisted her hair out of the way of the mud.

I looked at Sulis. “Uh, I'm good. I like my impurities. Or, as I like to call them, preservatives. They may be all that's holding me together at this point. Maybe I can just…keep Sigyn company.”

“And disturb the peace of this place? No, I can't allow it. If you're here, you soak.”

Her eyes glowed for a second, like amber suddenly superheated.

“All due respect—”

“
Soaking
will show me all due respect.”

“But—”

“No buts.”

“It's
my
butt, actually, and I don't want it getting grit where the sun don't shine.”

A muddy hand rose out of the one occupied bath, and a cucumber flipped up. “Tori, you're such a hardass. I promise you'll love it.”

“I promise I won't.”

“Well then you'll get to be right.”

Sulis was watching me expectantly, and I realized that I was essentially in her temple, expected to comply with the tenets of her religion. I supposed the damage to Hermes's credit card wasn't tribute enough.

I sighed. “Okay, but there's something I need you to look at first. Sulis, can you give us a moment?”

She looked from me to Sigyn, and at the latter's nod, she gave one of her own. “A moment. I'll send Adriana back to care for you.”

And with that, she left through a door I hadn't even noticed at the other end of the room. It blended so nicely with the frescoes.

As soon as she was gone, I pulled the sleeve of the robe down around my hand, but it was too thick to fit into my pocket and still grasp the coin. Considering the problem, I squatted down and dipped the thumb and forefinger of my right hand into the closest mud bath to coat them and provide some layer of protection between me and the coin. Only then did I reach into the pocket and bring forth the Set disk, leaving mud smears on the pristine white robe.

As it cleared the pocket, Sigyn's eye widened, as though she could
feel
the power. Her hands and all the rest of her was so coated in mud that she couldn't take the coin from me, so I set it on the mosaic tile between us and brushed away the mud I'd left behind with the belt of my robe. We both stared at the face revealed, the mud in the cracks bringing it into better relief than it had been before.

Sigyn removed the cucumbers from both her eyes and shifted for a better look. Then she glanced from the coin to me.

“Set,” she said in a hushed voice.

“Hermes talked to you about it, yes?”

“Yes, but… I hoped he was wrong. Tawaret was certain she and her sister-wives had cut him off from his power.”

“You feel it then? What does it do?”

She started to raise a muddy hand out of the bath and then thought better of it. “It's not my work. It would take me time to unravel, but it is dark magic. Not that I would expect any other kind. If I could have time with it…”

I wasn't so sure that would be a good idea. “Would you be able to track this coin back to those who'd carried it?”

“Set's taint overpowers any other. I could trace it back to him, but that's not what you asked.”

“No.” If Set was locked away, it was his acolytes we had to stop. And his influence. “Could you…neutralize it?”

She looked back to the disk. “Have you tried a sacred salt circle? Or, better yet, a salt bath?”

“Um…no.” I didn't know the first thing about sacred circles, and my only use for salt involved steak and eggs.

“Leave it with me,” she said. “I'll decipher the magic and then you can tell me what you want to do with it.”

I studied Sigyn. First Hermes and now she had tried to get me to leave the disk behind. I wasn't equipped to deal with it. I knew that, but still…

“I'll get back to you on that. I've got feelers out on Ichnaea. I don't want to do anything right now to the disk that might keep her from tracking it back to the last guys who used it.”

She eyed me back, aware of my distrust.

“I would not use it for ill,” she said.

“Maybe not intentionally.” But what if she succumbed to Set's influence? With Sigyn on his side… Sigyn, like Hecate and Isis and others, was a powerful sorceress, a mistress of runes and other magic. She could control others, paralyze them, send them to sleep, possibly for good and all… It was a risk I couldn't take.

The door on the far wall opened again, and a new woman appeared—petite and unassuming. She carried a tray of what looked like jars of oils and a plate of cucumber slices.

I quickly pocketed the coin without first coating my fingers. I felt a flash of power, something dark and almost greasy, and immediately pulled back my fingers, wiping them on my robe, rubbing until the tingling gave way. Suddenly, I couldn't wait to enter the bath and soak out any impurities.

The new woman—Adriana—twisted my wild hair up into a rose-colored tuque, helped me off with my robe and let me sink down into the mud bath.

To my surprise, it wasn't nearly as icky as I expected it to be. The temperature was perfect, and the mud oddly silky. It still smelled like mud, but…not the kind mucked up from the earth. More…aromatic.

I'd come about murder, mayhem and the patron god of both. I didn't see how relaxation was possible, and yet as I sank into the mud, I actually heard an “Ahhh,” escape my lips. I even felt a muscle unkink.

Ariana moved my head like I was a ragdoll and put a pillow under it, heedless of how muddy it was likely to get. Then she gave Sigyn a new set of cucumber slices and rubbed something that felt like cold cream and smelled like lemons into my face before placing cucumbers over my own eyes. Cutting off my sight. My eyes were already closed by that point, or I might have been upset over the curtailing of my vision.

And then she was gone, leaving me alone with Sigyn and a weird new mud fixation.

“So, tell me about Tawaret,” I said, before the sleep-inducing heat of the bath dragged me under.

“Set's first wife,” Sigyn said, her voice quiet, soothing, “but you know that. It's very sad, really. She's the soul of devotion. Faithful through all of Set's many affairs… I know all about that. She's the goddess of childbirth and yet married to a man not only faithless but infertile.”

“That's horrible,” I mumbled.

“Worse, have you seen representations of her? Her people gave her the head and back of a crocodile, and the body of a pregnant hippo. Don't even get me started on the use of a hippo to represent a pregnant woman.”