Complete Nothing (5 page)

I slipped away from her. “No. It’s fine,” I said, my jaw clenched. “You’re right. You don’t see her trying to plan around me.”

I snatched my backpack off the floor and barreled up the stairs. “Call me when dinner’s ready.”

I had just walked into my room when my phone beeped with a text. It was from Claudia.

I CAN STILL COME OVER AFTER BALLET TO HELP U W/GENERAL APP! LET ME KNOW!

My fingers tightened around the phone, and I slammed the door. I swear, it was like between her and my mom, they were
trying
to get rid of me. I threw my bag and my phone onto my desk, then dropped onto my unmade bed, trying to breathe through the pressure. Once my heart rate calmed down, I rolled over and looked at the framed picture of me and Claudia on my nightstand. We’d taken it at the shore over the summer on what had pretty much been the best day of my life. We’d driven down at the crack of dawn and spent the entire day making out on a beach towel, running into the waves, eating greasy food, and napping under her umbrella. We both looked so tan and chill and happy. Like two people who’d never even thought about taking anything seriously. Back then, college hardly ever came up. It was just this sort of nebulous thing far off in the future. Now it was the only thing everyone talked about. Every day. Nonstop. Next year, next year, next year.

I just wanted to be that guy at the beach. The guy with no worries.

I’d almost told her I loved her that day, on the boardwalk, as the sun went down, but I’d chickened out. No. Not chickened out.
Decided
to keep it to myself. To not let things get too serious. To keep having fun. And it had worked out. We did have fun. For the rest of the summer. Until school started again and then, suddenly,
everything
was serious.

I grabbed the frame, hugged it to my chest, and stared at the ceiling. Maybe I didn’t want to go to college. Did they ever think about that? Maybe I just wanted everything to stay the way it was.

“Orion is here?”

My mother, the gorgeous and indomitable Aphrodite, stood at the open refrigerator with a bottle of Perrier poised an inch below her perfectly outlined, colored, and glossed lips. Her crisp white shirt was tucked into her form-fitting, black pencil skirt, her shimmering blond hair just grazing her chin. Her name tag from Perfumania, where she spritzed customers at the door, was still pinned to her left breast pocket, her name spelled out in gold script.

Unlike me and Hephaestus, my mother had refused to take on a more modern name when she had been relegated to human status. Just one of the many ways her stubborn nature had shown through since we’d been banished to Earth.

“Yep,” Hephaestus said, looking across the wide kitchen floor at me as if he thought I might suddenly collapse against it in tears.

“Not only is he here, he was in most of my classes,” I groused. If Zeus
had
sent Orion here to torture me, he’d done a thorough job.

“Why would Zeus send him here? What purpose does it serve?” She let the stainless-steel refrigerator door close with a bang.

“We were hoping you might have a theory,” I replied, leaning
back against the counter, feeling defeated, since it was fairly clear she hadn’t a clue.

“And he doesn’t remember you? He has no idea who either of you are?” she asked, placing the bottle on the counter.

“Not a one,” I replied.

“But that is entirely un—”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence, because we were suddenly blasted by an explosion of otherworldly wind. The lights in the room flickered, the fridge released an avalanche of ice cubes onto the floor with a harsh growl, and the coffeepot exploded, ricocheting shards of glass across the room. My mother was still screaming when I opened my eyes and saw my father standing not two feet away.

“Ares?” I gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“You couldn’t have whirled into the backyard?” my mother complained, tugging a square of jagged glass from her hair.

“And risk the neighbors seeing?” he shot back. “Don’t test me, woman. I don’t have much time.”

“Don’t call me woman,
man
,” she replied, eyeing him up and down with disdain. But then her gaze softened. She gripped the refrigerator’s door handle, and an almost imperceptible blush appeared at the very crest of her cheeks.

My father looked different. Clean. As if he’d just bathed seconds before gracing us with his presence. Usually the God of War appeared sweaty and creased and stained from the field of battle, but as he stood in the center of our modern kitchen, his tan skin was so scrubbed it glowed. He wore the camouflage cargo pants often favored by today’s warriors, and a green T-shirt, the sleeves of which were pulled taught by his massive arm muscles. His brown hair was wet and combed forward over his forehead in a way that altered his features from their usual squared-off growl.

Ares had always been handsome, but ruggedly, violently, almost off-puttingly so. For the first time I could see the god my mother had fallen for. Or maybe that was just my hankering for home.

“What is it you’ve come to tell us?” Hephaestus asked.

Ares turned abruptly, automatically assuming a fighter’s stance. When he saw Hephaestus there, the deep furrow of his brow intensified.

“Hephaestus?” he blurted. “What are you—How is this possible?”

“The wonders of the universe never cease,” Hephaestus replied with a Cheshire grin, wheeling around the end of the table and offering his hand. “It’s been a long time, Ares.”

“You haven’t aged a day,” my father said.

Hephaestus lowered his hand, realizing Ares was not about to shake with him. “I may be mortal, but I’m still pretty. Not sure why Zeus made it so, but he did, and I thank him for it. As do the bulk of the ladies I encounter. Plus, it makes it easier for me to help your daughter. This high school experience has been fascinating thus far.”

Ares glanced over his shoulder at my mother. She shrugged like,
This isn’t my fault
. There was clearly some communication passing among the three of them that I didn’t understand.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Can we speak somewhere in private?” my father demanded of me.

Hephaestus chuckled to himself. The tension in the air was palpable, the unspoken so thick I could have taken a bite out of it and tasted its sour heat.

“Why?” I asked, my eyes darting among the three of them. “What’s your problem with Hephaestus?”

“Yeah, Ares? What’s your problem with me?” Hephaestus asked merrily.

He was teasing the God of War. No one teased the God of War. Not unless they wanted a spear through the heart or an unceremonious beheading. His audacity was met with more silence. The kind that normally preceded a massive earthquake.

The fridge let out another groan and spat five more ice cubes onto the floor. They skittered down the pile already melting at its base and came to a stop near the pointed toe of one of my mother’s stilettos.

“Ares, Hephaestus has been of immeasurable aid to me and to True—to Eros—over the past week. You can trust him,” Aphrodite said, lifting her chin. “
We
can trust him.”

My father sighed. “I haven’t the time to debate you,” he spoke at the floor. “Fine. I’ve come to tell you that Apollo and Artemis have learned of Orion’s existence, and as you can imagine, they are none too pleased. With any of us.”

My knees buckled. I stumbled toward the nearest chair, slipping and sliding across the ice and water and glass.

“How?” I asked. “How did they find out?”

“No one knows,” my father replied. “Or if they do, they’ve yet to confess. Apparently, Artemis actually laid eyes on Orion in the royal palace, before Zeus had a chance to properly hide him. Now the witch wants nothing more than to get her claws into Orion. She and that bastard brother of hers have been causing chaos on the Mount.”

“So this is the reason for Orion’s sudden appearance,” my mother said. “Zeus sent him here to protect him.”

“And to insure your bargain,” Hephaestus added darkly. “If Artemis were to steal Orion away for herself, you’d have no reason to complete your mission. But with him here, dangled before you, you have the motivation you need.”

“That explains his lack of memory,” Aphrodite said. “If he knew you when he saw you, there’d be no keeping the two of you apart. But if he doesn’t remember you . . .”

“He gets to keep us apart even though we’re so very close,” I breathed. “Does she know it was I who rescued him from the stars? Does she . . . know of our love?”

Ares shook his head. “Zeus and I thought it better to keep that a bit of a secret. If the other gods found out you held such power . . . things could get complicated for you. For now, we’ve floated several rumors as to his reemergence.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Don’t thank me too soon. You know how word gets around on the Mount. It’s only a matter of time before she discovers the truth.”

I pitched forward and buried my face in my hands, my stomach clenched with pain. Artemis must have been livid, knowing Orion lived and she could not be with him. In her mind, Orion belonged to her. She was the one who’d loved him on the day he died those many centuries ago. She was the one who had set him among the stars so that his image might live forever. She’d been trying to bring him back to her for generations, but where she had failed, I had succeeded.

“If she ever finds out, she’s going to kill me,” I muttered through my fingers.

“She has not the power to take your life,” my father scoffed. “At least not if you return to Mount Olympus with your full divine powers. You are both lower goddesses of equal merit.”

My mother and I locked eyes, both of us recalling the same event—that day years ago when Artemis had appeared in my chambers and nearly ended me. She’d locked her hands around my neck and squeezed so hard I had felt the life force draining out of
me. I had no idea how she’d developed the power, but she could have done it. She could have ended me. Would have, if not for the timely intervention of my mother.

It was the first time any of us had witnessed a god or goddess’s power growing. Until that day, I hadn’t known it was possible for our abilities to change.

“Do they know where on Earth he is?” my mother asked, choosing not to let Ares and Hephaestus in on our secret. But I could tell Ares had seen our silent communication. He knew that something was amiss.

“Not as of my leaving,” Ares replied. “Zeus has all of you cloaked. But they are doing everything in their power to find out.”

“But even if they do, they can’t come here,” Hephaestus put in. “They’re lower gods. They can’t come to Earth unless sent here by an upper god. Banished or set on a mission.”

“And I’m sure Zeus has forbidden the upper gods to send them,” my mother put in, though it was more of a question than an assurance.

“Of course,” my father replied. “But that doesn’t mean one of them won’t be convinced to spite him. Neptune or Hades or Hera.”

My mother rolled her eyes at the mention of the queen’s name. There was no love lost between the two great goddesses.

He looked me in the eye. “You must complete your mission, my daughter, and you must do it now. When last we spoke, Zeus had no intention of breaking your bargain. He did not send you here for you to fail. He sent you here to teach you a lesson, to force you to refocus on your work. Of course the king wishes for love to succeed, for love to flourish in the world he so cherishes, but the situation is volatile and could easily change. Time is of the essence.”

I wanted to groan, thinking of how I’d spent the day idly longing for Orion, willing him to remember me, when I could have been working to match my next couple. Somehow I held my tongue, not wanting my parents to mark my desperation, but my disappointment in myself burned hot beneath my skin. Self-pity was such a waste of time. I knew this. How could I have let myself indulge in it for an entire day?

“Why?” my mother asked. “Even if Artemis does get herself banished to Earth, there is no contest between her and Eros. Orion would choose Eros in a heartbeat.”

“As always, you’re thinking only of matters of the heart, and ignoring the logistics of the situation,” my father said derisively. “If Artemis were to come here as a goddess while Eros remained human, Artemis could smite her with a blink of an eye. If Artemis were to come here as a human, and Eros remained a human, all Artemis need do is get her hands on any man-made weapon and she could end our daughter just as easily. The only answer is for True, as you call her, to complete her mission and have Zeus return her and Orion to Mount Olympus before Artemis and Apollo can get themselves to Earth. Then the two girls can face each other on common ground, with equal powers between them.”

“And then what?” my mother demanded. “A fight to the death?”

“If need be,” my father replied.

“How can you say that? How can you stand there and say that as if it’s nothing? She’s our daughter.”

“He’s right,” I said flatly.

“What?” my mother gasped.

“He’s right.” I rose to my feet and pressed my sweaty palms
together. “I’m going to have to fight her. Eventually, that’s what this comes down to. Whether it’s here on Earth or back home on Mount Olympus, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Orion safe, to ensure our love.”

“But Eros—”

I looked her in the eye. “Whatever it takes.”

My father followed me as I made my exit out the back door, intent on walking into town to start trolling for some new lovers to match. The sun was just going down behind the wooden fence that surrounded our small but green yard, and birds chirped merrily in the dogwood tree off the patio. It was amazing how the world just went on, entirely oblivious to one’s mood. Back on Mount Olympus, I would have had the skies swirling with black clouds and the sea roiling right about now. We might even be suffering a rain of toads.

“Eros, we need to talk,” my father said, the wooden steps bowing under his weight.

“Do we? Now? Why now when we never have before?” I asked, barely glancing over my shoulder at him.