Authors: Kailin Gow
Hephaestus laughed again. It was a booming, hearty laugh, at odds with that of his wife. “Well then, vampire, can we talk to the girl yet? It is you we should talk to, isn’t it? After all, it is not your mark I sense on her.”
“The mark is my brother Rothschild’s,” Cruces explained. “It surrounds that of the Order.”
“The Order?” Hephaestus looked momentarily surprised. “It seems that your girl has been leading an eventful life.”
“I am here, you know,” Scarlett said.
Aphrodite looked over to her sharply. “Yes, you are. That’s easy enough to tell. And I sense something else.” She darted over to Scarlett’s side and took hold of her wrist in a grip that did not allow Scarlett any choice as Aphrodite turned it over to look at the inside of it. “There is the ghost of a mark here, Cruces. It did not last, but it was there. Your mark. Protection. Possession.” Aphrodite raised an eyebrow pointedly. “Desire. I might find myself jealous, darling vampire. Loving a mortal woman rather than me?”
“Um… you do realize that your husband is right behind you?” Scarlett said to Aphrodite, trying not to blush at the thought that everyone in the room knew what lay between her and Cruces.
Aphrodite let her wrist fall and then waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, Hephaestus knows how things are. How long has it been since we have been together, dear?”
“A while,” the god said. He did not sound particularly happy about it, but he did not seem inclined to do anything to try to stop Aphrodite either.
“Now,” Aphrodite continued, staring at Cruces, “answer the question.”
“I don’t believe you asked a question,” Cruces pointed out. “Do you really wish to do this, Aphrodite?”
“Yes. Now, do you find
her
more desirable than
me
?”
Cruces stepped up to Scarlett then, putting an arm around her. It seemed to be half in protection, and half as a way of making it clear what he felt. Though right then, with the possibility of making a Greek goddess jealous in the offing, the two points seemed to be at odds. “Scarlett is special. She is very desirable, but it does not have to do with looks alone, Aphrodite. You above all others should know that. There is something about her that stirs the heart.”
"And more.” That came from Tavian. He did not put an arm around Scarlett, but he did step close to her on the other side from Cruces. There was a sense of defiance about the way he stood that made it clear he was not going to allow anything to happen to Scarlett. Though what exactly he could do in the face of such a powerful immortal as Aphrodite, Scarlett did not know.
“Well, what have we here?” Aphrodite asked, looking Tavian up and down. She gave him an almost hungry look, but there was a slight turn to her smile that suggested she had mischief in mind too. “Do you have a name, sweet boy?”
“Tavian.” Tavian did not move back under the scrutiny of her gaze.
“A lovely name,” Aphrodite said. “But then, you are a most lovely young man. And fey too. What more could a girl ask for?” Her eyes shifted to Scarlett. “What more
could
a girl ask for, Scarlett? A vampire and one of the fey? Have you tried them yet? No, of course you haven’t.”
“That,” Scarlett said firmly, “is none of your business.”
“Careful,” Aphrodite warned. She stepped forward and ran her finger down from the center of Scarlett’s forehead to the tip of her nose. “I decide where to put my nose, and those who say otherwise… well, two young men in love with the same woman is always interesting, but I could make it a lot
more
interesting if I wanted, dear.” She smiled wickedly. “Just look at what happened to poor Helen.”
“You know, I’m sure you promised to behave,” Cruces said.
“Oh,
promises
.” Aphrodite shook her head. “It’s not like I’m one of the faery folk, you know. Besides, I’m not the one who has offered an insult here.”
Scarlett looked around. “Then who has?” she asked. “Look, you can’t possibly be jealous of me. I’m just mortal, while you… you’re more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen. So what if Cruces likes me?”
“And Tavian,” Aphrodite pointed out, not entirely sweetly. “Don’t forget your faery boy.”
Scarlett managed to keep some measure of composure, just about. She did
not
like having her life discussed like this. “Even then, it’s two young men. You’re… well,
you
. You could have any man you wanted.”
Aphrodite shook her head. “But we’ve already established that isn’t true, haven’t we? Though possibly…”
Thankfully, Hephaestus stepped in at that moment, putting a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Behave yourself, Aphrodite, the way you said you would. Remember that we are here because we want the Seeker’s help, not because we want to cause trouble.”
“I find that there is generally room for both in most…”
“Aphrodite.”
“Oh, very well.” She looked at Scarlett. “We require your assistance, mortal, in a matter we are forbidden to act in directly.”
“Cruces said something about that,” Scarlett said. “About you using mortals, I mean. But what could I possibly do for you? What is there that needs me?”
Hephaestus and Aphrodite looked at one another, then at Scarlett. It was Hephaestus who finally spoke. “We need your help in recovering an item, young human. One that you will be able to sense and touch where other mortals might not.”
“All right,” Scarlett said. It occurred to her that the best way to go about it was probably just to treat it the way she would any case. “So what is the item?”
Aphrodite and Hephaestus spoke together. “Cupid’s bow.”
S
carlett stared at the two immortals for several seconds, trying to work out if they were serious, and then trying to recover from her shock when she decided that they probably were.
Treat it like a normal case
, she reminded herself, though that was far from easy. Normal cases did not involve figures out of myth. This was far stranger than any of the ghosts or other creatures Scarlett normally saw.
“Why would you need my help in helping you find Cupid’s bow?” she asked. “Surely, you could find it much more easily than I could?”
“It is a little more complicated than that,” Hephaestus said.
“A lot more complicated,” Aphrodite corrected, smoothing out the folds of her dress in what seemed to be almost a nervous gesture. “Cupid, my son, has never really grown up.”
“He has never tried to,” Hephaestus said. “He still goes around looking like a young boy even though he is centuries old. He thinks it lets him get away with those tricks he plays.”
Scarlett wasn’t sure that she wanted to get between two immortals who seemed to be on the verge of an argument, but she needed to know more about what was going on.
“What sort of tricks?” she asked.
“Oh, he likes to shoot that bow of his at people,” Aphrodite said, with a smile that seemed more than a little amused with the idea. “And of course, those he hits fall in love. It is the power of the bow. Well, his power, really, but he’s so bound up with that bow of his, dear thing.”
“He’s lucky Zeus didn’t strangle him with it, after his latest effort,” Hephaestus snapped. “Honestly, I told you that no good would come of letting him go around watching mortal players.”
“Really?” Aphrodite said. “Well perhaps if you hadn’t been so busy minding that forge of yours…”
“What happened?” Scarlett asked, and for a moment, both immortals glared at her. It was all she could do not to wilt under the combined weight of their gazes. “I need to know so that I can have the best possible chance of finding the bow. Please, just try to tell me everything.”
“He saw the plays of one of those modern playwrights,” Aphrodite said. “Shake something or other.”
“Shakespeare?” Scarlett tried to contain her incredulity. “But he lived three hundred years ago.”
“Immortals,” Cruces said softly. “The greater ones in particular have little concept of time.”
“Now personally,” Aphrodite continued, “I don’t think that he has anything on Euripides, but Cupid seemed to like him. And… well, one of the plays gave him an idea.”
“Which play?”
“
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
,” Hephaestus supplied.
Scarlett quickly ran through all the possible ideas that play might have given someone like Cupid. There were a lot to choose from.
“What exactly did he do?” Scarlett asked.
“He found a queen of the fey visiting the mortal realm,” Aphrodite answered, “and he arranged for a donkey to be nearby. You can presumably guess the rest.”
Scarlett could. She wasn’t sure that she could guess at the kind of trouble it would cause, though. “What happened to the bow, then?”
“It turned out that the
king
of that particular group of fey was friends with Zeus, our leader,” Aphrodite said. “He complained to Zeus quite vociferously, and Zeus told my son that if he could not use his bow responsibly, then he did not deserve to have it.”
“So he confiscated it?” Scarlett said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m the right person to just go up to an immortal and ask him for your son’s bow back.”
Aphrodite sighed. “Don’t be foolish. If Zeus had kept the bow, I would have been able to persuade him to hand it back long before now.”
“Persuading people always was your strong point,” Hephaestus muttered.
“You never complained when it was you I was trying to persuade,” Aphrodite shot back.
Scarlett looked from one to the other of them. “So what did happen to the bow?”
“Zeus hid it,” Aphrodite said. “He took it from Cupid and he put it somewhere else. He won’t say where.”
“Our best guess at the moment is that he placed it somewhere in the keeping of the fey, as a way of placating their king,” Hephaestus added.
“That is just a guess though,” Aphrodite continued. “Really, he could have put it anywhere.”
“Even so,” Scarlett said, turning the problem over in her mind, “presumably, you are much better placed to find the bow than I am. This is an immortal affair, not a mortal one, and I don’t know anything about the lands of the fey. I have only recently discovered that places like that might exist at all.”
Aphrodite moved over to one of the busts that lined the room. It was the one that appeared to be of her. “Believe me, if we could deal with this directly, we would.”
“Zeus has declared that immortals such as us may not search for the bow,” Hephaestus explained. “I do not believe he wishes to make it impossible to recover, but he does not wish to make it easy, either.”
“He probably intends it as a lesson,” Aphrodite said with a sigh, “he generally does. Something about how little trouble keeping a more careful watch on my son would have been, compared to this, probably. You know, I don’t think this artist has quite captured the curve of my neck correctly.”
“Is this really the time for your vanity?” Hephaestus demanded.
Aphrodite smiled back at him. “I find that there should always be time to appreciate beauty. You agree with me, don’t you, Scarlett? After all, you have so many young men appreciating you.”
Scarlett shook her head. “If you think that is going to make it more likely for me to help you, you are mistaken.”
“But you must help,” Aphrodite said. “You have the gift as a Seeker.”
“Possibly,” Scarlett agreed, “but that does not mean I will help you. You have been nothing but insulting since you…” she paused as Cruces put a warning hand on her shoulder. Scarlett let out a breath. She knew the vampire was right. She could not afford to insult Aphrodite. Thankfully, she already had a way out of having to do what the Greek immortal wanted. “I don’t have time to take on a search like this,” she said. “I am already busy searching for…”
“We know what you are searching for, Scarlett,” Hephaestus said. “Or rather whom.”
Aphrodite smiled again, without much warmth. “It might even be that our searches might happen to coincide. After all, not long before we departed for this place, we spotted a young fey woman and a rather handsome vampire coming into the immortal realms.”
“Rothschild?” Cruces asked.
Aphrodite nodded. “Now that you mention it, it
did
look a lot like him.”
“And of course, you did not think to mention this before,” Cruces pointed out. Scarlett had to admit she was thinking the same thing. After all, Aphrodite had already commented on Rothschild’s mark, and she clearly knew his importance.
Aphrodite shrugged. Beautifully, of course. “Was there a reason to mention him before? Oh, you might also be interested in knowing that a little time before those two showed up, another young man arrived. Young, quite handsome, dressed in the kind of stiff nonsense that passes for clothing these days. I believe you have an interest in him, too.”