But after that vision?
I’d just been faced with, at the very least, my own death. More likely, I’d been stranded out there with a pretty solid confirmation that everyone else was also going to die, without me knowing how to stop it. Maybe I was naive or just plain stupid but, until now, I had firmly believed that Kai and I would win. That Hades and Zeus would be defeated, taking Demeter along with them, and leaving humans—me included—to live out long, happy, lives.
A sharp splinter of doom lodged itself in my heart. No matter how I looked at things, I couldn’t see a happily-ever-after in all this.
I. Was. Freaked.
I got myself under control as best I could. Got ready to face Theo and Festos. I opened the bronze gate that served as a door for the old cage elevator, squeezed myself in, and pressed four.
The elevator began its slow, grinding ascent with a hum, bumping to a none-too-gentle stop when it reached its destination on the top floor.
Festos had the only apartment on the fourth. In fact, he had the only apartment in the building, keeping the rest of it, which he owned, empty of other tenants—supposedly for safety’s sake in the event of unwelcome beings. But I figured it was just an excuse since he tended to irritate easily. Also he wanted as much room as possible to spread out his various metalworking and technological experiments.
I creaked the cage open, stepped out into a small concrete foyer, and opened the door to Festos’ place. My home sweet home these days. Much as I’d complained about being shipped off to Hope Park as a child, I couldn’t believe how much I missed the place now. Even going to class. I’d been keeping up my coursework through online correspondence but that meant me being 100% self-motivated. And I’d learned I was more the “have teachers ride my butt with deadlines” kind of student.
Also, it was sort of hard to care about high school classes when the fate of the world was on the line.
My body drooped in listless sorrow thinking about how I’d kill to be getting ready for bed check with Hannah and not running back like a scared puppy after I’d experienced a crazy, scalding vision of the end of the world.
Nothing I could do about it. It was what it was. And I was grateful to Festos for taking me in. He was loyal as they came, once you proved yourself. I had, back on a mission to stop Hermes, now a multi-media mogul, from making Bethany famous. Being the best friend of the god he’d been in love with for ages hadn’t hurt either.
I saw just how much Festos loved Theo as I slipped through the apartment door and found Fee washing windows. Festos had a lot of areas of expertise as a god. Housekeeping was not one of them. He’d actually had a cleaning service until about a month ago, when Theo had turned the living room into our war council. Since humans couldn’t be made aware of gods and their battles, the service had been cancelled.
Festos had sucked it up with remarkably good grace and only three tantrums as the cool furniture in his hipster pad got shoved aside to make way for a giant conference table, where Theo now sat, sharing space with a large 3D relief map of the final battle site in Eleusis, Greece. The map was marked up with various entry and exit points, and a huge pile of books teetered precariously off the edge of the table next to it.
Large aerial photos of Eleusis were tacked up along the walls, next to whiteboards containing the ritual words, and various possible battle strategies. The room was in total disarray.
As I silently pulled off my dirty socks—I hadn’t grabbed my boots in my bat-out-of-hell flight from Jennifer’s cabin—I watched Festos clean the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end, his back to both me and Theo. “You like how zee manservant, keep zee charming view so crystal clear?” Festos asked Theo in a horrible French accent.
At Fee’s words, Theo shot his boyfriend a fond smile before returning to whatever dusty tome he was studying. “You’re cleaning windows at night. You’re an idiot.”
Theo was combing through all kinds of ancient texts looking for anything that might give us the edge in this battle. I knew this because I recognized his hunched-over pose. All he’d been doing for the past few weeks was sitting and researching. Yeah, he lived here too now. Which made it very cosy. Theo had been a student with me at Hope Park since grade two—intending to keep an eye on me until I was eighteen and the memory spell around my goddessness lifted. But since Kai’s kiss had jumpstarted my powers and Felicia had removed me from school, Theo left as well, in order to stick by my side.
His faith in me was touching.
And upsetting after what I’d seen. Which was why I didn’t draw any attention to myself as I came in and saw them.
The incredible normality of the scene helped calm me down and push my fears away.
A bit.
Theo’s usual garb of black, long-sleeved T, and baggy skater pants looked more rumpled than usual. He propped his head on one hand, his fingers crushing some of the tiny spikes in his shock of dark hair.
Festos rose up onto his tiptoes to wipe at a spot. “Oui, bien sur. I am an idiot of love, n’est-ce pas? And I clean for zee pleasure of your—Oh, hello, young Sophie.” Festos grinned, catching sight of me as he turned to face Theo.
Theo looked over at me and scowled. Not an uncommon occurrence. “Sit.” He pointed at the chair beside him, then pushed his black, thick-framed glasses back up his nose in a familiar gesture.
I couldn’t face him. Not tonight.
“Magoo,” he sighed, reverting to his nickname for me, “now is not the time to be keeping stuff from me.”
He was right. Theo was my friend, and my mentor. He absolutely deserved me coming clean.
And I would. I just needed to sort out everything I’d seen in my own head first. “Tomorrow,” I promised. I’d tell him everything then.
I walked through the open concept living space toward my bedroom. All I wanted was to curl up and obsess until I finally got so tired that I crashed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Theo stand up and I also saw the head shake Festos gave him.
“Tomorrow,” Festos murmured.
I went to my room and shut the door.
My first order of business was to see how much of me had actually been tattooed. I pulled up the sweater and glanced down at my side. The answer was none. All I could see was the purple outline of the drawing. No black ink on me anywhere.
Which meant that Jennifer had literally just touched the needle to my skin, and my entire vision had occurred in a split second. Or, more likely, she’d never had a chance to do anything because I really had been convulsing.
Either way, I was untouched.
I wasn’t totally disappointed.
I kicked off the jeans. Since the sweater was long enough and soft enough, plus I hadn’t done laundry, I crawled into bed wearing it and my underwear. I tucked the comforter around me and hoped that the sun would come out tomorrow. Maybe I’d wake up and all would be glorious warmth with the arrival of spring heralding our good fortune to come.
But I wasn’t counting on it.
Which left a whole bunch of hours to think through what I’d seen. I closed my eyes to mentally review the vision. To start, that pomegranate tree better not have been some kind of obvious symbolism about
her
. Because what exactly was the big message then? That Persephone was dying? Gawd, even my visions featured her.
Well, guess what Universe? That chick was history. And maybe whoever or whatever was causing these visions should be more concerned with my mortal Sophie self that was alive and kicking and planning to stay that way.
Except, what if it wasn’t the universe or whoever sending this vision to me?
Since prophecies were common to the not-so-mythological Greeks I was descended from, I’d figured that these visions were too. Which is why I’d assumed that these images had been sent to me.
But what if I was generating them myself? From my insecurities and fears, in the same way I’d installed Persephone’s voice in my head. Maybe I was trying to give myself a giant wake up call—that I had to put all my issues with Persephone aside, once and for all.
Kai and I
both
did. That could be why he hadn’t figured in any of it. I mean, he had that pomegranate tattoo on his back, right? Maybe the tree in my vision was symbolic of him.
Of us.
Maybe the point of all these freaky hallucinations was to press the urgency of Kai and I working things out so that we remained a winning team, instead of two distinct parts that would lose.
Zeus and Hades had been warring against each other on Earth for thousands of years. They caused a lot of destruction and death, usually managing to blame it all on natural disasters. If Kai and I failed to stop them, their attacks on each other might amp up, thereby taking out more humans. Or worse, if they might just decide to harm humans for the spiteful fun of it.
Either way, we needed to defeat them.
I rolled over, mushing my pillow up to a better fluffiness level and resettling myself. I didn’t really believe that Kai wouldn’t show up to the big battle. He had such a horrible history with his father, Hades, that I knew Kai would do anything to take him down.
I even knew that he still loved me. But Kai’s anger might dilute his intentions enough to cause the ritual to fail. And if I continued to enable him by not forcing us to hash this out, well, that would make me just as complicit in our eventual loss.
The thing that really killed me was that I didn’t blame Kai for feeling gutted at Persephone’s intention to use and betray him. I just didn’t think it was fair that I was the one who had to deal with the fallout of his anger toward her. He believed that she was a part of me and technically, he was right.
Still …
Kai was just so damn stubborn.
Two months with both of us being mad, and still unable to keep our hands off each other. If that wasn’t messed up, I didn’t know what was.
I loved Kai back. Fiercely. I’d just been so scared of losing him that I’d gone along with this pattern, even though it didn’t sit right with me. To be honest, I’m not sure who I was more mad at—Kai or myself.
I sighed. Come tomorrow morning, I had to confront Kai. I’d make him yell at me if he needed to. Whatever I had to do to make this wound stop festering.
My eye twitched at the brain—exploding sensation of all this overthinking. Okay, it was the pulsing of my low grade headache. But despite the throbbing, I felt filled with a sense of peace, and the courage to finally confront Kai and sort things out.
Seeing Jennifer
had
given me clarity. With new hope, and a game plan in hand, I fell asleep. Like, passed out cold.
I would have slept in even longer on Friday morning, but a particularly despised sound woke me up. A sound that struck dread into the marrow of my bones. The sound of someone singing, “Happy Birthday.”
I squeezed my eyes tighter, flung the covers over my head and rolled over with my back to the door. None of which deterred Festos from tromping in, still singing the damn song.
“We talked about this,” I said, my voice muffled.
He waited until he’d ended the final “to you” in a rousing falsetto before he answered me. “You talked. I ignored.”
“I hate you,” I said. Although it probably came out muted by the covers.
“I have cake.”
Hmph. That was tempting.
Somewhat.
I poked my head out from the comforter but didn’t look at him. “What flavor?”
“I don’t understand the question,” he replied. “Is there another flavor besides chocolate?”
“Yes,” I heard Theo say. “I like pie.”
I rolled over and opened my eyes in time to see Festos shoot Theo a pitying glance. “Well,
you
would. But fun people like cake.” He winked at me.
Theo waved him off. “Cake is obvious. Pie is for people with depth.”
Festos’ idea of a deep response was to stick his tongue out.
Theo grinned. “Way to make my point.”
I loved my bickering boys.
“Enough.” I motioned Festos closer. “Bring me the frosted confection.”
He scooted in, cake outstretched to me like an offering to a god. Smart boy.
It was really fabulous. One of those super sugary chocolate sheet cakes with red icing flowers that hurt my teeth to even think about eating. I grinned in anticipation.
“Make a wish already and blow these puppies out,” Festos said, tilting his head at the eighteen lit candles blazing away on top. “The heat is opening my pores and that is
not
a good look for me.”
Sitting here, with these two guys who so totally had my back, who so completely loved me, gave me the strength to keep going. No matter what went down when I finally faced Zeus and Hades, I was going to bring my A-game and not let anything get in my way.
I closed my eyes, wished for victory, and blew.
Every single candle went out. The seventeen for my birthday
and
the one for good luck. I took it as a sign. Today was going to be a damn fine day.
I flung off the covers.