The Pantheon (21 page)

“
What’s he saying?” Lewis interrupted.

“
Shut up,” Peter snapped.

“
As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I was cleaning it and checking for damage, someone grabbed my throat, it burnt, and the next thing I remember I was stepping out of my poor, mutilated body and noticing that the jar was absent.”

“
I’m pretty sure the guy who killed you is the serial arsonist in Olympia Heights,” Peter said. “He attacked my... friend. He also burned down Evan’s house, part of our high school, and killed some kid out in the woods.”

“
Ah, yes, I read about that case in the Herald.” Lionel’s ghost chuckled, “Called himself Epimetheus, didn’t he? I would have chosen Prometheus as my alias, personally.”

“
Yeah? why?”

“
Prometheus was forethought. His brother, Epimetheus, was afterthought. Epimetheus was the screw up. He married Pandora after Prometheus warned him to send her away.”

“
Pandora’s box?” Peter asked.

“
Well yes, how many Pandora’s are there in myth?” He pulled out a silver pocket watch and checked the time. “Well, now I’ve spoken to someone in the land of the living, I must be going. The afterlife waits. Do tell the police what I’ve conveyed to you.”

“
Uh-- sure.” Peter lied, “I will.” He couldn’t tell the Miami Police that he’d talked to a ghost.

Lionel Barker smiled and looked around the office for a moment. His form was like a reflection on the surface of a lake. Suddenly a ripple went through him. Lionel Barker shimmered and was gone.

“
We have to go tell the police,” Diana said.

“
No!” Teddy was clear. “No, we can’t do that. We don’t need any more attention drawn to us.”

“
Diana already found one toasted body. Do you know how bad two will look?” Astin opened the door to the office. Jason Livingstone was scanning the exhibit, looking for his students. He spun around and caught sight of half of The Pantheon standing in an employee’s only room.

“
What are you guys doing in here?” He stomped to the door, lowering his voice, ready to chew them out. “This room is off limits to vis-- ugh!” Jason caught the smell of the room. “What the hell is that?”

“
Dead guy,” Astin said for lack of more eloquent words. He pointed back at the feet sticking out from behind the desk, “We found him.”

“
You guys can’t be found here,” Jason said.

“
Don’t you think the security cameras will give us away?” Peter asked. “There’s a camera in every exhibit. We have to come forward. They have us on tape going through that door.”

“
No, no they don’t,” Valerie pointed to the camera in the corner. It was a mangled piece of molten plastic and metal now. The arsonist had taken care of protecting his own identity.

“
That settles it.” Jason wiped down the door handle with his tie so that Astin’s prints wouldn’t be on it. “Go,” he hissed at them. “Go to the bus. I found the body. You kids left just before. Go.”

Minutes later, as they were gathering in the lobby, the students saw security guards run up the back stairs. When they got on the bus, The Pantheon was silent. Candice Matthews kept asking the students if anyone had seen Dr. Livingstone. The other students exchanged rumors in excited voices.

Peter turned over the new information in his head. He had to email The Pantheon tonight. Peter now remembered Richard Davis’ warning. Forethought and Afterthought. They were dealing with the vengeful Titans and so far they had only heard from the screw up. He couldn’t imagine how dangerous Prometheus would be.

“
All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.”

-Ovid

xvii.

She was the most beautiful girl in the world.

Her long, flowing hair trailed past her slender waist.

She ran with her friends through the tall, swaying hay.

Her bright eyes twinkled.

They fell in the grass, all rolling and laughing.

It was the perfect picture of innocence.

A patch of flowers at the edge of the field

caught the maiden’s eye.

The girl wandered away from her companions

to collect them to make a wreath for her hair.

The Fates hovered as he watched in his mirror,

his heart beating fast.

Just thinking about her tiny fair fingers

and her pretty pink lips made him feel alive.

She sat in the patch, and picked them one by one.

He was done watching.

He left his throne and mounted his chariot.

The earth where she sat turned suddenly silent.

She could no longer hear the birds or her friends.

It was too quiet.

The ground around her feet began to fracture.

There was a crack as Hades breached the surfaces.

There was no chance to flee from his mad pursuit.

He had to have her.

“
Second thoughts are ever wiser.”

-Euripedes

XVII.

Peter woke up with his clothes sticking to him. He pulled a black spiral-bound notebook out from under his mattress and recorded every detail he could remember of the dream. He’d started the log right after the first meeting at the Davis residence.

The glowing green digits of his alarm clock read midnight. Peter walked softly out of his bedroom and into the living room. He turned on the family computer, which was slow and out-dated, and let instant messenger boot up.

Penny wasn’t online.

Peter shut down the computer and went back to his room. He couldn’t get her off of his mind.

Celene had been having the same memory on loop in her dreams for quite some time. It was as if her mind was trying to warn her. Celene was Demeter, Penelope was Persephone, and Peter Hadley was Hades. She knew that this could only bring trouble. She kept seeing Hades overpower Persephone in her nightmares. The girl was kidnapped and taken away from her mother.

In this life, Celene still had Penny. She was not going to let him take her again. When the same nightmare woke Celene an hour before her alarm would have, she got up and cooked breakfast. There was no use in lying around trying to go back to sleep only to doze off minutes before the alarm sounded. She was alert now.

Celene had time to shower, get dressed, do her makeup, and make pancakes before Penny was out of bed.

“
You cooked?” Penny sat down and piled a couple of pancakes on her plate. She was used to grabbing toaster pastries or fruit on her way out the door.

“
I was an early riser today.” Celene sat down. She was turning the subject of Peter Hadley over in her head, trying to find the best angle from which to approach it.

“
Everything okay?” Penny asked.

Celene set down the jar of raspberry preserves. She looked across the table at her daughter. “We should talk.”

“
About what?”

“
I’d prefer you didn’t spend time alone with Peter Hadley.”

Penny put her fork down and stared at her mother for a long time. “Why?”

“
I’m worried about his history. Penny, he’s Hades. Don’t you think--”

“
He’s my friend,” Penny cut her off.

“
He’s dangerous. He has a record of being cruel and selfish and dishonest. If you look at his history, he’s a violent coward.”

“
I don’t see you quitting your job to go supervise the harvest.”

“
This isn’t about that,” she lied. “He spent a week in reform school for stabbing someone with a ball-point pen.”

“
In self-defense.”

Penny had never talked back to her mother like this before. Celene took a moment to recover. “Penny, I’m your mother, I only want what’s best for you.”

“
So you’re going to forbid me to see the one person I can talk to about all of this?” Her voice went shrill.

“
There are thirteen other members of The Pantheon besides you and Peter. There’s... Valerie! And why can’t you talk to your mother?”

“
Because you overreact and ban me from seeing my friends. He’s a nice guy, Mom!”

“
Nice? Penny? Do you know how Persephone got to be Queen of the Underworld? Do you?”

Penny hadn’t bothered to do any research on her past life. She liked her abilities, but the idea of a past life was too much to handle. She didn’t want to go digging. She wanted to forget about Persephone and Epimetheus and now Prometheus. She just wanted to worry about being a fourteen-year-old girl. That was more than enough to handle.

“
Hades kidnapped Persephone,” Celene said. “Peter kidnapped and raped you and then tricked you so you’d be trapped, so that you couldn’t see me.”

Penny stared down at her plate. She remembered fearing and resenting him in some of her dreams. Now she knew why.

“
Penny, I’m sorry,” Celene said. She wished Penny never had to know that, but their stories weren’t a secret. She was bound to hear the tale. She needed Penny to know now before she was hurt again. There was still hope.

The breakfast table was silent. Penny picked at her pancakes. After a moment Celene returned to spreading jam on her own breakfast and ate in silence.

“
Can I ride with you to school?” Penny asked as she rolled a bite of pancake in maple syrup.

“
Of course.”

It was a silent trip to school.

Penny spent the day avoiding Peter. She was still furious with her mother, but she was also extremely shaken by what had been revealed at breakfast. At lunch, Penny threw out most of her meal and went to the library. She got a copy of Ovid’s The Metamorphoses and skimmed through it. When she got to book five and found the passage on the rape of Persephone, her heart fell into her stomach. Had she not believed her mother before?

Penny shoved the book back on the shelf and left for the bathroom. She shut herself in a stall and leaned on the cubicle wall. Why didn’t she remember any of those stories? Could Peter really do that to her?

Jason Livingstone had spent the remainder of the day of the field trip at the police station giving a witness statement. The bus had been held back for nearly an hour until someone thought to tell the Olympia Heights chaperones what was going on. They left without him and the police paid for a cab back home.

The days following the incident, students had come in to his office with weaker excuses than normal, just to see if they could overhear anything about the murder. Now, a week later, things were finally quieting down.

Celene came into the office during her free period. It had been weeks since she had come to him for aspirin. She hadn’t been here since the first Pantheon meeting. Jason looked up from his newspaper, when he noticed her going to the unlocked medicine cabinet where he kept cough drops and over-the-counter drugs.

“
Good afternoon,” he said.

She nodded in reply. Celene fought with the childproof cap on the bottle and ended up cursing under her breath. Jason stood up and came around his desk, taking the bottle from her and opening it with ease. “What’s going on?” She looked tired. She looked like she was checked out for the day already.

“
I had to tell Penny, this morning.”

“
Tell her what?” he asked, his brow coming together.

Celene lowered her voice. She wasn’t sure how well sound carried into the other room. “I had to tell her exactly how she got to be Hades’ queen,” she said.

“
Oh.” Jason felt an uncomfortable knot in his stomach. “Did Peter do something?”

“
No,” she admitted, “not yet.”

“
She didn’t know?”

“
No, she doesn’t want to know. She’s doing her best to be as ignorant as she can about all of this. It’s not safe. She needs to be armed.”

“
She’s fourteen,” Jason said, dumping a pair of aspirin into his hand and dropping the pills into Celene’s palm. They were both whispering now. “High school is hard enough without adding superpowers and murderous Titans.”

“
I know, but that fact doesn’t make it any safer for her to go on living in a bubble.” It was the horrible irony of being a mother. She wanted to keep Penny safe and innocent forever. She didn’t want her to have to learn about the darker things in the world. But she needed Penny forewarned of what was out there to stop it from hurting her. There was just no winning.

“
How did she react?”