Antigoddess

after Hermes flashed his puppy-dog eyes. He’d had enough of hoboing.

“Check out the fog,” he said. “It’s like a Van Halen video.” He air guitared, and she smiled in spite of herself. “Nobody uses fog machines anymore. Except I saw the Foo Fighters do it last year. Mostly as a joke.”

Athena tossed her combed hair back over her shoulder. A large, wet stain had soaked into the front of her gray t-shirt. She tapped at the antique silver buckle that adorned her brown leather belt.

“Nice,” Hermes commented. “Where’d you pick it up?”

“Thrift shop in Albuquerque,” she replied. “Now try to focus.”

“Fine,” he said, and left the room. “I remember Circe. Of course I do. She was a sorceress, had a habit of enchanting men and turning them into beasts. But unlike you, I haven’t stayed in touch with the descendants of times gone by.” Sounds came of him rifling through his pack, pulling out clothes and putting them on.

“I haven’t stayed in touch with them either,” she said. “But it doesn’t hurt to stay in the know. Circe herself is dead, obviously, but her island remains, in an altered state. Witches of her tradition have lived in covens through the centuries, in Greece, then later France, and now here in Middle America.”

“Chicago’s an underrated town,” he observed. “Or maybe I just like the wind.” He popped his head back into the bathroom, dressed now in a brown hooded sweatshirt. “They’re not still turning men into animals, are they?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Athena said, and smiled.

* * *

The witches had gone corporate. They occupied two floors of a warehouse on the lower east side. The sign on the building read THE THREE SISTERS, but in truth, over twenty women lived and worked within. Athena and Hermes entered the lobby, which was done up chicly in marble and brushed chrome. The receptionist, one of those bookish, sexy types with carefully pinned hair, glasses, and a low-cut blouse, gestured to the elevator at once. She watched them calmly. Athena barely saw her pick up the phone as her view was reduced to a slit by the closing doors.

Good, she thought. They know who we are. It would make things easier; eliminate annoying explanations and demands for proof. It also lent faith to the fact that the witches still had power, a question that had plagued Athena since her decision to come to them. A millennium was a long time to foster a mystical thing. The reduction in her own strength was evidence of that.

The elevator reached the upper level, and the doors opened on a wooden crate-gate, the type often found in warehouses. The rest of the interior had been completely redone: impressionist art hung on the plastered and painted walls, and marble columns stretched to the ceiling, but apparently the wooden gate had been left for ambience. Athena bent down and lifted it with a soft whirr, and they stepped into the center of a very large reception area. A circular brushed-chrome desk sat ahead, and behind it a receptionist so similar to the girl downstairs that one might have been just a hologram of the other. On the wall, a row of plush, cushioned sofas in shades of cream and gray rested. In them sat not customers but girls, beautiful girls in tight, attractive clothing, who looked at them with expressions of curiosity and obvious welcome.

“Holy shit, it’s an escort service,” said Hermes.

“And not only that.”

They turned to find a girl nearly as tall as Athena standing beside them in a finely cut black suit. Hermes jumped, and she smiled at him warmly.

“I am Celine,” she said, and Athena recognized a name passed down through generations. She offered her hand, and both shook it. Athena was surprised to see Hermes blushing. Celine was strikingly beautiful, with shining red hair, peach skin, and legs that seemed to stretch for miles beneath the elegantly tailored skirt, but Hermes’ tastes rarely ran toward women.

“Do you know who we are?” Athena asked.

“I know only that you are of the old ones,” Celine replied. There was a trace of a French accent in her voice, as soft as an echo. “Mareden, the girl in the lobby, is one of the strongest telepaths in the world. She phoned a moment ago to say that two visitors were here whom she could not see into. Only those among the old ones could be so strong. We know only that.”

Athena scanned the room again. Celine had come from a doorway to their left. The girls on the sofas had ceased to stare and had gone back to posing with lithe, languorous grace. Beauty was everywhere. The very air was perfumed with some soft, floral scent. The room was meant to seduce, to comfort, and to quicken the pulse. When Hermes went to introduce himself, she stopped him with a hand on his forearm.

“Have you seen many old ones?” Athena asked casually.

“Never in my life,” Celine replied. That gentle smile, the graceful squaring of her shoulders. “Until two days ago. When one showed up on our doorstep, beaten nearly to death. Is it he whom you are looking for?”

Athena and Hermes exchanged a look. “Can you take us to him?” they asked together.

Celine laughed softly. “But of course. However, you may find him … indisposed.”

* * *

They were led down a long hallway, through a conference room with a high-tech projector and glass walls, and into the back area of the warehouse, which was a system of cubicles, what looked like an office kitchen with a sink and refrigerator, and several closed doors. While they walked, Celine talked to them of The Three Sisters.

“We are, as you so quickly observed, an escort company,” she said. “But not only that. Twenty-three girls live and work in this space, performing a variety of tasks, including high-end mystic consultation for many businesses you would know by name. Others manage our worldwide distribution department of occult supplies and books, most of which are written here, in house.”

“High-end mystic consultation?” Hermes asked skeptically.

“Oui.” Celine smiled. “Those who have the most power are the most inclined to believe in more power, in endless power. They are also the most desperate, the most fearful of losing everything. And so they pay us—for spells, for charming girls, for feng shui, in some cases.”

“And you have twenty-some girls, all living and working here?”

“Oui. Vingt-trois. Twenty-three. Our apartments and quarters are downstairs, and in the basement. We are all coven members, all descendants of Circe and her clan. Everything you see here”—she gestured around her, to the walls, the floors, the art and sculpture that adorned it—“comes from the coven, and everything we make goes back into it.”

Athena listened with half an ear. Her mind raced ahead, scrutinizing every closed door. This old one, who was he? Who would they walk in and find? Every muscle in her body was tensed and ready for the possibility of a trap. Her eyes and ears tuned to every movement, every sound. Beside her, Hermes chatted with Celine, but she knew he was ready as well.

This reeks of Aphrodite. He feels it too.

Celine moved slightly farther ahead of them and pivoted. They had come to the end of the warehouse, to another elevator. She crossed her arms over her chest as they waited for it.

“Will you not tell me your names?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “We are your hosts, you our guests. It is my right to ask this question, is it not?”

The elevator arrived with a soft ding. They stepped inside.

“Who do you think we are?” Athena asked. She was genuinely curious. No mortal should recognize her, or Hermes either. They looked nothing like any of their paintings and statues. No vacant eyes or marble butt cheeks.

The question, when Celine posed it, had an innocent ring, but her face darkened, becoming almost trancelike. Her pupils dilated and for a moment her hair swayed back and forth like a dancing mass of red snakes. She looked at neither Athena nor Hermes for several seconds. When the elevator doors opened on the basement level, her eyelids closed. When they opened, her eyes were back to normal.

“Please,” she said, and motioned for them to leave the elevator. “This is our personal level. We do not conduct business here.”

“But this is where you’ve taken the old one?”

For a moment Celine hesitated and seemed almost fearful. “You must understand,” she said carefully. “He was very badly injured when he came to us. He had been traveling for such a long time. He was weary; he needed