in front of her and caught it. It gave Hermes just enough time to rush past them and leap over the railing onto the stairs.
“Big sister’s on her way,” he said. “I’m going to love watching you explain this to her.”
Aidan growled and leapt for him. The tip of the broken bottle sliced through the back of Hermes’ shirt and into the skin but went no farther. He was out of the cellar and fleeing before Aidan even regained his balance.
Aidan ran up the stairs and out into the party.
“Aidan!” Cassandra shouted. She vaulted up the stairs and caught him at the open front door, staring into the night. “Don’t!”
He looked at her frightened face and dropped the bloody shard of bottle, then pulled her close.
“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She shook her head, and he felt her arms and down her back. “But he was one of them, wasn’t he? One of you. Where is he?”
“The fast-footed prick is probably a half mile away by now.”
She glanced over his shoulder. Andie and Henry had heard her yell; they were coming through the crowd, their faces concerned.
“I have to go after him,” he said.
“No.”
“I’m stronger than he is. I promise.”
“What about your sister? The big one he talked about.”
“I’m stronger than her too.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Come on. It might not be a lie. She’s dying, after all.” He kissed her quickly and ran out the door, black cape flying ridiculously behind him.
“Hey.” Sam poked his head out beside her. “What’s up? Where’s he going to so fast?”
“Family emergency,” said Cassandra, and walked down the front steps with Andie and Henry not far behind.
Andie snored. It was loud on a regular night, worse after having her lungs shoved into a corset for three hours. She slept in Cassandra’s bed while Cassandra lay on the floor in a sleeping bag, watching the pale light from the bulb over the driveway basketball court float up through her window. The dull thud of a rubber ball hitting pavement assured her that Henry couldn’t sleep either. She stared at the glowing red numbers of her alarm clock. They hadn’t advanced much since the last time she’d looked. Aidan hadn’t called, but she thought he was okay. She hoped he was. No certainty of his death had leaked into the dark space between her ears, anyway.
Cassandra sat up and threw the covers back, then grabbed her bathrobe and went downstairs to join Henry by the basketball hoop.
“Can I play?” Cassandra asked, closing the front door softly.
“Sure.” He tossed her the ball and she almost dropped it.
Basketball wasn’t their game. They were both surprisingly bad at it. But chasing down missed shots seemed like just the thing to tire them out and hopefully drive them to sleep. Cassandra made it all the way to
“I still don’t think he is what he says he is.” Henry took a shot and made it off the rim. “I mean, I know he jumped out that window, and he’s definitely strong. Superhuman, even. But a god? Come on.”
“You didn’t see them tonight,” said Cassandra. “You didn’t see the way Hermes moved. Or hear the things they said.”
Henry scoffed and threw a shot up into the backboard. It bounced off and Cassandra chased it down the driveway. She took her own shot, missed, and blew into her frozen hands. Touching the cold ball was starting to hurt.
“So what do you think he is, if not a god?”
Henry shrugged and dribbled absently. “A government experiment maybe. And now he’s got amnesia about it, or paranoid fantasies or whatever. It happens all the time.”
“Where?”
“TV.” Henry smirked. “To be honest, Cassie, I’m trying not to think about this too much.”
That was well and good for him. But she had to think about it. Because big sister was coming, whoever that was, and she was coming for her. “Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“You know how I won’t be psychic for much longer?”
Henry bounced the basketball, nodded. “Sure. Eighteen or whereabouts you always said. It’d just go up like a puff of smoke.” He drew up and took a shot; the ball dropped through the net and bounced off the driveway into the dead grass. “What about it?”
“Well, what if I was wrong? What if that dark spot in the future isn’t me not being psychic anymore? What if it’s me not being around anymore? What if I just—” She held her hands up and let them fall. “Die?”
Henry took a breath and let his shoulders slump. He still had traces of pirate eyeliner under his eyes and it gave him the look of a cartoon villain.
It didn’t surprise her that he was the one having the hardest time accepting Aidan being what he was. He was always so grounded, solid, and practical. A six-foot-tall rock people leaned on. Sometimes Cassandra wondered if he believed in her psychic stuff at all, or if he just said he did because he loved her.
After a second, Henry retrieved the ball from the grass. He shook his head.
“Nope.”
She smiled. “Nope, what?”
“Nope, that’s not going to happen.” He dribbled and passed her the ball. The impact stung her fingers.
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” he said, and took a defensive position, trying to get her to drive past him. “Maybe I’m psychic too.”
Aidan stood in the backyard of his parents’ house, leaned against one of their pine trees and listening for movement. The only thing he heard was a gentle wind and the soft squeak of his mother’s porch swing swaying slightly back and forth.
His adopted mother. The mother who was thousands of years too late to be his real mother. He’d never thought of her that way before. She’d always been Gloria, the woman who loved him enough to call him her son. And Ernie was always just his dad. But everything was coming unraveled. The way that Cassandra had looked at them through the window that day; he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
There wasn’t much time left. He’d fought against believing it ever since Cassandra’s visions had started. But denial didn’t do anyone any good. Not even a god. Especially not a god, when Athena was on her way. A fight was coming to him, and he had no idea whether he could win, no matter what he said to the contrary.
He looked down at his clenched fists. For the first time, they seemed pathetically weak. Maybe he’d been hiding for too long, passing as a human when he was anything but. He used to be one of the strongest gods to walk on Olympus: the god of the sun, the god of prophecy and the arts. But he was out of practice. Not so long ago, he would have had that little rat Hermes skewered and roasting over a pit with a snap of his fingers. He flexed his fists again. Maybe he really was growing weaker. Maybe he hadn’t escaped the curse that was killing the others after all.
“You’re not thinking of taking her away from here, are you?”
Aidan turned, ready to rip Hermes in half, but his anger dissipated as quickly as it came. It wouldn’t have been possible anyway. Hermes peeked out from behind another pine, his legs loaded on springs. If Aidan so much as pulled his fist back Hermes would run, too fast and too far to ever be caught.
“It would be a waste of time,” Hermes warned. “And she wouldn’t be safe.”
Aidan smiled ruefully. “Is she safe here?”
