“When the Cyclops jumped me in England, they weren’t going for the kill. That’s probably why I got the better end of it. They wanted to take me alive, so I could be Hera’s Achilles-dowsing rod. So what do we do?” Odysseus asked. “Do we find him first? I can take you there. We could leave now.”
“No. Nobody finds him.” There was no point. He’d never fight for their side; there wouldn’t be enough blood to sate him. He would fight for Hera, for glory, and a place amongst the gods. If they went looking, they’d lead their enemies right to his doorstep. “I don’t want any part of him. He’s mad, and evil. He always was.”
Odysseus sighed. “No, he wasn’t. He was just an angry boy, caught up in your struggle. Like we all were.”
Athena nodded and bit her tongue on disagreement. He had known Achilles better than she had, after all.
“What about you? Why are you looking for your weapon? Planning to ‘eat’ Hera and Poseidon before they can eat you? You trying to save your own skin?”
She sighed. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing to say yes. It would be nice if Hermes didn’t have to die.” She chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just something Hermes said back in Utah. He called us ‘the last of the sane gods’ and said I had my cape of Justice on again. Seemed stupid. But after what Hera did in Chicago…” She looked down, and her voice grew somber. “The world doesn’t need that running around, I suppose. The world has enough of
“We need to get out of here.” She struck her fist against the softening wood of the picnic table. How long did it take to switch loads on a truck anyway? She didn’t even know where Craig was. Eyeballing the red Freightliner, she wondered just how hard it would be to steal it and how fast it would go.
“Don’t,” Odysseus said. “Just, don’t. We’re not hijacking a semi.”
Athena smiled. Then she coughed. At first it was just a light tickle in her throat, but it got worse. She felt something moving, coming loose down in her right lung. It itched. She coughed harder, until she was bent over, hacking.
“Athena!” Odysseus held her by the shoulder. She took great, whooping breaths; her coughs sounded like someone ripping a bed sheet.
Finally she sputtered. She’d managed to dislodge it and work it up her throat. Her fingers fished around on her tongue, and held the feather in front of her face.
Just one, and mostly white, with a little brown speckling at the edges. Only the shallowest bit of the left side had any blood or tissue stuck to it. The rest was just wet.
“Don’t get upset,” she said shakily. “It’s just a small one. Hardly attached to anything.”
Odysseus stared at it before she crushed it in her fist and flung it off into the grass.
“How long do you think you have?” he asked.
Athena smiled, still a little breathless. “Forever.”
13
THINGS YOU LOSE
The day after the Halloween party, Cassandra sat around the kitchen table with Andie and Henry. Henry crunched through M&M’s with circles under his eyes so dark they looked like bruises. Andie and Cassandra split their third Kit Kat. Andie’s leg bounced up and down at a jittery pace, and even though she’d showered her costume makeup off an hour ago, Cassandra knew she still looked dead.
“This is too much chocolate on too little sleep,” Henry muttered. But he reached back into the bowl anyway.
“You should stop. Dad wants you to help rake the yard later.”
“Ha-ha,” Andie said between chews.
“You wanna help too?”
Andie dropped the candy bar. “Yeah, sure.” She sighed, and stretched in the chair. “I’ll tell you one thing. That is the last time I lace these bad boys up into a corset. How did women wear those, anyway?”
Nobody answered. Henry’s eyes drifted over Andie’s chest and he looked almost disappointed by the news. Cassandra kicked him in the shin.
She glanced out the window while Andie and Henry talked about taking naps. The day was gray, pale, and disgusting. Leaves shedded off of the trees like pieces of dead skin and frost clung to the brown grass and frozen dirt. Everything was so cold. Cold to the point of cracking.
Henry stood and turned on the TV on the kitchen counter, just a small-screen Panasonic their mother liked to listen to while she cooked. It was tuned to CNN and they were broadcasting more coverage of the attack in Chicago. This time it was footage taken from someone’s camera phone. The video was shaky, shot while running backwards. The collapsed building went in and out of frame, only one half of it visible through the clouds of dust.
“Can you change that? It’s pretty much the last thing I want to see.” She still didn’t know why Hermes and his sister had blown up the warehouse. Not for sure. But he sure as hell hadn’t seemed very sorry about it when she’d seen him.
Henry turned the whole thing off and leaned over the sink to look out the window.
“Hey, it’s Aidan.”
Cassandra stood just in time to see his head pass by the glass, a few seconds before he knocked and came through the front door. His eyes found hers and he smiled. There wasn’t a scratch on him. He was safe. She hadn’t realized how scared she’d been. Her heart thumped like she’d run a mile.
“Aidan!” Cassandra’s dad walked down the hall and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re just in time to rake.” He sipped his coffee and raised his brows at the rest of them in the kitchen. “With so many bright-eyed helpers it should only take a few hours.”
“Sure thing, Tom.” Aidan smiled. “Do you have leaf bags?”
“In the garage. I’ll go get the rakes. You guys meet me out there in five minutes.”
After ten pulls on her rake, Cassandra felt ready to fall over. They were spread out in the backyard, dragging damp brown and yellow leaves into sad-looking piles. Wetness made the piles heavy and flat, and far too cold to jump in.
“Here, let’s get this one.” Aidan handed her a leaf bag and she held it open while he used their two rakes to gather leaves and stuff them inside. Cassandra looked over her shoulder at her dad, who saw and flashed a smile.
“It feels like lying now,” she said.
“What does?”
“Not telling my parents. It didn’t before, because it didn’t feel real. But Hermes was real last night. They’re really here. So now it feels like lying.”
“The less they know, the safer they’ll be.” He didn’t look at her when he said it.
“Cassandra?”
“Yeah?” She let go of the bag and took her rake back to start the next pile.
“We should think about leaving soon.”
Her rake stopped. There was no pretending that she hadn’t heard, and really no pretending that she hadn’t known, deep down. Not in the dark space in her mind but someplace lower: in her heart, or the pit of her stomach. She looked again at her dad, and at Andie and Henry. They were throwing leaves at the dog, who barked and raced around them in circles. Her mom watched through the kitchen window while she put a casserole together for lunch.
She and Aidan would have to leave. To run. She didn’t know why she felt so shocked; it wasn’t like they’d
