“It’s my mom.” The first call. “I’m shutting it off. I can’t— I don’t want to listen to her messages. I’d want to call her back too bad.” She stuffed it back into her pocket. After a second, Henry pulled his out and shut it off too. He sighed.
“Are you sure you don’t want to let Aidan choke you out?”
Andie laughed. “What for? You want me to be in love with you?”
“No.” Henry snorted and shuffled his feet. “It just might be nice to feel like we knew what we were doing. Like maybe we’d know how to fight or something. Besides, it can’t be all that weird. Cassandra’s still Cassandra.”
Andie shrugged. “I guess so. But I don’t see what good it’d do. So you’d know how to use a sword. And I might know how to shoot an arrow or something. Big deal. The flipping Mustang’s a more useful weapon. Besides, you’d also remember what it was like to die with a spear in your chest. Doesn’t sound like fun.”
“It might give us a better chance.” The fuel nozzle clicked off, and Henry pulled it out and put the gas cap back on.
“I’m just not doing it. I—” She exhaled. “I’d rather die as me.”
“You’re not going to die, Andie.”
“Look at us, Henry. Look at what we’re doing. None of us knows what’s going to happen. Not even Cassandra, and she’s frickin’ psychic.”
Cassandra opened the car door and stepped out. The day was bright and cold. The parking lot of the travel plaza they’d stopped at was already busy, filled with the sounds of idling engines and the scents of oil and gasoline. She stretched her back and legs and cracked her neck.
“Look who’s up. Want to go in and grab something to eat? Aidan’s in there already, but he never knows what to get you.” Andie gestured behind them, toward the Sunoco convenience store.
“Sure.” Cassandra smiled. “You coming, Henry?”
“I’ll stay with the car. Can you grab me a Chuckwagon sandwich?”
They walked through the aisles of motor oil and cold medicine, toward the cold cases in the back. Andie craned her neck toward the hot chocolate and cappuccino machines. It felt too early for soda, but they stocked up anyway, grabbing bottles of Mountain Dew and Diet Coke. Aidan walked up holding both a Grape and an Orange Crush. Cassandra could never decide which she wanted.
“I’ve got a couple of breakfast burritos in the microwave. We should really eat on the road.”
Cassandra nodded, even though the thought of getting back into the car so soon made her want to scream and kick her feet. She’d better get used to it. They had days and days of car ahead of them. Who knew how far they’d have to run before they felt safe enough to get a motel room? Who knew how far they’d have to go before Aidan felt safe enough to sleep?
There was a short line for the cash register, and it took extra time as the guy in front of them wanted to cash in scratch-off lottery tickets and buy several more of each different type. Cassandra took the opportunity to stretch and flex her legs as much as she could. She wouldn’t even have noticed the footage playing on the TV mounted in the corner had the clerk not taken it off mute and turned up the volume.
At first she thought it was a rebroadcast of the Chicago explosion. The piles of debris and clouds of dust looked so similar. But this structure was more twisted; there was more iron to it, and the destruction hadn’t been as complete. The frame of half of one of the buildings was still visible, charred and jagged. And the “live” tag blinked in the corner of the screen.
“My god,” she heard someone say. The camera panned over fire trucks and ambulances, flashing red and yellow lights everywhere. People were panicked and crying. On the periphery of every camera angle there was blood: someone walking with gauze pressed to their head, paramedics running past with stretchers.
“Where is that?” asked Aidan, and the guy with the lottery tickets said, “Somewhere in Philadelphia.”
Philadelphia. The same way they’d been heading.
Aidan threw two twenties down on the counter and nudged Cassandra and Andie toward the door. “It’s more than enough for what we got,” he said when Andie looked worried. She needn’t have bothered. No one even looked their way when the bell dinged to announce their exit.
Andie jogged ahead with Henry’s Mountain Dew and Chuckwagon.
“It was them, wasn’t it,” Cassandra said.
“I think so.”
“Of course it was. It was just like Chicago.” She clenched her fists, felt heat behind her eyes. “How many people do you think died this time? Were they people who knew, like the witches, or were they just regular people?”
“It doesn’t matter if they knew or not. She killed them.” Aidan’s face was a mix of blank and terror. “She’s insane.”
Cold fear clamped around Cassandra’s heart. If Hera found them, they wouldn’t have a chance.
Walking back to the Mustang, her feet felt like lead. She couldn’t hear anything. The images of smoke and blood took over her senses. She didn’t see the figure shuffling toward her until he was close enough to touch. Close enough to smell.
He stank of urine and something faintly medicinal. He wore the clothes of a vagabond, stained and torn, just a green sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. The sides of his Velcro tennis shoes had burst. He giggled and pointed at her. Stringy brown hair trailed along his hollow cheekbones, and underneath the shock she felt sadness. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.
“She’ll have you.” His grin stretched, showing every black-stained tooth in his mouth. “She’ll have you now.”
“What?” Cassandra asked. “Are you all right?”
The man’s eyes widened, stretching impossibly until it seemed that his lids had retracted into his skull. His hazel green eyes trembled and skittered wildly back and forth—until all at once, they were blue.
Aidan grabbed Cassandra and pulled her behind him.
“What?”
“I know those eyes. Even half mad and sick with disease, I would know them anywhere. Aphrodite.”
Cassandra looked toward the car. Andie and Henry stood behind the wide open door, their faces scared and confused. She tried to drag Aidan away, but he wouldn’t budge. He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him around the side of the Sunoco station. Cassandra hesitated, then followed. She rounded the corner just in time to see the man’s body buckle at Aidan’s feet.
“No,” she breathed. He took her by the arm.
“Walk, don’t run.”
“Where are we going to go now?” Cassandra asked, just before the vision struck.
It sent her to her knees. Pressure squeezed down hard on her arms, hard enough to crack the bones. The world went by in flashes, whipping from right to left. She saw trees, a flash of blue sky. Ice-blue eyes beneath a crown of dark gold hair. Hera laughed as she wrenched her back and forth and lifted her up high. The sky whipped past, like leaning her head back on a playground swing. Panic took hold and her fists connected, digging into Hera’s strange surface, soft and hard, warm flesh dotted through with granite. And then the ground rushed back. She felt her head strike pavement and heard something crack. After that, everything went dark.
“Cassandra.” Aidan shook her gently. They had to move; people had seen her fall from inside the gas station and were starting to come out to help. The clerk was on the phone.
She gripped his arms and let him pull her up. Her head felt heavy. It seemed like she could feel the blood sloshing around inside it.
“We’re okay,” he called to the people coming toward them. “She’s okay. She just slipped.”
“Aidan. I saw.”
“What? What did you see?” He watched in horror as blood began to drip from her nose.
“I saw Hera. I saw her kill me.”
He scooped her up and ran to the Mustang. “No. Everything’s going to be fine. She’s not going to touch you.” He shouted at Andie and Henry to get in the car, and put Cassandra gently into the passenger seat. The tires squealed as he pulled out onto the on-ramp.
“What? What’s happening?” Andie gripped the back of Cassandra’s seat.
“They found us. So easily. They’re stronger than I am. Stronger than Athena is.” Aidan mumbled. He drove
