Rise of the Blood

side of the city, and the view…stunning didn’t even begin to cover it.

But I wasn’t there for the view. In fact, I’d have been just as happy to turn tail and run.

The party was in full swing and none of it safely inside the restaurant. All of the partygoers were packed together on the terrace balcony enjoying the beautiful evening and the city’s most amazing sights. I took a deep breath, then another, trying to get my panicked reaction under control. Just the thought of stepping out onto that balcony—so high, a dead drop below, teeming with people who might accidentally jostle me over the edge… I knew it was irrational, that the hotel would have built the balcony walls high enough to prevent that, but fears weren’t rational, and heights…that was a phobia pure and simple. I didn’t look out the windows in airplanes. I’d never climb to the top of the Empire State Building, and I didn’t want any part of that balcony.

Still, Yiayia and answers. It was a toss up which would be stronger, my fear or my curiosity.

I made myself take a step, then another. And another. Toward the balcony. Toward the press of people, looking for familiar faces to latch on to. I didn’t recognize a good half of the people, and avoided everyone’s gaze, familiar or not, in my search for Yiayia. I didn’t see her. I ignored the waiter who stepped in front of me offering cocktails and stopped dead when I heard a tinkling little laugh. I knew that laugh. My head whipped around searching for the source, and I found her up against the terrace rail—my best friend Christie, and right beside her, hand resting on the small of her back, was Hermes.

Apparently, I’d found the friends Yiayia was talking about. Some of the tension eased up out of my shoulders, as my most immediate sense of pending doom started to ebb. I should have known from the lack of internal alarms that Yiayia couldn’t have been talking about Zeus and Poseidon, but how could I ever have guessed it would be Hermes and Christie?

“Christie?” I said, raising my voice to carry.

She turned from the rail and spotted me even from across the terrace. A smile burst over her face. “You’re here!”

The party seemed to part for her, and then she was kissing me on both cheeks in the European way.

“I’m here,” I answered. No debating that. “But why are you? Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what about your big shoot over in the Riviera?”

“I’ll get there! But it’s days away. Usually I get in a few days early to acclimate, but Greece…France…close enough! When your friend called and offered up his private jet—well, that beats a commercial flight any old time.”

I eyed Hermes. “Private jet?” I asked.

“Being the CEO of a worldwide messenger service has its perks.”

“What I don’t get is why you didn’t take advantage,” Christie said.

I wondered what story he’d given her, but all I got from the look on his face was a challenge. Was I going to blow his cover or maintain his secret identity? There was no fear of the outcome, only interest.

“Yeah,” he said prodding. “You know you can take advantage of me any time.”

Christie swatted at him. “Oh, you!” Like she’d already grown used to his flirting. Like it was old hat. Like it was cute. I gave Hermes the hairy eyeball.

“My tickets were non-refundable,” I lied…or not. Who knew with airline travel these days?

“Oh, well—”

“Can I get you girls a drink?” Hermes asked, sliding a hand down Christie’s back in a way that made me want to slap him. Setting them up…worst idea ever. “Tori, you look like you could use one.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Probably two of the more dangerous words ever spoken. I could just imagine him making it a double, but he was off like a shot before I could take it back.

“Oh. My. God. Why didn’t you tell me about him sooner?” Christie gushed the second he was out of earshot. “You’ve been holding out on me! I mean, sure I’d met him in the middle of all the insanity in San Francisco, but not met him, met him.” I was sure that made sense in her head, if not so much when it came out of her mouth. “And he’s so charming!”

“He is?”

“You don’t see it? How do you not see it?” she gasped.

“Well, of course, I mean, I just think of him more like a brother—”

And speak of the devil. “There you are!” A bearlike arm wrapped around my shoulders. “The prodigal sister returns!” Spiro slurred. He squeezed me too tightly and breathed his beery breath into my ear. “Who is this gorgeous creature you’re chatting up?”

Spiro would see it that way. Last I’d seen him, he’d been hopping mad about me exposing his little love nest with Lenny Rialto’s new wife. I hadn’t meant to reveal it, but that didn’t change the pyrotechnics that resulted and nearly got my family expelled from the circus. It had only been smoothed over with a lot of ouzo, guy talk and, I suspected but couldn’t prove, my brother subsequently seducing Lenny himself when they were in their cups. Oh, and the decision to let me go. Me and only me, for kicking over the whole hornet’s nest.

Rumor had it that our family line had started with the god Pan beer-goggling one of the immortal gorgons. If I’d taken after Medusa’s half of the family with my gorgon glare, Spiro had definitely taken after Pan’s with his libido. If it was pretty and over the age of consent, it was fair game.

“She’s off limits,” I stage-whispered back so that Christie would overhear.

Hermes reappeared at her side as if on cue. “Ouzo,” he said, handing me a glass. “And a white wine spritzer for you,” he continued, bowing to present it to Christie. A spritzer. Probably the girliest of all girlie drinks.

“Where’s Yiayia?” I asked Spiro, trying to distract him from Christie, especially with the god of chaos taking it all in. The last thing any of us needed was him having fun at my brother’s expense. “I tried to call her, but —”

The look of I-know-something-you-don’t-know that flashed across Spiro’s face was not comforting.

“Let me guess, it went to voicemail? She’s probably off with her new—cough— paramour.”

He actually said cough. But that wasn’t the startling part. Yiayia. Dating again. It was… Pappous was barely in his grave…barely two years in his grave, anyway, and I’d thought… Well, I guess I thought that all of her crazy obsessions had taken his place. I couldn’t imagine another person filling it.

“Her what?” As if I’d misheard.

“Anipsi!” Yiayia’s voice rang out behind me, cutting through the babble of the party all around the terrace.

I turned and…and…stared. Every bit as paralyzed as if she’d hit me with the gorgon glare. Yiayia and a young man. Young for her, anyway, by at least twenty years, and with a beard fully as long as her own, starting from some truly impressive mutton chops, flowing down over his chest and out to the sides in a thick handlebar mustache. All of it flaming red. He wasn’t wearing a kilt and a tam, but he might as well have been. He looked like he’d stepped straight away from the Scottish highlands.

Yiayia embraced me, her beard tickling my ear as I hugged her back. She took after the gorgon side of the family for sure, which was how she’d gotten the bearded lady gig with Rialto Bros. When I stepped out of her arms, I noticed that her eyes were glowing. Not literally, like Serena’s, but with happiness.

“Anipsi, let me introduce you to Fergus. Fergus, my favorite granddaughter, Tori.”

Fergus smiled, or so I assumed by the twitching of his facial hair. I couldn’t actually glimpse lips or teeth. I held out a hand and he used it to pull me in for a bear hug, thumping me gently on the back.

“Any relation of Lorelei’s…” I’d known they must be on a first name basis, but still hearing her given name on his lips sounded odd.

Plus, my brain stuck on the question of how on earth they found each other’s lips to kiss. While I tried to steer quickly away from that thought (avert! avert! avert! I insisted, scrambling all my brain cells to turn that ship around), I couldn’t help but wonder about the Velcro effect. Did it take real effort to disengage? Ack!