Rise of the Blood

did.

“Get out,” I said to her.

She looked utterly dumbfounded. I was a woman. I should believe her. She turned watery eyes to Nick. I had to admit, she was quite the actress. “Please, you have to believe me. You have to help. What if he does it again and you’re not here to stop him?”

Nick took this one. “I don’t know the penalty here for filing a false police report, but in the States there’s jail time.”

Her eyes got really wide. “But, I’m telling the truth.”

“Uh huh.”

“Tell them,” she said, appealing to, of all people, Apollo himself. “I’ll drop the whole thing, if you’ll just —”

“No,” he said.

“Freeze,” I said, not prepared to take any more.

She froze, her mouth opened in mid-protest.

I looked from the girl in her ripped dress—sleek chestnut hair straightened to within an inch of its life falling in a shining curtain down to her waist, not at all mussed as if there’d been a struggle over her virtue—to Apollo— looking a lot less spooked now.

“I swear, I never touched her,” he said again.

I believed him. But still, she could cause trouble if she really wanted to. “I’m not sure the press will care. It’d be juicy enough to hurt you and the film Uncle Hector’s so invested in.”

Nick shook his head at me. “You can’t just go around freezing people.”

“What would you suggest?” I asked.

Because freezing her had been the most civil of my thoughts. The ease with which we could hide her body being the least. Not that I’d been serious about that idea.

“Sadly,” said Apollo, “this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. But last time was back in the States, and I was, uh, with someone already when the girl broke in.”

I rolled my eyes.

“We’re calling hotel security,” Nick cut in, offering that suggestion I’d asked for. “Or the police.”

Apollo and I exchanged a glance. That would be the by-the-book way to play it. It was also a likely path to accusations and tabloid headlines. We’d both been there and done that.

“Or I could switch clothes with the girl and we could put her out into the hallway,” I suggested.

Nick’s eyes narrowed at me, and I didn’t think it was just because of the disparity in our sizes. My clothes would likely swim on the girl. “If you strip her down, that’s assault.”

I sighed. I could see his point, even if I didn’t like it.

“Serena could cover for you,” I told Apollo. “You’re trying to bulk up your ‘romance’ to promote your film, right? Would she say she was with you when crazy-girl broke in?”

Nick threw his hands into the air and paced to the phone over on the desk. “You will not suborn perjury,” he said, reaching for the receiver.

I turned on him. “Oh, like you told Internal Affairs that Detective Lau flew off on the back of a dragon? Or that Zeus and Poseidon were ancient Greek gods?”

His tension didn’t ease. “I left things out. I didn’t lie,” he said. “And you,” he accused Apollo, “are awfully blase about this whole thing.”

Apollo looked as though he tried to grimace and couldn’t. “I feel like I’ve had Botox all over my body. I can barely move. My heart is struggling to beat. Look for me tomorrow and you may find me a grave man.”

My heart sank. It was a bad thing when an actor began quoting Shakespearean soliloquies. This one hadn’t turned out so well for Mercutio.

Crazy-girl twitched, and I demanded again that she freeze. One problem at a time.

“So what do we do?” I repeated.

“I’ll go have a talk with hotel security,” Nick announced, brooking no argument. “They need to know they have a breech in any case. I’ll tell them what we overheard and what we saw, and we’ll get this all worked out. You two…” He glared at each of us in turn. I felt like I was back in L.A., facing him across an interrogation table, back when we were more adversaries than anything. It hurt. “Try not to conspire while I’m gone.”

He about-faced and left, sucking much of the air out of the room with him.

Apollo and I looked at each other. He was…less than he had been without his typical glint and smirk to draw you in. His eyes had lost their sparkle. His mouth was set.

“I wish there was something I could do for you,” I said, meaning it wholeheartedly.

“I wish you could too. I guess this would be the time to mention you might have a point about Serena. Apparently, she’s already campaigning to have me replaced.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said, but if this petrification keeps up, I don’t see that they’ll have any choice but to find somebody new. It makes me wonder if she knows something we don’t about my chances of recovery.”

“So she knows your paralysis isn’t limited to…” My gaze dropped somewhere south of the border.

“It’s starting to become obvious.”

I hadn’t liked Serena from the start. It was probably terribly unprofessional of me to feel a little leap of joy at the idea of collaring her for the crimes against Apollo.

“I was planning to have Nick interview her. In the meantime—”

“Ambrosia?” he asked.

“How can you tell?”

“You’re shaking.”

I looked down at my hands. I hadn’t even noticed. Not good. Seriously not good. I wondered if Nick…of course he had. He was a detective. He noticed everything. Crud cakes.

“Do you have any with you, and would it help your situation?” I asked.

“No and no. Gods don’t need ambrosia to heal—not from anything natural. As for the unnatural, we can’t undo what another power has done…not unless it’s in our wheelhouse. In other words, Zeus could dispel a storm someone else raised, but he couldn’t return to water what Dionysus had made into wine. Make sense?”

“Sure, clear as mud. I think I need some kind of course in remedial mythology. You say ‘another power’. So it wouldn’t take a god to do this then?”

“Circe could have done it. Or some other enchantress. A few others. No, it wouldn’t take a god.”

“Gah, this just keeps getting better and better. Anything else I need to know? Any other potential players in this drama? Nymphs…banshees…Big Foot?”

“Nymphs, maybe. I’ve, uh, had run-ins with a few of them.” And by that, he meant liaisons, not all of which would have ended well. “Sirens are water divinities, so they’d be loyal to Poseidon. Can’t rule them out. Banshees are second cousins to the sirens, but they only predict the deaths others cause. As for Big Foot, you’ve got me. Maybe one of the giants still roaming the Earth?”

“Really?” I asked, momentarily sidetracked. “Whatever. I’ll talk to Serena, but in case we’re barking up the wrong tree—” Apollo gave me a dirty look, “—I need a list of every divinity you’ve pissed off in the last millennium. I can run them past Yiayia for last known whereabouts and find out who’s in the area.”

“Done,” he said.

“And the ambrosia—”

“Ask Hermes.”

“Hermes?”

He stared. “You haven’t figured it out? Tori, Hermes runs a worldwide messenger service. The only one as far as the ancients are concerned. Anything imported or exported he’s got a piece of the action.”

“So the Back to Earth movement—you think he knew about their secret ingredient?” We’d busted the Back to Earth cult just months ago. It had been run by Dionysus…