Rise of the Blood

“No buts.” She put her hand to my back and virtually propelled me through the doors, knowing I wouldn’t dare hip check her after she’d helped me take down a killer cult and rescue Uncle Christos just last month.

A woman with the longest, straightest, whitest-blonde hair I’ve ever seen rushed out from behind a counter at the sight of Christie, gripped her by the shoulders and gave her an air kiss to each cheek, which Christie returned. Me, I was too busy watching to be sure she wouldn’t accidentally puncture Christie’s flesh with her dagger-like nails—gold swirled with black.

“Chi Chi,” Christie said, stepping back and turning talon-lady toward me. “This is my dear friend Tori. She’s a blank slate. I want to give her the works.”

Chi Chi eyed me, her brown eyes as dark as her hair was light. It was a striking combination, but her diamond-studded nose ring distracted from it all, focusing attention on the wrong part of her facial landscape. Apparently, I had my own pause button—Chi Chi’s gaze hadn’t dropped any lower than my brows.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” she said to Christie. “I think we start with the threading.”

“Threading?” I asked, but not with actual fear. Absolutely not.

“Of the brows,” Christie explained. “They’re a little…untamed.”

I imagined whips, Chi Chi in full lion tamer regalia. I suspected she could take me in a cage match.

“Um, okay.” Show no fear, I reminded myself.

“We’d better get started.”

As she led me away, I looked over my shoulder at Christie for reassurance. She gave me a double thumbs- up and turned toward another…stylist? masochist? glamscaper?…who was coming to take her away, ha, ha. I wondered what Christie was having done, then decided I didn’t really want to know. She was due for some kind of swimsuit shoot in the French Riviera around the time I’d be in Greece enduring Bridezilla and my crazy clan. I assumed scary words like Brazilian were in order. The fact that I even knew a Brazilian wasn’t just someone from Brazil meant I’d been associating with Christie for far too long.

I survived the eyebrow threading, but the facial… I wondered why the guys at Guantanamo Bay bothered with water-boarding when extractions seemed so much easier and, apparently, less controversial. Having a young thing with too much bosom leaning over me with a telescopic lens that made molehills into mountains on the level of Vesuvius was not my idea of a good time. Then she squeezed. I nearly erupted right out of my chair.

“Ow! What did you do, file your nails to points?” I asked, batting her hand away when she came back for another round.

“Some of your pores are impacted. When was the last time you had a facial? Do you exfoliate?”

“Exfoliate? Do I look like a tree? Wait, don’t answer that.” With my hair, I definitely tended toward bushy.

Brittany, as she’d introduced herself when I entered her lair, pushed me back into the rack…er, chair…with a strength that said she could probably bench press me and the horse I rode in on. I’d fought gods and goddesses, but Brittany…clearly she was a force to be reckoned with.

“It will go faster if you stay still.”

Don’t struggle, said the spider to the fly.

I crossed my arms over my own much-smaller chest and tried for stoicism. I failed miserably.

Afterward, I lay there with cucumbers on my eyes and some sort of soothing or detoxifying or gods-knew- what-kind of balm on my skin when Katy Perry’s “California Girls” suddenly blared right in my face. See, torture. I was pretty sure Chi Chi’s had cornered the market.

Then I realized that all the music I’d heard so far had been low key and new-agey. This was definitely not on the menu. It wasn’t coming from my phone, which would melt to slag if I’d ever made it ring out a Katy Perry song. Any self-respecting phone would.

I peeled a cucumber off one eye and squinted around me. An eye stared back—huge, golden brown, long lashed. I jumped out of my chair, and there was no Brittany to hold me back. The other slice of cucumber flopped to the floor.

The music squealed to a halt and a “Whoa!” issued from the magnifying lens that had been right above my head. The eye pulled back to reveal brows, hairline, cheek and, finally, a full face— Hermes, god of mischief.

“So not a good look for you, agape,” he said, eying me top to toenails. “Your pores are the size of—”

“Would everyone stop obsessing about my pores?” I nearly shouted.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I’d hit a sore spot.”

I forced myself to breathe slowly and count to five. Bashing the magnifying glass would only hurt my hand. Hitting Hermes himself would be so much more satisfying. He’d scared me half to death.

“What do you want?” I asked. “And get to the point? I’m relaxing here.”

“Yeah, you look really relaxed. Maybe a nice massage?”

He waggled brows at me that not only hadn’t been threaded, but were threatening to merge and mate with his hairline.

“Pass.” For all I knew that was next on Christie’s menu of masochism. “The point?”

“Oh, you’re no fun. The point is, you owe me. I’m here to collect.”

“I owe you for what?”

“Keeping your friends safe during the last battle.”

“You mean locking them in the bathroom?”

“Did they escape unscathed?”

“Yes,” I answered reluctantly.

“Then I did my job.”

Crap. It was impossible to win an argument with the god of mischief. By the time I was born he’d already had thousands of years of talking his way into and out of trouble.

“Fine. What do you want?”

“Her number.”

“Whose number?”

“Your friend.”

“Tori,” Christie’s voice carried from outside the room Brittany had tucked me into, far enough back, I’d have thought no one could hear me scream, let alone converse with ancient pains in the butt. “You all right? I hear voices.”

Cerberus crap. A big steaming pile.

“I’m okay. Just…watching a video on my phone.”

“You’re supposed to be relaxing.”

“Let her in!” Hermes said gleefully. “Three’s a party.” Then he gave me that all-over look again. “Hmm, maybe not. Though you do clean up pretty well.”

“Gee, thanks,” I mumbled.

“What’s that?” Christie asked.

“Nothing. I’ll shut it down.”

“Uh, okay. It’s just…the girls thought you might be talking to yourself. They were worried.”

Great, I was a crazy talking, walking disaster with pores the size of volcanic craters. Could the day get any better?

“How about that number?” Hermes asked.

I glared at his face in the magnifying mirror. “I don’t pimp out my friends,” I said in a hush.

“So who’s asking you to?”

“You’re a god. You can’t get her number for yourself?”

“She’s unlisted.”

I wanted to smack my head on something—hard—but it would probably leave a mark Brittany would feel compelled to fix. I didn’t think I’d survive it.

I thought about Hermes’s request. If I denied it, would he turn up in Christie’s bathroom mirror as she stepped out of the shower? It was exactly the sort of thing he’d do. Maybe the fact that he wanted to start out a little more conventionally was a good sign, something to be encouraged? As if Hermes needed