A musical chime played as Artemis pushed open the heavy glass door into Cornucopia. She pressed a hand against her hip, looking around the place haughtily as she removed her sunglasses. Two floor assistants made a beeline for her, eager to sell Artemis some fermented bull penis or whatever it was that they carried there.
“Stocking up for a party?” said the first assistant, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. “I can recommend an excellent Spanish cava.”
The other assistant chuckled, his hand fluttering at his chest. “Which will go perfectly with our tapas assortment. Might I suggest pairing it with a delicious morcilla blood sausage?”
Artemis, queen of Snacky Yum-Yums and a goddess with very few fucks to ever give, pushed her hair back and sniffed. “Actually, I was looking for something a little more starchy. Do you have any bagels?” She looked at the rest of us, grinning proudly to herself. “Poppy seed, maybe?”
The assistants looked as if Artemis had asked them to give her a dead puppy. “I’m afraid we don’t carry bagels, ma’am.”
Artemis’s grin was starting to strain her, the muscles in her neck taut as her eyes flitted from the assistants, to Florian, and back. “Are you sure? Poppy seed? Poppies?”
“Oh,” Florian said, finally understanding. “Duh.” He raised his hand, a tiny pile of powder already waiting in his palm, and blew in the assistants’ faces. The two of them hit the ground before you could say “farm to table.”
“Security,” someone yelled, a woman stationed by the cash register. Florian admittedly looked a little silly running through the shop while cradling a handful of powder, but he knocked out the rest of the staff, too. He had almost been right. There were eight of them in all. Samyaza had been right, too. Some of them were just people doing their jobs.
Artemis stretched her arms out as she talked to Florian. “What the hell was that? Poppy seeds. That was your cue.”
Florian scratched the back of his head. “I really thought you wanted those bagels.”
“Sis,” Apollo said, taking her by the shoulders into a one-armed hug. “Honestly, to be fair, that was really dumb.”
Artemis shrugged him off. “No, you’re dumb. Arm yourselves, the blond one called for security.” She held her hands out as if she was nocking an arrow in a bow, and both implements materialized out of thin air, grasped comfortably in her fingers. “Speaking of security, I should have thought of this first.”
Plucking her bowstring like a harp, it took Artemis mere seconds to disable the two security cameras watching the shop floor. She shrugged.
‘They might have caught us on camera already,” Samyaza said.
“Big deal. We don’t exist to anyone in Valero, anyway.” Artemis tossed her hair. “Never need to leave Paradise. I’ve got enough snacks to last a lifetime.”
I snapped my fingers. “So that’s why you demand those cheesy snacks for offerings.”
She grinned, tapping the side of her nose. “To build my stockpile. Now you’re catching on.”
Samyaza’s voice cut through the store. “Everybody, focus,” he said sternly. “I hear nothing from the back. Something’s up. This isn’t right.”
We all turned towards the double doors that presumably led into the back of house. My stomach went into knots at the thought of going in there, of what was waiting. Schrödinger’s freezer, you know? But we had to find out.
Samyaza led the way, stepping over the sleeping bodies of Cornucopia’s floor staff, then pushing the double doors open. He made it one step into the back before he stopped cold, staring dead ahead of him.
“Uh, Sam?” I stepped through, Apollo and Florian each holding one of the doors open. A frigid chill hung in the air, like the breath of winter. “Is everything okay?”
His voice sounded like it came from far away. “I’m not sure, exactly.”
And then I saw what he was talking about, and I understood. “Holy hell,” I muttered. “What is this?”
The back half of Cornucopia couldn’t possibly have fit within the building’s physical space. In fact, it seemed to take up the entire block, maybe more, just rows and rows of shelves and racks and meat hanging off of great metal hooks. It was like someone had stuffed a football field into a broom closet. This was magical. Whoever owned this place definitely had at least one foot planted firmly in the arcane underground.
“Don’t make any false moves.”
The voice from behind us was painfully familiar. I held my hands up and turned around slowly, my stomach swooping when I found myself face to face with Dionysus. The god of wine glowered.
“What the hell are you doing here, Mason Albrecht?”
18
“You are trespassing here, my criminal friends and brethren.” Dionysus glared at each of us, his hands lowered, but his fingers curled into talons, like he was ready to launch an attack at any given moment. The wreath tattooed to his temples wasn’t moving anymore, the magical wind in its ink gone perfectly still. “And need I mention the fact that you, Mason, personally stalked and threatened someone who is very important to my business?”
“That’s been sorted out,” I said. “It was a misunderstanding, okay?”
He narrowed his eyes at me, still distrustful, until Samyaza spoke up.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Sam said. “We followed the trail of the Hunger and it led us here. There’s a nephilim on the premises, and they’re in serious danger.”
Dionysus’s eyes went huge. “What? Preposterous. How is that possible?”
Apollo stepped forward imposingly. He looked taller, all of a sudden, his muscles bigger than before. I wondered if it was a trick of the light, or if this came naturally to him. Dionysus shuffled back a couple of steps, apparently intimidated.
“Do you mean to say that you own this place, and have no idea of what goes on in the back?” Apollo said, his voice much quieter and far more serious
