Ungodly: A Novel (The Goddess War) (23 page)

Athena frowned. She knew Henry was tired and unused to the feel of it, but watching him fumble still felt like a bad omen. She walked over, toed the shield, and flipped it up into her hand like a skateboard. The Shield of Achilles. It hadn’t aged much since she’d last seen it. Hephaestus must have taken it out of the world of men as soon as Achilles’ line died out. She squeezed the edges to test the metal, to see if she could bend it. But of course she couldn’t. And she shouldn’t want to. The Shield of Achilles was a formidable asset. The metal taco shell of Achilles didn’t have the same ring.

Besides, it’s Henry’s now. He claimed it, fair and square.

She wished she’d been there to see him do it.

“You’ll train him with this?” Andie asked, and nudged the edge of the shield.

Train him. How could she train him? So they could start right back where they’d been? So she could use them up again, and run them headlong into impossible odds?

Athena shook her head slightly, and tilted the shield into Andie’s hands. The mortals’ lives weren’t hers to play with.

“Are you and Henry—?” Athena gestured with her eyes and kept her voice low, cloaked by a light breeze and Ares’ wolves snarling.

Andie’s cheeks went rust.

Athena snorted. “Good.”

“Are you and Odysseus?” Andie asked. She arched her brow and made the same gesture with her eyes. Neither excelled at girl talk. “I mean, you jumped off a mountain for him, so, the cat’s out of the bag on feelings.”

Yes. Feelings. Except feelings didn’t change what was.

“I just know I couldn’t let him go,” Athena said. “And I still can’t.”

Odysseus caught her eye and smiled. He looked different to her now. Fragile. The untouchable hero of her memory was gone, and maybe he’d only been a delusion to begin with. Or maybe it only felt that way because she’d lost the power to protect him.

“I still don’t understand how you’re not dead,” Andie said to Odysseus.

“The banks of the underworld kept me in limbo after we jumped off Olympus,” Odysseus replied. “And then good old Ares showed up with magic beans. Water from one of the rivers of Olympus. It let me heal. Brought me back.”

“Did he piss in the bottle first?” Henry muttered.

Hermes snorted, but Ares laughed full force, with just a bit too much wicked mirth in it. Odysseus turned faintly green.

“Hope you don’t mind if we take off,” Andie said. “It’s been a long trip. We want to get home. Henry, you should probably leave that.”

Henry had been holding the shield, and looked disappointed to have to let it go. But it would be a lot to explain, and impossible to sneak in under his shirt.

“We’ll take care of it. Until you come to train.”

As he backed out of the driveway, Henry waved. Just a little wave, and no smile. Athena waved back. Something had changed while she’d been gone. Henry had finally thawed to them.

Well. Maybe not to all of us.

Ares stood alone, his good hand stuffed into his pocket, studying the house. She thought he’d sneer at its lack of grandeur, but he didn’t. Maybe he was too tired. Whatever it was, the expression he wore took her a moment to place. He looked at the house like he wanted one. Like he wished it was his. Or at least he did until he caught her looking.

“The wolves and I will take the basement,” he said.

“You’ll take whatever I give you,” she said.
And that means somewhere you can be watched.

18

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

It always happened with gods. You left the house in the morning for a simple meet and greet and returned in the evening after a battle, an impromptu obstacle course, and a trip halfway to the underworld.

Henry’s stomach growled loudly and he mumbled, “Excuse me.”

Andie shrugged. “What for? It’s just your stomach. Not like you can control it, or even like it smells bad.”

He grinned. “Next time I’ll let a burp fly. Isn’t it nice that we can make out and somehow still talk like this?”

“It’s not that nice. I’m a lady, for Christ’s effing sake.” She laughed. He loved to watch her laugh. Teeth out, like a donkey yawning. It was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.

“Can you come in for awhile?” he asked. “Or do you have to go home?”

The slightest flush crept into her cheeks.

“I can come in.”

Had he not been so focused on Andie, thinking ahead to her warm curves on the soft, familiar surface of his bed, he might have noticed that something was different about his house. That yellow light flooded nearly every room. That it looked like a house again instead of a vacant building. But he didn’t even notice that Lux wasn’t barking.

He and Andie opened the door with their hands and lips already on each other. The awkward, embarrassing sound of their mouths smacking apart when his mother shouted would replay in Henry’s brain for days afterward.

“Henry!”

At first his mom’s face was all he could see. Her smile stretched so far across it might literally have gone from ear to ear. That smile was rare. He’d only seen it a handful of times in his entire life. The question in his mind—what could be that good?—was answered less than a second later, when he saw Cassandra on the couch with his dog half on her lap.

“Oh my god,” Andie whispered. Then she shouted it, and ran to hug her friend. Lux disengaged and came to snuffle Henry’s hand.

“She came back today,” his mother said. “Just came back. Showed up on the front steps with…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked farther into the den, to where a stranger stood.

A god.

Not one they’d ever seen before, but Henry saw past the college-boy clothes in an instant. It was hard to believe that his parents hadn’t. But then, they’d had far less practice.

“Zack,” the god said. “Thanatos.”

Zack. Cassandra’s eyes flickered vaguely at the name.

That’s not a name she’s heard often. Just something made up? For our benefit?

“Henry.” His mom gestured for him to come closer, but his feet stayed planted. Sitting on the couch, one hand held limply by their dad, Cassandra looked like a ghost. She looked like a rag, worse even than she had in the days following Aidan’s funeral. Whatever had happened to her after Olympus had been bad to the point of trauma, and his parents’ smiles seemed at best mismatched and at worst wildly inappropriate.

“Cassandra.” The god who called himself Zack stepped up and knelt beside her. “I’m going to go, so you can be with your family. But I won’t go far.” He and Henry’s parents stood. It seemed to take forever for his father to work up the nerve to shake the boy’s hand.

“Thank you,” his dad said. “For bringing her home.”

“Sorry I couldn’t convince her to come back sooner.” And he sounded like he meant it. When he walked past, Henry grabbed him by the arm.

“Where are you going?”

“I thought I would stay at my cousin’s place.”

Henry looked into his eyes.

“She has a lot of cousins.”

Thanatos looked back. “Not as many as she used to.”

A minute after he left, Henry heard a car start somewhere on the street. They must’ve driven right past it without noticing.

With the stranger gone, the tension in the room was plain. No one knew what to do after so long apart. His parents puttered around Cassandra like square pegs navigating round holes. They wanted to yell and scold, but were too happy to see her. They wanted to baby her and stuff her full of food, but it wasn’t right to coddle a runaway.

“So you and Athena came home,” Henry said.

Cassandra looked at him. Wherever she’d been, it was sunny. And hard.

“Hi, Henry.”

“Hi, Cassie.”

They all looked to him for what to do. As if he knew any better than they did. He was sick of being the one to figure it out and hold it together. But everyone else seemed ready to break.

Henry took a deep breath.

“What do you say to a double-cheese Hawaiian pizza?”

*   *   *

Even though it was an odd meal, eaten between estranged and hated family members, Stanley’s Wok had never tasted better. Not even the sound of Panic and Oblivion crunching through chicken wing bones could put Athena off her food.

“The house looks great,” she said.

“What?” Hermes asked. “You thought I was going to trash it? I’m the only one who does any cleaning around here. And now it’s going to smell like dog.”

Ares scowled near the kitchen sink and fed Oblivion another wing. The wolves didn’t, in fact, smell like dog. They smelled like blood if they smelled like anything.

She’d need to decide what room to give to Ares. And he’d need a few sets of clothes. Nothing Hermes had was likely to be of his taste, and probably wouldn’t fit anyway. Ares had several inches on Hermes around the shoulders and chest, even before Hermes started to lose weight. Odysseus’ shirts would be tight, too. But maybe something of Henry’s.

She stuffed the last of her sesame beef into her mouth and pushed away from the table. Her room, her bed, and her widow’s walk called her name.

Everything in her room was exactly as she’d left it. Exactly. Nothing had been moved, from the items on her dresser to the blanket on her bed hanging slightly askew. Hermes had preserved it like a shrine.

The door closed behind her, and she turned. Odysseus leaned against it. He looked good. Healthy. Freshly showered, and his T-shirt clung to his chest from the damp. Athena cleared her throat.

“It’s good to be back,” she said.

“It is.” He crossed the room to her, hands fluttering in his back pockets, eyes everywhere but on her. “Only we’re not back.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“We’re not back,” he said. “Not back to playing at goddess and hero.”

He looked up at her from under his brow. They were alone, and all at once that seemed to take on another meaning, as if the French doors had bricked over and all the furniture but the bed had tramped out on wooden legs.

“I know,” she said.

She thought it would be all the encouragement he needed. But instead he stood there, as awkward as she felt. She rolled her eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She shrugged. “I just thought … that you would handle this part.”

“This part?”

“You have this reputation, after all. Calypso, Circe, even Penelope. Odysseus, the man of many ways. Slayer of Cyclops. Seducer of women.”

Odysseus laughed.

“I’ve never had to seduce a woman in my life. They see me and fall into my lap.”

Athena rolled her eyes again, but she laughed, too.

“You’re the difficult one,” he said.

She crossed her arms and nodded. She was difficult. And she’d been the one to blur the lines between them in the first place, kissing him in the sleeper of that truck, something that it felt like had happened forever ago and as close as yesterday. If she hadn’t done that, he might never have pressed the issue. But it had felt so natural there, waking beside him in the afternoon light. As right and as easy as resting her head on his shoulder on the banks of the Styx. She stepped closer, barely a shuffle of feet. If she could just get close enough, maybe it would feel that natural again.

He stood still, as though he was worried any movement he made would scare her off. But his breath came faster, and she could hear his good, strong heartbeat.

She lifted her arm and slipped it around his neck. It was harder than anything. Heavier than any sword or shield she’d ever lifted. And she trembled. What guts this took. What a fool she’d been, to think Aphrodite was ever weak.

Odysseus raised his hands to her hips, and then to her sides, careful to avoid the fresh feather wound over her ribs. They stood that way for long moments, statues except for the blood rushing under their skin. Athena sensed his wanting in the eager grip of his fingers, and his rising and falling chest. But still they stood, and went no further.

“I love you,” she blurted, and his eyes opened wider. “I just wanted to tell you, in case. In case you didn’t know.”

“I knew,” he said. “I don’t remember much from the fall. Just the wind in my ears and you, wrapped around me. Your heart beating faster as mine slowed down.” He pushed her hair away from her cheek.

“I love you, too, Athena,” he said. “Always have.”

He looked into her eyes. If he kissed her now, she would let him. More than that, she would kiss him back. They both knew it, and neither moved.

It’s because he knows it’s wrong. He feels it, like I do. Our hearts, our desire will never be stronger than what stands between us. We are two different things. But oh how I want it, this time we have left.

Athena let her hands slip from behind his neck down to his shoulders.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t let go of me. I haven’t worked up the courage yet, but I will.”

“You never lacked for courage,” she said, and pushed gently away. “It’s because it’s real now. And now that we can have it, you know it’s as wrong as I’ve always said.”

“That’s not it. That’s not it at all.”

He reached for her, as if he would prove it.

“Athena!” Hermes said, and burst into the room.

“Not now, mate,” Odysseus groaned. “There’s a sock on the door.”

Hermes narrowed his eyes and tore it off the knob.

“There’s not anymore,” he said, “and you two had better get downstairs.”

He turned on his heel and left, and Athena and Odysseus followed. When the stairs turned toward the entryway, Athena was greeted by a very unexpected sight.

Standing on her welcome mat, dressed in a navy plaid button-up with sleeves rolled to the elbows, was the god of death.

*   *   *

Athena had last seen Thanatos in Los Angeles in 1972. She’d been living there then, in a small, dusty apartment above a biker’s lounge. Most of her nights she spent on a stool, belly up to the bar and a line of empty beers, watching a band called Steve Hunger Road Show do their best impression of America. Steve Hunger Road Show. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought of them. Steve had been sort of a douche, but Mickey and Jim hadn’t been half bad. They’d been her friends.