“Is it working?” Athena asked. “Is he cooler?”
“I don’t know.”
Time flattened. The sound of water rushing into the tub went on and on into forever, and she couldn’t tell if it cooled her brother, even as it cooled the air against her face. Her mind spun, it raced ahead and put coins over his eyes. She could actually see them, silver circles sunk into his cheeks.
Ares pressed ice to the back of Hermes’ neck, and his lids fluttered. They fluttered, and the eyes underneath swiveled back and forth, slower and slower, until he blinked. When he opened his eyes again, they fixed on her face.
“Hey,” Athena said.
“Hey yourself,” Hermes whispered. “This feels nice.”
Her heart thudded in her throat, and she gripped Odysseus’ fingers where they held her shoulder. Hermes was fine. It was just a scare. Just a bad night after too much running and too many bad dreams.
“Ares,” Athena said. “How did you know to do this?”
“You knew it, too. You just panicked.” He pressed more ice to Hermes’ forehead. “You love him too much,” he said gruffly. “It makes you stupid.”
The pulse in Ares’ neck jumped like a grasshopper. His expression was as worried as theirs. He loved their brother, too, she realized. No matter what he said.
* * *
They lay Hermes onto the couch with ice packs and damp towels, and covered the whole mess with an insulated blanket to slow the melt. Athena spent the rest of the night sitting on the floor, watching him sleep. Odysseus did his best to stay awake with her, but by daybreak she and Ares were the only ones left. Odysseus snored softly with his head in her lap, and Panic did the same with Ares on the other sofa. Oblivion slept beside the armrest. Or she thought it did. Its eyes were still open, but it hadn’t moved in hours, and occasionally twitched its paws like it was dreaming.
They didn’t talk, though their whispers would’ve woken no one. Athena didn’t know how to say thank you, and she didn’t want to hear the other thing. The thing that she knew. That Hermes was worse. That ice baths and an insulated couch were not a cure. They’d fought their way out of the underworld in just enough time to watch their brother die.
No. I’ll save him. I should be able to save him.
Maybe if she’d been there. If she’d stayed in the fight that day instead of diving off Olympus. Hermes had had to do everything without her.
But then Odysseus would be dead. And damn it all, she couldn’t trade one for the other, even in her imagination.
She hadn’t heard a peep from Thanatos. She assumed he’d listened and left. Good. But now and then, when Odysseus stopped snoring and everything seemed too quiet, she’d imagine him in the basement, motionless as a wax figure, waiting for her to calm down.
“I’m going to change the ice.” Ares stood and stretched, dislodging Panic, who yawned. “And then I’m going to take the wolves out to run. They don’t do well kept in one place for too long. Start taking bites out of each other.”
He switched melted ice for fresh and subbed in a few frozen gel packs they’d accumulated for the mortals’ post-training-session swelling. He did it so well and so carefully that Hermes didn’t even mumble in his sleep.
“Come on.” He clapped his hand to his thigh softly for the wolves to come.
“Don’t go far,” Athena said.
She’d told him about the dream she and Hermes had shared about Demeter, murdered in the desert, but wasn’t sure whether Ares believed it was true. He’d said that the desert was days away anyhow. On a map, it was days away. Yet the Moirae had been in Buffalo yesterday, and slicing into Demeter by nightfall.
“I’ll go to the woods,” said Ares. “And I won’t kill anything that anyone will notice. You don’t need to watch me every minute.” He shrugged into a jacket and headed for the back door.
“Ares,” she called softly, and his shoulders slumped, ready for a lecture. “Be careful.”
He looked back. Sometimes Ares seemed so much like one of his wolves. But just then he seemed more like a kicked dog, surprised by an offered Milk-Bone.
“I will be.”
* * *
Cassandra and her mother met with the principal for an hour and a half. For forty minutes of that time, the district superintendent sat in as well, for no other reason than to convey the gravity of the situation. Or at least that’s how it seemed. She said nothing of note, just sat in a charcoal suit and drank a cup of coffee. But they let Cassandra back in for the rest of the term. Summer school was on the docket, too, as her father had predicted. Consequences.