“Cassandra.” Andie grabbed her arm.
“She’s not even upset. Why? Did you send them out there as bait? Did you know this was going to happen?”
“You and your conspiracy theories,” Athena muttered. “I wasn’t the one who sent them. They wanted to go.” And now she had to go after them. Why else would the Moirae have sent Cassandra that vision? She slid past Andie and Henry and flew upstairs to her bedroom. She’d pack fast, fast as Hermes, and light. “They’ll be fine,” she whispered to no one. “You’ll be fine, both of you. Just hold on. I’m coming.”
She ransacked drawers, paying no mind to what she threw into her bag. It hardly seemed to matter. She wouldn’t take a bag at all if not for TSA snoops getting suspicious at the airport. Questions flicked through her mind as she zipped up: how long did she have? Were they injured? Had their mission cost them a soldier? Had they lost Artemis?
You’ll be all right. My brother and my Odysseus. You have to be.
She snatched up the bag and flew downstairs.
“Go home. Pack a bag,” she said as she passed them en route to the kitchen. Cans of food and cereal bars went in on top of her clothes.
“What?” Henry asked. “You can’t take her with you. You said there were things in that rain forest.”
“Nothing I can’t protect her from.”
“This is ridiculous. She’s not going. Cassie. You’re not going.”
“Well, I’m going,” Athena said. She closed the fastenings on her bag. “And I’m not leaving her here unguarded, to be snapped up or killed by who knows what god. Besides—” She looked at Cassandra’s hands. “She might come in handy.”
“Cassandra,” Henry said, and took her arm.
“I’ll be okay, Henry,” said Cassandra. She turned to Athena. “I have a bag packed in Henry’s trunk. We all do. Just in case.”
“Your passport in there?”
“Yeah.”
“Clever girl. Let’s go.” She ushered Cassandra out the door and waited as she ran to Henry’s Mustang for her bag. He squawked the whole time, trying to get Cassandra to stay. He was going to be a tough nut to crack. But when the time came, he would fight. He would, because Hector had. Reason carried him pretty far, but if someone pushed, he pushed back. For now though, the big brother/mother hen routine was getting on Athena’s last nerve. She stuffed Cassandra quickly into the cold Dodge before Henry could really work up a guilt trip.
“What am I supposed to tell Mom and Dad?” he shouted.
“Lie,” Athena shouted back. “You ought to be getting pretty good at it by now.”
* * *
“I’m sick of the jungle. And I could really use another serving of monkey.” Odysseus kicked through an enormous leaf and was rewarded with a long streak of wet across his shin.
“Don’t tell Cassandra that,” Hermes said. “She’ll never speak to you again.”
They’d walked all day since leaving the peace of the village at dawn. Now the sun dipped low, and Odysseus had passed tired about three days and a dozen or so miles ago.
“She heard the ravening beasts,” he said loudly, referring to the tribal elder. He raised his brows. “But maybe they weren’t our ravening beasts. There’s got to be more than one beast that ravens in a jungle this size, eh?”
“She knew what she was talking about.”
“Did she? But your ears are ten thousand times the ears that she’s got, and you didn’t hear anything.” He ducked a vine that Hermes intentionally flapped back into his face.
“Maybe I would if you’d stop yammering. Besides, she didn’t hear them with her ears.” Hermes slowed and took a breath. “I’m sorry. I keep trying to remember you’re only human, but we’re so close. And I don’t know how I know that, before you ask.
“You’re not the only one who’s tired. Or sick of all this wet.” He looked back. “I want to go home, too.”
“Home,” Odysseus said. “Is that what Kincade is now? Home?”
Hermes smiled. “I guess it is. I didn’t think I’d ever have one of those again. And certainly not Kincade, New York, a piddly town with no decent shopping mall and not a single museum to speak of.”
“But it’s where we all are,” said Odysseus.
“Yes. Where we all are.” Hermes turned back in the direction they’d been heading all day. “But we can’t leave until we find my other sister. So get a move on. I miss my pot stickers.”