Aunt Demeter, who is this girl? What did you send me to find?
Hera’s left arm slipped free and Athena heard it hit the ground, crumbling the asphalt. It had been close. Cassandra rolled away before locking her fingers in again. The look on her face carried thousands of years of resolve, thousands of years of vengeance. Hera screamed.
Will she turn that power on me next? Will I explode in a mass of feathers, just a pile of white and speckled brown, cut through with ribbons of skin and sinew?
In the midst of the thought, Hera’s arm swung again. It caught Cassandra in the chest and threw her back. Athena twisted just in time to see the girl bounce onto the pavement, and to hear her head strike the road with a sharp, final crack.
“No!” When Hera shoved her away, she barely felt it, too busy scrambling across the road to Cassandra’s limp body.
She wasn’t moving. Was she breathing? Fresh prickles rose on the back of Athena’s neck. She was afraid to touch her. Behind them, Aphrodite keened, and a scraping sound told of Hera’s rock-infested flesh being dragged from the road. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Cassandra. Apollo’s Cassandra. And the death she’d faced even though she’d known it was coming. Athena knelt. The others called Cassandra’s name as they ran closer.
“Get up,” Athena said. “Get up and breathe. I won’t have failed my brother so soon.”
Cassandra’s head swiveled, and she locked upon the goddess with empty eyes. Athena backed off a step. It was like looking into an abyss, power she didn’t understand. And then Cassandra blinked, and the window slammed shut.
Cassandra pushed herself up onto her shoulders. The strange electricity was gone.
“It’s over.”
Athena nodded. It was over. Hera would be dead soon if she wasn’t already. Poseidon drifted in pieces at the bottom of the lake to be swallowed by his own servants. Aphrodite, even though she lived, was mad and unable to make much mischief on her own.
Athena looked down at her wounds. Adrenaline still sparked through her exhausted frame, and blood saturated her left side. The impact of Hera’s fist had turned her rib cage into a mess of pick-up sticks and paste. She took a hesitant breath and felt the itch of feathers. They were still there.
Just because they don’t disappear instantly doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it doesn’t happen all at once.
She swallowed. It sounded like bullshit even in her head. Hermes was going to be so disappointed.
Odysseus jogged up to her, his eyes bright. She walked back and picked up the tire iron.
“Not a bad plan, was it?” He grinned, and she shoved it into his hands.
“Then don’t look so surprised that it worked.” She took his shoulder to lean on.
Andie and Henry stood on either side of Cassandra, holding her arms for support even though she didn’t seem to need it. The darkness that had swum up and around her in waves when her skull struck the pavement was gone. Hermes limped around behind her on his crushed foot.
“What do we do now?” he asked, and looked at Athena.
“We take them back to their homes.” Her eyes rested on the unmoving form of a god propped against the tire of the car, dressed in a boy’s clothes. “All of them.”
EPILOGUE
The coffin was overlaid with flowers. A huge spray of calla lilies, creamy white, draped over an obsidian black box, arranged in such a way that they strained toward the ground. They were good flowers for funerals. Their stems dipped, hanging their heads mournfully. If a plant could weep, it would be a calla lily.
The service was crowded, full of students from the high school and many members of the community. They had all come out for the funeral of the boy they only thought they knew.
Cassandra sat to the side, with Aidan’s parents. Throughout, she said nothing, but she kept her back straight, even as tears coursed down her cheeks. Andie and Henry sat behind her, their faces constricted. Both of Andie’s hands were bandaged, and under her shirt were stitches forming the lines of claws. Henry had a broad cut on his forehead from the window glass, and another stitched together on his hand from sharp gills.
Such a shame, people said, to lose a promising young man to a car accident. It was a miracle, they said, that all four of them hadn’t been killed. The Mustang was completely mangled. State police would never be able to figure out just what happened, how fast they had to be going to lose control of the car so badly.
The service ended, and people began to stand, began to come to her, to Aidan’s parents, and tell them how much he’d be missed. How much he was loved. Cassandra did her best to not hear a word. A hot, seething ball hung suspended in her chest, and she wasn’t sure what it was made of. Screams? Tears? Love, or hate, or all rolled up together. But Aidan’s funeral wasn’t the place to find out.