“It wasn’t exactly what you wanted her to say, was it.” Hermes sighed.
“I never expected it to be easy.” She shot him a look. “I just thought maybe we’d band together this time instead of tearing each other apart. How stupid of me.”
“Some of us will band together. Only … to eat the other band. Still a team effort, depending on how you look at it.”
Athena snorted. “And these reincarnated tools? I never figured on dealing with humans again.” Even though she had lived among them, blended into their population almost since the day they tossed her and her brethren off of Olympus and sent it crashing into the sea.
“So much bitterness. I thought the humans were your friends. That they came even before us.”
“They did. Once.” Before they forgot me. When I was a true god.
Hermes took a long drink of Rolling Rock. “So what happened? Some hideous mortal break your heart?”
She laughed, genuinely and ruefully. “Shut up, Hermes.”
He shrugged. “Guess not. Still the virgin goddess then, eh? I don’t know why. You have no idea what you’re missing out on.”
“It’s a choice,” she said. And more than that. It’s what I am. What I’ve always been. “But you’re getting off point. You heard Demeter. We need to find the tools. The oracle. Whom she seemed to think is a ‘she.’”
He sighed. “An oracle. In this century you can find one on every block. Neon palm with a blinking eye in the center. You can call them on the phone. How are we supposed to find the one she’s talking about? And why would this human even help us?”
Athena clenched her jaw. Find her. Make her remember, and she’ll be more than a prophetess. It sounded like another of Demeter’s riddles. But Demeter wanted them to survive, no matter what she said. She’d been a curmudgeon as long as Athena had known her. The kind of aunt who slapped your hand off the table but gave you a dozen cookies if you just asked properly.
“The prophet will help us. We’ll convince her. We’ll make her remember.”
“Right. Somehow.”
“Will you shut up? We have to find her first.”
Hermes shrugged. “Maybe if we tell her we can prevent the war. A war between the gods means a dirty, bloody mess, and not just for us.”
“So we should lie.”
He shrugged again. “Maybe not. If we have to go down, I wouldn’t mind if the mortals went down with us. It sort of eases the blow. Is that wrong?” He took another long swallow of beer. “To tell the truth, I sort of thought that it was the humans who were doing this to us, somehow.”
“We still don’t know what is doing this to us. This whole thing feels strange. I’m dying, and I feel like something’s starting. Like something is on its way. But maybe that’s just how it always feels. Not like we would know.”
Hermes took a swallow of Rolling Rock.
“A war against our own. Killing each other to survive. I wonder who we’ll go against?” He started to say more, and then summed it up with a shake of his head. The truth was, the gods had never really cared that much about one another. Bonds were fickle and morality generally nonexistent. They changed sides constantly. “Those bastards.” He looked at her incredulously. “How could any of them think of killing me? Me! All these millennia, all I’ve done is be helpful. Deliver a message here, fetch a hero there.”
“Necessity is a strong motivator.” Athena rubbed her tongue across the bump of feather on the roof of her mouth. The others were dying too, in various ways and shapes. She knew that much. And killing each other wasn’t really such a strange way to survive. Their grandparents, the Titans, had eaten their own children toward the same end.
“Another round?” The bartender stood directly in front of her, an impatient stare on his face like he’d been there for days waiting for her to notice.
“Yeah,” she said, and reached into her wallet for a twenty. He took the money and their empties. They waited to speak again until he’d brought the fresh drinks. He still forgot the waters.
“Are you sure the oracle isn’t in Delphi?” Hermes asked.
“She called it a ‘she.’ Which I guess rules out Tiresias.”
“Not necessarily. There’s no rule that says you have to be reincarnated as the same gender.”
“How would you know? You should hope there is. Or our task becomes harder. So rattle off some female prophets.” She took a long drink and set her mug down hard with a heavy clink. “All I can think of is the Sybil, but she was never one person. She was a line passed down over time.” She took another drink. The temptation to let this business rest rose up, strong and cloying. Her back hurt, and her eyes hurt. There were feathers seeding her internal organs. Beside her, Hermes’ labored breathing hadn’t abated. Maybe it never would. They could just drink here, in this small, comfortable bar, and forget about things. They could stretch out across the land like Demeter and sink into the dirt.