Haven’t I lived long enough? Shouldn’t a goddess have the grace to accept this?
“She also said you screwed the girl over.” Hermes squinted while he thought. “The three of you, she said. That mean anything?”
“I’ve screwed a lot of people over.”
“Yes, you have.”
“So have you,” Athena snapped.
“But we’re talking about you. So think.”
Think. What prophetess did I screw over with the help of two other gods? A prophetess strong enough to help us now, somehow …
“Oh, shit.” Athena turned to him. “It’s Cassandra.”
Hermes’ eyes glowed brilliant blue and stood out like methane torches against his dirt-streaked face. “Of course it’s Cassandra,” he said. “She’s talking about Cassandra. God, we’re idiots.” He clapped a hand to his chest.
Cassandra of Troy. A princess and prophetess during the Trojan War. She’d warned her city that they would fall to Achilles and the Greeks, but no one had listened.
Because she was cursed. Someone cursed her to never be believed.
Not just someone. A god. Their brother, Apollo.
“It’s so simple,” Hermes said. “Cassandra of Troy.”
Athena blinked. Hermes was getting ahead of himself, as usual.
“Don’t get too excited. We might be wrong. And you should hope we are.” She took a drink.
“Why?”
“Because I fought against her, last time. I sided with the Greeks to burn down her city and murder her family. I started the war.”
Hermes waved his hand dismissively.
“Sides change all the time.” He tightened his thinning fist, spread his fingers, and watched them tremble. “But I guess … Even if we find her, she won’t be the same person we knew once. She’s probably happy and not a part of this anymore.”
The sympathy in his voice edged just nearer to sorry for himself. Death was softening him up. Athena didn’t remember him having an excess of compassion for mortals in the past. It was sort of touching. And they didn’t have time for it.
“You’re not even half right. She probably is happy, but she’s also the same prophet we knew once, and that means she always has been, and always will be, a part of this.”
She took a long pull of her beer, but it tasted bad. Cold water was what she’d craved since they’d come in. She looked at the bartender to order, and found him staring straight at her. When she opened her mouth, he opened his in a broad, strange smile. A smile that quickly stretched until it split into bleeding cracks across his cheeks.
Beside her, Hermes took a drink and crinkled his nose. “Yuck. Did someone salt this while I wasn’t looking?”
“Hermes.” Athena put her hand on her brother’s arm and together they looked around the bar. The baseball game was forgotten. Every pair of eyes was on them.
As the seconds ticked by, the flannel shirts and thick, tanned flesh of the bar patrons hung looser. Blue and silver scales began to show through at their temples and cheeks like harlequin-painted sequins. One moment she was looking at a middle-aged man dressed in a John Deere ball cap and tan shirt, and a blink later seeing a clawed, finned thing in a melting human costume.
Athena’s eyes did a full sweep and came back to rest on the bartender.
Who wasn’t the bartender anymore. Only the slightest resemblance to his previous form remained. The bone structure around the eyes and cheeks was still intact, and there was something about the curl of aquatic lip, peeled back against piranha-jagged teeth, that was reminiscent of the way he had smirked when he dropped off their beers. Beyond that, everything had changed. Black, speckled scales peppered his skin. His irises were gone. Slight webbing fluttered between his fingers, and his legs had molded into one long, muscled appendage. He stood balanced on it like a snake’s tail curled beneath him. At the end a broad fin waved lazily.
All of this she saw in an instant, and in her silence, Hermes looked as well. He reacted with more force, spinning off of his stool and sending it swiveling unevenly to the floor with a sharp thud.
“Nereid,” she said lowly. They had of course seen the oceanic creatures before, swirling about their master, Poseidon, the god of the sea.
“Make that plural,” Hermes added. The other bar patrons had almost finished shedding their human makeup: shirts and jeans slid down scaled and rubber-skinned legs. When the Nereids stood, they made a wet squelching sound like they’d been sitting in a mud puddle, and a look at the seat of their chairs revealed a flesh-colored pool of water. Their disguises ran off of them in rivulets.