Athena shook her head, once.
“We can’t risk it. I’m sorry.”
“Athena—”
“We have to stick together now, brother.”
Cassandra watched Hermes slowly sink back into himself, into his prominent bones and hollow cheeks. The light that had briefly flickered went out. Athena should have let him go. But no. The way Athena looked at him, and the sad fury in her face told the whole story. She wants to let him go, but he’s too weak. He’d never win.
“This wasn’t your failure,” Athena said. “It wasn’t the way you hid them, or how fast you ran.”
“Right,” Hermes muttered.
The TV beside them was still on, and Athena struck the button with the side of her hand, hard enough to knock it back against the wall. In her frustration, she seemed to swell three sizes, and the space in the motel room grew small.
Hermes glanced at Cassandra.
“What use is she? If she doesn’t even give us time? What use are visions that you can’t change?”
Athena peered at her. “Do you feel any different now? Now that you remember your old life?”
“No.” Cassandra thought a moment. “The vision was a little strange, but they’ve been evolving since … I guess since you started looking for me. But I don’t feel any different.”
“Useless,” Hermes muttered.
“Hey,” said Aidan. “She’d be more than happy to be useless. Why don’t you face Hera and tell her so? Then you can leave us alone.”
Voices broke out, the voices of gods, and they forgot themselves. The sound of their argument rose over everything else. It thundered through walls and rang out across the nearly empty parking lot. Odysseus couldn’t do anything to shut them up, but he did try, with an elbow in each of their chests.
Cassandra and Athena looked at each other. The time for bargaining had come and gone. So had the time for laying blame.
“Quiet,” said Athena, and the room fell silent. Cassandra stared into the flowered wallpaper. Outside, the city of Kincade went about its business in cars and shops. Meals were made and eaten. TVs played too loud. Lights turned on and off. Just like every other Kincade evening.
This was her life. Her city. And they meant it to be their battleground, just like it was before.
“What good will running do?” Athena asked. “How far can we go before Hera burns up all the land behind us? We’d never be safe.” She looked at Cassandra. “They’d never be safe. We’d run until Hermes’ body eats itself from the inside out and I’m too stuffed with feathers to breathe. Our fall would be pathetic. Unworthy of an epithet.”
“So what?” Hermes shrugged. “Let it be. After we’re dead, it won’t matter anyway.”
“You don’t mean that,” Athena said softly. “And besides, what about them?” She nodded toward Cassandra and looked at the door. Cassandra edged into her view, like she could shield Andie and Henry from her thoughts, but Athena had already looked back at her brothers. “Will you let them try to stop Hera on their own?” No one had an answer. They stared at their feet.
“If you want to know the truth, giving up would be easy. As easy and comfortable as falling into a bed. Stopping these feathers … Saving my life doesn’t seem any more possible than it is important.”
“If it’s not important,” Cassandra said, “if you don’t care, then why are you here? What are you doing?”
Athena looked at her, and for the first time Cassandra saw less a goddess and more a girl. A girl who had fought a hard battle and still come up cornered. Athena smiled, a small smile, through closed lips.
“There isn’t much to me anymore that isn’t push me and I push back. There hasn’t been for a long time. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but there it is. And besides, I can’t do nothing, when they stand here looking, waiting for me to say what to do.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“We have to make a stand,” she said.
“What? Here?” Hermes sounded horrified.
“Kincade is as good a place as any for the world to end.”
Hermes shook his head. “It most certainly is not. Kincade is a place of unclean motel rooms and a mall that’s several dozen stores too small. I vote with Apollo. Running. Running I’m good at. We could run halfway around the world, to places worth seeing once more before dying: London, Paris, Florence. Maybe all the way to fricking Delphi.”
“More than that,” Aidan said. “Kincade isn’t the best place to face an enemy. It’s settled into a valley in foothills. Not exactly the high ground. You should know that. You should seek advantage.”