Book 3 Chapter 13
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13
“Oh my gods,” Cassie says an hour later, her arms around me as I cry on the floor of her dorm room. “That’s horrible.”
“I know,” I say, wiping my eyes—returned to their rightful shape and color now that Metis’s spell has worn off. “I don’t know what to do.”
Cassie’s mouth goes into a thin line. “Wrong. You know exactly what to do. We have to get the rest of the weapon pieces. You said yourself, you don’t have to kill Mr. Zee. Just get him to step down and agree to let Mavis go.”
I wipe my nose. Everything Cassie says seems to make sense, here in her warm, brightly lit room. The dungeons got to me in the small amount of time I was there, making everything seem bleak, all my choices bad ones.
No wonder Mavis seemed so different. She’s been down there a long time. The whole being tortured thing probably hasn’t helped her attitude either.
“So…” Cassie reaches under her bed, producing the Seer Stone.
“No,” I say, emphatically shaking my head. “You said—”
“That I didn’t like how it made me feel, and what it made me see,” Cassie says. “It’s still true, I don’t. But you know what else I don’t like? Everything that is happening to my best friend. I can’t just sit here and hold you while you cry, Edie. I have to do something.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Cassie says, but her voice has lost some of its conviction. Even so, she closes her fist around the stone.
Immediately, her mouth drops open, and her eyes roll back.
“Wait!” I shout. I hadn’t meant for her to do it right away. But she’s already gone, in a trance. I thread my fingers with hers, holding both her hands tight. A small sigh escapes her, and a familiar voice comes out of her mouth, one I haven’t heard since that terrible day of the tsunami.
“If you touch my granddaughter, I’ll tear you to pieces!” It’s the voice of my grandmother, a harpy in disguise who gave up her life to protect me. She died in an elevator fall on the same day my dad was swept out to sea.
This isn’t the prophecy I need. This is something else.
“Cassie!” I cry, shaking her. The stone rolls from her hand, and her mouth snaps shut, eyes rolling to the front. She sags against my shoulder, barely able to keep herself upright.
“You shouldn’t have touched me,” she says weakly. “I saw a flash of something—but then you grabbed my hands and it was…I could hear you, Edie. I could hear you yelling. There was the ocean, and a great face made of water. Levi, just like you always said. He took your Dad and you…”
Her eyes clear for a second, focus on me. She puts her hands on both sides of my face. “You were so scared! I’m so sorry you had to see that. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“My grandmother,” I prompt her, grabbing her wrists. “You were speaking in her voice.”
“Yes,” Cassie nods, her eyes clouding, not with the opaque white of a trance, but with regular, human worry. “I saw her too. I saw it all.”
“Tell me,” I urge her. I’ve long suspected Grandma’s elevator falling that day wasn’t connected to the tidal wave. There’s just no way it was a coincidence. Not with all the secrets I’ve learned since then.
Cassie is crying now, tears spilling over her lashes. “He instigated Levi to take out your dad. Then he went after your grandma,” she says. “She was trying to protect you, trying to keep him from coming for you. She knew that if you didn’t have anyone left in your life—you’d take the invitation. You’d go with him and you’d come to MOA. And once here, you’d be in danger.”
Cassie falls forward, clearly exhausted.
“Who killed my grandmother?” I ask desperately. “Who did you see?”
Cassie looks up at me, circles already under her eyes. “It was Hermes.”
“Hermes?!” But even as I say his name, I realize how much sense it makes. I should’ve figured it out on my own a long time ago. “Hermes,” I say again, this time accepting it.
Cassie nods once and mouths the words, I’m sorry.
“Not as sorry as Hermes will be.”
When I get back to my room, I don’t feel like explaining to Tina how I just found out the god who brought me to MOA in the first place wasn’t doing so out of the kindness of his heart—if gods even have those. No, Hermes was keeping tabs on me, and had been for who knows how long. What did he suspect? Did he know I was Mr. Zee’s child?
There are a million questions in my head, and more in my heart, and Tina can immediately see that something is troubling me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks when I walk in, wiping tears from my eyes. “You know what? Never mind. I really don’t care. I’ve got bigger problems. Like a dead Stymphalian bird.”
“Right,” I say, eyeing the feathery corpse, which she’d propped it up in the window, more to have it out of the way than anything else, but the sunlight isn’t doing it any favors. A few feathers fall out even while we’re talking.
“What am I going to do?” Tina wails. “I can’t go to class without a bird. And I already missed breakfast.”
“And you can’t report him dead, either,” I remind her. “We talked about this. He kicked the bucket right after drinking from the ambrosia Hepa was about to deliver to Mr. Zee. She’s helping Themis to poison him, and we can’t blow her cover because of your stupid bird.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Tina counters. “Mr. Zee is the head of the gods, you know. It could have just been undiluted ambrosia. It might have knocked us dead too, if the bird hadn’t downed it all first.”
“I guess that’s true,” I say, but inwardly, I don’t agree. I’ve seen Hepa coming and going from Themis’s office too many times to buy into Tina’s simpler explanation. “Regardless, how would we explain a dead Stymphalian bird? Do you want to tell Themis we’ve been stealing ambrosia on the sly? Or face Artemis after she finds out one of her beloved pets is dead?”
Tina goes a shade paler than she already is, which is saying a lot for a vampire. “No way,” she says. “Themis has no tolerance for drinking on campus. And Artemis...”
“Is an unforgiving battle ax,” I finish for her. “They’ll just issue you a new bird, anyway,” I say, as I join her on her bed.
We both look at the dead bird as a fly settles on its beak, then crawls into its mouth.
“Ugh,” Tina says. “I bet it’s laying maggots in there.”
“More food for Vee,” I say, trying to find the bright side.
The Venus fly trap turns its head towards me when it hears its name. It’s bizarre how life-like it is. Even when Tina’s bird was alive, I think Vee was the more sentient of the two. And now…
I go still, my mind churning. Vee tilting her head, studies me almost like she can read my thoughts.
“Tina,” I say. “I have an idea. And you’re not going to like it.”
“I can try,” Fern says. “But I can’t promise excellent results. Life is an incredibly difficult thing to mimic. That level of magic is way above my abilities.”
“But you can try,” Tina repeats. “Right?”
Fern looks at me, unsure.
I sigh. “Look, I know we’re asking a lot. And I know that I just took your face earlier today, so it’s a big ask on top of a big ask.”
“Um, her face?” Tina asks, but I wave it away.
“But we don’t have a good explanation for a dead Stympahlian bird that doesn’t get everybody into a lot of trouble.”
“So if you’d take a swing at it, we’d really appreciate it,” Tina finishes for me. Unfortunately, she allows her fangs to erupt as she speaks, which makes it come off more like a threat than a favor.
“Okay,” Fern nods. “Shut the door. This could get loud. And possibly very smelly.”
She isn’t kidding. It takes most of an hour, three rune stones, five very fresh piles of Stymphalian poop (happily donated by Val’s bird), a little of Tina’s blood, one of Vee’s leaves, some fire and enough chanting that Fern nearly loses her voice.
“Well,” she says hoarsely, lifting her hair off her neck as the smoke clears. “What do you think?”
“Um…” Tina watches as her bird performs a bizarre, lurching walk around the room. It runs into her bed, then falls over onto its back, legs still valiantly moving. It’s like a weird mix of a wind-up toy with low batteries and a drunk turtle stuck on its back.
Fern picks it up, rights it, and the bird takes off again, this time marching into the closed door. It keeps walking in place as its beak repeatedly bounces against the door.
Thunk.
“Guys,” Tina says.
Thunk.
“I don’t think—”
Thunk.
“This will work.”
Thunk.
“Oh sons of Zeus, will someone please stop that thing?!”
Fern goes to the befuddled bird and picks him up, lovingly cradling her new creation in her arms.
“He can’t help it,” she says. “It’s not his fault I’m not good at this yet. It’s complicated magic. I put a spell on him that should keep him from rotting for a good long while, and you won’t have to worry about him eating—”
“Or pooping?” Tina asks, hopefully.
“No, he won’t do that either,” Fern says. “He is dead. I can’t resurrect him—that’s seriously dark magic. All I did was make him seem alive.”
“Kind of,” Tina says, eyeing the bundle in Fern’s arms as his neck goes completely limp, and he stares at her upside down, unblinking.
I squint at him. “I don’t know, now that’s he’s not pooping, he’s kind of cute.”
“Cute?” Tina looks at me like I’m crazy.
“I think we should name him,” I add, reaching to pet his feathers. They’re slick beneath my fingers and the body beneath them is cold. Even colder than Tina and Val. “Hey, he’s kinda like a vampire,” I say with a grin.
Tina’s fangs come out for real this time. “I have killed people for lesser insults.”
I ignore this. Tina threatening to kill me just doesn’t have an effect on me anymore. “I think we should call him Bernie.”
“Ugh,” Tina sighs. “First of all, we’re not naming him. Second of all, he’s my dead bird and if anyone’s naming him, it will be me. Third, just because you have an old person name, doesn’t mean everyone else should too.”
I laugh and it feels good to know that I still can...even as Hermes’s name nibbles at the back of my mind. “I actually picked Bernie because of this old movie. My dad loved it and made me and Mavis watch it. This old guy named Bernie—”
“Ha,” Tina interrupts. “I told you it was an old man name.”
“Not the point. Anyway, Bernie dies and these two young guys—for reasons—spend a weekend propping him up between them so people think he’s still alive.”
“That’s horrible,” Fern says. “Why would your father make you watch this horror story?”
“No, it was a comedy,” I correct.
“I’m naming him David Bowie. Bowie for short,” Tina declares in a ‘subject closed’ tone. “’Cause I wish Fern could’ve reanimated him instead.”
“Yeah, I’m definitely not reanimating anyone else,” Fern says. “But I think this one went pretty well, all things considered.” Fern crosses the room to sit next to Tina on her bed. “The good news is that muscle memory is very strong, even in animals. And the anti-decomposition spell means that his muscles will be in good working order for quite some time.”
“Uh-huh…” Tina eyes Fern warily as she settles in next to her and then raises the bird to Tina’s shoulder. Bowie moves over to Tina with a shuddering step and latches on.
“See?” Fern exclaims. “Muscle memory!”
The bird utters a half-hearted squawk and falls forward, claws still embedded in Tina’s shoulder as he does a faceplant into her boobs.
“Hooray for muscle memory,” she says, dryly.
- Writer
