Fire & Flood (Mythverse #1)

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Six Months LaterMom and Mavis are still missing. I’ve been told the Greek police force is stumped. They seem to have disappeared without a trace.

People say to have someone you love go missing and not have answers is the worst. But they’re wrong. The worst is when you get the call that your father’s body has washed up on the beach ten miles north of where he was last seen. The worst is going to the morgue to identify him. The worst is having to make the decision to bury him next to Grandma.

The worst is my life.

I have foster people now. I refuse to refer to them as family.

They’re not so bad. But they’re not so great either. Thank God I’m seventeen and only have to do this for a year.

I think they had this idea about really making a difference in someone’s life. Carla, that’s the lady, told me on the first day, “We’re gonna get your inner light shining again.”

But that light is permanently burned out, so far as I can tell. And I like it that way. I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to think. And I sure as s**t don’t want to shine.

I can tell Carla and her husband, Rod, are disappointed with me. I’m a dark little rain cloud drifting through their beautiful house full of beautiful things. They’re art collectors and dealers. Expensive and strange sculptures seem to be their specialty. Expensive and strange and delicate. If I get within breathing distance of anything they immediately cry out, “Ah, don’t touch that! It’s delicate!”

This weekend, though, I have the house to myself. Carla and Rod are on an all-day buying trip. I could tell they were nervous about leaving me alone with all their precious art for so long. The last thing Rod said was, “Uh, just so you know, most people wouldn’t understand the true value of what we have here. If you took one of these sculptures, like say ‘Wisdom’ right here”—he gestured to a sculpture that looked like a pile of human teeth. “If you took that to the local pawn shop they wouldn’t give you anything for it.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on pawning anything while you were gone,” I told him.

Rod let out this big fake laugh. “Oh no, no, I know you would never. Of course not, I was just saying.”

Once they’re gone, I flop on the couch and try to find something to binge watch on Netflix. I’m debating between two different cooking competition shows when there’s a knock on the door. I’m tempted to ignore it, but Rod and Carla specifically mentioned an important delivery I needed to sign for.

With a sigh, I head toward the door and look out the peephole. There’s a courier with a package on his hip. He knocks again, and then checks his watch like maybe he knows I can see him and I’ll get the point that he’s got other packages to deliver. I c***k the door open, the security chain still in place.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Rod Mason?” he says, raising his eyebrows. I probably don’t look like a Rodger. But I also don’t feel like explaining, so I just nod.

“Package for you,” he says, looking at me expectantly. It’s a box, not an envelope he can slip through the c***k to me. I groan a little, inwardly. I know it shouldn’t be the first thing on my mind right now, but this guy is hot and right now I am…not. For the first time in a long time I reconsider my oversized sweats and t-shirt look.

I open the door and hold out my hands for the package, but he shakes his head. “Sorry, gotta sign.”

I motion for him to follow me inside while I look around for a pen, and he does, closing the door behind him. I hear it click, and think to myself that’s pretty ballsy of him, but when I turn around—pen up in the air like maybe I’ll stab him with it—he’s just standing in the front hall, smiling. I try to act like I wasn’t going to impale him with a Bic as I take the clipboard from him.

“Now, remember to write Rod Mason, since it’s not for you…Edie.”

I glance up and he tips me a wink, a sly little one that almost has me smiling back until I realize something. “How do you know my name?”

“I know a lot of things, Edie,” he says, voice calm. Like he’s trying to keep me that way too. “Your name. Your Dad’s name, the name of the thing that killed him.”

“What?” I drop the clipboard and it clatters at my feet. “He was killed by a rogue wave.”

The guy laughs. “No way. Leviathan doesn’t have that kind of power. Levi just hitched a ride on that wave, as a way to get to your father.”

“Levi? Who the hell is that and why would he want to get to my father?”

The smile falters, the dimples disappear. “You really don’t know, do you?”

I shake my head, and he drops the box. Whatever’s inside crunches loudly in a way that tells me Rod and Carla’s latest super delicate and expensive sculpture might be a little bit broken.

“Great,” he says. “That’s just…seriously?”

I edge away from him, back toward Carla’s desk where I’m pretty sure there’s a letter opener. I reach behind me, hands clattering over a calculator, her notebooks, and then—yes! The slim blade slips into my palm.

“Look,” the guy goes on. “I’m the messenger god. Also, occasionally, a finder of lost things. Like you. But I didn’t realize exactly how lost you would be. I figured your dad told his daughter—”

“Told me what?” I yell, brandishing the letter opener in front of me.

He studies me, and then he says, “Ichor.”

The word stops me. It’s the passcode Dad told me.

“Ichor,” I repeat. “Blood of the gods.”

“Aw, look at that. You do know things. Good job.” He says it like someone praising an especially stupid little dog. “Yep, blood of the gods, and it’s gonna get spilled real fast if we don’t get you up to the Academy. I’m Hermes, by the way.”

He holds out a hand, but I don’t shake it, my fist still tight around the letter opener.

“Herpes?” I’m so confused.

He doesn’t even blink. “One million two hundred thousand and seventy-eight.”

“What?”

“That’s how many times I’ve heard that joke. Now,” he swipes the blade out of my hand—at least, I think he did. It’s like he didn’t even move. I just felt a breeze on my hand and then he had the letter opener…and I didn’t.

“Listen,” he says, tossing it back and forth. “I’m not going to hurt you. Obviously, your Dad didn’t tell you much, but he did tell you the password.”

“Ichor,” I repeat, like maybe it’ll protect me somehow from something. Like that Leviathan?

“Levi—Leviathan,” I say aloud. “What is that? What killed my dad?”

Hermes walks over to an antique silk armchair that isn’t actually meant for sitting. Or at least that’s what I was told. But Hermes didn’t get that message, apparently, because he collapses into it, still twirling the letter opener in his fingers. “Oh, Levi’s nothing, really, just a water monster.”

“A monster?”

“Not a particularly powerful one, either. Be glad they didn’t send Scylla after him.” He pauses. “But I guess they didn’t have to. Levi got the job done.”

“The job…” My heart, which has been like a rock in my chest, thumps hard, reminding me it’s still there. “The job of killing my father, you mean?” And now I can feel the blood pumping through my veins too, and I realize as my hands start to tremble, that I’m not scared.

I’m pissed.

Hermes throws one leg over the side of Carla’s chair, and that’s when I spot them. Little wings on his feet, popping out of his ankle on either side.

“Holy s**t,” I say, backing away until the couch hits me in the knees. I fall onto it. “What is that? What are you?”

Hermes ignores me my order as he lifts up his leg. “Didn’t think wings would come as that much of a shock to you. Unless…” he c***s his head again, like he’s getting messages from above. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

I shake my head. “Well you didn’t know that I didn’t know, so I guess we’re both a little under-informed today.”

He grins. “You’re cute when you get feisty.”

“Oh my god, are you seriously flirting with me right now?”

“Oh. My. Me. Yes I am.” He tilts his head so his hair flops over his left eye. My mouth goes dry. He is so intensely…intense.

After six months spent with all my feelings on lockdown, it’s too much. I pull out my inhaler and suck air into my too-tight lungs. By the time I tuck it away, I’m calm again.

I look back at Hermes, who is amusing himself with a sculpture of the Eiffel Tower made entirely of Barbie doll limbs. “I’d rather have the explanation without a side of flirtation.”

He looks amused. “You think I can just turn all this charm on and off?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, okay.” He leans forward in the chair. “Have you ever had anything happen to you that you couldn’t quite explain? And no—” He stops me before I can say, yeah my dad being killed by a big water face. “I mean something that happened to you, or maybe because of you? Something you did?”

I’m about to shake my head when I remember that first rush of water and the glass front doors of the condo going to pieces in front of me, the water rushing forward until…it stopped. But it didn’t stop, it just kind of evaporated.

“Yes,” I say. “Maybe.”

“And what about…” Hermes gets up, moving slowly. “Don’t think I’m being weird, kid. Just hold still, okay?”

I definitely think he’s being weird and I keep a close eye on him as he circles behind me. He keeps telling me to relax and I keep telling him to back off, until finally he lets me have the letter opener back. I grip it tightly as he touches my back.

“I promise you can stab me if you think you need to,” he says, and then his thumbs press down right between my shoulder blades and I scream.

It’s a familiar pain, but one I haven’t felt in a while. The school nurse had made one hell of a face when they did scoliosis checks in sixth grade, sending home a note saying that I probably need x-rays. Dad said I didn’t, said the school should stick to worrying about test scores and he’d worry about his daughter’s health. But then the pains began, and Mom developed a worry line between her eyebrows.

It had become a dull, constant ache, one that I carried with me every day and rarely notice anymore. Not until Hermes pushed on the spot. Immediately, one of my back spasms wracks me with pain.

“Don’t touch me,” I shout at Hermes, and I mean to sound tough, but it’s useless. I just sound scared and hurt. And I dropped the knife, anyway.

“Sorry.” He comes back around in front of me, face suddenly sympathetic. “You’ve never let them out?”

“Let what out?” I ask, still seething through the pain, though it’s dulling.

He shakes his head. “Wow, that must hurt like a b***h. I feel like I’ve got fasciitis just after one day tucking mine in. Your father might’ve thought he was protecting you, but really he wasn’t doing you any favors.”

“Don’t you dare insult my dad,” I tell him, my voice a little stronger.

“Okay, okay, look,” he says, when he sees my frustration growing. “It’s the easiest way to convince you. Listen to me. I want you to think about that pain, really feel it.”

“I do feel it,” I growl at him, rolling my shoulders.

“No, like really think about it. How it feels as if there’s a center that it radiates from.”

“Will doing this make the pain go away?”

“Make the pain go away? It’ll be better than that. It’ll be like the best morning stretch of your life.”

An involuntary sigh whooshes from my lips at the thought of that sort of stretch. I close my eyes, re-thinking this ache that’s been with me since sixth grade. “Two centers,” I correct after a moment. “There’s not just one.”

“Great, good,” he says. “Now I want you to focus on those centers with your mind and push them out.”

I c***k one eye open. “Push them out?”

“Yeah.” He holds out his palms flat, moving his arms toward me. “Push that pain out, away from your body.”

“Okay, weirdo,” I say. Then I do.

The pain intensifies and I feel like I’m about to pass out, but then there’s a release. It’s so sudden and so complete that I drop to my knees.

There’s a rush of wind past my ears, but there can’t be. Carla and Rod keep all the windows shut tight for humidity control. I look through the doorway to my bedroom where the closet mirrors reflect my shock. That’s not all they reflect.

Two leathery black wings sprout from my back.