Back at Bill’s place, suitcase and toiletry bag in hand, I felt better about deserting my little bookstore. The game was finally afoot. I put the bags at the bottom of the stairs and walked toward the kitchen. The place was a buzz of activity, with people talking, discussing, and arguing. All of my newly-acquired entourage was trying to figure out what roles they would play in our little drama. Power struggles that were so common at the Olympus court were in full swing. I wouldn’t tolerate this for very long, but I decided to give them a day or two to get things sorted. Everyone wanted to secure their place in the new court.

Bill’s house would work temporarily as a base of operations, but he only had four bedrooms so we would have to move soon. My entourage was ever-growing. Demi had been joined by her husband, Jason, and Hercules had been joined by Hebe, his wife. Ariadne joined her husband, Dion. Those three brought our compliment to twelve. The addition of nine new constant companions to an already crowded world was going to annoy me very quickly. I beat down those thoughts with a mental stick. I needed help and I needed people close to me. Prickling and bristling at their presence wouldn’t help any of us.

Demi and Hebe met in the kitchen and began preparing food for all of us. Aaron and Hermes spread maps on the kitchen table while Hercules looked on. Nike, Ariadne, and Dion worked to get the bedrooms ready for guests. Apparently, Aaron and Bill were going to sleep in the room with Eli and me, on inflatable mattresses. No one questioned the choice. Maybe they sensed the connection between us. I don’t know. Maybe they simply obeyed when I said it was to be so. Either way, each went about their tasks.

As I moved among my followers, I felt detached and extraneous, as if they could do everything that needed doing without my help. It was likely true. But, like any group, they needed leadership and that is where I came in. Each fell to a knee and pledged their support and then they got down to the business of helping my life work smoother and easier. The idea was that I needed to be free to think and plan and lead, I assume. I could count on them to help me establish a regime, but could I count on them when the fighting started? I hoped so, with all my heart.

The food wasn’t ready, and plans weren’t solidified, so I walked up the stairs, feeling as if I were dragging a heavy weight behind me. I went into the bedroom where I slept the night before and stretched across the bed. Within seconds, Eli appeared at the foot of the bed. He had been in the living room with Bill and he saw me mount the stairs. He knew my destination.

“What troubles you?” he asked me without waiting for me to acknowledge him.

“A lot has happened today, Eli.” I rolled over so he couldn’t see my face.

“You were... spectacular. That is the only word to describe what happened in the valley. I have never seen such a display of power. Not even when Zeus pounded Olympus to rubble and dust.”

“Spectacular? I don’t feel spectacular. Eli, I feel as if I destroyed something beautiful. It was very destructive energy that I released.”

“Destructive energy that will kill Phobos and his followers. Imagine doing the same thing to his house in Eastover.”

I sighed. I suppose men would always be men. How could he think utterly destroying a pristine valley in the Caucasus was a good thing? “Eli, I could have killed you, Aaron, and Bill in those moments. I was angry enough to. I could have killed the horses. You see what my anger did to Aaron’s face.” I sat up and faced Eli. “Don’t you understand, Eli? I tried to kill Aaron out of anger. Have you seen his face?”

“An improvement, I would say.” Eli’s attempt at humor fell flat. “I’m sorry, Athena. Listen. You don’t know of the conversation that Bill, Aaron, and I had. We three conceded it was a possibility that you would kill one or more of us, but we had to know the extent of your power. Just asking you to show us didn’t work, if you recall. You wouldn’t destroy a flower I held in my hand. Our plan was to get you to do it on your own and if that didn’t work, to goad you into action.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I said, lamely.

“I know that and you wouldn’t have. Do you see, Athena? The experiment would have gone very differently if you knew what we desired of you. You would have held back. You would have been even more reticent. We would not know.”

“Eli, don’t you see? I almost killed Aaron. I tried to kill him. But, more than that, I really wanted to kill him in those moments.”

“But, you didn’t kill him. That is the most important part of this. You had enough control of your energy to not kill Aaron. You had enough control to not kill my horses.”

“Eli, I resent your experiment,” I said as I turned away from him again. “Besides, I didn’t stop on my own. I stopped when you knocked me on my backside. Just short of killing him.”

“Aaron is not that easy to kill.”

I felt the bed move when he sat on it beside me. I rested my head on the pillow, but my feet were still at an oblique angle to the rest of the bed.

“Athena, my love, my love. I know you better than you know yourself. I know you will always hide behind that stone exterior, never allowing anyone inside. Never allowing anyone to see the real Athena. You only give me very brief glimpses.”

I rolled over so that I could look into his eyes. “Brief glimpses? I thought I showed you everything.”

He nodded and said, “I know you think that, but it’s not so. You always hold yourself in check. You let me in the door, but make me stand in the foyer. I never get to see the room inside.”

I felt the frown on my face. “But, I assumed it was you hiding from me.”

“No, no, no. When you see things in my head, it is because you allow it. When I showed you my home planet, you were in a frame of mind to be distracted and you gave me permission to show you Sonara.”

I felt the shock wave of incredulity run down my arms and up my legs. “Eli, can that be true? Can I stand such an accusation?” My husband said nothing. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

His face softened and he leaned forward to kiss my forehead. “Because you wouldn’t have believed me. Even now, you scarcely can believe it. You are perfect in all things save this one. You don’t allow people to see what you hold so deeply inside.” He stretched out his full length beside me, but because I lay diagonally across the bed, his feet hung over the side. “I wanted to be the one to raise your ire, but Bill and Aaron both vetoed the idea. If you got eternally angry with someone, neither wanted it to be me.”

“Understand that I am not complaining, but why not?” I asked.

“Because you and I are married and both of our partners know the value of that institution.”

He moved his luscious mouth closer to mine and I turned away from him, again. “Am I not forgiven?” He pulled himself upright on an elbow. His voice was soft and very sad.

“Eli, what happened to me has left me feeling like I have an open raw wound in my chest. Not the anger and release of power, but the rape. I can still feel the knife blade in my soul. He did something to me.” Eli understood I was talking about Phobos. “Something bad.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know.”

He nodded and then said, “I can feel that knife blade, too. Not as intensely as you because you are keeping yourself carefully hidden from everyone. For me, it is more like a pinprick. Annoying little pain, but livable. Knowing how you keep yourself hidden, I can only imagine what that pinprick is doing to you.”

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“It’s not just the rape, either. It is the boys in the mall. I close my eyes and I still see the blood. I still see the body parts. I still see the haunted look in Jessica’s eyes.”

I felt his nod, but Eli didn’t say anything.

“Eli, something clung to one of the girl’s jeans. It looked like a piece of liver and she screamed and tried to scrape it off as if it were a spider. It was hideous.” I shuddered when I thought about the piece of an internal organ that had, only minutes before, belonged to a living breathing person.

“The manager of the mall threw up at the crime scene,” I whispered when I realized that I didn’t vomit at the sight. And that was all it took for me. I could have transported to the bathroom, but I was too busy keeping my Japanese dinner down. I swallowed hard and managed to swallow vomit. My stomach didn’t like that mistreatment, at all. I ran to the bathroom that was next door to our room and barely made it to the toilet in time. I knelt in front of the toilet and threw up everything. When I was empty I threw up bile. It seemed like I would never be able to vomit enough to get rid of the images.

Eli held my hair away from my face as I heaved again and again. If nothing else defines love for me, that one moment in my life did. Not many people would do that for anyone.

I heard the water running and Eli handed me a damp washcloth that smelled faintly of laundry soap. I wiped the sweat off my face, and then rested my cheek against the cool, cool porcelain. I heard the water running again and Eli handed me a glass full. I rinsed my mouth and spat the water into the toilet bowl.

I closed the lid to the toilet and flopped over the seat with my upper body while I willed my stomach to settle down. My eyes were still closed and Eli’s hand rested on the back of my head. “He’s had an entire day to recharge his energy, Eli. He will strike again, soon. Very soon. If not this afternoon, then tomorrow. He will. And I am not ready to stop him. I don’t have a plan.”

“Aaron will think of something. He is, after all, the greatest strategist that has ever been. You don’t have to plan. You have Aaron.”

“By Zeus, Eli, I am supposed to be the goddess of wisdom and I am not very wise at all.”

“Much wiser than you think, love.” A pause, then, “Are we done here?”

I nodded and pulled myself off the floor. “Why won’t the images go away?”

“Maybe they don’t have to. The world is not made of beauty only. There is an equal amount of ugly to keep things in balance,” was his sage reply. I felt less and less wise all the time. At that moment I felt like an impotent little child who was powerless to accomplish anything that needed accomplishing.

I opened the door to the bathroom and saw Hebe standing in the hallway that was carpeted with a beautiful Persian runner. Hebe looked as if she were only thirteen or fourteen. She had a slight body, no feminine curves, and her eyes looked too big for her face. She was the goddess of youth and she still looked the part. Her white blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail and her pink shorts showed nearly all of her legs. On her backside, she announced to the world that she was “Juicy,” and her t-shirt was white with a large pink flower. Her earrings were large pink and yellow daisies and her sneakers were pink with yellow and white daisies. This woman who was well over three thousand years old would be carded at every bar in the country.

“We are ready in the kitchen,” she said. Her voice held a very youthful quality, too, as if it hadn’t deepened to that adulthood level, yet. She spun on her heel and skipped down the stairs, her ponytail flopping behind her.

The thought of eating made my stomach turn a flip. I soldiered on, leading Eli down the stairs. On more than one level, I felt that getting in touch with my feelings was not necessarily a good thing. It was a practice I would have to learn.

The hum of voices hit me from the door. I continually find myself in domestic settings, especially when I feel less than domestic. Even immortals had to eat to maintain perfect health. Besides, it delighted the palate and was one of the chief pleasures people of all races had. Food was piled high on the table. My entourage had filled plates and were standing or leaning against counters while they ate. I rejected the idea of food and settled for a glass of cold water from the refrigerator. I began to feel better.

I glanced at the clock over the pantry door and was informed that it was only 3:30 in the afternoon. Phobos still had time to do something bad before sundown. After sundown was when he came into most of his power, so he would likely wait until then. A thought struck me. “Bill, everything Phobos has done in the past few days has been during the daylight hours, right? Except for the car near Williamsburg.”

Bill looked up from his plate of mashed potatoes and fried chicken. “Well, everything except that and when he attacked you.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. More people around to attract attention?” Bill answered. He speared another forkful of mashed potatoes and poked them into his mouth.

“Unless you are chasing the wrong man,” Hermes said, voicing the thought that I had only begun to formulate on my own. He bit into a chicken leg.

Bill’s mouth dropped open. “Holy Hannah!” Bill said. “What if Tinkerbell is right?”

“Hey, watch it,” Hermes said to Bill.

“Mighty Zeus, it can’t be,” I said. “I mean look at what he did to me.”

Bill placed his plate in the sink. “He deserves to die for that, alone. And for all the crimes committed over the centuries. But, if he isn’t the one responsible for the weird deaths, then it has to be someone who knows him or who works in his camp. Look at the evidence. You saw them drain several people dry.”

I nodded. “Bill, I know I told you to stop thinking like a cop, but you may want to start that again. You take this information to a judge, what does he do?”

Bill nodded and his frown deepened enough to wrinkle his entire face. “He tells me to come back when I have solid evidence.”

“So, that’s what we need.”

Bill nodded and then said, “Back to square one.”

“No, not really,” Dion said. “We know it has to be one of Phobos’s associates.”

“Are you sure, Dion? Are you sure?” I asked him.

Dion shook his head in the negative and turned to Aaron. “Phobos is your son. Would he kill eleven boys in a mall on Saturday afternoon?”

“I would not have thought so,” Aaron agreed

“It sounds as if we have been making a lot of assumptions,” Hermes said, walking closer to us.

“But what would they want with all that blood?” Hebe asked.

“To bathe in it,” Aaron said.

“What? You mean literally take a bath in blood?” Hebe asked. Her childlike face was incredulous.

“Yes,” Aaron said. “Before a battle, Eris and Enyo would fill a tub with blood and soak in it until it started to separate and clot. They said it made them more youthful.”

I shook my head in disbelief. How had my sisters developed such a distorted view? I participated in many battles and my rituals for preparing were nothing compared to those two. I donned my armor and ensured my weapons were in good shape. I sharpened my own spearhead, my own arrows. I strung my own bow, not wanting to leave those tasks to anyone else. If I did it, I knew it was done correctly. During the Trojan War, I helped the Achaeans time and time again and never went through a ritual as heinous as Enyo and Eris.

It was one of those moments when I remembered something long forgotten and the thought hit me so hard I gasped. All fell silent in the room and waited for me to continue. “I was thinking about the Trojan War and my role in it. I was so intent on helping the Achaeans win the war that I often either disguised myself and fought with the Achaeans on the battlefield, or I walked in the Trojan camp, unseen by them.”

“You mean you can make yourself invisible?” Bill asked me. He was shocked down to his large, large boots. He had better get used to these kinds of shocks if he was going to continue fraternizing with us immortals.

“Not invisible, as such,” I told him. “But, I was able to keep everyone distracted so they simply didn’t look my way. I heard battle plans, strategies, everything. It was a form of mind control.” I took a moment to remember that someone in Phobos’s camp had controlled my mind when I was recently his guest. That would account for the lost minutes. Had Phobos grown in strength enough to be able to do that, too?

“She is one of the best at invisibility,” Dion said. “Show him, Athena.”

I didn’t tell anyone about the lost moments in time, again. As if it wasn’t very important. “It won’t work right now, because Bill will be watching for me. It works if the people I am spying on don’t know that I am in the area. Which gives me an idea...”