Aphrodite

  Chapter VIII

  THE FEEL OF Poseidon’s hands grabbing at me, his lips pressing against mine, his tongue snaking down my throat, coated me like a filthy residue. I wanted nothing more than to get it off.

  “Aphrodite . . .” Adonis stared at the spot where Poseidon had been standing. “What the hell was that?”

  I pushed past him to get into the room. Warmth pricked against my cheeks as my skin adjusted to the lack of wet wind zapping my body heat. Adonis must have turned off the air conditioner, because the room no longer competed for the title of coldest place on earth.

  “I asked you a question.” Adonis locked the sliding glass door with a click, and then moved from panel to panel, yanking the taupe shades down the floor-to-ceiling windows as if fabric could somehow create a barrier against Poseidon. Unfortunately, all it did was make the room feel smaller. “Time to think over what? What did you just agree to?”

  “I haven’t agreed to anything, yet.” If my hands would stop shaking, I could unzip this stupid dress and change into something warm.

  “Yet?” Adonis ran his fingers through his golden hair, his face pinched with concern. “Aphrodite, don’t. I know he rules a realm and all that, but just because he’s powerful, doesn’t mean he’s worth—”

  “You think that I’d—” I stared at Adonis in disbelief. “For power? You think that’s my price?”

  “What else would you want from him?”

  I stared at him for a solid minute, letting the words he’d just said hang between us.

  “I’m sorry,” Adonis said at last, shifting uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “That I’m a whore?” I snapped, all the anger and fear I’d felt on the balcony a moment ago latching on to a safe target. “Is that what you think of me? That I’ll just have sex with anybody, no matter how much they make my skin crawl, as long as they offer me enough? That I’d be willing to—”

  “You’re the one who said ‘yet.’” Adonis held his hands up in surrender. “Despite the fact that you’re shaking. That nothing in your face, not an iota of your body language indicates you wanted that.” He jabbed a finger out at the balcony. “Much less anything further. He’s offering you something, or he’s holding something over you. And I’m telling you, whatever it is, it’s not worth it. If even half the myths I’ve read are true, he’s bad news. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  The heat of my anger dissipated, leaving me cold inside. My knees folded under me as I sat on the couch, hunching forward to cradle my head in my hands. “I can’t leave.”

  “I know you want to find out what’s happening to the demigods, but I can help you. “Adonis sat beside me. “I won’t forget whatever happens. I can’t be charmed, and I’m still willing to investigate for you. Put a glamour on me, and let whoever is behind this think I left the ship with you. You can meet me when we get back to Florida. I’ll fill you in on everything I saw.”

  The chill from my soaking-wet dress bit into my skin too much to ignore. I pushed to my feet and fumbled for the zipper. “That isn’t what I meant. I can’t leave a ship in the middle of the ocean, any more than you can.” My hands were shaking too much, my fingers too numb. I swore. “Do we have scissors?”

  “What?” Adonis stood. “No. Here, let me.” He cleared his throat, and once he finished unzipping the dress, he moved away from me. “You can’t teleport?”

  “No.” I waited until Adonis walked to the kitchen, careful to keep his back to me, before shimmying out of my dress. Reaching into the suitcase, I pulled out a pair of yoga pants and an oversized gray shirt. Socks! My feet rejoiced when I slid the cotton fabric over my freezing-cold toes. I finger-combed my hair, and wandered into the kitchen. “Excuse me.” Reaching past Adonis, I grabbed a bottle of water.

  “Wait.” He grabbed the bottle and put it back in the fridge. “Let’s get something warm. I’ll call” Adonis broke off, his gaze sweeping over me. “Uh, um. You know what, room service will take forever.” He recovered. “Is coffee okay?” He rummaged through the drawer under the coffee maker. “We’ve also got tea and hot chocolate.”

  “Coffee’s fine.”

  He nodded and frowned at the coffee maker, then started fiddling with it. “Can’t Persephone teleport you out?”

  “I’m not from this realm, so no.” When my chest tightened, I forced myself to breathe. You’ll be fine. I propped myself onto one of the barstools and leaned my elbows against the smooth counter, gazing across the wide expanse of living room, and focused on taking deep breaths.

  The coffee maker clicked. Behind me, I heard Adonis draw two cups from the cabinet. “Can someone from this realm teleport you out?”

  I shook my head. “I have to be from this realm or have permission from Poseidon to teleport.” I turned to study Adonis. “Who’d you have in mind?” Poseidon was, to my knowledge, the only sea god left.

  Adonis shrugged and turned to the coffee maker. The sound of liquid pouring into mugs filled my ears as the scent of hazelnut wafted into the air. “Eh, well, if you turned me into a god in this realm, then I’d technically be from—”

  “Turned you into a—” Incredulous, I spun on my seat to face him. “What the hell kind of idea is that?”

  Adonis shrugged, looking embarrassed. “It’s not something I want. I’m just problem solving. Throwing ideas out there.”

  I gaped at him. “What makes you think it’s even possible?”

  “Didn’t Hercules get turned into a god?” Adonis passed me a cup of coffee, but I set the mug down on the countertop without taking a sip.

  “For a little while. He died from lack of worship back when most of the other gods did, but—” I took a sip of my coffee, considering my words carefully. “It’s not an easy process for either party.” There was almost no power involved in apotheosis, the process by which a demigod was turned into a full deity. All it took was a spark to activate the ichor in a demigod’s blood. “And there’s a price.”

  “What kind of price?” Curiosity flickered in Adonis’s eyes, but not hunger. My shoulders relaxed a bit when I realized he was legitimately curious about the process, not desperate to try it.

  “Activating ichor doesn’t automatically give a demigod enough power to survive as a deity.” The ship hit another set of choppy waves, and the crystals on the chandelier hanging over the living room chimed melodically. Lights from the crystals moved along the white walls. I swallowed hard, pushing aside the reminder that even within these walls, I was trapped in Poseidon’s realm. “It, uh, it takes time to build up, and even more time for the demigod’s body to change enough to handle divine powers. So for a few months, there’s . . .” I hesitated, trying to think of the right word. “A connection? No, more like a transfer. If I turned you into a god right now, my power would flow to you, and I’d be all but human for a few months. Eventually, your body would stabilize and my power would flow back to me.” The open-ended link between god and newly created deity was an odd one. Without enough power, gods should die. But the link allowed power to flow back and forth, enabling both parties to live through the process, provided there was enough worship to keep them both sustained. They were pretty much useless, in terms of being able to do anything with their power until the transformation completed, but they lived. “And no, this wouldn’t be your realm. You’d be getting an upgrade, but you were still born in Demeter-land.” Even I’d been created on land. The “being stranded in the ocean” bit happened afterward.

  Someone knocked on the door. I grabbed Adonis’s phone off the countertop and checked the time. “I’m late for a meeting.”

  “A meeting?” Adonis reached for his phone, fingers brushing against mine when he took the slim device back. “With who? And why?”

  “Do you think my investigation is limited to following you around all day?” I asked with a lightness I didn’t fe
el. I pulled open the door and smiled at Miguel. “Be right there.”

  “I’m going to shield the room,” I told Adonis as I cast the shield, double-and triple-checking the barrier. This time, the frickin’ thing held without any trouble. Go figure. “Stay put.” As if he had a choice.

  Chapter IX

  “YOU CAN LOOK up passengers by last name, or account number.” Miguel moved the cursor over the computer screen. He clicked on a tab, and a lengthy list of names and numbers sorted into columns filled the screen. “Or you can search by room number.”

  We sat at the guest services desk in the atrium, out of sight, thanks to a carefully crafted shield. Miguel had chosen the middle of the three computers, claiming the machine to be the fastest.

  “Does it print?” I glanced above and below the desk’s surface but didn’t see a printer.

  Miguel nodded. “It’s hooked up to a printer in the office.” He motioned to the glass door behind us marked “Staff Only.”

  Passengers walked across the marble floor in packs, each group going in a different direction with a sense of purpose. Piano music played over the speakers, the lilting melody of Beyond the Sea setting my foot tapping against the rolling chair I occupied as I waited for Miguel finish this unnecessary software tour and hand over the frickin’ computer already.

  “And you can see their transactions by clicking here,” he continued, showing me the appropriate tab.

  “The one labeled transactions?” I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. So far, everything looked pretty self-explanatory. So if I could just take the keyboard . . . “I think I’ve got this, Miguel. You can go now. Thank you.”

  “Happy to help.” Miguel grinned and made as if to leave, then hesitated.

  “Yes?” I didn’t glance up from typing Narcissus’s first and last name.

  “These people you search for, and the man you travel with . . .” Miguel trailed off, as if debating what to say next.

  I looked up. “Adonis? What about him?”

  “I know of their kind. They are not . . . trustworthy. Be careful.”

  I thanked him, shaking my head with a smile as I thought how odd it was that Miguel would recognize demigods—and fear them even—but he didn’t realize when he was in the presence of a full-blooded deity. Then again, maybe he’d been on other ships with some of the missing demigods and had been charmed into forgetting them. The memory, or lack thereof, would definitely be unnerving.

  Filing that thought for later, I settled into my seat and combed through pictures of all the passengers on the ship, making certain I’d met all the demigods on board.

  I had. I recorded their room numbers and looked at their transactions, trying to pin a pattern to their day I could share with Poseidon. Then I turned my attention to past cruises, and began compiling a list of demigod passengers and cruise dates. “Oh, forget this,” I muttered after studying another ship’s worth of passengers. I could charm a team into doing this for me later. Instead, I keyed in the names of the demigods I knew for a fact were missing. I needed to pinpoint exactly when they went missing on their particular cruises and figure out if there was any connection.

  The music lowered in deference to sleeping passengers as the night wore on, and a general hush fell over the ship, interrupted only every so often by a group of drunken revelers making their way from one club to another. But by the time I got around to typing the name of the last missing demigod—Otrera Ephesus—into the search engine, even those groups wandered by less often. Perusing her file, I discovered that Otrera had sailed with Fantasy Cruise Line just before she went missing on . . . this ship. Scribbling down the name of our ship, and the dates, I moved on to the other tab.

  Otrera had boarded the ship the day the cruise set sail, debarked two days later on the small island the cruise line owned, then boarded later again that afternoon. She hadn’t scanned in or out again the rest of the cruise. Clicking on the next tab, I searched through her transactions and found the last one to be a drink charge at three a.m., on the third night of the cruise, from the karaoke bar. Then nothing, no activity at all.

  My eyes burned with fatigue as I thought over what I knew. The missing demigods hadn’t always travelled this cruise’s route, but all the ships passed through the same coordinates within twenty-four hours of the demigods’ last transactions.

  Staring at the spot on the map, I yawned. I saw nothing notable there, just more ocean. Actually . . . I leaned closer; measuring distance with my fingertips. What made the location notable was the lack of surroundings. The coordinates marked the cruise’s farthest point from land.

  I cradled my forehead in my hands, yawning again. “Time to take a break.” I could make sense of all of this later. Time to get up, and gather the papers, and . . .

  And . . .

  A knock on the shield caught my attention and I raised my head. Ares stood on the other side, his hands pushed into the pockets of his leather jacket.

  “What?” I dropped my shield in surprise. “How are you—Why—?”

  “You’re dreaming, love.” His pupils were wide with charm as he stepped behind the desk.

  “Stop,” I whispered as Ares knelt before me, gazing up at me with those blank, adoring eyes.

  I couldn’t see Zeus, but he was there. He was always lurking somewhere in my dreams, waiting to twist them into nightmares. His breath stirred the hair on my neck. But I couldn’t make myself turn to face him. Not with Ares in front of me, staring at me as if he’d been blind and I was his first glimpse of the sun.

  “Swear fealty.” The hateful words left my tongue, but the voice belonged to Zeus.

  “I swear.” As Ares spoke, he crumbled into dust and bones.

  I screamed his name, wrenching myself out of the nightmare and into a dreamscape.

  “Aphrodite!” Ares’s arms closed around me.

  I didn’t question his presence, just buried my head in his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whimpered. “I’m so sorry.” I clung to him, fighting the panic rising in my chest from the horrible nightmare-turned-memory. I couldn’t save anyone. Someone would always find a way to use me against the people I cared about. Why did I volunteer to come here? What did I think I could accomplish? “I wouldn’t have let you—I didn’t want—”

  He made soothing noises and stroked my hair, holding me until my babbling turned coherent then ceased all together. Eventually, I put myself together enough to recognize that his arms around me felt warm and firm and real.

  “How are you here?” I pulled away from him, voice hoarse.

  “You, uh.” He glanced down. “You called me here.”

  Horrified, I closed my eyes against the memory of me screaming his name. There was no recovering from this. No pretending. “I didn’t mean to.”

  He shrugged, pushing his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “I don’t mind. Bad dream?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Scrubbing at my face, I tried to regain some semblance of composure. “I, um, I need to meet with Persephone. I shouldn’t have—”

  “You’re allowed to have nightmares, Aphrodite. Hell, you’re entitled.” Ares drew back, studying me with concern. “A year ago, you never apologized for anything. Now, you’re tripping over yourself trying to undo what I just saw? What happened to you?”

  You left. I stared at him, trying to come up with something less needy, less desperate, less . . .

  True.

  Everyone had left after Zeus died. Persephone disappeared into her grief and the responsibilities of running three realms for months. Melissa went off to college. Everyone else went back to their own lives, but I didn’t have one outside of Zeus. At first, that freedom felt exhilarating, full of potential. Then everything I was so certain I knew turned out to be wrong. Surviving hadn’t even begun to prepare me for living with what I
’d survived.

  I gave up and threw his own words from the other night back at him. “I can’t afford to be weak, remember?” Summoning a hair tie, I stepped back and pulled my hair into a loose ponytail.

  “This isn’t weak.” Ares motioned around the blank dreamscape. “This is you, dealing. Hiding from the aftermath, avoiding meetings unless someone can physically pull you in, pretending what happened doesn’t affect you at all, that’s not—”

  “Your problem.” I tightened the ponytail. “And frankly, not your business. I’m not one of your soldiers, Ares.”

  A frown marred Ares’s perfect features. “You brought me here.”

  “I didn’t want to, it just happened,” I snapped, unable to contain my temper. “I just”—my temper fizzled as a feeling of uncertainty crept up my spine—“dozed off, I guess.”

  “You guess?” Ares tilted his head, eyebrows raised in confusion. Gods didn’t need sleep. When we choose to sleep, it’s a conscious action. “Aphrodite, where are you right now?”

  I closed my eyes and shifted the dreamscape, pulling in my awareness of the world outside of my sleeping form. The details filled in. The “C” shaped desk, the brightly lit lobby, me, with my head buried in my arms, snoozing away. “My shields are still up,” I realized, relieved.

  “Maybe the strain of being in another realm got to you.” Ares walked behind me to see the screen of the computer. Jumbled letters and symbols filled the display, but the pictures came through without any problem. “It takes some getting used to. But still . . .”

  “I’m also maintaining two shields,” I argued. “And it’s been a long day.”

  “Two?” Ares glanced around.

  “One around Adonis’s room.”

  “He’s here?” Ares raised his eyebrows. “That changes things. We can’t let Adonis disappear. Have you told Poseidon?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah. He knows.”

  Ares opened his mouth, and then closed it, studying me hard.