Page 46 of Ungodly Rich

Therewasone way to force Julia’s secrets out of her, one far more effective—not to mention riskier—than the Eye of Argos. But Hera never liked asking Apollo for favors. He was so pretentious about it, so self-righteous. She promised herself that she would do so only as a last resort.

In the meantime…when it came to dirty little secrets among the gods, she knew precisely who to ask.

Chapter Eighteen

Hermes

“Hermes?” There was a relentless thudding noise. A hammer, Hermes thought, groaning and shutting his eyes tighter.

“Hermes!” The voice was louder now, more insistent. Through the fog that clouded his mind, Hermes registered who had spoken.

The queen of the gods washere? At his studio apartment in Bushwick?

In his sudden effort to sit up, Hermes flung out an arm, which came into contact with a body.

He squinted, disoriented, at the young mortal in bed next to him. Tanned brown skin, shaggy dark hair, and was that a six-pack—no, an eight-pack? Curious, Hermes lifted the sheet to peer underneath. The stranger had on a pair of Hermes’s shorts, but Hermes himself was naked. Hmm.

He drew in a breath and glanced around the room. He’d forgotten to close a window last night, and the city air drifted in, fragrant with that distinctly New York smell of sunshine and concrete and a hint of overwarmed trash.

Ah, how he adored it here. New York, the city of grifters and hustlers and liars, of people from other places. This was a city constantly in motion, always reinventing itself.

Hermes glanced back at the stranger in his bed. They had met late last night at a club whose name Hermes had forgotten, the kind where everything was shrouded in dim lighting and loud music. He sighed regretfully and shook the young man’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but you need to go,” he said gently.

The stranger woke and blearily registered Hera’s insistent knocking. “This way, please,” Hermes said calmly, like an airline attendant guiding a passenger down the aisle, except he was bundling the young man’s clothes into a ball and handing them to him, then leading him out the tiny door off the kitchen to the fire escape.

“I—um, sure. I had fun, by the way,” the mortal called out, bewildered.

“I had fun, too,” Hermes assured him, and shut the door. It felt like a rather asshole move, kicking him out this way. If he’d had more energy Hermes would have just turned the guy into a spider while he was still asleep, then tucked him into a kitchen drawer until Hera left. But transfiguration was such a draining branch of magic, especially when you were transforming a living thing. Athena had always been best at it.

Hermes hurried into a pair of khakis and a golf polo. Then, smoothing his unruly hair with one hand, he opened the door to his apartment.

There was something discordant about seeing Hera here, standing in the fluorescent lights of the hallway. Usually, Hermes was quite proud of his building, one of the latest luxury apartment complexes popping up in Brooklyn for trust-fund millennials who played at being hipsters. Hermes’s neighbors were the director of an off-Broadway play and a Peloton instructor who threw very loud, very fun parties. But now, seeing Hera here, Hermes felt slightly embarrassed by how cookie-cutter it all was. And how painfully small, compared to Hera’s vast penthouse.

“Thanks for letting me drop by unannounced.” She smiled and followed him inside.

Hermes watched her take in the studio apartment. In the corner stood his king-size bed, the fluffy Matouk bedding rumpled in a distinctly incriminating way. Stray shoes and wrinkled sweaters spilled out of Hermes’s closet. The walls were covered in an eclectic mix of art, everything from an abstract image he’d bought at a night market in Thailand—he’d thought it was a cloud, only to realize later that the cloud was actually quite phallic—to the Manet he’d stolen from the Louvre.

He quickly recalled his manners. “Can I offer you something? Coffee, tea?”

Hera sighed. “Hermes, you’re the one who needs coffee. I’ll make it.”

He slumped gratefully at the table while Hera bustled around his kitchenette, turning on his coffee machine, scooping in fresh beans. Moments later came the heavenly sound of coffee pouring into a mug.

“You do know it’s a weekday,” Hera said reprovingly.

“It’s a Friday in the summer! Everyone knows summer Thursday nights are the start of the weekend.” Hermes would have protested more, but Hera had come over with his coffee, and he took a grateful sip.

When he set down his mug, Hera placed her hand on his brow like a mother taking the temperature of a sick child. Her palm felt delightfully cool on his skin. Hermes felt the refreshing sensation spreading its tendrils through his body, soothing his overheated brain, lowering his pulse, sending a jolt of relief to his liver—which, while not in as bad a shape as Prometheus’s, had been decidedly abused last night.

Hera was not Apollo, who could fuse broken bones, or Asclepius, the true healer among the gods, but Hermes would never underestimate her healing gift.Mending,she had always called it, the sort of healing that mothers all over the world do every day. The kind of mending that fixes bruises or fevers or skinned knees—or in Hermes’s case, a god-awful hangover that was already evaporating like smoke.

When she’d finished, Hera took the other seat at the table. “Thank you,” Hermes croaked, and took another sip of coffee.

Hera waved away his thanks. “I must admit, I had an ulterior motive in stopping by.”

Of course she did. Hera’s moves were always calculated, her plans meticulous and often inscrutable.