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While I’d expected it, it irritated me. “Work load too demanding?” I asked.
He didn’t reply because Hector tapped his fingers on the table like he was trying to get my attention. Lifting my eyebrows, I gazed at his hand, and then his face. I wasn’t a child who needed redirection.
Clearing his throat, he shifted in his seat, but he kept eye contact. A little piece—okay, a big piece—of me studied him with something like fascination. His arms flexed beneath his shirt. Like Pollux, he was broad-shouldered—but there was something about his frame that gave me the impression I was staring at a man who honed his body. Pollux was big. Big hands, wide shoulders, long legs, and while Hector was as tall, I wondered if he was an athlete, and that was why he looked like he could bend steel.
“What do you do?” I asked. The question slipped out, and once it was between us, I couldn’t drag it back. I shifted the ice pack to my other hand, since the one holding it was numb. “Stunt man? Cowboy?”
Cowboy?
“Leonora, since you can’t help saying the wrong thing, love, try saying nothing.”I shook my head to get my mother’s voice out of it.
“Pollux is an equestrian coach. Orestes saves distracted Americans who aren’t careful crossing the road, and you? What? What is all this? You all must have lives outside of tracking down ancient pieces of pottery. And also, why do you really care? It’s the twenty-first century. If you are a little lax in a promise to a secret society, I’m sure they’ll understand. You could just let it go.”
Tapping one finger on the table, Hector stared at me. It was the only part of his body that moved. He didn’t even seem to blink. He just stared.
Was this some kind of competition? Or hazing? Was he waiting to see who would look away first?Well, news flash, buddy,I’d stared down armed guards at the Iranian border. I didn’t intimidate easily.
Not in the least.
The creak of the chair as he leaned forward, elbows on the table, was as loud as a peel of thunder. Startling hard, I dropped the ice pack. The cubes scattered over the table and floor.
“There are somepromises,” he infused an over-the-top amount of sarcasm into the word, “that should never be forgotten. No matter what century it is. And if that is what you think of them, that they can be ignored when it’s inconvenient, then what I suspected about you is true.”
“What’s that?” God, I hated that my voice shook. Weak. I said it again when he didn’t answer, “What’s that?”
“You’re lying. And we can’t trust you.”
My stomach clenched. “Trust?” That was rich. I had met him yesterday. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“And the rest of the world? What about your friends? Family? Is the only thing that matters to you that you find something that—to you—means nothing?” He stood fast. The muscle next to his ear ticked, like he was grinding his teeth. He towered over me, but not to threaten. It was more he couldn’t spend another second sitting next to someone he had no respect for.
“Mixed martial arts. Or MI-6.” My statement confused him, as it should, since it was unrelated to the character assassination I was sitting through. It probably should have hurt more, hearing what this stranger thought of me, but it didn’t.
Because he was just that. A stranger. When you’d spent your entire life insulted by the people whose love you craved, other people’s digs weren’t huge rakes across your heart. They were scratches. Paper cuts.
It still hurt. It was uncomfortable. It’d smart for a while.
But it wouldn’t scar.
Orestes
Hector was wrong. Leo’s face was whiter than the milk sitting in the center of the table.
Her gaze had gone distant while he spoke, like she’d retreated inside herself. I recognized it because I did it every time the Furies reminded me of my crime.
Whatever she was thinking about was worse than what Hector accused her of.
She was right. She didn’t owe us anything. And she didn’t live in a world where the gods played with the fate of humans. Everything in this world was logical and predictable. For the most part.
What human had the experience of being visited by a god? Or being the son of a god?
It wasn’t fair to ask more of Leo than her experience allowed her to comprehend.
“That’s enough.” My voice came out stronger than I had heard it in decades, and my mind, too. Last night, I had slept. A beautiful, dreamless sleep. And only the second one in millennia. Ever since that strange, strange event in Leo’s apartment, I hadn’t had one visit from the Furies. Their enduring presence was the only thing I could count on in this world. Ironic how we had sealed up the Olympians, but the Furies and other offspring of the Pantheon remained.
I couldn’t help thinking Leo’s presence was directly correlated to their absence.
A wave of protectiveness washed over me. This girl brought out a side of me I don’t think had existed. “Hector, she doesn’t know. And you don’t know her.”
