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I’m the ex-soldier with time on his hands. Ares and Apollo are busy running the world from behind the curtain.
“Check the app,” Zeus prompts.
The blue wave is calm. Well below the red line.
“It stopped, I think. The graph went down. It looks like it’s breathing.”
“That’s sleep.” The cocktail party persona slips, just a little, into sheer relief. “That means she’s asleep. Everything should be fine if you let her sleep.”
“Great.”
“Don’t make her any promises.”
“…what?”
“Don’t promise her anything, Hercules. Don’t promise to keep her there.”
“Keepher here?”
“If this keeps happening, you have to get her home.”
I stand up and pace away from the bed. “You don’t want me to make any promises, but you want me to promiseyouto bring her home.”
“Yes.” There’s a long pause, and everything from the day crashes into me at high speed. Exhaustion from the flight. Stress. Adrenaline. The persistent ache of not belonging in what everyone says is supposed to be myfamily. “Please.”
“I hate you so much.”
“That’s okay.”
“I’ll bring her home if it comes to that.”
I hang up before he can say anything else.
3
DAISY
Ugh.
I am garbage incarnate. Every muscle hurts. My skull aches. My teeth. I reach for the bottle on my bedside table without opening my eyes. Uncap it. Swallow the pill dry.
Then I lie still and think about silence and darkness until it kicks in.
Thankfully, the painkillers don’t take long to work. Pain melts out of my head first, relieving the scratchy pressure at my eyes, and works its way down to my toes.
Which is exactly the moment my phone buzzes on the bedside table.
I reach for that without looking, too, and find it in place on the wireless charger. I have a vague memory of the phone sliding to the floor of my SUV last night, which means the seizure situation was handled by Shane, which means I owe him.
“Hello?”
“Daisy!” My uncle Zeus’s voice is warm and bright. He’s so full of shit. “It’s me, but you knew that. How are you?”
Because Zeus sounds like he does, I know they found out about the shooting. I’m sure my dad was beside himself.
A wave of guilt, followed by more hatred, followed by a strong urge to give up on all this and go back to New York, pins me to the mattress.
I let out the loudest possible sigh. “Who called my dad about the thing last night? I know it wasn’t Shane.”
