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It’s as dark and quiet downstairs as it is upstairs. No bright exterior lights. Nothing except the moonlight, and a muted glow from the pool by Zeus’s house.
Hercules sits at the side of the pool, his feet in the water, looking up at the stars.
I don’t bother with a blanket. It’s warm enough outside, even at night, and it feels good to go outside without any armor. Hercules keeps looking up at the sky while I cross the yard. He must be deep in thought, because any other time he’d be rushing over here to make sure I don’t over-exert myself by strolling on soft grass.
I’m about ten feet away when he turns his head, eyes going wide.
“Don’t get up.” I wave him down, but he’s pulled his feet halfway out of the water.
“You shouldn’t be walking around.”
“I can still walk around. I don’t know why everyone thinks I shouldn’t walk around.”
“Conservation of energy. You have more important things to do.”
Fine. He’s right. The walkwasslightly draining, but that seems like a mindset issue, really. I take a seat next to him and stick my feet in the pool. Hercules puts his arm around me with zero hesitation and holds me closer to his body, like he’s afraid I might tumble into the water and drown. That’s a nonsense fear. My uncle Poseidon taught me to swim. I don’t think I could drown if I wanted to.
“You know,” I mention, trying to keep it casual. “Seizures are an excess of energy in the brain. It would be better if I walked around more.”
“Bullshit,” he says.
“Yeah. Maybe. Ormaybe, if I walked in the dark…”
He doesn’t say anything. The sky is clear, at least over these houses. It must be some kind of optical illusion. The sky over the city is never this visible. Tonight, I can see constellations.
“Why are you out here instead of in bed?”
“Why areyouout here?” His hand moves up and down on my arm. Up. Down. Up. Down. It’s a smooth, soothing movement.
“I woke up.”
“So did I.”
“Whatwoke you up?”
A sigh. “Same things that always do.”
“Like what?”
“It feels like bad luck to talk about it.” He seems to make a decision. “I’ll tell you when this is over.”
My throat gets tight against my will. That’s what everyone keeps saying.When this is over.It might notbeover. Or—when it’s over, I might not be here to talk about anything.
Thinking about it makes the nightmare seem closer, like it’s lurking in the foliage at the property line.
“Let’s talk about something else, then.”
“Do you think…” He sounds like he’s casting about for a less death-oriented topic to talk about. “Do you think Apollo is ever going to bring somebody home?”
I kick my feet in the water, a slow slide under the surface. “What do you mean, bring somebody home?”
“A girlfriend. A boyfriend.Somebody.”
His arm gets tighter around me. The silence turns thoughtful, and then it’s gently broken by the burble of the pool filters. The answer feels obvious to me.
“He brings Artemis home. I thought that would change when he went to college without her, but it didn’t.”
“Like…a date?” It’s the first time Hercules has brought up the idea of dating. The idea of two people being normal together. Dinner. Movies. That kind of thing. We haven’t had to talk about it. Our situation was nevernormal,what with the shooting and my apparent inability to keep my brain in check.
