Chapter 50 This Is Hera-fying
WELL, THAT WASN’T WEIRD AT all,” I say. His disappearance happened so fast that I’m still staring at the place he used to be.
“Right?” Arjun plops down on the corner of my bed. “What do you think he was so nervous about?”
“I don’t know. I just wish—”
I break off as Frankie snaps back into our room. Only this time, he’s got Calliope with him.
My muse looks a lot like she did the last time I saw her.
She’s traded in her black pleather pants and jacket for a black pleather vest and miniskirt, but everything else is the same.
Same black boots, same black aviators, same black travel mug she drinks from four times before she steps forward to greet me.
“How’ve you been, Eleanor?”
I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow her New York accent has gotten even thicker.
“Actually, it’s Penelope,” I correct her.
She frowns. “Are you sure?”
“Of my own name?” I answer incredulously. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
“If you say so.” She looks at me over the tops of her black aviators. “Frankie says you’ve got a problem he doesn’t feel comfortable handling.”
“I said it was above my pay grade,” Frankie corrects her huffily. “That’s not the same thing as saying I can’t handle it.”
“Potato, po-tah-toe,” she answers airily.
“Actually, it’s more like potato, artichoke,” he shoots back.
“Please. I would never touch an artichoke. It’s poky.” She shoots his shirt and tie a look of revulsion before turning back to me. “So tell me, Eleanor—”
“Penelope.”
“Ellie,” Fifi corrects her at the exact same time.
“That’s right, Ellie!” She snaps her fingers a couple of times. “I knew it wasn’t Penelope.”
I have absolutely no idea what to say about that.
“So what is it the three of you need help with?” She lowers her voice. “You want me to put a curse on someone for you?”
My eyes go wide. “You mean you can do that?”
She shrugs. “Not really. But it sounds like it could be fun to try.”
I pause for a moment, wondering what kind of muse I would have gotten if I’d actually made it into Athena Hall. But then I shake it off, because there’s no use crying over lost muses. And I still have answers to find.
“Actually, I was kind of hoping you could help me with this.” I hold up the book. “Can you read Attic Greek?”
“Of course I can read Attic Greek. I’ve been around so long it used to just be called Greek.” She turns to Frankie with a scowl. “Seriously? You dragged me out of a poetry reading for this?”
“It’s more important than a poetry reading.”
“We’ll see about that.” She pulls a pair of half-moon glasses out of the inner lining of her vest and switches her aviators out for them. “Give it here.”
I’m still irrationally reluctant to let go of the book, but Calliope is supposed to be here to help me, so in the end, I do as she says and place the book in her outstretched hand.
“Okay, now, what do we have here?” she mutters as she flips it open to the first page. And then promptly drops it. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where did you get that thing?”
I’m too busy choking on the dust cloud that rose up the second the book hit our dorm room floor to answer.
She turns to Fifi’s muse. “Frankie, where’d she get that?”
“You sure you don’t want to go back to that poetry reading?” he snarks. “If you leave now, you can probably make the last twenty minutes.”
“Okay, fine. You made a good call.” She bends over and picks up the book so gingerly that I half expect it to bite her. “This is serious stuff you’re playing with, Penelope.”
Funny how she gets my name right when she wants to chastise me.
“I’m not playing with it. I just want to know her name.”
Frankie and Calliope exchange another long look. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
“That’s basically what Frankie said.” Frustration rises inside me, drowning out the little voice in the back of my head telling me I should be cautious here, that Calliope holds a whole lot of my future at Anaximander’s in her tattooed hands.
“Why can’t somebody just tell us the truth instead of dancing around it? We’re old enough to handle it!”
“You sure about that?” Calliope fires back, right before she drains her entire cup of coffee. “Fine, but if we’re going to do this—”
“We’re actually going to do this?” Frankie’s voice breaks in shock.
She shoots him a look. “If we’re going to do this, I need pizza.”
She snaps her fingers, and seconds later, a giant thin-crust pizza from New York City shows up on my bed. “I hope everyone likes vegan cheese.”
I’ve got no problem with it—Athenas are big on alternate dairy and protein sources—and neither does Arjun, but Frankie and Fifi both somehow manage to look repulsed and resigned at the same time.
Five minutes later, we’re all seated around the floor with paper plates loaded with pizza. Only after she’s taken several bites of her slice—“That Joseph really knows how to make a pie”—does she open the book.
“Why don’t you tell me what you think this says, Ellie?”
“I know what it says,” I answer. “Sort of. Even though I can’t read it, I do know it’s a story about a woman who took care of a wounded cuckoo bird. I don’t know why that’s such a big deal to everyone. I just want to know her name.”
“Her name?” She lifts a brow. “Her name’s right here.” She points to a small word.
“I know that. But whenever I try to say it, or think it, it disappears right out of my head. Do you know why that is?”
“It’s because the enchantments are working, just like they’re supposed to.” She snaps the book closed and gets to her feet. “You know I can’t leave this with you, right?”
“We need it,” I tell her, even as I play her words over in my head. “To win the scavenger hunt. Since Charlie and her friends got involved, we’re only two items away from winning—one, if you count that book.”
“Is that what you want?” she asks shrewdly. “To win the scavenger hunt?”
“We’re so close,” I answer, dodging the question.
“Wow.” She inclines her head. “That nonanswer was worthy of an Athena girl. You sure you’re an Aphrodite?”
“Of course she is!” Fifi answers indignantly. “Ellie is Aphrodite all the way.”
“Is she now?” Calliope looks me over from head to toe.
“In that case, I won’t confiscate the book.
But I will turn it over to your head teacher.
That way she and the other teachers can give you credit for having found it so it’s not just lying around, waiting to cause trouble—although I don’t have a clue what they were thinking, putting it on the list.”
“Is that what it’s trying to do?” I ask, because I really do want to know the answer. “Cause trouble?”
She and Frankie exchange another look. “Something like that.”
Then she picks up her coffee cup and heads toward the door, my book dangling from her left hand. “Enjoy the pizza,” she calls over her shoulder.
“Wait!” Arjun tells her as she reaches for the door handle. “You still haven’t told us who the woman in the story is.”
She lifts a brow. “I was really hoping you were going to let that go. No such luck, huh?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Fine. Just remember, you asked for it.” Suddenly the hand she’s holding the book in begins to shake, which seems strange, considering she’s never before shown even a drop of nerves. She leans forward, lowering her voice to little more than a whisper as she says, “Her name is Hera.”
“Hera?” I repeat, determined not to forget it.
“Yes, But you should know that some don’t like that we remember her.
” She starts to say more, but her voice is drowned out by a sudden burst of thunder rolling across the sky.
It’s followed by another torrential downpour like we had this morning, with lightning bursting overhead and rain coming down in literal curtains of water.
“What just happened?” Fifi yelps, crossing to the window to see the sudden storm.
“I told you, some don’t like it when we remember her,” Calliope says.
“Oh, come on,” I tell her. “It’s fall in the Berkshires. You can’t really tell me you think this is anything but regular fall weather?”
“Didn’t you have a weird thunderstorm experience this morning too?” she shoots back.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t talking about this Hera person then.”
“Maybe not. But were you talking about something the gods didn’t like?” Frankie asks.
I shift uneasily, because the last thing I want to do is have to go it alone like I did earlier. All that didn’t happen just because I was feeling bad for Prometheus, did it?
“All we’re saying is now that you know her name, let it go,” Frankie tells us. “It doesn’t matter to you anyway.”
“Don’t you think we should find out about her? Try to figure out why she’s supposed to be forgotten?”
“No!” he and Calliope say at the exact same time.
That’s when she approaches me, wary and watching, like she’s getting ready to jump away at any second.
“Look, kid. I know you like to figure things out, and that’s cool.
But you have enough going on here to take up your time.
Classes, the scavenger hunt, those labor things of yours, the festival that’s coming up.
Why go chasing after something that’s only going to end up biting you in the butt or worse? ”
I start to answer her, but she’s already climbing up onto the windowsill, the book Kyrian gave me tucked under her arm. As she turns to leave, she mouths “Let it go!” one more time.
Frankie, who is right behind her, says, “You guys really should listen to her.”
Then they take their exit, leaving Arjun, Fifi, and me with nothing to do but stare at each other and wonder what comes next.