Chapter 3
It’san old-person thing to say, but it seems impossible that the women of the family—plus Castor and Pollux, Orion’s teenage twin brothers, who are currently having pedicures done in an adjacent room—have gathered together at a private event space in Hell’s Kitchen to ready ourselves for my baby sister’s sixteenth birthday party.
A second old-person thing to say is that it brings a tear to my eye to see Calliope glancing over her makeup with a critical eye while her stylist hovers, bright-eyed and attentive, ready to move on to hair when she gets the go-ahead from the birthday girl. Calliope was, like, just born. I’ll never forget how tiny she was the first time I held her, with her wispy blonde hair and her little button nose and the pink onesie that looked like it could also fit a doll. Daisy and I had, of course, met our cousin Orion by then and marveled at how doll-sized Uncle Poseidon and Aunt Ashley’s son was.
But it was different with Calliope. She was mine.
And, subsequently, Daisy’s, since we’d been raised more like sisters than cousins. She’d wanted a baby sister, too, even if her eyes made it harder to do the kinds of besotted older-sister things that I sometimes did, like letting Calliope chase me around in the backyard for hours during the brightest part of the day.
“I love you,” Daisy says into my ear. “But you have to get it together. It’s not like she’s moving to California.”
I dab at my eyes, careful not to screw up my frankly flawless makeup. “I would never let her move to California. I would hunt her down and bring her back.”
“Some friend you are.”
“I tried to bring you back, like, a million times. It’s just that you don’t love me as much as Calliope.”
“Slander!”
I laugh out loud at Daisy’s thunderously offended expression. Daisy moved away to California out of nowhere after we graduated, and I hated it. Of course, I respected her decision, because she is an independent woman capable of making her own life decisions, but it was the worst. We went from spending time together pretty much daily to a few scattered visits every year, and I always felt like we were racing against time.
We were racing against time. I didn’t know how little we had until Hercules brought her home last summer and the situation was so dire that I thought we’d be planning multiple funerals before the month was out. There was no way Daisy’s dad would survive her death, and my dad was in pieces and trying to hide it, and I cannot imagine a family reunion with more tension than when Daisy’s nightmares almost killed her.
Luckily for all of us, Hercules rolls his eyes in the face of death, and despite years of simmering animosity between the second of my three adoptive brothers and my best-friend-slash-cousin-slash-sister Daisy, he fell in love with her and leaped into the deadly reaches of her mind to save her.
Or so I’ve heard.
I didn’t personally witness the leaping-into-the-deadly-reaches. I was across the lawn in my dad’s house with Apollo and Ares, trying to be calm and steadfast for Calliope and Orion and Castor and Pollux. The effort had to be what counted in that situation, because I did not want to be calm and steadfast. I wanted a killer nightmare to be embodied so I could shoot an arrow through its heart and send it back to hell, or wherever it had come from. Apollo and I spent at least half that time staring at the light in Daisy’s window and trying pointlessly to tell each other that it wasn’t really killer nightmares, it was just an outgrowth of her brain sensitivities. In reality, it was probably both.
Never let it be said that I grew up in an uninteresting family.
Right now, we are not in any sort of emergency. Calliope and her stylist have moved on to her hair. Daisy leans closer to me, and we check ourselves out in a nearby full-length mirror specially bolted to the wall for the occasion.
“We look good,” Daisy pronounces.
“We do.”
Personally, I think Daisy is the more striking of the two of us. I’ve inherited my parents’ sunny blonde aura, but Daisy has a mysterious white-blond princess thing going on that’s offset by her eyes.
Black, with only the faintest suggestion of blue on the outer rings of her irises. That’s what happens when your pupils are permanently dilated, a condition she inherited from her dad. The killer nightmares, however, are unique to Daisy. I don’t like how long she was alone in that ordeal. At the same time, I don’t know what we’d have done if there were multiple people with lethal dreams.
That feels like too much.
No sign of any murderous nightmares in this dressing room-slash-spa, which Daisy’s dad, my Uncle Hades, had put in just for the day. He had a separate dressing area put in on the floor below us so—he claimed—Uncle Posiedon didn’t interfere with the styling process. I think this was code for I want to remain in a dark room for as long as possible while also staying close to my wife, with whom I am obsessed. My uncles and my dad usually take turns being the most over-the-top. Uncle Hades would’ve won with the temporary luxury spa if it weren’t for the party. It’s Orion and Calliope’s turn to take part in the cute family tradition of endorsing causes and having birthday fundraisers, so my dad and Uncle Poseidon have seized the opportunity to battle to the metaphorical death for the Crown of the Party King. You’d think that would be easy to sort out, since my dad has always been the Party King and my Uncle Poseidon spent a decent portion of his adult life being a pirate—sorry, working in shipping—but no.
This isn’t the family birthday we had when Calliope Calliope turned sixteen in December and Orion shortly before. This is a gala. Daisy and I shared a similarly fancy event when we turned sixteen, but we weren’t the first. Ares and Apollo were first, as they’re older. Hercules had his first charity birthday when he turned eighteen. He was the first person I’d met who could scowl through an entire event in celebration of his birth. Social media went wild. Daisy did plenty of secret browsing to see the photos. She was adamant that she didn’t care one way or the other, since Hercules hated her.
My point is, sometimes cousins know things in advance.
Daisy and I do a few more poses in front of the mirror. Across the wide room, our moms and our Aunt Ashley are having their nails done and laughing at each other’s jokes. It’s such a safe, lovely scene, and of course I love it. Of course it’s my favorite thing in the world.
Aside from the things I do when nobody in this room can see.
“I know you’ll say I’m full of shit,” I start.
“You are full of shit.” Daisy stands at an angle to the mirror and looks over her shoulder. “I don’t look better than you. We look different.”
The dress code for the gala is black tie with a strong suggestion to follow a celestial/sky theme. Daisy and Hercules are going as night and day. Calliope and Orion are going as sunrise and sunset. And Apollo and I?—
“The night suits you. It was practically made for you.”
Daisy rolls her eyes. Her gown is a custom Prada that looks like it was pulled out of the starry expanse and painted onto her body.
“The moon was made for you,” she says, giving me a pointed look.
My gown is a custom Charlotte Hill that looks like?—
Well, like the moon was polished to a pearly luster and painted onto my body. All of us together are going to look like pieces of the sky floated down to the deck of the aircraft carrier where the party is being held. Thank Uncle Poseidon for that one. No son of his was going to have his sixteenth birthday charity bash held somewhere that wasn’t floating on water.
From the treated windows of our dressing room slash spa, we’ve been able to watch a swarm of decorators transform the deck of the ship into what will be a twinkling celestial dream come nightfall.
“The sunrise was made for Calliope,” I point out. My sister’s gown is a pinkish-dawn custom Dior. “It’s her color, don’t you think?”
“No one else should be allowed to wear that color.” Daisy spins, giving me a three-sixty view of her gown. Still perfect. “Is Apollo here yet?”
“No. He had a last-minute meeting.”
Daisy narrows her eyes. “A think-tank emergency? That seems unlikely.”
“It’s world peace, Daze. It’s probably always an emergency.”
I get my phone out of my purse. No new texts from Apollo. Daisy and I take a series of selfies in the mirror, then bend our heads over the phone to do some mild editing. We bicker lightly about whose socials the photos should go on, then decide we’ll post on Daisy’s so that my account can be dedicated to Calliope and Orion’s cake.
Apollo should be here already. I try not to dwell on it, but it’s weird that he let himself get trapped at work. Especially when something weird happened earlier.
Flash fevers by themselves aren’t, unfortunately, out of the ordinary for me. I’m not sick. Not with a virus or a cold or mystery infection. My body just…behaves that way, specifically in relation to my adoptive brother Apollo. If we’re apart too long, it feels like a sickness, but it’s not something I can cough up or Motrin my way out of. It starts as a nagging feeling that I’m too hot, that the air conditioning has broken, that I’m out of sorts.
And if I’m foolish enough not to respond, then it escalates.
This has happened in a predictable pattern since I was six years old and Apollo and Ares became part of our family.
At least, it was predictable.
When that feverish, out-of-sorts feeling started happening off schedule a month ago, I thought it was just the impending birthday party and the amount of events I had on my company’s calendar and the increase in events leading up to Daisy and Hercules’s June wedding. No one thing on its own was enough to stress me out. In addition to my parents’ looks, I’ve also inherited my dad’s skill at event management and some of his influential abilities. Not nearly as powerful, but enough that my career in planning and hosting a variety of events makes sense to my parents.
They have no idea about the parts of my life that seem more mystical and unavoidable. They have no idea about the bond between me and Apollo—the one that sets a hard deadline on how long we can be apart.
At first, it was two weeks. By the time I turned twenty, it was one week. For the last two years, it’s been five or six days, and neither of us has wanted to test that boundary.
So when the mild fevers started showing up after three days, or four, or sometimes two, I thought it had to be unrelated. There haven’t been many, and they only lasted for a minute or two. I could’ve easily been overheated.
And then I had one a few hours ago, when we were all throwing our purses on various surfaces and exclaiming over the very Hades-over-the-top-ness of the space. It wasn’t a bad one—I didn’t even feel the need to sit down—but it was noticeable enough that I expected the text from Apollo to say I’m on my way.
“Posted,” Daisy says. “Get ready to be swamped with compliments.”
“Being swamped with compliments is my favorite pastime!”
She’s still laughing when it happens again. The heat centers in my chest and shoots up to my face.
Daisy notices immediately, despite the heat being a dim flicker—annoyingly hot, but not enough of a fever to cause any real trouble. My cousin’s eyebrows are almost to her hairline.
“What?” I fan myself absently, keeping my smile firmly in place. “Did I screw up my makeup?”
“Did you feel that, too?” she asks.
My stomach flip-flops. “Feel what?”
“The—” She shakes her head. “Never mind. You turned pink. Come on.”
By the time Daisy presses a sparkling water from the fully loaded fridge into my hand, the heat is subsiding. My heart rate isn’t. Twice in one day is unheard of. And Apollo and I were together two days ago at Daisy’s house for a movie night. Ares was there, too, and Hercules, and it hasn’t been long enough yet.
But I don’t panic. I’m not going to panic on my sister’s day. And Orion’s day. And everyone’s day to celebrate them.
I turn my attention back to Calliope, feeling Daisy’s eyes on me.
“Something’s going on with you.”
“It’s my sister’s sixteenth birthday. She’s practically flown the coop.”
“What coop?” Daisy asks. “The coop you don’t live in anymore?”
“The coop of our family. She’s so grown up.”
Daisy sighs. “It doesn’t seem like it’s been sixteen years.” A pause. “Are you sure this isn’t stress about the wedding?”
“Your wedding?”
Daisy’s black eyes meet mine, assessing. “Yes, mine. If it’s too much stress?—”
“You’re not too much stress.” I give her the flintiest look I can.
Daisy stares back at me.
This is a conversation we’ve had many times. When you have a best friend slash cousin slash sister with a brain slash eye slash seizure condition, that defines a lot in life. My parents and uncles never framed Daisy’s condition as limiting, and no one ever asked me to limit myself for Daisy, but I knew from a young age that she would rather hurt herself than ask me to change my plans for her. So I changed them without her having to ask. I learned to go inside early and suggest things we could do in relative darkness when it seemed like she was having a hard day, and I didn’t mind.
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t stressful,” she says. “It could be getting to you.”
“It’s not. Planning your wedding is an honor, and I’ll be mortally offended if you hire someone else.”
“Fine, but?—”
“Artemis?” Calliope calls. “Can you come here for a second?” Daisy and I hurry to Calliope’s chair. The stylist hovers nearby, looking over her work. “What do you think?”
My sister’s warm tone says there’s something wrong, and I don’t want to tell the stylist. She hates telling people what to do.
Her hair is only half-done, but it looks good. A quick scan tells me exactly what Artemis is worried about.
“This piece here. When we get to the end, do you think?—?”
The stylist steps in to explain how it’ll come together, and Artemis relaxes.
Thanks, she mouths in the mirror.
We stay with Calliope. Daisy strikes up a conversation about what’s going on in school and the comparative attractiveness of various celebrities, grinning at Calliope in the mirror. My mind wanders to Apollo and his last-minute meeting and the angle of the sun in the window. The party is nigh.
I’m drawn back into the conversation by Calliope saying, in a strained voice:
“—conical?”
“What?” Daisy answers. “Conical?”
“There was a part that had a…conical shape.” Artemis is beet red in the mirror. The stylist keeps her eyes studiously on her work.
“I suppose,” Daisy says. “That depending on certain…alterations, there could be a kind of conical shape at the…far. End.”
“But not the inner end?” Calliope chokes.
They are clearly talking about dicks. I don’t have the self-control to join the conversation without laughing.
“Where did you see this…example? Of the form?”
“Not in person!” Calliope squeaks. “It was artwork.”
In the confused, nearly hysterical silence, the stylist disguises a laugh as a cough.
“Classical artwork?” Daisy says. She’s an accomplished artist. I would say she’s pretty familiar with a wide range of art. “Abstract art? Some statues can?—”
“It was a drawing,” Calliope answers.
“No,” Daisy says firmly. “No, I would not describe the inner end as conical. Artemis, have you seen any depictions like that?”
“I have not.” And I am not thinking about Apollo and his physicality. At all. “And if I saw a depiction that was conical, I’d have mentioned it as a public service.”
“However!” Daisy extends a finger like a professor making a point. “It’s my understanding that there are a wide range of appearances. Hercules might have a better idea of?—”
“Please do not ask my brother that.” Calliope’s voice is now a high whisper. “Daisy. Please.”
“I won’t! I was only offering, in case?—”
“I’m good,” Calliope insists. “I’m—it’s good. It’s all really good.”
“That artwork wasn’t,” Daisy says. “Unless the artist wasn’t concerned with?—”
“Let’s talk about your wedding!” shouts Calliope.
My torso aches with silent laughter an hour later, when we’re collecting our things for the party.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Daisy asks, her voice low. “You’re not worried about the party, are you?”
“I am completely unworried about the party,” I promise her. “It’s Calliope and Orion’s sixteenth. What could possibly go wrong?”