Chapter 8
“Betrayal,”Delphi sings, strumming a loud, cheery chord on her guitar. “Like pulling down the temple and stealing all the sac-ri-fices, asking for replacements with their overflowing hands?—”
“Wow.” I hold up a hand to shield myself from whatever this song is and move past her into my office. Overcoat off. Phone on desk. I hit some keys on my keyboard. The screen lights up.
Delphi follows me, picking out a complicated melody that sounds like a burbling stream. “How quickly they forget,” she sings. “The songs and prayers and heavy prices?—”
“Delphi.”
“Paid to honor an absent god?—”
“I’m not absent. I’m sitting right in front of you.”
“You’re not a god.” She strums even faster, pacing in front of my desk and glaring at me. “You’ve just forgotten?—”
“I didn’t forget about you.”
“You got engaged!” A final, random strum, and Delphi slaps her hand on the front of her guitar. “Or you were secretly engaged and never told me! And then you just told the entire world! Before me! Your boss!”
“You’re not my boss.”
“I am one hundred percent your boss. I do your schedule.”
It’s five seconds into the morning, and I cannot be dragged into this discussion. I already want to throw myself into the nearest vehicle—I’ll steal it if I have to—and drive back to that place on Park Avenue. I don’t know why Daisy’s having photos taken there, and I don’t have the energy to care. I just want to be with Artemis.
And not because I have a terrible sense of foreboding. Because I don’t want an episode to whiplash over to her and kill her. There’s no telling how fucked this could get.
I rub my hands over my face, drop them on the desk, and look Delphi in the eye.
“Fine. You’re my boss.”
“Awesome,” she sings. “Then I want a raise.”
“You can have a raise.”
Delphi plays a mysterious tune. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never been better.”
The tune gets more mysterious. “Stop bullshitting me,” Delphi sings.
“It was spontaneous. That means I didn’t plan it in advance. It just happened, and it was already a weird day, so I neglected to text you. I am sorry. Please accept whatever raise you see fit in recompense.”
“Recompense is a fancy word,” she sings. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I run a think tank. Or I guess you run a think tank now. Are fancy words banned under the new regime?”
“Not inviting me to the wedding is banned,” she sings.
“Fucking crickets, Delph.”
“You didn’t invite me to the aircraft carrier gala.”
I point at her. “False. You were invited to the aircraft carrier gala, and you declined.”
“Why did I do that?” she sings. “I could have witnessed your spontaneity in person.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Why?” Delphi has range. I’ll give her that. She can even turn scolding with one-word phrases into a song.
“Because Walsh was there, talking to Artemis.”
Delphi’s mouth becomes a perfect round O. She strums extremely fast. “I might’ve been wrong before,” she sings. “Betrayal or blessing? Only the gods may?—”
“Jesus Christ.”
She stops strumming and rests her hand on her guitar, shaking with silent laughter. “I don’t think I’d have been able to keep my mouth shut. Sitting U.S. Senator Chris Walsh was flirting with your girl? And you proposed?”
“That’s not what happened, and you know it.”
“Sorry,” Delphi laughs out loud, breathless. “You just walked onto an aircraft carrier, whipped out a megaphone, and shouted I’m engaged into that man’s face?”
“I said it. Without a megaphone. And I don’t know how else I’d have gotten on the aircraft carrier. It wasn’t like I had access to a parachute.”
“This is the best day of my life,” Delphi whispers.
“Get out of my office.”
“Fine,” she sings. Her finishing melody is like laughter translated into music. “But I’ll be just outside the door, waiting, in case there is anything you need for your?—”
“I’ll give you another raise if you leave right now.”
“I’m already gone,” she sings, and walks backward out of my office, still playing her guitar. When she strums all the way up on the headstock, it sounds just like crickets.
When she’s out of sight, her pleased little tune echoing through the office, I fold my arms on my desk and put my head down.
This was a mistake.
I should’ve gone to the photo shoot. I would have looked ridiculously possessive and/or pathetic, but I wouldn’t be hyperaware of every heartbeat. I wouldn’t be constantly trying to assess whether I feel hotter than I did a second ago. I wouldn’t be wondering if it was already too late, and I’m doomed to tip over onto the carpet and become an absent god at my very own think tank.
For at least thirty seconds, I indulge in the fantasy of calling Delphi back in and handing her the entire company for real. World peace initiatives, backchannel meetings, everything. Delphi can’t glow at people in whatever sense I do, but she can make up a song about them with zero advance warning and her approval, unlike mine, isn’t empty. It has real value.
It’s a very vivid fantasy.
But if I gave this up, then everyone would know that the effort was always a pointless performance.
They would know that I was only invested in world peace because there’s no such thing in the filthy, smoking aftermath of a terror campaign.
There’s only the scorched earth and the poisoned rain and the withered husks of everything that could have been.
There’s only a man who thought, for some unfathomable reason, that he could make it to the finish line without fucking up his perfect adoptive sister’s life.
I pick my head up and tap some keys on my keyboard again.
The only way to fix this situation is to untangle the knots of the Senator’s favor, to solve that problem and get it away from my office, away from me, and thus away from Artemis.
I need more information for that.
Internet research isdifferent when what you’re searching for isn’t on Google.
What I want to know is why exactly, if it’s so clearly the Right Thing To Do, Chris Walsh was selling me like a hustler. On his favor. If the government wants this transition, then why hasn’t the ask come to me through one of my usual contacts? It’s not as if I expect a White House press release on the issue, but still. This is just far enough outside the regular flow of research, policy development, and meeting coordination that I can’t just type that into a search engine. I have to come at it from a less obvious angle. Perhaps many less obvious angles.
Like looking through every photograph of him that the internet can identify. Like saving every pixelated one where he appears by someone shadowy, and then sending the batch over to August and Julien with a note that basically says enhancement ASAP? please and thanks with a link for them to invoice me for whatever fee they want. August is the photographer of the pair, and Julien is the one who does the write-ups—long-form, short-form, whichever strikes his fancy. The lifestyle shoots and wedding photography and family portraits—not to mention things like the Vogue cover shoot—are things August does for an extremely select clientele. He and his brother have spent more time embedding with military units in hostile countries, covering the aftermath of natural disasters and terror campaigns, and generally putting themselves in situations that would be intolerable for most people in the quest for in-depth reporting, although from what I understand, they’ve mostly been doing lower-stakes hobby work these last few years.
I also happen to know that August and Julien have done their own share of backchannel work for the government. Sometimes, journalists are easier to get in position as negotiators, and because of August and Julien’s long history of working as an inseparable pair, it doesn’t raise any eyebrows if they drop into a foreign country on assignment and take some extra meetings on the side.
The reply comes fast.
No need to beg.
August
He has also invoiced me for twenty thousand dollars.
Before I’m finished paying it, the enhanced photos come through.
Finally, I start looking into Mociar. Well, I try.
Delphi comes out of her office and paces the hall, picking at her guitar strings in a light, almost absent way. The melody reminds me of daydreaming. Maybe Delphi is daydreaming. It’s hard to tell, because she does the same thing when she’s solving a problem in her head. Equally possible that daydreaming is one and the same for her. She hums a tune that turns into words as she paces.
“—for the end of the circle, but it doesn’t end at all,” she sings outside my door, and then her voice gets softer.
More humming.
“—a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, and you?—”
Fucking crickets. It’s a delicate, sunny tune, but that is not a delicate image.
Delphi’s sing-thinking out loud.
“—not a cut you can stitch up, and the doctor’s wearing cufflinks when he says he doesn’t know?—”
“What did you say?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she sings.
“Did you say cufflinks?”
“Maybe,” she answers, and interrupts her melody with a loud strum.
“What kind of cufflinks?”
“When you’ve seen one pair of cufflinks,” Delphi sings. “You’ve seen them all.”
She makes all last about thirty seconds, then peters out into silence.
When Delphi picks up her melody again, it sounds like pine trees.
I can’t explain how it sounds like pine trees. Wind in pine branches, maybe. The melody flows into an interlude that gives me a vivid memory of the way the crowd sounded on the deck of the Intrepid for Calliope and Orion’s party, then shifts again—the sensation of passing through a doorway, the street noise dying down into a quiet that buzzes.
Okay.
Mociar.
A backwater country, but only when people want to downplay its value to the United States. At other times, Morcia is an important ally and a linchpin. Much of the country’s importance as an ally has to do with its position in Europe, directly between a group of United Nations member states and one former United Nations member state. Rathbek left the United Nations after they consolidated the government. That was what they called it when the military became the government.
It’s a rather sanitized term for what the “consolidation” became.
I hadn’t been particularly clear-headed during my meeting with the Senator. Now that I am, I need to know what flavor of political unrest he was talking about. Senator Walsh has access to classified intelligence assessments, and I don’t expect those to be publicly available on Google, either. I’ll have to read between the lines.
There’s not much Mociar coverage from the big media outlets in the U.S., and what does exist is succinct to the point of rendering it dull.
Feels purposeful. As if someone, or many someones, in the government and media establishment think that looking directly at the problem will turn it into a catastrophe, Law of Observation–style. The Senator felt comfortable using the phrase civil war.
All the reporting I can find is meticulous about avoiding those words. An attempt at manifestation? If they say that the current tensions in Mociar are the predictable result of a democratic system with two political parties enough times, will that make it true?
There are hints that the answer is no. Like every member of one of the political parties in Mociar staging a mass walk-out at the last congressional session. Like a single-paragraph news item declaring a return to business as usual because three members of that party showed up to the next session. Like those three members giving a statement calling for bipartisan cooperation, by which they meant that the president should agree to meet with the leader of the party in a neutral location to discuss security for the next election.
If this is the publicly available information, then I think it’s a safe bet that the situation is worse on the ground. Bad enough to worry about a civil war? I don’t know.
What I do know is that it’s very likely a civil war would devastate the country’s infrastructure and make it easier for a hostile government like the one in Rathbek to take over, especially if the opposition party doesn’t have the means to do it alone. And neither the opposition party nor Rathbek is likely to honor trade agreements with the United States. Mociar is the world’s top producer of promethium, and we need promethium. For nuclear batteries and exploring space and all manner of research projects that will gutter like a spent candle without it.
Almost every mention of Mociar I can find comes paired with one about Rathbek. My heart rate rises whenever the name comes across my screen. Unsurprisingly, a free press hasn’t been a priority for the military regime in Rathbek. Neither has reliable internet access for its citizens. The non-state-sponsored reports from civilians are not promising, and that’s my fault.
But it’s not time to dwell on guilt.
Everything I’ve read dovetails with what the Senator said.
There’s only one more piece, which is asset management, which begs several questions, such as what assets? and whose assets? and why do the two political parties in Morcia need to go through channels to resolve the management of the aforementioned assets?
Another set of questions that can’t be answered with a Google search.
And when I broaden the queries and switch to less obvious terms, what turns up gives me a sick, creeping feeling. The phrase missing persons comes up, along with Rathbek army. I find an archived comment thread on a movie review website where several people are talking about passports and building storage areas that are more like panic rooms or bomb shelters.
I look into reports from near Rathbek’s borders next.
More missing people. More unrest at the border. More signs that whatever’s being moved at Rathbek’s borders—including the border with Morcia—isn’t material assets. It’s people.
Delphi’s phone rings when I’m mid-report about imports and exports being delayed at the Rathbek border. My desk phone beeps not long after.
“Do you have a few minutes for Senator Walsh?” she asks.
No, every cell in my body says. No. Get up and leave.
“Put him through.” There are two clicks as she transfers the call. “Senator Walsh, this is Apollo.”
“I wanted to get your confirmation on the arrangements we made at last week’s meeting,” he says. There’s traffic noise in the background. He’s not calling from inside his office.
“I don’t believe we made any arrangements at last week’s meeting. Refresh my memory.”
He laughs, booming but lifeless. “It’s an in-and-out. Less than twenty-four hours on the ground, and you’ll be back in New York.”
“On the ground?”
“In Morcia.”
I know he didn’t say anything about going to Morcia last week.
Unless he did, and I didn’t hear it.
“We must have had a misunderstanding, Senator Walsh. It won’t be possible for me to leave the country.”
“There was no misunderstanding, Apollo. Your passport is current, and you’re at liberty to take a short leave from the office.”
“That’s not how this is done, Senator. Representatives from?—”
“We have commitments from all the parties involved.”
“Then there’s nothing standing in the way of a resolution.”
Another laugh. “You’re standing in the way of the resolution. But you’re not going to be the man who throws a wrench into protecting United States interests abroad. I wouldn’t let that happen to you.”
“Senator Walsh?—”
“Time is of the essence. I’ve sent directions to the airfield.” His email pops into my inbox. “A representative is in place for when you land. Security won’t be a concern. You have my gratitude, as well as the thanks of the American people.”
He ends the call before I can answer.
Who in the fucking crickets does Senator Chris Walsh think he is?
Does he really think I’m going to trot out of my office and get on a plane because he acted like it was a done deal?
I’m scrolling absently, reading the words on my screen but not taking them in, when my phone buzzes.
Artemis: Something happened at home, going there with Daisy
Apollo:???
Dots dance on the screen of my phone while I’m throwing my coat over my arm.
Artemis: Calliope said something happened. She said she’s ok but she was crying
Artemis: Asked me to come home, so we’re going
Artemis: Everyone’s okay
Artemis: Well, except Calliope
Artemis: I think she’s ok health-wise
I’m not okay health-wise.My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
Apollo: On my way
My phone buzzes with more texts from Artemis during my conversation with Delphi and my walk to the parking garage.
Artemis: You don’t have to leave work. I really think she’ll be ok!
Artemis: Seriously—if it was dire, I would call. We have a deal ha ha ha, but I mean it, you don’t have to rush across the city to my side
Artemis: Unless
Artemis: If you’re not ok then have someone drive you!!
I get behind the wheel of my SUV, start the ignition, and read over Artemis’s texts.
Apollo: I’m okay. Don’t freak out
Artemis: I’m not freaking out. You’re freaking out.
Apollo: I’m perfectly calm. See you in a while
Artemis: Love you
Love you is followed by three kissing emojis.
I won’t see her in a while. I’ll see her in several centuries, when I recover from the shock of what Artemis has just texted me. We’ve said I love you before. My dad and his brothers are constantly shouting it to each other like the only way to approach it is like it’s the world’s funniest joke. Like they’ve just learned to say it and have to keep practicing.
The kissing emojis feel less like a joke.
Artemis: Ummmm
Artemis: I thought we were engaged?
She sends me a ring emoji.
Apollo: We are engaged.
Artemis: So serious!!
Apollo: I am serious. I love you, too.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think I could feel her reading the text on her screen. I’d think I could feel her heart speeding up and her face going hot and her breathing getting shallow.
Artemis: *swoon*
I toss the phone into my cupholder. Even texting these things feels dangerous. Because of course I love her.
Of course I do.
And with all this Senator business afoot—with the episodes calm for now but threatening to come back and kill me at any moment—I’m not too proud to use any excuse to leave the office and go to Artemis.
The SUV she must have come from the shoot in is in the driveway when I get to my dad’s house.
Inside, Hercules stands in the middle of the family room, a big blue bowl in his hands.
“I didn’t steal your bowl,” he says. “Red one’s all yours.”
“Where is everybody?”
Hercules shrugs. “Around.”
“Okay.” I start for the stairs. I’m fairly sure that’s where Artemis is just from the way the air feels.
“Don’t go up there,” Hercules calls. “I already got kicked out once, so now I’m down here, eating ice cream.”
I go back into the family room and flop down on a couch. Hercules watches me, then takes a seat on the opposite couch.
“Artemis said there was something going on with Calliope.”
Hercules clicks his teeth on his spoon. “Internet emergency.”
“What?”
“Internet gossip. Something like that.”
“Like a threat? Did someone threaten to come here?”
Hercules gives me a look. “Not that I know of. But even if anyone did come here, we’d be fine, and they’d end up like Kenneth Coleman.”
“Dead?”
“He’s not dead.”
Hercules eats more ice cream.
“Herc.”
He looks at me, spoon in his mouth, as if to say, what?
“Are you keeping tabs on Kenneth Coleman?”
He rolls his eyes and flips the spoon out of his mouth.
“Yes. Obviously.” My Greek statue of a brother frowns into his ice cream like he’s actually sorry for Kenneth Coleman. “It can be so tough to see someone grapple with the consequences of their actions.”
“You’re clearly having a hard time.”
He meets my eyes. Hercules has eyes that are oddly similar to Zeus’s and Artemis’s for someone who doesn’t share any of their DNA.
“I said it can be tough. Not that it’s tough for me. Hey, did you bring Ares with you?”
I make a point of looking around. “No? He doesn’t work at my office. I don’t keep him in my pocket.”
“It would be so cute if you did,” Hercules says in a sing-song voice. “I was just asking. I thought, what with the internet apocalypse, that he’d be here, too. Guy’s acting pretty suspicious lately.”
A scoff burbles out of my mouth. “He’s acting suspicious? You feel comfortable making that judgment call?”
“Super comfortable,” Hercules answers. “Guy’s got a secret he’s trying to keep from all of us. Guess that kind of thing runs in the family.”
“Shut up.”
Voices rise from the far end of the house—Castor and Pollux, shouting at each other. They get louder and louder until one of them lets out a weird shriek like a raptor. Laughter, then silence.
“Freaks,” says Hercules, almost warm.
“Why weren’t you at the photo shoot today?” I ask, mainly because I want the thoughts churning in my head to stop for a minute.
Hercules pauses, his spoon in mid-air. “The photo shoot for Daisy and Artemis?”
“For Daisy.”
“Artemis was in it too. Didn’t you know? They’re both going to be on the cover of Vogue together. Because of your engagement.”
“Why aren’t you going to be on the cover of Vogue?”
“What makes you think I’m not?” Hercules looks at me like he can’t believe I’ve said such a thing. “There are twenty different photo shoots for this production. The one for me and Daisy isn’t for another month.”
“That was rude of me. I shouldn’t have assumed you wouldn’t be on the cover based on today’s shoot. Everyone wants you on the cover of a magazine.”
“Yeah, and can you blame them?” He narrows his eyes. “Are you jealous? I know you’re usually the pretty one, but?—”
“Shut up.”
That was…more forceful than I meant for it to be.
Hercules blinks at my tone. “Woah, champ. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Champ. That’s a good one.”
“You were the one who wanted to be…” He motions in a circle with his spoon in a painfully accurate imitation of me. “Brothers.”
“I never said I wanted you to call me champ.”
“Too bad, champ.”
“Fucking crickets.” I get up off the couch. Hercules gets up, too. “No, no. Don’t trouble yourself.”
“I’m not,” he says, and grins at me. “I’m just coming with you. Brotherly shit.”
“Ares isn’t even here. Doesn’t that count as brotherly, too?”
“When in Rome.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Hercules follows me through the house for several minutes.
“Who are you looking for?” he asks, finally.
“Dad.”
“He’s outside.”
“How long were you going to watch me look for him?”
Hercules shrugs with another brotherly grin. I might hate it on him if I didn’t see him on the edge of a nervous breakdown last year, ripping an exercise bar out of the studs of Hades’s wall. This—the teasing and the brotherly shit—is harder for him than being sullen and withdrawn and angry.
“You’re the worst,” I tell him.
He follows me outside anyway, where we come upon another brotherly scene.
My dad and my Uncle Poseidon have set up a target in a stretch of grass between our pool and Aunt Persphone’s garden. Blades flash through the air and thunk into the target.
Our Uncle Hades—soon to be Hercules’s father-in-law—is not throwing knives. He’s sitting on the ground, his back to us, one hand lifted to shade his eyes. With his free hand, he pats his dog, Conor, who is curled up as close as the enormous dog can get to Hades’s leg. Aunt Persephone sits at his side, surrounded by a circle of flowers.
“What’s going on with him?” I ask Hercules.
We must be within earshot, because Hades answers without turning around. Conor’s tail wags against the blanket they’re sitting on, but he doesn’t get to his feet. “I got tired of breaking their knives.”
Poseidon throws another knife into the target. “Fuck off, Hades. You know you love it.”
“It’s boring after the first thousand times.”
Persephone looks over her shoulder and smiles at us. “Apollo! Did you take the day off?”
“Part of it.” I glow at Persephone just a little, out of habit, though I don’t think it has any effect on her. It’s like extra sunshine on a flower. She’s already used to it. “Decided to head out early.”
“Good for you.”
She turns back to Hades and readjusts her left hand, which rests on his knee. With her right hand, she traces a pattern just above the grass.
Flowers spring up under her fingertips, the petals bursting out of the top of the stems and opening wide, fully grown.
Hades lifts his other hand to shade his eyes even more. “Fuck this.”
“What, do you hate flowers?” Hercules asks, sounding astonished.
“No. I hate magnetic storms.”
I would say something like people can’t feel magnetic storms, but I know better than that. It’s very possible Hades is making a joke.
It’s also very possible that he can feel magnetic storms, and they don’t feel good. I’ve never seen Persephone sit next to him outside and grow flowers before. The flowers themselves are beautiful. That doesn’t mean nothing’s wrong.
There are more than a few things to worry about today. All my thoughts are at full volume again.
“Dad,” I call, the word almost sticking in my mouth. Horrible, hot shame turns into a fist in my throat. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
My dad throws his knife into the target and smiles at me, big and bright and happy, and a second wave of shame tastes like bile. My son, he used to say at all those events, his voice sunny with pride. My son, he still says, because he doesn’t know that everything pretty and good about me is only skin deep.
He abandons Poseidon at the target, patting Hades on the head as he goes past. Hades accepts this with an irritated sigh. My dad ruffles Hercules’s hair and pulls me into a quick, back-slapping hug.
“Can you throw two knives at once?” Hercules asks Poseidon as my dad and I move away.
“Poorly,” Hades answers.
“Flawlessly,” Poseidon corrects. “Where’d the rest of the knives go?”
We stroll around the pool. The water is clean and fresh and heated, ready for anyone who wants to swim before summer comes. My dad rests his hand on my shoulder.
My dad. Zeus. My dad.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I wanted to…” I don’t know what I wanted. It seemed clear on the way over, and now it’s a mystery. “Talk to you.”
“Apollo, I wanted to say…” My dad’s tone is light, like this is just occurring to him. “You have my blessing.”
“Oh.” I just barely manage not to choke. Zeus—my dad—has seemed quietly amused in the few minutes we’ve spent together since the engagement debacle, like he and everyone else thought it was inevitable and not the shock of the century. After Hercules and Daisy, it’s not as if I thought there would be an explosion or a disowning or anything like that, but the awkwardness I feel is crushing nonetheless. “I—thank you. I didn’t want you to think?—”
“Please don’t worry about what I think, Apollo. You and Artemis are in love. You should do what makes you happy.”
“Thanks? Thank you.” It’s completely inadequate. What I should be saying is I know I owe you my life. I should be weeping and hugging Zeus and saying that he didn’t have to do any of this for me and doesn’t have to pretend to be happy about this. I should be telling him that he can be honest and open if adopting us was a mistake that he would rather undo.
“You’re welcome. You probably know this already, too, but there’s no rush on any kind of wedding planning. I know people have been making jokes about a double wedding?—”
“What?” I choke.
He rubs my back. “But those are only jokes. You and Artemis should make the plans you want to make, when you want to make them. You have our full support.”
“Perfect,” I manage. “I’m—really—” Zeus thumps me harder on the back. “I’m glad to hear that. But, actually, I didn’t come to talk to you about—there was something else.”
“Anything,” Zeus says. He stops at the side of the pool and waits for me to collect myself. I can feel the depth of his patience and care down to my bones. Sometimes—right now—I wish I couldn’t.
“Okay.” I square my shoulders and look him in the eye. “What do you know about human trafficking in Europe?”