Chapter Eighteen Hermes #3
“Little Miss Harvard, can’t resist the chance to do her homework,” he teased, though he was impressed in spite of himself.
Few people were both intellectual and quick-witted.
Even fewer dared to stand up to billionaires the way Julia had just done.
Perhaps she could hold her own in this family after all.
They wandered to the edge of the roof and stared out over the city.
It was a tapestry of a thousand small lights: the golden glow of office buildings, where worker bees still tapped frantically at their laptops; the lights of a million apartments, of cars and taxis and Broadway marquees and billboards.
And before them lay Central Park, a vast square of darkness.
Underneath it all, Hermes felt the web of subway tunnels connecting the city, like the tentacles of some chthonic beast stretching out into the boroughs.
“This view never fails to make me feel small,” he mused aloud. “Remind me, you didn’t grow up in a big city, did you?”
“No. Did you?” Julia neatly turned the question back on him.
Hermes gave an airy laugh. “I’m a citizen of the world; I’ve lived all over.”
Julia cast him a surprisingly sympathetic glance.
“I loved my time on the cruise ship at first, but it got old after a while. There is something about constantly moving that feels…” She hesitated, searching for the right word.
“Isolating. No matter how many people you meet, you know you will always have to say goodbye to them soon enough.”
Hermes was surprised at the insight. “Enough about me,” he said swiftly. “You grew up in Texas, right?”
“Georgia, actually.”
Time to speed things along. Hermes reached for the magic that lay coiled within him and coaxed it into his next question.
“With your parents?” The words felt slick on his tongue, as if he could taste the compulsion that he’d woven around them, viscous like a soap bubble.
Compulsion was one of his signature tricks.
Hermes Dolios, they used to call him—which might be translated as Hermes the Deceiver, or Hermes the Cheat, or his favorite, Honey-Tongued Hermes.
Julia shot him a look. “You sound a little funny. Are you feeling okay?”
Holy Fates above. Was this woman immune to compulsion? Was that even possible?
“Sorry. Allergies.” He cleared his throat. “You were telling me about your parents? I mean—you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” he amended. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
Julia shrugged. “My mother passed away when I was nine. My father was never in the picture.”
“He wasn’t a good guy?” Hermes felt clumsy, fishing for information without magic, relying on nothing but his wits and his charm. This was probably a sensitive subject, but Hera would definitely want to know about Julia’s absent father.
“My mother never talked about him.” Julia sounded bitter.
“I always suspected that he might have been a partner at the law firm where she was interning, because I’m pretty sure she received some kind of payout.
All I really know for certain is that once she got pregnant, she dropped out of law school. ”
“I’m sure your mom was a very special woman,” Hermes said gently. “What was her name?”
“Claire.” Julia smiled. “Even though it was only the two of us, we were so happy. She would do things like buy cookie cutters shaped like zoo animals, so that she could cut my PB she loved to take me to the local museum on her days off.
And she always said that she believed in magic. ”
That last detail piqued Hermes’s interest. “You mean tarot, Ouija boards, things like that?”
“No, she was a lawyer, a logical thinker at heart. More like…she loved telling fairy tales, daydreaming about the impossible. With her, life was full of wonder and possibility.”
“What happened to her?”
Julia’s hand on the railing tightened. “She died in an accident.”
“I’m so sorry,” Hermes said quickly, hoping that the rest of the evening would help Julia forget this conversation. Guilt squirmed in his chest, alongside a flicker of fear.
His magic hadn’t worked on Julia. That had to mean something, and whatever it was, he suspected that it didn’t bode well for him. Should he tell Hera, or would this revelation only upset her? And Hades would surely want to know, too.
Perhaps it was safer if Hermes kept this tidbit to himself, at least until he had done a little more digging into Julia—and what had brought her among them.
As if on cue, a chime sounded around the rooftop. The museum’s head of development stood near the tables, smiling as he gestured everyone to their assigned seat.
“Oh, we’re in for a treat.” Hermes started babbling, still trying to normalize things between them. “The food is nothing special, but they always serve the best wine at these events, because of course, the more wine they pour, the more readily the checkbooks come out….”
It wasn’t until they were nearly at their table, with its glass pinwheel centerpiece and calligraphed place cards, that Hermes saw who else would be joining them.
Aphrodite was seated next to Julia.