Chapter Forty-Six Hermes
Chapter Forty-Six
Hermes
The noise in the ballroom had reached a fever pitch.
Aphrodite and Hephaestus had retreated to the front of the makeshift altar and were speaking in low tones.
Hermes cast his preternatural hearing toward them, but he could only make out a few words here and there—not an Olympian, and then, I’ll protect you.
Not enough to make sense of over the shouting match currently happening between Ares, Athena, and Hera.
Ares had whirled on his mother, fists clenched. “I can’t believe you were plotting against Julia the whole time!”
“I wasn’t plotting against Julia; I was plotting to protect you!”
“You promised you would be my ally, back in Olympus! You lied!” Ares bellowed. His eyes were red with rage, his muscles quivering with it. He looked every inch the god of war.
Hermes cast them one last glance, then started toward Zeus, who had retreated to the back of the ballroom. The king of the gods sprawled on a folding chair—which was tied with little sprays of greenery and white blossoms in each corner—as if it were a throne, his whole body radiating entitled ease.
“Hermes,” Zeus said in greeting, and reached inside his tuxedo jacket for a metal flask. He took a long pull before offering it to Hermes, who shook his head. He wanted all his wits about him for the conversation that would follow.
Hermes had done plenty of negotiating in his day, but never with the king of the gods himself.
Zeus shrugged and screwed the top back on the flask. “My family gets more outrageous by the year,” he said ruefully. My family, not our family, as if Hermes weren’t even part of it. “What a lot of fuss to make over a mortal woman!”
“I think Ares is caught off guard by everything that’s happened,” Hermes replied neutrally.
“I know, what a trick Aphrodite pulled. It’s the sort of thing I might do myself, if I knew how.” Zeus let out a guffaw of laughter. “Not that I blame her for being unfaithful. Marriage is long in an immortal lifetime. But she needs to be more discreet.”
Hermes nodded as if he agreed. He needed Zeus to think of him as an ally, given what he was about to ask.
“Zeus. I was wondering if I might bring something to your attention,” he began, and bent forward in a bow.
The gesture, or perhaps the wording, made Zeus take notice. “Yes?”
“I know why everyone is so fixated on Julia. I think you’ll find it interesting,” Hermes added meaningfully. “On a personal level.”
Zeus cast a glance toward the front of the ballroom, where his wife and children were still feuding. “I’m listening.”
“I need to know that sharing this information will be worth my while.”
Hermes was done playing in the minor leagues, spying for Hades or Hera and getting nothing in return. Though Hades, at least, had followed through on his promise. Hera had never really cared whether she fulfilled her vows to Hermes.
Hermes would go straight to the top from now on, would negotiate for power, and position, with the only god who could truly grant either.
When Julia had knocked at his door in the middle of the night, visibly distraught, Hermes had longed to ask what had happened.
But for once he knew better than to pry.
Whatever nasty trick Aphrodite and Hera had pulled, Julia clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
Now he knew, of course—and even he, who had a decidedly wicked mind, would not have imagined how royally fucked-up Aphrodite’s actions were.
“Percy. I need to get out of here,” Julia had said breathlessly as he gestured her into his dark hotel room. “Can you help?”
“Get out of here?” he repeated, brows drawn together.
“I need to get off this island. As far as possible, preferably to another country. Or another continent.”
“You are aware that we’re in the middle of a freak storm?” Hermes asked, just as thunder rumbled outside.
“Am I wrong, or can you help?” Julia pleaded.
He wondered, briefly, how she knew to ask him. Did the Aegis give her some kind of instinctive sense of his powers, or had all this exposure to magic finally made her aware of its existence, if only subconsciously?
Or maybe she was asking out of sheer desperation. Turning to the only other friend she had here, aside from that mortal woman.
“I can help,” he promised. “Meet me in the lobby in half an hour.”
Hades didn’t seem all that surprised to find Hermes at his door in the middle of the night. He was already dressed, in crisply ironed pants and a cotton shirt that Hermes could tell was deceptively expensive. Or maybe Hades slept in those clothes, Hermes thought, if he slept at all.
“I need you to follow through on your promise,” Hermes said without preamble. “Can you get Julia off the island?”
Hades started briskly down the hallway, leaving Hermes no choice but to fall into step alongside him. He pulled his phone from his pocket—why did Hades’s phone work when the rest of theirs were down?—and began typing a message. “I’m summoning Charon. He’ll be at the ferry station in ten minutes.”
“Charon?” Hermes spluttered. “As in, the boatman who ferries souls to the Underworld?”
“Is there an Underworld?” Hades asked conversationally, philosophically.
“Despite what the mortals say about me, I’ve never seen it.
I just send them to their final resting place, whatever that is.
” He shrugged, still walking at a fast clip.
“Charon has transported mortals through this realm before. Orpheus. Ernest Hemingway. Theodore Roosevelt.”
Hermes recalled that those mortals had all very nearly died—from attempted suicide, or plane crashes, or bullets in their chest—only to survive, forever changed by the experience. Hopefully Julia’s encounter with Charon wouldn’t leave her scarred.
“You’ll be with her the whole way,” Hades added, as if reading Hermes’s thoughts. He tossed over a set of keys. “When you get to the mainland, find the black Ferrari in the ferry’s parking lot.”
Hermes grinned. He’d always wanted to drive Hades’s chariot.
Julia had been admirably brave through the whole thing: a little surprised by the grizzled ferryman who met them at the docks, but she hadn’t complained when they rode a motorboat through the storm, or when Hermes tugged her into the Ferrari and began speeding down the empty highway.
The Atlanta airport was far enough inland to still be operating the international flights, the ones with the largest planes, so that was where he’d taken her.
At the departures door in the predawn light, he’d handed her a small bag.
“You’ll need this,” he told her, through the surprising roughness in his throat.
It wasn’t much, just a new passport and a couple of credit cards under the same name—illusion magic, flimsy stuff.
“Be careful,” he warned. “The passport will only scan a couple of times at best.”
Julia’s eyes had widened in surprise, but then she’d leaned across the dashboard to give him a fierce hug. “Thanks, Percy.”
Wherever she was now, at least she was out of danger. Far from Hera and Aphrodite and all their meddling.
Hermes looked at Zeus, ready to finally do what Julia had urged. You should stand up for yourself, she’d told him. You deserve more than the scraps from their table.
“I want my position guaranteed. A position of greater influence than I currently have,” Hermes declared.
Zeus held out a hand in a gesture that said, Go on.
“I am sick of being treated like the hired help. When you make decisions, I want to be part of the process. Maybe that means a role in the company, but more than that, I want my position in the Olympic Pantheon secured. I want your word that I will never be demoted to make way for some other god or goddess.”
Zeus’s eyes had widened as Hermes made his list of demands. At last, he said, “You’re asking for a great deal. I assume your information is very valuable indeed.”
“Trust me, it is,” Hermes assured him.
“I don’t trust anyone except my wife,” Zeus said with the flippant attitude of a man who had no idea what his wife was capable of. “But why don’t you go ahead and share this secret. If you’re right, and it’s of critical importance, then I will grant all that you ask.”
One thing about Zeus, he never went back on his word. Hermes knew he would do as he promised.
“Julia isn’t just any mortal. She’s the daughter of your former lover Claire Henningsen. She changed her name after her aunt and uncle legally adopted her.”
Surprise flickered over Zeus’s features. “Claire had a daughter, but she died.”
Hermes took a deep breath and explained the whole sordid tale.
How Julia had been protected by a fragment of the Aegis: a ring, which she still wore on her right hand.
How she remembered a man who’d dated her mother that final summer, a man who brought toys to life and danced with his feet hovering above the ground.
How Hera had set the fire that killed Claire.
“Hera wouldn’t dare,” Zeus said automatically.
“Julia says that a woman had been at the house that very evening, shouting at her mother,” Hermes said gently. “I suspect that Hera set the fire out of rage. By accident, maybe, but she set it nonetheless.”
Zeus looked across the room to where his wife was bickering with her two sons. Anger roiled through the room like a thundercloud, as if the storm that had been gaining force all week had now moved inside the ballroom.
“That’s why Hera wanted Julia gone,” Zeus mused aloud, his voice a low growl. “She didn’t want me to learn her secret. That she snuck behind my back, defied my authority, and killed a mortal under my protection.”
Well, Hermes thought, the secret was out now. Come what may.