(YOU CAN’T GO. YOU ARE A WEAPON OF FATE)
“I am,” she said. “Just not in the way you intended.”
Cassandra pulled the door closed behind them to keep some water in the chamber, and then shook Calypso into a run. “Come on. We’ve got to move! Move, damn you!”
Damn you. I could’ve killed them all.
EPILOGUE
Even with Hermes’ speed, they almost didn’t make it out. The winding rooms and corridors of Olympus thwarted them at every turn, sending them into dead ends and upside down staircases. The water churned up to their waists. Currents dragged them under and fought them hard, as if the sea knew it was chasing the god who’d killed Poseidon. In a room full of false doors the water finally closed over their heads, tossing them so Hermes had to twist himself between the walls and the mortals. By luck and panic, Andie found the right door, and Hermes scraped and clawed his way toward the surface.
They broke into the dank reality of the shallow cave of the state park, coughing brine, soaked, and freezing. Hermes jogged the last steps out into daylight and fell onto one knee, with Andie and Henry clutched onto his sides like barnacles. He hugged them tight, proud of them for hanging on.
Henry coughed the last of the ocean from his lungs and looked around.
“Cassandra?” he asked.
“She wouldn’t come.”
Henry blinked. “You have to go back.” He rolled away and stared into the black spot of the cave.
“Henry,” Andie said, her breath ragged. “He can’t go back. It’s submerged.”
“We can’t leave her there!” He looked at Hermes. “You can swim, can’t you? You can hold your breath.”
Hermes shut his eyes. If he went back, he’d be going for her body. And he might run into Ares or the Moirae on the way down. But he would go, if they wanted him to. He didn’t have much more to lose.
Andie’s eyes widened, and she pointed. “The cave!”
The ground shuddered beneath them. Hermes put his hands out, ready to grab their shirts and yank them down the trail. But the quake stilled. When he looked back, the cave had disappeared.
“That’s not possible,” Andie said. “Where did it go?”
Hermes walked to the side of the hill. The cave was gone. Not closed up, or fallen in, but gone, like it had never been there at all.
He stared at it, at brown grass and weeds and roots. At impossibility. Nothing there for him to fight. Nothing to dig out. No way back to the place they’d been moments before. No way back to Cassandra.
Or to Athena.
His whole body went numb, inside and out. He might’ve stood all day before that spot, if Andie hadn’t sneezed.
“Come on,” he said. He pressed his hands to her back, to staunch the blood from the wolf’s claw marks. But the blood was slow. She’d heal, nothing left but a set of scars on her back to match the Nereid wounds on her stomach. “We have to get you dry and warm, before you catch pneumonia.” He walked to the patch of shrubs where they’d hidden their supplies. “I’m not going to lose everyone.”
* * *
He brought them back to the house, and tried not to think about how empty and quiet it seemed. He sent Henry into a warm bath, and dressed Andie’s wounds. He set out warm sweaters and flannel pants and towels. When they were dressed, soup waited on the stove. It wasn’t until it was gone, and another half pot besides, that anyone really spoke.
“What are we going to do?” Andie asked.
Henry stared down into his bowl. “What am I supposed to tell my parents?”
I don’t know, Hermes wanted to say. I don’t know, but if you need me, you can leave a message at the French Riviera. But that’s not what his big sister would do. It wasn’t what she’d want.
“Cassandra and Odysseus,” Andie said, and started to cry. “And Athena. Cally. Are they really dead?”
Hermes put his arms around her. “Whether they are or not, we’ll find them.” He squeezed her, careful not to squeeze too hard. “We’ll find them. And until we do, I’ll keep you safe.” He would try, even though his insides felt like broken glass. He put his hand on Henry’s arm. The boy’s face was washed out and gray. After a moment, he bent his head over the table and wept.
“It’s all right to cry,” Hermes said, and started to cry himself. “We’re both down a sister today.”
(Down, but not lost.)
Hermes blinked as the familiar, air-through-bellows voice whispered inside his head. He almost smelled her: a faint cloud of dust upon the wind.