5
“Tori, we do not say crazy; we say eccentric.”
Yiayia scolding a young Tori talking about her family
So my uncle was missing and caught up in some cult, the god of dead people had a mad-on for me, volcanologists were getting torn to shreds atop Mount Lee, and the Feds were looking to me for answers. My life was nearly complete.
What would really ice the cake would be an arrest for trespassing or tampering with evidence, I thought, even as I ducked under the crime scene tape on Mount Lee right behind the Hollywood sign. I wondered whether ambrosia addiction had some kind of side effect in humans … like rampant stupidity. But then, that would hardly explain all the other bad decisions I’d made in my life.
I picked my way over darkened and matted clumps of grass, forcing my gaze over them when all my mind really wanted was to skitter away and defer analysis. I didn’t know what I was searching for, but I sure as hell wouldn’t find it if I didn’t look. Chunks of ripped-out rock littered the landscape, deciding my course as I steered between the bigger bits and twisting my ankles as the smaller bits rolled beneath my feet. By the time I got to the summit, I was lucky to still be able to walk. The mouth of the crater looked charred, as if the Titan Prometheus had tried cauterizing the wound with fire. It still smelled of brimstone and sulfur and … No, I realized. That wasn’t a residual scent. It was something living and breathing, flowing out of the hole in waves, like expelled air. There was no breeze at the summit. Yet the scents washed over me, hot and fetid, with the rhythm of expelled breath and the ooky fertile flavor of bacteria incubating in a Petri dish. Yes, I said ooky. It’s a technical term.
I drew back in alarm. There was something down there. Living, breathing, watching. I was sure of it. I pulled out my phone, thinking to call someone. For backup? So they’d know where to find my body? I wasn’t sure. But anyway, I didn’t know who to call. Armani? I was trespassing on a crime scene. Jesus? While he could probably cut anyone to shreds with his razor wit, I didn’t want to count on him in a fight. My best friend Christie, much as I loved her, wasn’t exactly sidekick material. There were only so many times a body could listen to a high-pitched “ewww” without adding to the carnage.
“Looking for something?” a voice asked, low and sly.
I whirled, my heart pounding in my chest, holding my phone out like a weapon and reaching for the pepper spray on my keychain. Behind me—well, before me now—stood a foxlike creature. Tufted ears, red-gold fur glowing like a second sun … and a long, slender lizard’s tail flicking lazily. He barked out a laugh.
“There is no need to phone-a-friend. I am right here.”
“Friend. Yeah, right. More like a pain in the a—”
“Ah ah ah, show some respect.” He tsked, and it was so strange a noise to hear coming from the foxy body. Almost stranger than words. “Not nice to curse in front of the gods.”
“You’re not my god.”
He—Hermes, in the guise of one of his other namesakes, Iemisch (he also answered to Mercury, Loki, Coyote, humor columnist Thom Foolery and any number of other things)—cocked his head and stared at me thoughtfully.
“God of tricksters, travelers and thieves—no, perhaps not. I tend more toward your competition.”
We’d met before. Hermes had supplied valuable intel, in his own way. Cryptic, sometimes in free verse. Never straightforward. Something like an oracle. I had yet to figure out why. Maybe I amused him, but I was almost sure he was playing some game and I was a living chess piece he was nudging toward the proper square. No, I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him … in any of his forms.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“So polite.” Hermes took three steps closer and wound around me like a cat, his whipcord tail lingering over my legs and other areas in a way that would have been sexual harassment had they been hands. Or if I had a weapon at the ready more threatening than a phone with which to take proper exception. “I came with a warning. There is a war brewing, and that”—he nipped playfully at my phone, but let his teeth close on empty air—“is not going to cover it. I doubt you can speed-dial your enemies to death.”
“War?” I asked, already adding it to my mental list of taking down a cult, kicking my addiction, finding a semi-formal dress and a date … “Can you give me a little more to go on here? Are we talking War as in the card game, Cowboys vs. Aliens or thermonuclear?”
“What have you got to trade for the information?” he asked. His tail lashed the phone out of my hand, and it landed in something I didn’t even want to analyze.
“Oops,” he said in response to my glare.
Oh, if looks could kill … “I don’t have anything to trade,” I told him with a minimum of regret.
“Perhaps not now,” he agreed, tail swishing like a cat’s, “but you will.”
“How do you know?”
“I have my ways.”
“I’m sure you do, but I’m not dealing. No way am I going to promise you some undisclosed future thing for information of questionable use. Do you think I was born yesterday?”
“Well, in the grand scheme of things—”
“Forget it. Look, it’s been nice talking to you. Really. Glad you could drop by, but I’ve got work to do.”
He eyed me. You’d think it would be hard to take seriously a foxy-face with cute little sticky-up ears. You’d be wrong. There was something about the expression, the stillness, the implied threat of those teeth, all of which seemed to be canines and wickedly sharp … “You know, I think you’ve made the right call, deciding to fight your addiction. I mean, fast-healing, nigh invulnerability, ultimately becoming immortal. Awful stuff. But the flipside—fever, withdrawal, hallucinations, death. Definitely the way to go.”
“So, what? Apollo sent you to talk me into staying hooked?”
“Well, I am the messenger of the gods,” he answered helpfully.
With that, he turned tail, literally, flicked it once and was gone. Just … gone.
Or maybe I’d missed his exit, because right now all I could see was red. I was going to kill Apollo. As in dead. Deceased. Bleeding demised.
I stomped over to my phone and lifted it out of the muck. I was just about to wipe it off with the hem of my shirt when I heard. “Stop right there!”
I froze.
“Put your hands where I can see them.” It was the voice of authority. Agent Holloway, I thought, or maybe Rosen.
Slowly, I raised my hands to shoulder level. “Turn around.”
I did as he asked, figuring I could go all gorgon on his ass if he made for the cuffs. It was Rosen, and he had a weapon in hand, aimed straight at me, but he didn’t seem inclined to use it. He actually seemed satisfied in some weird way rather than angry, as if my presence confirmed something he’d suspected all along … like my involvement. At least he hadn’t seen Hermes. A fox-lizard might have been challenging to explain.
“Do you people have motion detectors set up or what?” I asked, figuring that zipping my lip would only make me look guiltier. Strategy … sure thing. Certainly not poor impulse control.
“Or what,” he answered helpfully. “You want to step out here, away from my crime scene so that we can have a little talk about tampering with evidence?”
The question was probably rhetorical. Just to keep my mind off what I might or might not be stepping on as I complied, I argued anyway. “There was no tampering involved. You think I want to touch any of this? Besides, I’m sure the CSIs have been here and done that.”
“The scene hasn’t been released.” Rosen lowered his gun, but it didn’t disappear into that spiffy shoulder holster that always kept the lines from showing beneath the Feds’ suits. Not that he was wearing the jacket right now—not in this heat.
I reached the scene tape and debated which was more ignominious to try in front of the Fed—climbing over or going under. Finally, I opted for under and slid out toward Rosen, who stepped back as if I had the cooties. Hey, I wasn’t the one with sweat stains under my pits and halfway to my navel.
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” I told him flatly once I could see the whites of his eyes. “I don’t know anything.”
“If you weren’t connected somehow to these deaths, you wouldn’t be here.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m stunned by the brilliance of your reasoning. Oh no, wait, I’m not. Hello, private detective, a.k.a. snoop. It’s sort of an occupational hazard.”
“Hired snoop. If you have a client, you haven’t said,” he countered. Rosen was no slouch at staring contests. My eyes were going dry from the effort not to blink. There was a very short list of things that could outstare us gorgon girls. Fish. The occasional owl. Tikis.
“You brought me into this when you treated me like a suspect—in a slaying I still see in my nightmares. I take that personally. So yeah, I’ve got a client and she’s pretty demanding. If you’re not going to arrest me—” not that I should give him ideas, “—I’d like to get back to work.”
“Does your boyfriend know a former porn star stayed over at your place last night?”
Holy non sequitur, Batman. So that had been him. There’d been rumors that Apollo Demas, star of stage and screen (hey, the gods had to do something after they’d lost their worship and a great deal of their power along with it) had begun his career in the adult film industry. I might have to stop by the video store on the way home.
“Nick trusts me,” I answered.
“Uh huh. You didn’t answer my question.”
“I didn’t figure it was any of your business. How about you answer one of my questions for a change? If this scene’s already been processed, what are you doing here?”
He eyed me, much like Hermes had, but in the end, he too decided to talk. I was just one of those people, I guessed. Put me on public transport and I’d hear the life story of the lady next to me, whether I wanted to or not. Usually not. There were, after all, limits to my curiosity. “That fissure runs deep and has partially collapsed back in on itself. It’s not possible to see down past a few feet. A team’s coming out from UCLA and we’re going to send a camera down to take a look. I came out to check on the scene and the structural integrity. Now you. Tit for tat.”
I grit my teeth. “No, Armani doesn’t know.”
“It was Nick a second ago.”
“So sue me. Anyway, it’s not what you think with Apollo.”
“It never is.”
I glared and he ignored.
“We’re friends, okay?” I said. “It may seem odd, the actor and the PI, but we share … a common ancestry.”
He raised both brows at that. “You’re related? Like kissing cousins?”
The very thought was so absurd I couldn’t even get angry. “So no. Not unless it’s back countless generations.” Was Apollo related to Pan somehow? Maybe. It seemed like all the old ones were related somehow—springing fully formed from each other’s heads and that sort of thing.
“He’ll tell the same story?” Rosen asked.
Call me slow, but I only just realized that Rosen could only know about Apollo’s visit if he’d had me watched.
“How exactly is this relevant to your case?”
“Who says it is? Maybe I’m just making conversation.”
“Yeah, well, this one is over.”
His phone rang as I was about to brush past him, and he reached a hand out lightning-fast to grab me by the arm and hold me there. He lifted the phone from a hip holster with his other hand.
“Rosen.” He stopped to listen. “Really?” His voice sharpened, and I knew it wasn’t a checking-in sort of call. “Send them over right away. I’ll stand by.”
“Don’t move,” he ordered me, as if I had a choice. He was hanging on tight, and even if I gave him the gorgon glare, I’d probably have to break his fingers to escape. When he unfroze, I’d have a heck of an enemy. With a badge and a license to kill.
He punched a button on the phone and held it at arm’s length to look at whatever the caller had sent his way. It made him suck his lips into his mouth to the point where they ceased to exist.
“What is it?” I asked, not that I thought he’d tell me.
I was wrong. He turned the phone in my direction, and I wished he hadn’t. “Another body’s been found—torn apart.”
“Here?” I asked. I didn’t mean here here, of course, but LA in general.
“San Francisco area.”
“Uncle Christos.” It escaped my lips before I could think. More of a prayer than a statement, really, that the body not be his. It was hard to tell with the face ripped off.