Angie was surprised and a bit indignant at how chill Alex and Conny were about walking through a literal flame—Artemis poofed one into existence for them, it was hot and smoke-scented and everything, so it should have terrified them as it much had her—but she didn't have much time to care. As far as Angie was concerned, every hour that passed was another hour Hermes could be getting further away, whether physically or emotionally. She could not afford to wait any longer.
Being in the cave once again should have frightened her. There was scarcely any light, the jagged rocks and stalactites encased in inky shadow, no sound but the group's mingling breaths and the faint dripping of water from somewhere above their heads.
A beam of white light flared behind Angie, and she jolted. Behind her, Alex held up his cell phone, flashlight on. "What?" he said, when he realized Angie was glaring at him. "I can barely see anything. It's freaking me out."
Angie ignored him, instead turning to Clio, whose face was pearly and wan in the lurid light. "Stay here," Angie told her, taking the nymph's hand. "I'll go talk to Hephaestus and I'll be back in just a second."
Clio's eyes went round, her hand clammy against Angie's. "Are you sure? I mean why—why do you have to go by yourself, all of a sudden?"
Angie shot a furtive glance towards the twins, who both seemed too absorbed in some gimmicky app on Alex's phone to notice. "You know how Hephaestus reacts to strangers," she answered, turning back to Clio. "Especially mortal ones. So would you keep an eye on them for me? Make sure they don't do anything stupid."
Clio started to reply, but Conny cleared his throat. "I heard that," he said with a frown, fussing at the sling around his shoulder.
"Good," said Angie, voice echoing back at them as she turned, ambling further into the cave. "Don't do anything stupid, then."
The closer she got to Hephaestus's den, the more her nerves began to hum beneath her skin. I shouldn't be nervous, she told herself. I've met him before. I shouldn't be nervous.
But she was nervous anyway. This meeting, after all, was within an entirely different context than before. She knew so much more now—about who she was, about where she came from. Now that knowledge loomed before her like some impenetrable wall.
The flickering light from the hearth painted the cave walls gold, the eerie silence interrupted every so often with rhythmic dinks, like the strike of a metal drum. Angie stopped walking, and took a breath. She waited until her pulse nearly matched the metal strikes before she turned the corner.
She was in awe again, at the mallets and hammers and clamps that dangled from the walls in a neat yet chaotic array, at the work table decorated with piles of scrap metal like some abstract tactile collage. Behind the table, crouched low over the hearth, was Hephaestus, the back of his shirt stained with grease and sweat.
Angie barely had time to think of what to say before he said: "I know why you're here."
Angie fought back a jolt of surprise, stepping further into the room. "You do?"
Hephaestus turned, mopping away a smear of oil beneath his eyepatch with his sleeve. His face was gentle, the barest of smiles ghosting his mouth. It was strange, so strange, but Angie could have sworn at that moment that she'd known this man all her life.
Angie sighed, bracing herself against the work table. "Did you know?"
Hephaestus shrugged. "When I met you, I suspected," he answered, "but leave it to Hades to figure it out for sure. He has a much sharper intuition for these sorts of things, after all."
"Why wouldn't he tell you, then?" Angie blurted, her temples beginning to throb. "Why not tell me?"
"It doesn't matter, Angie," said Hephaestus, his visible eye flaring, a flame just after it's been fed more kindling. "It doesn't. You've made it this far without knowing you had divine blood; you would have kept going even if you never knew at all. Who you are, the path you carve in this world—whether or not you're a descendant of mine has no stake in that."
Angie swallowed, her hands numbly grappling a piece of metal tossed across the desk. She worked her fingers into it, flipped it this way and that, watched how the amber light flickered across it. It was relatively light, like aluminum, and smooth beneath her hands. "It still feels so jarring," she admitted, her voice low. "I guess I just...I guess I just thought I knew who I was already."
"Well," Hephaestus said, stroking his beard, "we are always evolving. People, gods, whatever. There's always something new to learn about ourselves."
A laugh bubbled up out of Angie's throat before she could stop it. She set the metal down, raising an eyebrow at Hephaestus. "You're Mr. Wise Guy, huh?" she said. "No wonder Hermes likes you so much."
A breath of silence passed between the both of them, the name weighing heavy in the air.
Hephaestus said after a moment, "That's the other thing you came for, right?"
As quick as it had been there, the laughter died again. Angie nodded her head. "If he couldn't go to Apollo, I know—or at least I really, really hope—he would have come to talk to you. So please tell me, Hephaestus. Have you seen him?"
"Apollo, that two-faced bastard," Hephaestus muttered to himself, his hands going to his hips. A startled bolt of electricity shot through Angie when she noticed his hands were, in fact, the size of her entire face. "If I were Zeus, I'd give him a scathing punishment for his disloyalty, but we all know Zeus isn't too loyal himself—"
"Hephaestus?" Angie said, widening her eyes at him. "Hermes. Where is he?"
Hephaestus's ruddy face turned rueful. "He visited me just after he became human, begging me to do something. Said there was nowhere else he could go," he said. "I told him I was sorry, that I couldn't do anything, but if he stayed here maybe we could figure something out."
Angie furled a hand over her heart, as if she could somehow press out the ache there. "He didn't stay, did he?"
Hephaestus shook his head. "I'm afraid not. He asked me if I could get him to Vegas, so I dropped him off there—a day ago, maybe? That's the last time we spoke."
"Vegas," Angie said, unsure whether she should be excited or terrified that it would be that simple. Conny and Alex knew the city far better than she did—they would have a few ideas as to where he was hiding, certainly.
Hold on, Hermes. I'm on my way.
"Angie?" Hephaestus said, rousing her from her reverie. He leaned forward, so that the faint smell of smoke and motor oil drifted towards her in waves. "I've never seen him so distraught. I'm not saying there's no way to bring him back—if anyone can, it's you. I just want you to be prepared."
Judging from the look on the god's face—the careful, solemn gleam in his eye—there was no way at all to prepare for this. Yet Angie nodded her head, extending her hand in his direction. "Thank you, Hephaestus. I'll fix this; I promise."
Hephaestus's face opened up into a toothy grin—though it was, in fact, missing a few teeth. "I know you will," he said, shaking his head. "You're a smith. It's what we do."
The second they reached Sin City, they split up.
"Check every bar, every casino, every hotel," Angie told them, mopping a trickle of sweat from her brow. "It's only been a day and without—without his speed, he can't have gone very far."
Conny nodded, already turning towards the Strip. "I'll call you if I find anything."
With a clumsy salute, Alex shot off in the other direction, and for a breath Clio and Angie lingered on the street, the city bleeding neon and noise around them, as if they were trapped within a vibrant kaleidoscope. All at once it didn't matter; all Angie could hear was her heartbeat pounding in her ears, all her muscles tense with the sensation of so close, yet still so far.
Angie started, "Clio—"
The nymph caught her in an embrace, so sudden and emphatic that by the time Angie realized she was supposed to hug her back, Clio had already stepped away. "We're gonna find him, alright?" Clio assured, and turned Angie around, delivering a sharp push to her shoulders. "Now go."
Angie went.
She took the eastern side of Vegas, down Fremont Street, the brightly lit signs all blurs of yellow, red, and green. She maneuvered through dense crowds and lengthy lines, enduring the impassioned shouts after her as she burst through door after door. Time and time again, it was this: bad EDM or pop music, a sea of human babble, the pungent stench of alcohol and sometimes regurgitated alcohol. But there was no Hermes.
A bouncer had just tossed her out onto the street for the third time that night when the ceaseless ringing in her ears resolved itself, finally, into the shrill of her cell phone. Nearly out of breath, Angie fumbled around for it and placed it to her ear. "Hello?"
"Angie." She didn't like the tone of Alex's voice, not because he sounded worried, but the opposite. His voice was flat, serious, nearly icy. It was the way he sounded when he was trying very hard not to break. "I found him."
Time blurred. He sent her the location, she hailed a cab, and then she was there.
The address was a small, independent-owned casino and bar at the edge of downtown, where the crowds were thinner and the music was quieter, where Angie could actually hear herself think. She pulled open the squat building's door, stepping into a cloud of cigarette smoke and fruit-scented vapor. The walls were a dated, ugly beige, the carpets worn and emerald green. The ceiling hung low enough that, if Angie jumped, she could probably touch it.
She found the twins at the bar, both of them with drinks in their hands and defeat in their eyes. "Guys?" she said, shaking their shoulders. Conny stirred, as if lifted from a trance. "So where is he?"
"Slot machines," Conny answered, gesturing in their direction. "With Clio."
"Angie," Alex started, brushing her arm, "he's—"
"Shh. It doesn't matter. I'm gonna fix it," she said, and turned away, unsure who was the one who needed more convincing: the twins or herself. "I'm gonna fix it."
It wasn't until she saw him, parked at the furthest machine, his eyes glued to the slots with a gaze so glassy he could've been there for days, that she had to admit she did not know how to fix this.
He didn't look remarkably different. His hair, stark black, wasn't an inch longer or shorter, his annoyingly athletic stature hadn't withered or grown. To the average passerby, he probably looked fine, if a little bit dazed. A good pinch in the arm and he'd wake up from whatever la la land to which he'd gone away.
But Angie saw it. The angle to his shoulders was downturned, and though his eyebrows twitched every few moments, the line of his mouth was flat, as if he'd taken any emotion—whether joy, rage, sadness—and shuttered it away a long time ago. He was utterly hollow. How was she supposed to fix that?
Clio leaned against the machine, a curtain of dark hair obscuring one column of the slots, but Hermes hardly seemed to notice her. "Hermes," the nymph was saying. "I know you're upset, but please, you have to talk to me, okay?"
Hermes said nothing. He didn't make a move or a noise at all.
The uncertain fog in Angie's mind switched, abruptly, towards action.
She stepped forward, grabbing Hermes by the wrist. "Enough with the catatonic act," she said, and to her admitted surprise, his eyes flitted up in her direction. She allowed herself one startled breath—they were a cool, deep brown, zapped of their former gold hue. "What? Did you think we were just going to let you vanish into thin air? Did you really think we weren't going to come looking for you?"
Hermes blinked.
"Angie," Clio started, but Angie shook her head. She'd made a promise to Hades, to Hephaestus. There was no other option, no other option but success.
"I get that you're pissed off. Hades and Clio got there in time to save me and Artemis, but not you." Angie bit her lip. Was she being too harsh? She just didn't know. She didn't know how else to face this but with the truth. "But so what, Hermes? So what that you're—"
"Stop calling me that," he said.
His voice was so gravelly, so unlike the one she'd come to know, that Angie had to make sure it'd really come from him. "Stop calling you what?"
"Hermes," he said, switching his gaze back to the slots. "That's a god's name, and I'm not a god anymore."
Angie sighed. "Hermes..."
"If I was, then I'd be able to make these slots get a jackpot," he went on. He pulled a wad of cash from his pocket, fed it into the machine, and yanked on the lever. The slots spun by in a blur of colors. "I mean, I'm the god of wealth, right? A stupid thing like this?" He kicked at it with his foot, a resounding thunk echoing in Angie's ears. "I should be able to make it work. The fact that I can't means it must really be true, then."
Clio and Angie frowned at each other over Hermes's head. He was talking to them, Angie thought, so shouldn't she be relieved? She tried. She tried with every fiber of her being to feel relief, but all she felt instead was the horror that accompanied the realization that this was going to be so much harder than she expected.
"I can't help either of you anymore," Hermes said. "I can't take you anywhere. I can't protect you. I can't do anything. Now that I'm human, I can't do anything."
Angie dropped her eyes from Clio's. For a moment, she no longer knew what to say.
Then: "If that's how you think," Angie said, "then you have a pretty lousy opinion of us humans, don't you?"
Confusion flickered across Hermes's face, the first expression, really, that had crossed it in the last five minutes.
"Those stupid ass twins over there?" Angie gestured towards the bar where they sat. Alex started to wave, but Conny swatted at his hand. "Both of them are very human. They've done some shitty stuff in their lives, but you know what? In the end they're the reason I'm still alive. If it wasn't for their big brains, Clio and Hades wouldn't have shown up to the trial. Maybe they didn't fight with godly speed or prowess, but they did fight for me anyway."
Now Hermes seemed stunned. He sat up, just as the slots finished spinning. No jackpot.
"And me. Recently I've discovered that...I have a bit of something else in me. But before that, before I knew any of that, I was living my life as a human, and I was still doing things. I worked with you, I made sure you got to Hades when you were hurt. And remember that wild storm Clio was crazy enough to try to stop?"
"I think it should be noted," Clio added, her chin lifted, "that I did, in fact, stop it."
Angie rolled her eyes, but spared her girlfriend a small grin. "I protected her from that falling tree. Of course I didn't know you were gonna be all badass and shove it out of the way. But you know what? I did it anyway."
Hermes sputtered, his gaze switching from Angie to Clio, and back to Angie again. "I...I don't know what to do, Angie," he said. "I don't know what I am if I'm not a god. I don't know how to do what you do."
Hephaestus's words echoed in the back of her head, and Angie smiled. "It doesn't matter, Hermes," she told him. "It really doesn't. Whether you're a god or a human, who even gives a fuck? You've still saved my life more times than I can count. You're still my best friend. I still need you."
Hermes's face crumpled, and Angie panicked. Oh, she'd done it now. She'd said the wrong thing, she'd screwed it all up; now Hermes and Hephaestus and Hades were all going to despise her for the rest of her life—
"For someone who claims to hate being sappy," Hermes started as he got to his feet; he was smiling, teeth showing, narrow eyes crinkly at the sides—really smiling. "Goodness, you are so good at it, Angie Nohl."
Clio, a hand held to her mouth, let out a discreet laugh. "I have to agree with him on that."
"What!" Angie stammered, her face heating. "I am not sappy, I'm just very open about how I feel. I...I can't be sappy."
Clio's eyebrows rose. "Why not?"
Angie hesitated, then turned away, her arms folded across her chest. "It would ruin my aesthetic," she murmured.
There were no words between them for a breath, only the awful pop song playing over the speakers.
Then it was a lovely cacophony of laughter, Hermes's loud guffaws, Clio's gentle giggles, the combined, furtive snickering of Conny and Alex. Angie stood there for an awkward moment, entirely mortified, before she couldn't fight it herself.
"Come here, both of you," Hermes said, and hooked an arm around Clio and Angie, hugging them close. He smelled a bit like day-old beer and sweat, but Angie decided it was best not to ruin the moment. "I'm so glad you're both okay. I was worried—really worried."
"Says you," Angie said once he'd released them. "You have any idea how many people have lost sleep over you? You've probably given both your weird uncle and Hephaestus stomach ulcers."
"For what it's worth," said Conny, hopping from his stool and approaching the trio, "I'm glad you're alright, too. If it makes Angie happy, or whatever."
Hermes's face flickered with an almost childlike surprise. "Wait," he said. "You were the guy with June Dolinski, and you"—he turned abruptly towards Alex, who was joining them with his glass of gin still gripped in one hand—"you shot me!"
Alex dipped his head. "I'm deeply sorry about that. I was going through some things," he said, and offered Hermes his free hand. "Truce?"
Hermes rose an eyebrow, but Angie just beamed and gave him a pat on the back, nudging him forward. He shook Alex's hand, but still regarded him a bit warily, like a beetle he was unsure if he'd squashed sufficiently. "Truce," he agreed, a deadly lift to his brow, "however I will still be keeping a very close watch on both of you."
Conny started to protest, but Alex coughed, cutting him off. "I think that's fair."
It was a dream, Angie thought. It had to be. There was no other explanation for this scene that played out in front of her, her old friends and her new ones, laughing and talking with each other, not a taste of malice in the air between them. There was no other explanation for the ease with which she brought Clio closer to her, interlacing their fingers.
"Well, Hermes," Angie said, and when his eyes fell to hers and Clio's intertwined hands, he grinned. "So begins your life as a measly human. Is there anything you want to do first?"
Hermes considered it for a moment, his eyebrows knitted.
"Ah!" he said. "I've always wanted to fly in a plane before."
Clio, Angie, and the twins all exchanged perplexed looks. To be fair, Angie didn't know what she'd been expecting, but she knew for certain that it wasn't that.
Mistaking their blank expressions for ignorance, Hermes spread his arms, mimicking the wings of an airplane. "You know, the big metal things in the sky that people use to fly to different places all the time? I've never been in one."
"Well, yeah," Angie said, frowning. "That would make sense, considering you could actually fly."
"Exactly," replied Hermes. "So they've always been so fascinating to me! Can we go? Can we?"
The idea that a man who was literally as old as time was asking her permission for something inflated Angie's ego more than she would likely admit.
"Sure," she said with a shrug. "I need to get back to Phoenix somehow."