The day she stole the car had been picturesque, fluffy cumulus clouds and a yawning sky. The heat had been nothing terrible, yet oppressive nonetheless; a dog day in the true spirit of the term. She had done it on a whim - she thinks it might have been something like teenage rebellion - when she had walked up to the salesman and asked him, pretty as you please, if I can take that car over there for a quick ride? He smiled and nodded through his glasses, ruddy-cheeked, sweating.
Only when he heard the screech of the tires, the burn of the exhaust as she sped away, did he snap out of his stupor and begin to yell.
Less than thirty minutes later, she was in the back of a police car. The backseat was cold. She chewed on her lip and waited.
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Jane once called her a "spoiled, attention-seeking, Daddy's-girl bitch." Not directly, but Piper heard it through the door to the secretary's office. She's good at eavesdropping, picks just the right times and places to snag a piece of gossip like that from the mouths of the gossipers. Leverage. It's nothing substantial, but she might mention something about what Jane really thinks from time to time. Especially in front of Tristan; Jane is Queen Bitch of Castle Hell when she wants to be, but never in front of her employer. Never in front of her dad. Piper pushes all sorts of buttons under Jane's good-girl routine and watches the anger mount.
Chalk it up to the same stupid impulses that will almost get her sent to jail two years later. Piper doesn't really care. She stopped caring long ago.
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Dad has Hollywood friends - tall, statuesque women in heels, suited gentlemen actors, arthouse directors, enough publicists and cameramen and paparazzi to form a country of their own. The country would be called Hollywood. They would export entertainment and import entertainment. Every day would be another day in California, where it's always warm and it's always bright and the sea boils on the terrible, no-good days.
Their private chef (and at this, the public will roll their eyes and tut softly, hating her, hating her and her wealth, her idiotic celebrity exploits and insignificant material complaints) teaches her how to cook vegetables and make them look nice when she's seven. His name was Joseph and he was both handsome and charming in that peculiar way most Italians are graced with.
"You have to shock them in ice water," he explains, "after you take them out. It keeps their color."
"Like the green beans?"
"Yes, cara."
Camp is not much different from Hollywood. It is a single-minded industry: kill monsters and don't get killed. Sometimes they kill the bigger monsters to save the world. Instead of sex and money, they export violence and import lives with expiration dates. Everyone is living on borrowed time. When the actors get old and ugly, they start to fade but still remain, having anchored themselves through a lifetime of money and fame. When halfbloods get old and weak, some of them stay and teach. Some of them leave.
People are still people, godly heritage or not. You shock vegetables to keep their color. You take children from bad places and good places and dress them up and make them fight wars. A kind of forced prostitution, but of powers instead of beauty. They keep their color until they begin to rot and grow soft. Then you shuffle them off to the sidelines in that quiet but familiar way, secretly resentful and glad that they are gone.
Actors act because they have a flair for the theatrical. Models model because they are born beautiful. Demigods fight because their parents are gods.
She is nothing special like they make her out to be, a child of the prophecy from her mother's side and a future starling from her father's. Just a warm girl shocked in ice water, starting to go sour in the open air.
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She is not selfish. Every day, she thanks the gods for her continued existence. She has friends and family and food. She has never wanted for anything and she never will. When she dies, she will go to Elysium with Jason, and they will be happy. She has Jason and that is enough.
She is not a dumb girl, contrary to popular belief. She knows her mother and what Aphrodite stands for. Better in the wild, killing nightmarish things not seen since millennia ago and grappling with cosmic forces beyond her wildest imaginations, than on the streets, in films and magazines, face plastered across the country - a temporary facelift. Beautiful girls are like mints; just one is never satisfying enough.
She is not selfish.
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At night, Piper dreams of love. Jason's hand is curled protectively over her wrist, his body warm. He smells like copper, his hair ash-fine and his body warm. The Aphrodite girls tell her love comes from funny observations like these. She turns over and pushes his arms away, gently. Jason snorts but stays asleep. Something about it makes her smile. Boys.
Outside, she sits, lazily kicking her feet. Summer's height shows, the breezes cool and the stars bright. Observations. Love. She wonders if she can fall in love with one of the worst months of the year.
Love. Curious thing, the heart.
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The day before her father was stolen, she dreamed of Las Vegas. All the people had become monstrous, leering things. When they died, they dissolved into thick flesh-colored puddles on the concrete, and the rest of them advanced, stepping through the remains of their fallen brethren. She tried to speak but her words failed her. She died and awoke, and then it was not a dream.
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Leo looked at her sideways. His eyes were blazing. She and Hazel sat near the port of the Argo II, nervous but excited. That was the demigods' caveat - they were blessed with the abilities necessary to resolve godly conflicts, but they were also drawn to war in the way smokers were drawn to cigarettes or alcoholics to beer. The children of Ares had the greatest amount of this spark, but none of the other cabins were exempt. Everyone carried a tiny glimmer of it, buried deep but still there.
Frank was sweating. Annabeth looked ready to cry. Percy and Jason were staring at the sun, creeping over the horizon like furious Apollo himself. Below, trees stretched for miles. The Earth Mother beckoned.
Aphrodite had been born from Ouranos, Gaea's lover. Her grandmother spoke in low tones to make sure the rest could not hear.
By midnight, they were back home.
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Mellie listens to her for all but ten minutes. Then she nods.
"Please go."
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Impulsive. Reckless. Calculating.
A friend makes a joke about it, referencing some psychology textbook. Piper smiles, pretends to laugh. Her voice is glassy and a bit too shrill to be taken as genuine mirth.
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His name is Jacob, surname Reynolds. He is a young lawyer quickly making a name for himself with each case he wins. He is not a monster; that she can plainly see. Many lawyers are - something about the profession, she supposes, calls to them. There is a spark, a charm to that line of work she does not, and will never, truly understand. Jacob is patient with her, and he is handsome and loving. They get married when she is 24, fresh-faced and barely out of college.
He is blonde, too, and well-muscled. There is a thin scar running across his left pectoral that he explains is from a teenage hiking accident. Sometimes when a case is too hard, he ignores her. Jacob is one of those people who can lose himself, freely and absolutely, in work. He is so like Jason that to deny the resemblance would be to deny the truth, and she does not feel she deserves that luxury anymore.
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Their baby is born normal. Jacob kisses her and she weeps into his shoulder; not because it was a safe birth, but because she cannot feel the curse of her mother on their newborn son.
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It was never about self-preservation. It was her. They gave her a sickness. A Hollywood girl rotting on the stalk, flash-frozen but still fading in little bits and pieces.
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Dreams are more fleeting now. When she dreams, she dreams of death. Grandfather's wrinkled hand a whisper on her cheek, the corn-husk doll in her hands, the storybook open to a dog-eared page. Spoke the world into existence, then destroyed it. Details. A smell like rotting apples. Details. Cold, dead boys and girls in the ocean, and one screaming father. Details. Nico's eyes as he turned, frigid and unforgiving. Spat a single word. Filth.
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They have not moved yet. Grandmother plays a slow game.
In her bed. Blue veins stitched into her arms, her face, her hollow cheeks. Look what years of crystal meth can do to a pretty girl. She wishes for ambrosia, but it does not exist. Nor does nectar. Food of the gods, she wishes. I'm so hungry.
Enamel eroding, mouth filled with the taste of her stomach acid. Rinse and repeat. A heart monitor beeping. Her nurse enters the room.
"Help," she commands (does not croak, does not waver) and the nurse's face splits. First into the face of Hazel, then of Annabeth, then into the haglike visage of a Fury.
"Of course."