"Hadley, dear, lunch is ready!" Mya called from the kitchen.
Hadley came racing into the room, clutching a wildflower in her hand. "I picked it for you, Aunt Mya!" The little girl snatched a clean shot glass off the counter and held it up. "Can we put it in here?" she asked.
"Of course we can, darling," Mya replied. She filled the glass half full of water and carefully placed the flower inside.
Plopping down in her seat at the kitchen table, Hadley looked intently up at Mya. "When is Reilly coming back?"
Placing a plate full of food in front of the four-year-old, Mya pondered how best to answer. "We'll just have to wait and see," she said after a moment. "They're chasing a rogue empusa, so there's no telling where that she-demon has led them off to."
Hadley scrunched her face, wracking her memory for what an empusa was. In addition to being taught to speak both Greek and English, Hadley was being educated on all sorts of supernatural creatures that lived in and around Greece. Frowning, she was disappointed to draw a blank.
Mya noticed Hadley's frustration and offered a hint. "Flaming hair."
An image immediately flashed in Hadley's mind: a fierce woman with hair on fire stood over a man, drinking his blood. The next image she saw was of the same woman, only this time she was eating her victim. Her eyes widened and Hadley stared at Mya. "What if she hurts Reilly?"
Mya smiled reassuringly. "Reilly is a very good hunter. And he's with Acheron and Damon. They've handled empusas before."
"How do you kill one?" Hadley's hazel eyes were wide with curiosity. Despite the fact that she had been torn from her family at such a young age and taken away to a strange country, Hadley maintained a very cheery disposition and was always eager to learn more about hunting.
Sensing that they would get no closer to eating lunch until Hadley's insatiable desire for answers was fulfilled, Mya guided the girl into a back room of the house. It was the Contos family's armory and it housed a very impressive collection of weapons. Picking up a large bronze sword off the wall, Mya held it down so that Hadley could look at it more closely.
"This is made of bronze." Mya tilted the sword so that it caught the light. "It's a special kind, mined from Mount Olympus. If you use it against an empusa, it sends the creature back to Tartarus. Takes one a long time to crawl back out of there."
Hadley ran her finger along the flat side of the blade, staring at it in fascination. "Did Reilly take one of these with him?" she inquired, still not satisfied that her adopted father was safe.
"Of course he did," Mya reassured her. "They all took one."
A noise from the kitchen startled them both. Mya placed herself protectively in front of Hadley, holding the bronze sword firmly in her hands. Instructing Hadley to grab ahold of the back of her shirt, Mya slowly worked her way from the armory to the kitchen. Peering cautiously around the corner, she stifled a gasp of surprise.
Perched on the edge of the table, a woman with wild brown hair snatched up part of Mya and Hadley's lunch in her sharp talons. With her winged arms resting at her sides, the creature seemed unaware that her thievery was now being watched.
Still grasping the end of Mya's shirt, Hadley peeked around Mya's leg to see what was happening in the kitchen. She tugged gently on Mya's shirt, her eyes asking for an explanation of what she was seeing. Pulling Hadley back down the hallway and out of earshot of the creature, Mya knelt down so she could look Hadley in the eyes.
"I need you to stay here and be very quiet. I'm going to take care of that thing in our kitchen and then I'll be back to get you."
Hadley nodded mutely.
Patting the girl reassuringly on her shoulder, Mya raised up the bronze sword and stepped out into the kitchen. Addressing the creature in Greek, Mya warned it to get out of her house. Dropping its stolen meal, the woman screeched and flew at Mya, talons raised.
Without flinching, Mya swung the sword up, scoring a hit on the creature's wing. The woman backed up quickly, baring her teeth at Mya as she retreated toward the door. Holding her injured wing at her side, she glanced back and forth between her food and Mya.
"I said," Mya stepped forward threateningly, "get out." She took another step toward the winged woman, keeping her sword leveled at the woman's chest. Realizing that Mya was not the type of person to back down from a confrontation, the creature scurried out the kitchen door and took off into the air.
Rushing out the door to make sure the creature was actually flying away, Mya shouted one last warning into the sunny afternoon sky. When she came back inside, Hadley was still sitting against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest as she stared at the wall in front of her. Hearing someone walking toward her, Hadley turned her head to make sure it was Mya.
She could tell by the woman's expression that whatever danger had been in the house had been taken care of. "Aunt Mya, what was that?" Hadley's eyes were wide with a combination of inquisitiveness and fright. Even though she had glimpsed the creature for only a split second, she knew that, whatever it was, it was not something Mya wanted to be in her house.
Mya sat Hadley down in the living room and told her to wait. Bustling about closing and locking doors and windows, Mya silently cursed her carelessness, realizing how much she had put Hadley at risk. She had been fortunate to only have to deal with one rogue harpy; Mya understood that she could have been faced with something much worse, and with everyone else out on hunts, there would have been very little she could have done to protect Hadley. After she was confident that her house was once again secure, Mya went back to join Hadley in the living room, bringing her a sandwich to eat.
Hadley took a bite without saying anything, sensing that she was going to receive an explanation soon. Sure enough, Mya sat down beside her and said, "That was a harpy in our kitchen, Hadley." Taking another bite out of her sandwich, Hadley waited patiently for Mya to continue talking.
"She was scavenging our lunch," Mya explained. "Harpies tend to do that, but if you interrupt them or threaten them, they're prone to attack."
"Did you kill her?"
"No, dear. She wasn't hurting anyone." Mya hoped her decision to spare the harpy's life would not come back to haunt her later. "But I did warn her never to come back this way again or she wouldn't be so lucky."
"Good." Hadley finished off her sandwich before handing the plate back to Mya. She was still too young to truly understand what Hunters did and what sort of life she had been thrust into by necessity. All she understood was that her adopted family—Reilly included—went out and fought bad things to keep her and other people safe.
Becoming bored with their conversation, Hadley jumped off her seat on the couch and raced back to the room she shared with Reilly. Grabbing her teddy bear—one of the only things she had from when she was a baby—Hadley sprinted back out to the living room, nearly colliding headlong into Mya, who had stood up to leave.
"Goodness, child, be careful!" Mya, as she had done countless times before, questioned her decision to house the two Americans. Reilly wasn't a problem; he was a very capable hunter and often had insightful suggestions to make to the Contos's hunting techniques. Hadley, on the other hand, was quite the little whirlwind. Mya and Acheron had already raised four son, but having another child to rear and look after—especially in their line of work—was an extra task they had not expected to have to take on.
Holding her teddy bear up over her head, Hadley announced, "Andy Bear and I want to go pick flowers."
"Hadley, that harpy could still be out there. You need to stay inside where it's safe." Mya hated having to keep Hadley cooped up, but she couldn't risk the little girl being hurt or killed.
Hadley pouted, crossing her arms across her chest and scowling at Mya. "But Andy didn't get to pick flowers with me this morning. He feels left out!"
"Then now is a good time to teach Andy that he can't always do what he wants to."
"But why not?" Hadley whined. "We'll stay close to the house!"
"Because you're too young to be out alone. The monsters know where we live and they might come try to hurt you."
"Andy Bear will fight them off!" Hadley pushed her teddy bear up toward Mya. "He's brave!"
"Hadley Rose, I am not going to say this to you again. You are not going outside."
"But Aunt Mya—," Hadley protested.
Mya pointed down the hallway. "Go to your room," she ordered firmly.
Holding her teddy bear at her side, Hadley stomped back to her room, slamming the door behind her. She sat down in the middle of her floor, setting Andy down gently in front of her. "I'm sorry, Andy," she apologized, "Aunt Mya is being mean today." Having learned the hard way not to throw a screaming fit when things didn't go her way, Hadley spent a few minutes throwing her pillow around her room to get rid of her anger.
Once she had calmed down, Hadley scooped her teddy bear up in her hands and began making up adventures for the two of them to go on. That day, she and Andy were great adventurers traveling the world in search of monsters to slay. No monster was too difficult for them and the courageous pair saved many innocent people from the terrible beasts that hunted them.
Back in the living room, Mya sat down wearily on the couch and asked herself again why she had let Acheron talk her into taking in the fugitives. Putting on her reading glasses, she picked up a book from the table and started reading. Like Hadley, she forgot her troubles as she traveled into a fictional world where everything turned out as it should.
As the sun began to set, Mya put her book down and went out into the kitchen to make dinner. While the food was baking, Mya went back to check on Hadley. She opened the door to find the little girl and her teddy bear diving behind the dresser, shouting for a make-believe harpy to put down the cheese it was holding. When the imaginary harpy apparently ignored the duo's demand, Hadley burst out from her hiding place and charged at a pillow that had been set against the wall. Punching it a couple times, Hadley and Andy celebrated their victory by jumping up onto the bed and sprawling out in exhaustion.
"When you're done slaying monsters, dinner's on the table." Mya headed back down the hallway, only to be overtaken by a very eager—and very hungry—Hadley. With Andy Bear standing guard over them during the meal, Hadley and Mya ate in relative silence. After draining the last of the milk from her glass, Hadley got up to leave the table.
"Hadley." Mya waited for Hadley to turn back around and look up at her.
"Yes, Aunt Mya?"
"Do you understand why you couldn't go outside this afternoon?" Feeling that it was important for Hadley to understand the severity of her situation, Mya waited while Hadley thought of a response.
Picking Andy up off the counter, Hadley hugged her bear close to her. "The bad monsters want to hurt me because I'm special," she answered.
"That's right." Mya knelt down to pull Hadley into a hug. "And you may think I'm being mean sometimes, but I'm just keeping you safe."
Kissing Mya on the cheek, Hadley ran back down the hallway and into her room. "Good night, Aunt Mya!" she called from inside her room before closing the door. Changing into her pajamas, Hadley climbed up onto her bed and burrowed under the sheets. Holding Andy Bear tightly in her arms, she fell asleep and dreamed of being a great warrior fighting dragons alongside her faithful companion.
