So later that day when the last of the customers and staff had gone home, I was to be found "fixing" the last of my stuff. I hadn't told anybody what I was up to but it was like they already knew. I gathered that much from the whispers and the giggles behind my back. I made a mental note to thank Joanne for her tactless approach. I remembered seeing the guy leave a few minutes after chatting with the girls and sharing some "poetry". When I heard his verses, I almost choked on my own saliva. Well, at least that was one thing about him that wasn't drop dead gorgeous: his poem skills. Shiny guy: three. Me: one.

But anyway, like Joanne had promised, the guy was just waiting at table eleven. Even though all the lights were turned off save one, his light filled just about the entire place, flooding every corner. I had to squint just to see what he was doing-checking out his fingernails. I rolled my eyes as best I could while squinting. He looked up just as I was within hand-shaking distance and grinned. I looked away a little too late, temporarily blinded.

"So you can see the real me, can you?" he asked so casually I wanted to punch his lights out (no pun intended, folks).

"I just need some answers," I replied, trying to keep my voice even. "Now."

"Well we can't reach a diplomatic decision if one of us can't look at the other in the eye," he said.

"Well if you would be so kind as to turn down your light," I said coolly, "I'd be happy to negotiate properly."

All of a sudden, the intense light faded and I turned to him. He was still glowing but it was a dull light. Sadly, he was still superhumanly hot so naturally I made a complete fool of myself by just standing there and staring at him with my jaw wide open.

He was wearing jeans, loafers, and a sleeveless T-shirt. Add to that his toned body and sandy hair and I totally understood why the girls were all fawning over him but I was determined not to fall down that path again.

"How's this?" he asked, his arms spread. "Can you see better?"

"Y-yeah, I... guess," I stammered real smart-like. I slapped myself internally and told myself to get a grip. I forced a polite smile and held out my hand. "I'm Katherine Gordon."

Much to my surprise, dismay, and school-girl giddiness, he took my hand and raised it to his lips. "It's nice to make your acquaintance. My friends call me Apollo." He looked up at me and smiled. My face went hot and I realized I was blushing. I snatched my hand away. "Funny name you've got," I muttered.

He laughed. "I get that a lot from mortals," he said. "If you had met any of my other less-than-kind relatives, they would have vaporized you on the spot." I almost laughed but his expression darkened a bit and I knew he wasn't kidding. I swallowed and took my seat in front of him. Then I asked my question: "What am I?"

Apollo rested his elbows on the small round table and interlaced his fingers, staring at me intently. "You're a mortal," he said simply. "But a special one."

"How special?"

"You can see through the Mist, can't you?" he replied like it was obvious.

"Mist? What mist? What are you talking about?" I blurted out.

He sighed heavily and scratched his head like he was wracking his brains for the answer. "It's hard to explain, Miss Gordon," he said. "And I'm not supposed to go around telling mortals the truth willy-nilly. And you may not be able to take it so easily."

That kind of hit me like a slap in the face. Why couldn't I take it easily? I've seen a guy with freaking horns on his head. I've seen women with snake legs, for crying out loud. I've seen so many disgusting and scary things in my life that should've shoved me into a solitary confinement for the rest of my life! How could I not be able to take it easily? I put my foot down. "Look, here, buddy..." I began to say but he cut me off with a wave of his hand. Usually I wouldn't let anybody do that but he had some kind of authority that made me clamp my mouth shut. Add to the list of things I hate about this guy: total control over me and my actions.

"Security purposes, my dear," he said delicately. "I know that you can see through the Mist and all but the less you know, the less you can be involved and that's safer. You have a weak constitution don't you, dear?"

"Don't act like you know me! I want to be involved!" I cried, standing up so fast I made my chair topple over behind me. I slammed my hands on the table and leaned towards him, glowering. I was so mad that I forgot to tell him not to call me dear or sweetheart. "I want to know what those monsters are. I want to know what you are. I don't like being so close yet so far to a world I've always wanted to know more about!" I was about that far before remembering that I had to breathe, too, but I was more than satisfied by his mildly surprised expression. He frowned.

"You're lucky that I happen to like mortal women," he said calmly yet with a slight edge in his voice that made me shudder. He tilted his chair back so that it stood on only two of its four legs and placed his feet on the table. "But if you insist, I can show you something." He snapped his fingers and I heard a car roll up front.

"What, you're going to take me for a drive around town?" I sneered. Probably not the right way to address someone who had relatives who could turn you into a pile of ashes in a matter of seconds. But, hey, I couldn't help it. I got reckless when I got nervous. But, you know, I needed a little humbling and that's just what the Apollo guy gave me. He raised an eyebrow expectantly and I sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry. Happy?"

"Very," he said cheerily. I suppressed the urge to kick him. He took his feet off the table and stood up. He held out his hand. "Shall we?" I hesitated, remembering that this was exactly the same way Mike had wooed me into spending every dime I had on our relationship before he ditched me for a rich brunette.

"No, thanks," I told him. "I can keep my own hand."

He looked a little curious but smiled anyway. "Follow me," he said evenly. He walked out of the door so smoothly I was tempted to run after him and cling onto him. Then I was reminded that it was because of that part of my personality that I ended up with near zero assets.

"I'll just lock up!" I called. Then after grabbing the keys, pulling on my coat, and my backpack, I jogged out the door then locked it, turning the key with a jangle. A blast of cold wind greeted me like icy cold knives flying through the air and I had to hold my hair back to see Apollo's car-a red convertible Maserati Spyder with the roof up. Great, I thought. He couldn't just be a hot guy with relatives who could blast me to bits. He had to be a rich hot guy who had relatives who could blast me to bits.

Like him, the car gave off this weird light but I figured he toned it down a bit so I could see it better. Apollo sat at the driver's seat, one hand on the wheel while the engine hummed. I frowned a bit but went around to the passenger side and got in. I buckled my seatbelt and looked at him expectantly. "Now what?" I said.

"Now this." Apollo pulled on the wheel and as it tilted, we took off into the sky which kind of freaked me out. I grabbed the edge of my seat with my right hand and his shoulder with my left, which made him veer off-course for a second with a "whoa!" But he got his cool back and we were on track again. He looked over at me and my hard-as-steel grip on his shoulder and told me with a grin, "Relax. I've got it handled. Just... tell me when you're going to do that next time."

Unfortunately, I was hyperventilating so much that I forgot he was even there. "Okay," I muttered frantically to myself. "Relax. I can do this. Twenty thousand feet in the air in a flying car... but I can do this-"

"Actually, we're thirty five thousand feet in the air, not twenty," he corrected me. I almost calmed myself down with my irritation at him. The guy was so annoying. Honestly. I wondered how his relatives had managed to raise him and just when I thought he wasn't going to say anything else, he added, "And this is the sun chariot. It's not just a flying car."

"Yeah," I said through gritted teeth. "Yeah, that makes a difference. Just get us down!"

He tsk-tsked and said, "I can't do that, sweetheart. It's a daily obligation and I decided that you could come along."

"And since when could you decide things like that for me?" I demanded though my voice wavered, making my tone not at all impressive.

"Since I was born," he replied matter-of-factly. He hung a right and I began to breathe normally again. Well, as normally as my breathing could possibly get while flying over thirty thousand feet in the sky with some guy with supermodel looks claiming that the flying sports car we were riding in was the "sun chariot". Oh, the joy. After a while of slight turbulence, Apollo said, "So, where should I start?"

"How about telling me who you really are?" I suggested. "Oh, and maybe include the part where you got the flying car?"

"Hmm," said Apollo thoughtfully. "Not a very original way to start but if you say so. Alrighty then, I'll give you my full job description." He looked me in the eye and said, "I'm Apollo, the Olympian god of the sun, of the prophecy, of music, of poetry, of archery, of healing, of plagues, and of light. You get all that?"

"I lost you at 'god'," I said truthfully, taking my hand off of his shoulder. "What do you mean by 'Olympian'?"

"I mean what I said," Apollo replied, turning his attention back to the sky ahead. "Usually I'd explain with a limerick but I'm getting tired of limericks now. Maybe I should go to Japan or something. Get some new material."

"Um, that's interesting and all but you haven't explained everything yet. By 'Olympian' I mean," I said. Then I realized something. It just popped into my brain: a memory from seventh grade. From History class. And then another one from more recent times: a Disney movie I'd watched-Hercules. "Olympian," I repeated. "The twelve Olympians. The most important gods in Greek mythology. Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Dionysus, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Ares, Aphrodite, Athena, Hermes, Artemis, and... Apollo. You."

"Exactly," he said. He studied me for a while. "You know your way around school pretty well, don't you? Let me guess: Ivy League?"

"Not exactly," I laughed. "I never graduated high school."

He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "I could've sworn you were some sort of theoretical physician or something."

I cracked up again. I had to admit it-he was funny. But not funny intentionally, I suppose. "Theoretical physicist," I told him. Then I said something I never meant to: "I wanted to be one, though."

"Hmm. I see." But he said it like I knew it! I sighed through my nose. Whether I liked it or not, I was warming up to him. Maybe we could be friends, I thought. Just friends. Then maybe we could just hang out like this every now and then. And maybe-

Whoa, there, cried my common sense. This is a bad idea. You shouldn't get too close to this guy. If what he's saying is true and he's a god, he can just obliterate you whenever he wants to. Or maybe even worse. An image of me as a chicken materialized in my mind's eye.

Well, I don't know about you people but that snapped me out of it. This girl did not want to be turned into poultry. I switched into formal mode. "So..." I said, smoothing the imaginary folds in my coat. "Are you saying that the Olympians are real?"

"Yup," he said, taking a left turn to goodness-knows-where. "Pretty much everything in you mortals' Greek mythology textbooks is true. Well maybe the thing about ole' Ares being a nude youth with a helm and spear isn't what the way mortals think it is. I think that started because Hephey saw him with Aphrodite that time in Athens. Ares got so mad he cast this really thick Mist so the Greeks could forget whatever things they saw that day. But of course, they never forgot."

"Hephey...?" I asked.

"Oh, Hephaestus," Apollo clarified. "Nice guy, nice guy. Misunderstood as all. Pretty good with the hammer, if I do say so myself. You know, I remember the time-"

"Ohhh-kaayyy," I interrupted. "So, um, about those monsters I keep seeing, too. Care to explain to the mortal what they are?"

"Like I said, it's all in your first-grade Greek mythology."

"The guy with horns?" I asked incredulously, sitting forward.

"Pasiphae's son."

"The women with snake legs?"

"Dracanae," Apollo said, scowling. "Nasty bunch. They apparently don't like it when you bait them with bacon. Well, it was a nice try anyway."

"And I suppose the teenagers with one eye are..."

Apollo nodded. "Cyclopes. Poseidon's kids."

I collapsed onto the backrest, slightly in shock but slightly in relief. "So I'm not crazy," I murmured. I ran my hands through my hair and laughed, sounding a little like a maniac. "I'm not crazy!"

"Not in the slightest," Apollo said confidently. "Believe me, I would know if I was talking to a crazy person."

I took a shaky breath and calmed myself. "You still haven't told me where we're going."

"Oh. Right." A forgetful god. Now I've seen it all. But he grinned like it wasn't a big deal. "We're going to Olympus."

My jaw dropped again. "What? You mean where the gods live? Are you serious?" All of a sudden I felt excited. I mean, how couldn't I be? We were going to freaking Olympus. A place I'd only seen once and that was in a Disney movie. And even then it was gorgeous. Then something occurred to me. "But," I said, "aren't mortals, you know, not allowed in there?"

"Well yeah," he said slowly. "That's why we're just going to go near enough for you to see it. And you can see it. What with your ability to see through the Mist and all."

"Cool," I breathed. Like I could say anything else. I shifted on my seat and made myself comfortable.

"Buuut..."

"What now?"

"We have to make a little detour," said Apollo with enough good cheer to make Santa want to run and hide. "Since this thing can only go west, we'll be getting to Olympus in the morning. So you should sleep tight for a bit."

"Does this have anything to do with the car being the"-I made quotation marks in the air-"sun chariot?"

Apollo laughed. "Pretty much. What do you say to a few poems to pass the time? I'll start." He cleared his throat and found time for a dramatic pause.

"The stars are twinkling in the sky.

I don't like the smell of a pig sty.

Maybe I should eat some stir fry.

I'm just really so sly."

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing but it was really, really hard. At the same time, I was trying not to puke. He was the Olympian god of poetry, but I was beginning to think that the Greeks meant bad poetry. But I gave the guy credit for trying. "Is-Is it my turn now?" I managed to say while swallowing my laughter. He nodded, completely oblivious of my hopeless case of the giggles because he was too busy being proud of his new poem. It took me a while to think up some verses but after working around so many poetry fanatics for a couple of years, I was beginning to get the hang of it. "How about this?" I asked.

"The relentless wind howls in my ears.

I cower, afraid, in the darkness.

Then out of the blue, a light appears,

And I am pulled free, to which I foolishly digress."

Apollo applauded and the car lurched downward. I yelled, "The car!" In a matter of seconds, he caught the wheel and pulled us back up. He smiled yet again and said, "Don't worry. I'm a pro at this. We won't fall. But, anyway, your poem was great! Almost as good as mine! You know, maybe with a little more practice, you could be as great a poet as me and I am the god of poetry after all..."

I pursed my lips to keep from smirking. "Yeah," I said. "Thanks. I think." It was then that a yawn escaped from my mouth.

The sun god looked at me strangely. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. But, in the end, he said, "Get some rest. I'll wake you up when we get there."

I yawned again. "Yeah, okay... But I don't think... I'll be... asleep... too long..." I hadn't realized it but my eyelids had begun to droop. I curled up on my side and drifted off to dreamland.