Author's note: It seems like Part Three is going to be too long to fit into two sections, and my OCD tendencies will not allow such blatantly uneven chapter lengths, so you get this first.
Three
by
Icy Roses
Part Three (2)
The restaurant is one of the classiest Italian ones in the city – Il Picco. Translated into English, it means The Peak, and it is certainly the peak of fine dining. People simply do not walk through the intricate glass doors without proper eveningwear. As much as Liza adores Italian food and adores Il Picco in general, tonight is not the best of nights for cheery, celebratory dinners. It's her birthday, and Bea insisted on taking her out for a nice meal and almost wrangled her into going clubbing, but thank goodness Liza managed to dodge that bullet. Bea swears, we're not coming back to your apartment until you are drunker than a squirrel on jungle juice, which doesn't sound pleasant in the slightest. Still, Liza puts on the little black dress, silver heels and earrings to meet Bea for dinner.
Of course, Bea failed to mention she also invited everyone who worked in any kind of proximity at the Department of Education. So Liza finds herself sitting at a table for twelve in a private dining room with a menu in one hand and messing nervously with her clutch in the other. She gives obligatory smiles for the others, but inside, she is all turmoil. She can't concentrate on anything, much less what dish she wants for dinner. After work, she figured nobody would be waiting for her on the steps today, but she snuck out the back just because.
Yesterday night, she had nightmares about the incident, the first time in years.
"Hey, Liza, why don't you tell them about that time you dropped the coffee on the papers? Wasn't that the first day?" Bea grins brightly. She leans toward Ryan, sitting next to her and promises, "It's a good story. Hilarious."
"Oh, that," Liza says. "I – oh, look the waiter is here." She bows her head again twirling her finger around and around her bracelet. What did that girl say? The Greek goddess. The thing is, Liza doesn't believe in that stuff. Or she has spent the last twenty years of her life trying very hard not to believe in it. She's got a steady job now, a future, and a fairly good life in the political center of the country. On the plus side, she thinks dryly, her father might stop mentioning her to the press all of the time if he finds out she's having the dreams again. Although, not even the reappearance of the dreams will convince her to call the senator. It's not like he's ever been good at offering comfort for what he's consistently termed her "hallucination problems."
If only they were just hallucinations.
"Why don't we order a round of prosecco?" Bea suggests. The waiter reappears moments later with a fresh bottle, pops open the cork, and produces elegant crystal glasses. Liza knows she can't allow everyone to pay her tab. These are government workers, not millionaires. She could afford it, if she drew from the bank account her parents opened for her. She hates using money that isn't what she explicitly earned herself, but sometimes, she can't avoid doing just that.
One thing is for sure. She is not going through psychological therapy again for "seeing things that do not exist." Because even though she went through it way back when with passively and with the most hopeful of intentions, therapy is useless. There isn't anything wrong with Liza's eyes – there's something wrong with everybody else's. For some reason, she can see the mythology world blending so chaotically with the real one. Her whole life, she has been able to see monsters and once, she swears she saw a goddess, although she isn't sure which one. They can see her too. She's had a few close calls. After she went to high school, the therapist convinced her (she wanted to be convinced at the time) that everything she saw was the manifestation of an overactive imagination. She was fourteen, she wanted to be popular and fit in, and she didn't want to be known as the freak who saw the Boogeyman all the time. By and by, ignoring her Sight worked, and the monsters started ignoring her too. By the time she went to college, it was an occasional thing and mostly unobtrusive.
Now, though – Jamie and the Hunter had opened Pandora's box. She had two choices. She could either ignore them again and hope the dreams and the sightings would recede or she could dive in headfirst into a world that would destroy her respectable job and everything she'd worked for. She could embrace freak-dom and accept the world of mythology.
Hell to the no.
She feels slightly better about this decision. Bea, a little bit red – she's Asian and gets the Glow at the drop of a hat – raises her glass and says, "Let's toast! To our newest friend, Liza Allen. Welcome to the firm, baby." Liza smiles and lifts her own glass up to the light. The bubbles rise precociously, popping in progression at the top. She loves the way prosecco tickles her throat all the way down. Twelve people cheer and clink glasses and Liza downs hers in one gulp. She hasn't drank much in a while, but tonight's her birthday. She can have a little fun.
"More, more!" Nirupam insists, pouring her another glass. "It's your birthday. Your liver can still handle it until you're thirty."
Everyone laughs. The toasts fly thick and fast as new bottles are opened. For her birthday. For her arrival on the scene in D.C. For Il Picco. For Italian food. For wages. For alcohol. They get progressively more and more outlandish, even when the food comes. Liza has to be grateful that they're in a secluded room and not in public – the patrons of Il Picco probably wouldn't appreciate their rowdiness after the first hour.
She is laughing and flushed red when Nirupam raises his glass. "One last toast," he says rather sloppily. He's moved onto stronger stuff. He bangs his fork on the table and everyone quiets down. The dishes have been scraped clean and they're all waiting for dessert. "For Senator Allen."
Liza is in a good mood, but there is a small lurch in her stomach warning her about where this toast is going. She shakes it off. "Why's that?" she asks.
Nirupam's pupils dilate. "Why wouldn't we toast your father? He's a junior senator now and just named the head of the Committee of Foreign Relations, and we all know how connections work in D.C., don't we?" He winks at her and clinks the rim of his goblet with Bea, who has hit her uncontrollable giggles stage. "So hear, hear. For the Allens who always find a way to make the right friends and have the right family members – always moving upwards on the corporate ladder. We'll see how long we'll be able to keep our Liza here in Education before she moves on to bigger and better things."
Everyone mirrors him with a shout of "Hear, hear!" Liza smiles so hard she thinks he teeth might crack. Lead fills her insides. The haze in her head fades into a dull, bitter feeling. And then she feels irrationally angry. Is that what everyone in the office really thinks? She is only here because her father got her the job and it's only her back-up plan until she gets a better one? The room becomes unbearably claustrophobic all at once.
Her head spins. "Hey," she says, more loudly than she means to. "I think I'm going to go outside and – uh – have a smoke." She stumbles out of her chair, pushes it in so it makes that squeaky noise against the tile floor.
"You don't smoke," Bea says bemusedly.
This is true. Liza never claimed to be the best at making excuses. "I need some air. Just – I'll be outside."
"Aw man, we can't have the cake without you!" Beth exclaims.
She is at the doorway. "Don't worry about it. Just dig in. I'll be back when I feel up to it, okay? Not a big deal." And she's shut the door, away from the nauseating laughter and carousing. She weaves through tables for two and four, past waitresses carrying trays stacked precariously with food, all on impossibly high, thin silver stilettos. The outside air is a bit chilly, but it wakes her up. She doesn't want to stand in front of the restaurant on the sidewalk, so she slips to the side into the alley between Il Picco and a flower shop.
There, she leans against the brick wall, slowly sliding down – no doubt ruining the fabric of her dress – and begins to cry. It's a shit idea since she didn't swipe on waterproof mascara and it'll be great fun explaining away the raccoon eyes when she goes back inside. Plus, it's absolutely pathetic. Liza hates crying. It's futile and doesn't fix any problems. But here she is, being a loser, and prostrate in an alley, wracked in sobs. It's lucky the alley is secluded and quiet. Nobody wanders back there without purpose.
At least, that's what she thinks, before a rustle sounds from the collection of garbage cans at the dead end. Perhaps, she decides, it's just a stray cat. But then, a looming figure rises, shrouded in shadow. The lids of the cans clatter onto the ground. The thing moves with a single full-bodied motion – like a snake. It slithers out from behind the cans and straightens to its full height. It shifts into the dingy yellow cast of the streetlight from overhead.
Liza screams –
..o..
Inevitably, he finds himself hanging around the playground. The swings are quiet and empty. Miserably, he sits down at the bench and wonders what he's going to do now. It didn't seem to matter all that much before. Maybe it's time for a change of scene. A move to warmer climes? D.C. sucks in the winter.
James taps his foot aimlessly against the pavement as if he's waiting, but he doesn't know what he's waiting for. Yesterday, he drove away Liza Allen. He is really more upset about this than he needs to be. Yesterday, he ran away from Thalia. He is actually quite pleased about this, but the lack of a pestering, delusional Hunter would be almost welcome at this point. For the first time in years, he is lonely. And it is the first rule of homelessness that you cannot feel loneliness or else you would never be able to handle the life of a wanderer.
Eventually he's going to have to get up and do something, because his stomach has begun to growl, but the gnawing pains of hunger are not enough to get him to move right now. It's almost a game – waiting to see how long he can handle sitting there, pushing off reality.
Footsteps approach. "James."
He recognizes the voice before he turns around. He sighs. "What are you doing here?" He can't be too annoyed, but he is suddenly very tired.
Thalia sits down on the bench next to him, and it's some kind of unpleasant déjà vu. "I thought you might need some company."
He snorts. "You're a Hunter. Isn't it some kind of crime to be hanging around a man all the time? And how are you doing this without Artemis throwing up some kind of fuss about how her lieutenant is gone?"
"I've got centuries and centuries. A couple of days is not going to make a big deal; I doubt the goddess has noticed my absence at all. And I am entitled to leave for short amounts of time as long as I leave my second-in-command in charge. The goddess herself only hunts with us perhaps once a decade. Time for us immortals does not run quite the same as it does for people like you." She pauses. "And besides, I wanted to say sorry for trying to make you come with me."
He sits back, not expecting the apology. "Why?"
"Because I know this is a jarring experience for you. You still don't believe me about who you are, do you?"
He doesn't answer, because he isn't sure. On the surface, the idea that he is someone else is absurd. But Thalia seems confident. And he is not.
Thalia looks down at her fingers. "I guess I was overeager. You know – Percy and Annabeth were my friends. I missed them. I thought maybe I could bring them back through you two." She falls silent.
Even though James does not know Thalia very well, he knows the feeling of missing his friends. At the worst of times, he misses Camp Half-Blood. So he wishes he could comfort her, but he feels like she wants the comfort of this Percy Jackson, and he is only James Fording, a poor substitute, so it would not be the same.
It's impossible, as they sink deep into their own regrets, for James to forget Liza. He can't believe that little girl from twenty years ago has become this lovely, accomplished woman. Although, she was always destined for something great. "I'm never going to see her again, am I?" he says out loud. "Liza, I mean. She thinks we're both insane."
Thalia blinks. "No, she doesn't. She's afraid of what she knows is not insane. You know"—she shifts uncomfortably—"I hadn't thought of this before, but it's possible that contacting her has made it worse for her."
"What do you mean?"
"A mortal girl with the Sight hanging around a son of Hermes and a Hunter doesn't quite make for a safe situation. It's rare, but sometimes monsters take note of these things."
James's spine stiffens and the blood freezes in his veins. "You mean she might run into a monster? But – but they can't hurt her, can they?"
"Monsters can hurt mortals. They usually don't try, but she's not just a regular mortal. So, yes."
He panics. He's not going to be the reason someone as successful with a future like Liza is going to get knocked off by a leering, clumsy monster. "Then, we have to help her, don't we? I don't even know where she lives. I don't know if she'll want to see us. What are we supposed to do? Thalia! You got her into this, you better help her get out."
She stands up. "Calm down, hobo boy. I know exactly where she is. She's at the Italian restaurant, Il Picco. It's her birthday. Come on. We can meet her there if we get going fast enough."
A cold wind howls through the streets, setting the swings swaying gently, creaking from the rusty chains. James follows her down the street. "You've been stalking her this whole time? That's – that's really creepy, Thalia."
"Creepy, but useful," she responds. Luckily, she knows where she's going, because James has never been to Il Picco, eaten there, or even heard of it for that matter. But then again, when was the last time he ate at something more high-end than McDonalds? Not in recent memory. They take the Metro to the swanky end of town, where everybody is dressed up for nighttime, and he feels a bit out of place. Liza will be mortified that he's shown up like this. He can't decide whether she'll be mad when he tells her that her life is in danger or glad that she's getting advance notice of that fact. Maybe she won't even believe him.
The lights are all lit up downtown. It feels intimate and friendly, like a small corner of a European city – not that James has ever been to Europe, but the way he imagines Europe being. There are quaint antique shops, coffee houses, and restaurants, all built with warm shades of brick, nothing synthetic or vinyl. Some of the restaurants have soft music playing out of their outdoor speakers. It's very romantic.
The romance of the place is broken by an ear-splitting shriek. James stops in his tracks. "What was that?"
Thalia points to an alley behind Il Picco. "There."
And they dive into the darkness, turn the corner, and in the secluded space, a woman stands with her back against the wall. Coming straight at her, a mermaid-looking thing. James let's out a yell. "What the hell is that?" The mermaid-thing turns its attention toward the newcomers. It makes eye contact, it's lower half swiveling around fluidly, and James realizes what it is – he hasn't seen one in a very long time. "Dracaena," he says. "Oh. Shit." In a split second, he stumbles upon a terrible discovery. In his haste, he forgot that he has since stopped carrying weapons of any kind since he moved out of camp. And monsters can only be killed with celestial bronze – a material that probably won't be found lying around some abandoned alley. He looks around desperately, but there's nothing. "Thalia!" he shouts. "Get her out of here. Take her around the corner! I'll deal with this." He doesn't know how yet, he just knows he has to get Liza out of there before she becomes monster-chow. Not her. Not now.
He'll improvise. It's what sons of Hermes do best.
Liza, against all logic, charges at the monster and – he watches in astonishment – she kicks it with one of her high heels and sends it reeling before turning. "Jamie?"
"You're going to be fine," he tells her, just before Thalia grabs her hand, and the two of them run off. Now, it's only the dracaena and him, one on one. The snake-woman grins toothily. "A demigod here in D.C. with no weapon. That's one I haven't seen before."
"Well," he retorts, "I've been lucky enough not to run into a ton of uglies like you."
The dracaena hisses at the insult. "I'll be shoving those words back down your throat, godling," she snarls. She circles closer.
"Yeah?" He's really not doing himself any favors by pissing off a creature that could rip him in half, but he'll be damned if he lets a monster have the last word. "Let's see if you can get to my throat first, then we'll talk. I'm surprised an idiot like you even understood the insult to begin with."
Now, he's really done it. The dracaena roars and lunges toward him, arms outstretched, pale, spindly fingers reaching straight for his neck. His battle reflexes kick in gear, and his first instinct is to duck. He grabs the snake lower half of the dracaena. The idea was to push it forward and slam her into the wall behind her back, but the force of her forward motion is too much for him to overcome. They end up slamming into each other, and she rolls over his shoulder onto her back. Quick as a cat, he does a somersault and spins around. She's already on her feet – well, her snake tail. Her forked tongue slithers out. "Not bad for your bare hands. We'll see how long you last."
She darts around in fast jerks, so he can't see what her next move is going to be. She goes for his left side, but at the last second, feints and switches to the right. He anticipates it and throws his arm out for a punch. But the dracaena knows what she's doing. She clamps down on his fist with her ice-cold, clay-like hand. He catches a glimpse of the sharp points of her fangs gleaming in the light before they sink into his forearm. At first, it's just like two shots, but then the concentrated points explode in white-hot pain and his entire arm feels like it's on fire. Purely out of desperation, he swings out with his other arm and makes contact with the side of her head, which snaps sideways. She shrieks and lets go, darting to the opposite end of the alley and rubbing her neck. Her eyes scream murder. The pain in his arm dulls a little, but it's still worse than anything he's ever felt. Venom. She must have shot poison into his veins. Already, the wounds have turned slightly green.
The dracaena locks eyes with him. "We can keep at this for as long as you want, but only one of us is walking away. And we both know that without a weapon, that one of us is not going to be you." She cackles.
His arm hurts, and James is beyond pissed. "Wanna bet?" He rushes toward her with nothing in mind but getting this blight off the earth so he can stop trading verbal barbs with her. It catches her by surprise – she thought she would attack first – and before she can react, his arm is around her neck and he is squeezing, squeezing as hard as he can with the aim of draining out her life. She chokes and sputters, tries to say something, but nothing comes out. Her pointy fingernails are scratching at his arms, but he can't feel a thing, concentrating on tightening his grip. Her tail lashes around madly, but after half a minute, it begins to get sluggish and slow down. She is dying. He waits and waits until at last, she falls limp to the ground, disappears into dust.
He stands there, panting. "So, there is another way to kill you buggers." He glances down at his arms, which are scratched up and bleeding. He grimaces. "Not the best way, I guess."
In the distance, he hears the screech of cop cars coming into the district, probably alerted by Liza's screams. He doesn't need more warning and darts out of the alley. Around the corner, Thalia and Liza wait for him. "Come on," he says. "We don't want to get caught around here."
Liza seems a bit dazed. She's still wearing a short black dress – a pretty dress, but not prettier than the girl that's wearing it, James' mind helpfully supplies – and standing in heels. But she doesn't question as they lead her out of the area and to the main part of the city. Having nowhere better to go and preferring to go somewhere well lit, they sit on the front steps leading up to the Aerospace Museum. There, in the spotlights, and the taxis driving by, Liza puts her hand on James'. "Please," she says. "Give me an explanation."
He and Thalia exchange looks. "Are you sure?"
Liza takes a deep breath. "I just got ambushed by a woman with the lower half of a snake. Yes, I'm ready." She squeezes James' fingers. "Tell me everything."
..o..
So he starts from the beginning and tells her about the gods, about Camp Half-Blood, about him, and about the irregularities in some mortals being able to see past the Mist. He tells her about all kinds of Greek monsters and about how to defeat them. Last of all, he tells her about them, about the so-called reincarnations, and about memories that they do not know of, but Thalia insists are there. He only holds back some things, some things he is not quite ready to admit to himself, much less admit to her.
The fluorescent white of the spotlights seems to gather in pools in her gray eyes. He admires the determination in them. She doesn't look afraid, only grim and sure. She listens quietly, does not interrupt once, and the whole time she looks at him as if he holds the answers to everything. He wishes – for her sake – that he did. Thalia sits to one side silently, chewing gum.
After it is all done, Liza closes her eyes for a brief moment. "I believe you. And I'm coming with you."
Surprised, James brings his gaze from the starry heavens back to earth. "To where?"
"To wherever we need to go to get this sorted out. Jamie – I just ran away from my own birthday dinner. My co-workers are never going to speak to me again. I'm not sure I want to go back anyway. I hate politics. I kind of want to leave D.C. forever and start over somewhere new, where nobody knows Liza Allen or cares about Senator Allen. I'm just the freak who can see Greek monsters but can't do anything about them. What do you think? I have no choice." She gives him a small smile. "Besides, I trusted you back then, and I trust you now. I think you're good person. And I think we should resume our long-lost friendship."
It's such a simple thing to say, but James feels infinitely happier when he hears it.
..o..
Of course, in the scuffle, Liza's clutch got dropped somewhere in the middle of D.C., and there's no way they'll be able to find it. Luckily, she's got an extra key tucked under one of the leaves of the dying snake plant in her hallway, and she fits it into the keyhole of her apartment. The building didn't look very promising on the outside, and when she swings open the door, the inside doesn't do much redeeming.
James steps inside with Thalia behind him. "This isn't what I expected out of Senator Allen's people."
Liza stiffens. "That's because I bought it, not Senator Allen. I'm not a freeloader," she says sharply.
"Okay, okay, I'm joking," he concedes with a grin. The inside is unbelievably organized. Like, to the point where James feels like he can get a toothache with how clean it is. She is probably – he thinks ruefully – the kind of person who color-codes her underwear and alphabetizes the bottles in her spice cabinet. The kind of girl he runs in the opposite direction from the second he realizes the type. These girls like plans, which is totally the antithesis of everything he has lived his life for. Plans are for squares. And James is the opposite of what is square. He is a lot of things – sometimes homeless, devilishly charming, a bit of a delinquent, good-hearted, a commitment-phobe – but he is not square.
He is thinking this as he examines the fact that she has coasters on her coffee table next to a book about Post-Impressionist art. He isn't sure exactly what this says about his little Tiana-girl Lizzy, but it sure says something about him that he can't name a single Post-Impressionist artist.
Liza puts her shoes back into the cabinet and rubs her heels. When James turns around, she is staring at him and they are alone; Thalia's in the bathroom. He feels awkward, sits down on one of the couches, and taps his fingers on his knees. "I like your apartment," he offers. It sounds hollow and like a hugely obvious space-filler. In his head, he slaps himself.
She sighs and collapses on the two-person loveseat. Somehow, she manages to do this without looking like a slob. Her ankles are primly crossed. "Contrary to what you might think, since I don't leech off my father, I don't actually make a lot of money. I'm not the Sidwell Friends rich girl I used to be."
"Who lived in a big white house with lots of windows," he helpfully supplies. He smiles.
"Yeah, that."
"Hey," he says, leaning in. "I don't think you're just an extension of your dad, okay? You seem to have a real problem with him, so I wouldn't link you two up because it looks like you might rip out my tonsils if I tried anyway."
She bristles. "I can't stand him. You don't understand."
"Trust me. I do." Between growing up thinking his dad was dead and then finding out his dad had just skippered off the day he found out his mom was pregnant and then finding out his dad was actually a Greek god and having about forty half-siblings dumped on him in the same day – well, that would put a damper on any father-son relationship. The fact that James didn't knee Hermes in the crotch the first time they met was a testament to James' remarkable self-control at the age of twelve. Or, he liked to think so, anyway. "My dad's Hermes, remember?" he reminded her. "He's not about to win the Best Father of the Year award. So yeah, I get you."
Liza looked up from her hands. "I forgot. I guess you do have it worse, don't you?"
"See? We have a lot more in common than you think." He said it to cheer her up, but he couldn't help but think secretly he said it to make himself feel better too. Even in this tiny cubicle-like apartment, Liza has more class in a single dust-bunny under her coffee table than he has accumulated in his whole life. She shifts a little and turns toward him. Then, she smiles, which is probably the most brilliant thing he's ever seen; it makes her whole face light up. And he remembers that when he was little, he really would've taken a fist in the face for her. Because she was just that pretty, and the one girl he never would've believed had cooties.
The bathroom door opens, and Thalia comes out wiping her wet hands on her jeans. "So what'd I miss?" she asks as she shambles into the living room.
James shrugs. "Just catching up." He notices the glitter in Thalia's eyes and decides to ignore it. Not that he wouldn't give up a rib or two to be Liza's anything, but he's not going to let Thalia be his fifteen-year-old matchmaker; he's not that desperate.
Thalia sits next to Liza, on the side closer to James. The shoelaces on her left Converse is untied and muddied from running, and she doesn't see Liza eying her feet like a hawk, practically shouting through her pupils that Thalia needs to take off her shoes right now before Liza tears them off herself. "Well, this is sufficiently awkward," Thalia says, running her fingers through her short black hair. Then, out of nowhere – "I hope you two are up for a quest." She tries to make it sound nonchalant, but there's really no way anyone can make a conversation bomb like that drop nonchalantly.
It takes him a moment, but James finally processes the statement in his head. "You – what? What do you mean, quest?"
"I mean, quest," Thalia says. "The kind that demigods go on. The kind of demigods that aren't always trying to run away from their heritage, that is," she adds pointedly.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" James glares. Gods, the girl can really be a pain in the ass sometimes.
"Nothing," she says innocently, but just guiltily enough to mean she loaded her words with meaning. She's goading him. He is so not going to take the bait. He's not going to take the bait. He's not that stupid. "What makes you think I want to go on this quest?"
"Because Chiron said you had to. I just got off I-M with him in the bathroom – "
"He I-M-ed you in the bathroom? What, with the toilet water?"
"- and he says that he wants you to go on this one. He says you're the only one with enough experience to handle something this big. The demigods at camp wouldn't know the first thing about the underworld. None of them have been there before, and if I recall, you've taken a whirl around the place, haven't you? You know your way around. And knowing some of the younger ones, they'd piss off Hades in a millisecond and get vaporized."
James lets out something that's halfway between a choking cough and a snort. "Really. Did you also forget that if I get within half a mile of Persephone, she's going to pitch me halfway to Tartarus with her bare hands? Did you forget that part?"
"She's not there right now."
"So what? Hades and I are not exactly BFF's at the moment either."
Thalia rolls her eyes in the most obvious way possible, and James represses the urge to kick her in the shins. He would prefer not to have a Hunter's arrow poking through his chest in the next five seconds. Also, she is about ten years younger than him, so maybe he should give her the benefit of the doubt.
Meanwhile, Liza's expression has morphed from roundly interested to mildly alarmed. "Are we – " she begins.
"Anyway," Thalia cuts in smoothly, "Chiron made it clear that you didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Not when it's something this big. You want to know what the quest is about?"
"No," he grumbles, "but it sounds like you're going to tell me anyway."
"The goddess Mnemosyne has disappeared," she announces. "And you know what that means."
"No, I don't know what that means. Nor do I want to know what that means." He refrains, with much effort, from putting his hands over his ears childishly, mainly because Liza is still watching.
She ignores him. "It means you have to find her."
"Why can't Hades find her?" he whines. "Or Zeus? I mean, I'm sure Zeus has had an affair with her at some point; maybe she left so she wouldn't have to deal with him hitting on her all of the time."
Thalia kicks him in the shin, and James swears that before the week is out, he's going to have a horrible bruise there from her abuse. "Don't throw around the Lord of the Sky's name like that. You know, if you have a death wish and want to be electrocuted, then go for it, but don't drag me into it. Also, I'm fairly sure Liza still wants to keep her apartment, so behave."
"I'm not going," he pronounces. "No way, no how. I'm done with that hero stuff." He sits back on the couch and crosses his arms.
Thalia doesn't take her eyes off of him. "I know why you don't like quests," she says, quietly, like she's testing the waters. There is a calm certainty in her voice; she isn't persuading him – she's telling him. "Chiron told me about it." She pauses. "Your first quest, eleven years ago."
Curious emotions flood his chest, but he is somehow detached from it all. Eleven years ago, he was fifteen, just a sophomore in high school. Even he'll admit, at that point, he was the cockiest son of a bitch that ever wandered the practice fields of Camp Half-Blood. He was on top of the world. He had just gotten his quest, and he was going to prove his status as The Coolest Guy At Camp. Everyone worshipped him. If he was going to be perfectly honest, he pretty much worshipped himself. And then, that summer, he went on his quest, and everything changed.
That fall, he dropped out of high school.
The fact that Thalia knows about it, the fact that she is bringing it up now, should piss him off to no end. But instead, he just feels a strange tiredness. Like he is too exhausted to care about what happened, and too exhausted to know how it changed the course of his life. Thalia is a manipulative little jerk sometimes, but even that can't make him mad. It was his fault, after all. It takes him forever to summon a response, and when it does, it sounds sad. "So what?"
"So," she says, "why are you going to let it define everything you do?"
He stands up. "I don't let it define everything I do. I choose not to go on another quest because the first one was a bust, okay? I've spent the last eleven years trying to get back on Persephone's good side. I'm obviously not meant to do this kind of thing. I'm not some great child of the Big Three; I'm just a freaking son of Hermes. Those come a dime a dozen, and this is not my job. I quit. I retire."
"Yeah, and that's all you've done your whole life. Why don't you want to make something of yourself, huh? Are you that afraid of failure? Stop being a loser, James," Thalia shoots back.
She sits straight and stares him straight in the eye, even though he's towering over her in rage, shaking and bright red. "Shut up, Thalia."
She scoffs and tosses her hair. "The guy I knew way back when wouldn't ever have given up that easily. And he had a dose of humbleness too. I sure wish he were here instead of you. You're nothing compared to him. Maybe you're right. Maybe you aren't Percy Jackson, after all. If you were, you would've taken up the quest in a heartbeat. If it hadn't been given to you, you would've broken the rules to complete it. My friend Percy was a hero. You're nothing, James Fording. You're nothing, and I wish you weren't."
James stands there, swaying a little bit. For some reason, those words sting more than anything anyone has ever said to him. He feels hot and cold all at once. It's like not living up to Percy Jackson is becoming an insult. Why does he want to live up to Percy Jackson anyway? This is stupid. He is stupid for even thinking about this in such detail. The more he thinks about it, the more irritated he gets.
Is he really going to let some dead guy show him up? Even worse, is he going to let an old version of himself show him up? It's almost absurd, how much it bothers him. The scathing way Thalia looked at him made him want to break something. He has dignity. He has talent. He isn't nothing, and how dare she think so? His decision teeters on a precipice. And then –
"Fine."
"What?"
He sits down on the couch again, breathing normally. "Fine. I'll do it."
She beams. "Really?"
"Yeah, really. But only to shut you up about this Percy Jackson stuff. I wish you'd stop bringing him up as a way of guilting me into things. It's pathetic."
"It works," she says with a grin.
On her other side, Liza, eyes wider than tea saucers, gives a little cough. James startles, almost having forgotten she was there. "You mean you two are going down into the underworld," she says.
They nod in unison, once, twice.
Her lips are pursed, serious, as if she is contemplating the idea of the underworld. "It's going to be dangerous. And you know, I don't know much about the gods, but I'm guessing they're probably not going to be very cooperative, seeing as you're – not dead."
They confirm this to be true.
"Okay," she says with a glimmer of a smile. "When do we start?"
James puts up his hands, palms away. "Wait, wait, wait. You don't think you're actually coming with us for this, do you? It's going to be all full of monsters and stuff, and you're – you're a mortal. You're not exactly monster-fighting material." Part of him is slightly embarrassed that she's heard all of this stuff about the failure of his first quest. The other part is just terrified that she'll get too deep in this stuff, and she won't be able to get back out. She has the Sight. And he doesn't want her to get hurt.
This time, she stands up. "It's okay, Jamie. I'm not six anymore; you don't have to protect me. And besides, you don't really have a say in this. I'm not staying behind after you've told me all that. Thalia, can I come?"
Thalia has a grin from ear to ear on her face. "Of course. Your Sight could come in handy at some point."
Liza clasps her hands in front of her. "Then, it's settled."
..o..
The first stop is to Camp Half-Blood (after a bumpy and uncomfortable Greyhound bus trip) where Liza finds, rather abruptly, that she can't actually go in, because she's a mortal. The funny thing is, it shouldn't matter, because she can see through the barrier and everything, and she can definitely see the hundred-eyed guardian of the border, who she correctly identifies as Argus. "Oh my gosh," she says childishly, "I read about you in my Greek myth book in fourth grade! I can't believe you're real." Oddly enough, he's sitting in the shade and reading Pride and Prejudice with a dozen of his eyes. It's like running into the Easter Bunny smoking a cigar on the corner of Seventh and Jefferson.
He gives her a bored, exasperated look. Or at least, that's what she thinks it is, since he doesn't actually have a mouth to respond with.
Personally, she is impressed with how well she is taking this full submersion into the world of the Olympians. The lack of a mental breakdown both surprises and pleases her. Although, that still doesn't mean she wants to be left by herself on the outside of the barrier with Argus of the hundred eyes, lover of Jane Austen. But she's not about to ask someone to stay with her; she wants to prove to James, who is still skeptical, that she can handle this world of his. Of theirs (it's about time she's accepted that she is weirdly, inexplicably involved with it anyway).
Thalia volunteers to stay back with her without comment, and secretly, Liza is glad. They watch as James descends the green, grassy hill. Down there, campers are climbing on a rock wall with – is that lava? – and shooting arrows at targets. She can make out campers sword fighting with probably real swords, and on the edges of her brain, she wonders if this Camp Half-Blood has some kind of liability insurance. It's like the place a little corner of fantasy tucked away from reality. It's like stepping into Narnia. She feels strange.
"This is where the demigods go, huh?" she says to break the silence.
Thalia leans against the pine tree, oblivious to the needles. "Yeah. This is where all of us nutcases end up."
Liza looks at the campers laughing and clapping each other on the backs, and it doesn't seem like they are the nutcases of the society. No, the nutcases of society are people like her. She knows everything, but she can't join in. She is a true outcast. "You know that book series, Harry Potter?" she asks Thalia on a whim.
"Of course. It might scare you to know that I was alive when that series was written."
In fact, it does scare her when Thalia puts it that way, but she plows on, determined not to think about the logistics of immortal aging. "Well, sometimes I feel like a Squib. I'm around freaking magical people all of the time, but I can't do any of it myself. It really sucks."
She sits down and pokes the invisible barrier with her toe. It doesn't budge. She sighs. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Thalia watching her with a bemused smile. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing." Thalia sits down beside her. "It's just that most half-bloods would say they'd much rather be normal." They look at each other, and Liza realizes that she is spilling her regrets and insecurities to a fifteen-year-old. Or a three-hundred-something. Either way, it's a little unconventional. Thalia's bright blue eyes are wistful, as if she's remembering something from her past.
Liza thinks about how strange life's paths are. Did the gods mean for her and James to meet so many years ago? He crossed her mind many times, even though they were only childhood friends.
"I guess," Thalia says finally, "the grass is always greener on the other side."
"I guess," Liza agrees. After a moment of awkward silence, another thought crosses her mind. Ever since taking the job (which she has undoubtedly lost at this point, not having called in sick and not answering her cell phone), she hasn't ever had time to hang out with a real best friend, the kind she told everything to. And she misses it. So she blurts out, "Does this mean we're friends now?"
Thalia laughs. "We were always friends. You just didn't know it."
"Right," the other girl says, gazing across the sweep of land to the blue and green horizon, feeling unsettled. "Right."
..o..
It is mid-afternoon when James finally emerges from the other side of the border. Thalia has begun to make daisy-chains out of absolute boredom, and Liza has lapsed into a semi-coma as she watches the top of the pine tree sway back and forth to the rhythm of the wind.
Thalia stirs first, drops her flower-chain to the grass, and stands up. "What did he say?" she says without preamble.
For the first time since Liza has seen him, James looks tired, like he has heard things that he doesn't ever want to hear again. Or maybe it's just the past piling up on him. Sometimes, Liza gets that feeling too.
"Well, you're right," he says, but his voice is quiet. "Mnemosyne is gone. She lives in the underworld, but as far as we know, nobody there noticed her disappearance. Hades certainly doesn't care, although I can remember from my past forays that Hades doesn't care about a lot, so that shouldn't be a surprise. Apparently, it's the Muses who figured it out first. Who would've guessed? They're the daughters of Mnemosyne, and when they found out their mother was missing, they threw quite the racket on Olympus. They're the goddesses of the arts, and in typical goddess form, they're going to halt the progression of everything good in culture: music, historiography, literature, everything, unless someone returns their mother safe and sound. The gods are too busy for this kind of shenanigans, so it's us illegitimate children to the rescue! Again."
"The Muses?" Liza repeats. "There are nine of them, I remember. I always imagined them as dignified and grand ladies. Like opera singers, you know."
James smiles at her cheerfully, as he sheds his downcast expression. "Nope. I've met them before – they came to Camp Half-Blood once for a presentation. They're actually twelve-year-old gum-chewing, back-talking pre-teens, and yeah – really kind of obnoxious. They really liked opera back in the nineteenth century, so I heard, but in their own words, that is 'so five centuries ago,'" he says, making air-quotes.
"This sounds bad," Thalia hypothesizes. "I mean, if they halt the progression of the cultural development. Not to be glib about the goddesses of the arts or anything, but these are the girls who used to be huge fans of the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus back in the day. Just think about how bad it could get if pop culture stayed exactly where it is forever."
They all shudder at the sheer horror of it. "No books," Liza murmurs.
"No music," Thalia whispers.
"The end of Western civilization as we know it," James says jovially.
"Why do you sound so happy about it?" Thalia accuses, fixing upon him with her beady, blue eyes.
"Because," he replies, "I haven't even told you the best part yet. The Oracle – Machiko, the girl's name is – gave me a prophecy, and you know how those things are. They confuse the hell out of you and they always mean something bad is going to happen. Here's ours: Between the living and the dead/A pathway lies to slumber's bed/Where memory wears a dreaming mask/And holds a choice to end the task." He chews his cheek thoughtfully. "It must be really obnoxious to have to rhyme like that all the time."
"I assume you know what the prophecy means, then," Liza says. "You sound pretty confident."
He shrugs. "No idea. Hey, I got coerced into doing this quest. I'm doing the bare minimum for it. Besides, it won't be so bad if the Muses halt Western culture. I'll just move somewhere else – Japan or something. No gods, no monsters, no annoying Quests. Wow, that sounds like a great thing, actually. I can't believe I hadn't thought of it before."
Thalia elbows him. "Yeah, okay, hotshot. You're not much help at all. I should've gone in myself."
A puffy gray cloud drifts over the yellow disk of the sun and a light breeze ruffles Liza's hair. An odd feeling slides through her. As Thalia and James bicker about what they should do next, Liza laces her fingers together and wonders how the pieces knitted themselves together in her head. Perhaps, there's something after all. Her connection with this world is tenuous, iridescent, but there are moments – like right now – when everything becomes clear. In the mortal world, few things are ever clear, but since coming to Camp, she has felt calm, like she has known this place a long time ago – but of course, she hasn't. She takes a deep breath. "I know where the prophecy means for us to go," she says.
The two of them stop arguing, and their eyes swivel toward hers in unison.
"Between the living and the dead," she clarifies. "A pathway lies to slumber's bed. That's Hypnos, the god of sleep. Sleeping is the in-between of being awake and being dead."
"That's an optimistic way to look at it," James deadpans.
"I mean – Mnemosyne must be in Hypnos' cave, although it seems like a peculiar place to disappear to. She must be asleep and lost track of time." Technically, it's a feasible thing to do for a goddess since time runs differently, but it seems like a rather stupid mistake, especially if it causes her daughters to go beserk and throw worldwide temper tantrums.
James exchanges a look with Thalia and throws his hands up. "That's just perfect. I thought this was some earth-shattering kidnapping job, but actually, we're just being called to be Mnemosyne's living, breathing alarm clocks?" He tilts his head back and yells at the heavens, "This is a real funny sense of humor you guys have got, you know that?"
"How did you know that?" Thalia says, oblivious to his temper tantrum. "You are a mortal and not some unclaimed or forgotten daughter of a minor god, right?"
"Completely mortal. You forget, when I was little and seeing all kinds of strange Greek phenomenon – getting sent to a psychotherapist for it, no less – I had a dorky fascination with Greek myths, so I'm probably more versed in them than most people. I got a minor in classical studies when I was in college. Senator Allen wasn't thrilled about paying for it, either, and it was the one thing that I was happy about him paying for." She turns to see James grinning at her widely. "What?"
"Nothing, nothing. It's just – never mind."
She flushes to her ears. "Okay, you can't do that."
He turns away nonchalantly and starts twirling Thalia's forgotten, half-completed daisy chain. "Classical studies, huh? That's absolutely something I imagine someone like you getting a minor in. Classical studies. Is that even a department in university?"
"Yes!" she says heatedly. "And it's very popular, I'll have you know!"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you went to Georgetown, didn't you? Only posh, rich kids like you get some kind of degree in classical studies." He's really laughing now and making no effort to hide it.
It takes a great deal of effort to keep from stomping her feet, but Liza has had a lot of practice dealing with her parents. Still, between dealing with government workers and her landlady constantly bringing up her golden pedigree, she is starting to get sick of it. She mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like "pompous ass," but not loud enough for it to be an insult. This is James, after all, and through all of the good memories, she's forgotten that yeah, even the nicest of boys can still be douchebags when they're in second grade and sometimes, they don't really outgrow the habit. So calmly, she says, "I know it's only because you're jealous that I'm so cultured and a graduate of Georgetown, that I'm not slapping you across the face right now." Because after all, she is proud of her alma mater.
"Ouch!" James has an expression of mock hurt. "You wouldn't slap me. I saved your Tiana lunchbox. So much for gratitude, huh."
Liza rolls her eyes. "Let's go, lunchbox boy, before you really say something to offend me."
..o..
Luckily for them, James is a son of Hermes, and as such, he is allowed to traverse between the underworld and the land of the living without too much difficulty – Hermes being the psychopomp who delivers guides the souls to the underworld. This is, he guesses, why he was given that stupid quest eleven years ago to begin with. As far as powers go, this one is kind of redundant, because it's something children of Hades can do too, and they can do it with a lot more pizzazz. Generally, they're also a tad bit more welcome when they show up without housewarming presents at the Palace of Hades. So really, James just gets kind of the crappy end of the stick. He tells them about his power anyway.
"How convenient," Liza says, staring at the hole in front of them, like she can't quite believe it leads to the underworld. To be perfectly honest, James can't quite believe it either, but reality always sets in when he takes the steps down and winds up right on the edge of the smelly, polluted river Styx, which has in the years, become more of a sludge pond than a river – there's no "flowing" to speak of.
"Oh, yes," he replies with sharp sarcasm. "Look, I didn't ask for this either; it's not like I enjoy being able to crash dead people parties."
Thalia clucks her tongue and says blandly, "I bet you wish you had those water powers now, huh? Definitely a higher cool-factor."
And the thought of entering the underworld is nauseating enough without getting teased by a fifteen-year-old who is really a three-hundred-year-old ancient Greek equivalent of a nun. "Shut up, Thalia."
She shrugs and nonchalantly slings her bow over her shoulder. Carelessly, she pulls a celestial bronze dagger out from her quiver and tosses it at Liza, who catches it with astonishment. James sees this exchange and purses his lips. "Oh, no. You're not giving her randomly sharp objects like that. She has no clue how to use it. You forget, she hasn't ever been to Camp. Gods, I thought after so many years, you'd grow some responsibility, seriously." He strides over to take it from Liza, but she's already unsheathed it and is inspecting the sharp edges with a careful, questioning index fingers. "Don't cut yourself!"
She looks up, as if she has just noticed him there. "I can handle it."
He stares at her, flabbergasted. "Are you high?"
Her eyes sharpen up immediately. "No, you idiot, I said I can handle it. I know how to use a dagger, thank you very much. I know you're going to make fun of me again, but my parents paid for self-defense classes through high school. We learned all kinds of techniques. We did hand-to-hand combat too, but for some reason, I liked knives better." She smiles at him thinly, and he isn't sure what to make of that.
So instead, he says, "I'm going to pretend like that statement didn't make you sound like a sociopath." A pause. "You know how to knife-fight?"
"Not girly enough for you?"
"No." He struggles to find what he's trying to say, which is something along the lines of, um, awesome girls knife-fighting is never a problem, but realizes right before it comes out of his mouth that it would probably sound like something a thirteen-year-old pubescent boy would say. "That's a little unexpected, I'll admit. But I bet you've never gone up in a knife-fight against a monster. It's kind of different."
She tilts her head to one side. "Yeah, I guess. I won't feel as bad gutting it."
"You are a sick, sick person."
Something like a snort – very un-ladylike – comes out of her mouth. "You've done this since you were twelve, and you're judging me? At least I haven't personally killed anything. Who should really be doing the judging here?" she asks skeptically, and to his dismay, James realizes she's right. It's not a pleasant realization. It's not the same thing, after all, killing monsters and killing people, and he hasn't ever killed a person. Knocked a few out, that's true; maybe broken some bones, but no killing.
"Well, that's why I stopped trying to be a hero," he says finally, like it's something he's discovered at last after all these years of avoiding going into the real world and making a name for himself. It's not all it's cracked up to be, demigods and everything. Some people are made for it and some people aren't. He doesn't know about what his past life brain thought about it – Percy Jackson was apparently some kind of crazy, ass-kicking, invincible son of a bitch, if what Thalia says is true – but James just doesn't feel that inside him. It's not like there's some secret seed of greatness that is lodged deep inside his ribs, and it's not like he hasn't tried searching for it. He doesn't think it's there. And he can't decide whether or not he is disappointed about that or not.
It's Thalia that breaks the silence. "Are we just going to stand here and watch the snake burrow get wider and wider? By the way, this is a really shitty way of entering the underworld. I'd almost prefer going in through the L.A. entrance if it weren't all the way across the country." She elbows him, not too hard. "Come on."
The hole is now wide enough for a person to step through, and the tug in his gut slows and stops. "There," he says. It looks – slimy – inside. The three of them stand in a line facing the entrance, a strange trio. He's in the middle with Thalia, a full head shorter than him, on his left, and Liza with her hair tied up in a high ponytail on his right. "I feel like we need to link arms or something and walk in together like the Wizard of Oz."
Liza laughs. "This doesn't look as cheerful as the yellow brick road." It's true. Nobody in the world would be able to stand before this cavernous, yawning hole, with the stench of warm, moist earth and worms and maybe something else (dead people?) without raising a few goose bumps.
He turns to her, half-serious, half-joking. "I hope you're not afraid of the dark."
"I got over that when I was ten." She smiles, but it never quite reaches her eyes. Still, there isn't an ounce of uncertainty in her voice, so he can't decide whether or not she's telling the truth.
Either way, it doesn't matter now. Shoulder to shoulder, they step inside, and the darkness swallows them up, closes behind them and leaves them entombed.
Author's note: This part has actually been done for about two months now, but I was planning on just finishing up the fic in one section. Seeing as that would be about 23,000 words, that doesn't seem like such a great idea now. I have officially rewritten the ending four times, and now I'm finally working on an ending that I like. There was a point when I cut out about 7,000 words; I have a "deleted scenes" section that is practically long enough to be its own fic.
Thanks for your patience and your marvelous reviews. Look for Part Three (3) any time in the near future, as I don't believe I will be rewriting the ending for the fifth time.