2

Confused and mildly addled, James Reason once more traveled the elevator up to the twenty-third floor noticed by a cute blonde teenager and two giggling twin boys. He mused toward them a second and wandered forward a bit determinedly to the honeymoon suite. His embarrassment was gone, his temper abated but his curiosity piqued as he sought answers to his experience. He entered the suite eagerly and analytically before he started hurling accusations to his own family members. He'd only had a sip of wine as he had talked on the phone. He was not inebriated. At the tip of the bottle, he stood at the bar and sniffed it before setting it back aside. There was a reason for everything, and everything had a reason. Out the corner of his eye, he detected a presence of a woman in a white dress, but it was not his blushing bride. She was a bit more petite with long flowing blond hair, a wide beaming grin and a long white gown adorned with pieces of jewelry of silver and gold.

"My baby boy is married again!" She shined and bounced in that long white dress. "I told you after your last wife you'd marry again, and what? It only took you fifty years to get over the last one."

"Forty-seven and a half…" Jimmy closed the doors to the suite. "Why did you just zap me down to the lobby in my robe." His mother looked at him and furrowed her perfect face into a face of confusion.

"That wasn't me, and besides, mother doesn't zap, she gestures!" She waved her hand as a display of her godly powers. She was not a fan of modern colloquiums. She darted her head back lovingly eccentric and grinning widely to her last son of many over the centuries. "Now, you must bring her to the next family dinner! Your father is bringing your new half-sister all the way from Asgard. I'm so curious to see if she takes after his side of the family. That's sort of what attracted me that big blonde thunder god, his big horned helmet and goatskin cape…."

"Mom…." Jimmy groaned and gently protested. "I can't bring her to any dinners yet. She's not an Immortal."

"Well, that's not a problem!" The former love-goddess glided and sashayed through the room. "We got used to the others. I mean, your Uncle Apollo is always bringing another female conquest, and you know how…"

"Mom…" The young demi-god winced at his mother's highly distracted emotions. "I already got her used to the idea of a dysfunctional family. I have to wait before I expose her to the fact that you and the family were once worshipped as gods by the Romans…"

"And the Greeks, the Dacians, the Etruscans, the Mysians, the Basques, the Phoenicians, the Minoans, the Achaeans, the Ionians, and the Lycians among others." His mother curiously pondered the remote to the TV and considered showing it off to a certain smith-god as a novelty item. "Don't forget I was worshipped by not just one culture but two! Those Sumerians had not just one name for me, but dozens! I still recall their barbecues…. Your grandfather on the other hand…."

"Mom, please…" Jimmy took her dainty hands to get her attention. "Let me handle how I'll introduce Samantha to the family. She's not used to magic or immortality."

"She will, baby…" She kissed her grown son daintily to the cheek. "By the way, stop fighting with your sisters. You know they take after me."

"And whose fault is that!" He looked again and noticed his mother had teleported between separate points on the planet again. He had lived too much of his life abroad with his great-grandmother. Rhea had raised him to be sympathetic to all living things while his father had trained him to be a warrior, but there was not much call to slay dragons in the Twentieth Century when they hid in Scottish lakes or the depths of the oceans. Remembering his wedding vows, he recalled he had a wife again… the fifth in his two hundred years of immortal existence. He knocked at his bedroom door once more and looked ahead this time. Standing over by the window looking out, Samantha suddenly reacted to his presence and turned to him out of love. A breeze lightly stirred her gown and wrap, reminding him that she was just as beautiful as some of the goddesses he used to romance.

"I can't believe just how incredible you really are." He fell in love with her image.

"Jimmy, honey…" She glided over to him. "There is something I must tell you."

"Look, there's something I must tell you too." He sat down in the love seat with her.

"I got to go first…"

"Mine's more important…"

"If I don't tell you now, I never will…"

"I should have told you before the wedding, but…"

"Jimmy, please," Samantha took his hands in her lap. "I have to tell you this…"

"Samantha," He caressed her cheek lovingly. "Whatever it is, I will always love you, but…" He stared into her big blue eyes. "You might not love me if you hear what I got to say."

"What?!" She reacted with suspicious tension. "Oh my stars, you're a warlock, aren't you?"

"A what?" He looked at her confused. What did she call him? "A war… no. No, that's not it. You see, Samantha… Uh…" He stood struggling with this confession, looked at her again gazing back at him with such love and devotion and recalled Allison, his previous wife and how he had told her. "Do you recall your world mythology?"

"What?" Samantha looked around a bit confused. "Well, of course… My Aunt Enchantra told me all about them. Zeus, Hercules, Ares, Aphrodite…"

"Yeah, but not just them, but Thor, Odin, Balder and the others like Osiris, Ammon-Ra…." He cut to the chase. "Would you like to meet them?"

"What?" She felt she hadn't heard him right.

"Samantha…" James sat by her again and took her hands in his. "They're your in-laws now."

"What?!" At this point, she didn't believe him.

"Samantha…." James stroked her face lovingly again. "By the standards of the modern calendar, I was born on May 15, 1569. My real name is Jason Donner Odinson and my parents are Thor and Aphrodite. The Thor and Aphrodite!"

"The Thor and Aphrodite…." Samantha repeated almost in a trance. Right now, her confession didn't mean much. Her face was filled with confusion, disbelief and stunned surprise.

"If it means much…" James held her hands in his. "You're taking this much better than my third wife…. She thought I was drunk… My second wife tried to have me committed…" He looked up and watched her taking the bottle of champagne from the table before her and pouring it into a glass.

"Third wife?"

"She passed away before the Civil War." He watched Samantha down the champagne in one swallow then pour another one. "My last wife passed away after we arrived in the States." Samantha had downed another glass of the champagne. "We had booked passage on the Titanic, but…" He watched Samantha pour more from the bottle. "It didn't make the return trip, and…. Maybe you should go light on that stuff."

"It doesn't affect me." Samantha gasped a bit, caught her breath and lightly shined toward him. "You win… your news topped mine!"

"Samantha," He looked toward her. "What did you want to tell me?"

"Wait a second…." The blonde beauty wandered toward the windows, posed trying to think then turned back toward him. "You… you're a god."

"No."

"No?"

"One has to be worshipped to be a god…" He rose, strided over to her in love with her and held her by her hips. "I was born centuries after paganism ended. Technically, as a race we refer to ourselves as Immortals, even those of us still with worshippers… like the Native American deities or the Gods of the East." He spoke with a immortal knowledge only the godly would know then gazed into her eyes. "Samantha, what did you want to tell me?"

"You… you… you…." She was still trying to think straight as she wandered around him. "You're immortal? How could I not known this? I mean, me? How could you keep this from me?"

"Sam," James looked into her eyes. "I tried to tell you several, several times, but…" He sighed deeply. "You seemed to like the simple life we had. I liked it too. Several of my last relationships were failures because they were more interested in what they could get out of me. One girl even wanted me to make her immortal…" He caressed the side of her face tenderly. "Sam, you wanted to tell me something. What was it?"

"What was it?" It was now Samantha's turn to become defensive. "Uh, well… Jimmy, " She lit up with a big smile. "I'm… You're really not going to believe this…."

"What is it?" He kissed her with a big grin across his face.

"Well…" She looked at him again. "I'm a witch."

That grin just sort of froze on his face. She could tell his mind was absorbing the idea.

"What?" His mind paused as if it was a casual confession. "You're a witch and you couldn't tell I was an Immortal?" He accepted her revelation much more easily than she had accepted his. After all, he had known quite a few witches, sorcerers and wizards. Most of them were quite reputable. The mortal witches he knew were nowhere as adept in their magic as the ones with certain longevity – it was those kinds who incorrectly called themselves immortal.

"I really didn't consider it." Samantha confessed. "Jimmy, it doesn't affect you wanting to be married to me, does it?"

"No, course not…" He gazed deeply and intently upon her. "As long as it doesn't bother you if I live in an apartment off Park Avenue instead of a drafty mountaintop valley with ancient porticos, does it?"

"No…" Their lips met and closed over each other in love. James inhaled her perfume and lightly pulled her close to him, her arms moving up over his back.

"Wait till I tell my mother…." They suddenly chorused together.