March 18th, 2017
The air stank of sweat. Dirty, salty, mortal sweat. Not the good kind; not sweat mixed in with dirt and blood and sulfur and cortisol, the beautiful scent of a battlefield. Just sweat.
And alcohol. Sugar. Those nasty pink fruity drinks that mortals enjoyed these days. Aphrodite probably liked them.
Estrogen and testosterone, too. I could almost smell the hormones, with all that lust hanging in the atmosphere.
I downed my whisky and stared at my morose reflection in the mirror behind the bar. What was I even doing here? I didn't particularly like Apollo's music. I didn't like this club with its foul stench. I definitely didn't like all these mortals pining after my brother and imagining themselves backstage after the show, ripping off his ridiculous rocker getup. Or the mortals wrestling one another to get closer to me — though their excessive fighting might've had something to do with the fact that I hadn't bothered to control my riling effect on people, until Apollo had shot a sharp look in my direction, cautioning me not to disturb his concert again.
I'd ordered one drink, another, then another, in a futile attempt to get the slightest bit drunk. Inebriation would be the only way to deal with these sweaty, mundane, invasive, aggravating mortals.
To stave off the boredom — why the hell wasn't I on a battlefield somewhere, anywhere? — I lazily scanned the crowd from where I sat at the bar. I didn't bother turning in my seat for a proper survey, but instead looked at minds and through people's eyes, promptly exiting when I found yet another shallow, asinine dreamer who would never even catch Apollo's eye.
Maybe I should just go. My brother would understand. He'd been surprised, after all, when I'd — unfathomably — called him this morning to ask for a spot on the guest list. He'd said he hadn't expected me to want to come anymore, given the lecture he'd given me after the fight that broke out at his last show. But I hadn't really had anything better to do tonight, and if Apollo's tour was passing through my new hometown anyway, I might as well stop by and say hi.
And I'd done that, I'd gone backstage before the show to greet him and his band members, better known to me as his sons and daughters. They had recoiled with fear when I came in — but I hardly noticed that anymore. All the lesser gods and nymphs did that now, even more than they used to. It was just shy of interesting how my apathetic attitude was apparently more intimidating to them than my usual volatility.
Perhaps I should've brought someone tonight, so I wouldn't have sat here by myself. I let out a surly chuckle at the thought. Who would I have called? Aphrodite would be a pain to have around all these lust-filled mortals. Apollo wouldn't have wanted my sons here, not after the chaos of last time. Hermes was much too busy — and we'd barely talked in recent years anyway.
Just when I was about to get up and leave, I heard the opening chords of Wreath. That was the last song before the encore — I might as well sit the whole thing out and then hang out backstage with Apollo for a bit, before he went out into the crowd to collect their adoration.
I tried to entertain myself by going through people's minds again. Most of them were uninteresting: thirsting for Apollo, focused on singing along, talking about banal things with their banal friends. A man was trying to remember what he had to buy from the corner shop on the way home. Someone else was dealing with heartache after having just spotted a former flame. I'd almost exited the thoughts of a girl who was fantasizing about what she'd do with my brother — something I didn't necessarily want to see — when she turned to face her friend, and I froze.
Virginia.
"I love this song!" the girl yelled at her friend. The friend — Virginia? — beamed back at her, then returned her gaze to the stage and sang along to the second chorus.
Virginia.
No, no, keep looking, I thought when the girl whose mind I'd breached turned her head to watch Apollo. She turned back and her friend came into view again. I was rooted to the spot, unable to exit this girl's mind, and I followed her friend's every move, drinking in the sight. The flecks of gold in her hazel eyes. The few baby hairs that stuck out from her hairline no matter how hard she tried to comb them away. The lips, those beautiful lips, parted in a smile much wider and livelier than I remembered, but hers nonetheless.
Virginia.
But she was dead. Hermes had taken her to Hades. Had Hermes lied? Hermes didn't lie to me. But then how? Had she escaped the underworld? No. Impossible. No one could, my uncle made sure of that. The thoughts raced through my head, my heartbeat starting to match their pace. I clenched my fist, unclenched it, flexed my fingers in an attempt to calm myself.
I craned my neck to find her, tried to find those caramel blonde waves, the face and the body I knew so well. Despite eighty years of putting Virginia out of my mind, every memory I had of her, every square inch of her came rushing back with a vividness that was both unsettling and gratifying, comforting really, in its familiarity.
Where is she? My searching eyes flitted around the club with increasing agitation, until they finally landed on her, and everything else faded. There she was, dancing, singing, laughing. I entirely forgot about going backstage as I stared, spellbound.
I stood up and tried to shout her name, but it got stuck in my throat. And the longer I watched her all through the break, the last song and the applause, the less she looked like Virginia to me — she was exactly the same and yet she was completely different. She was energetic, scintillating, buoyant. Young and youthful. This girl hadn't lived on the street, she hadn't experienced the Blitz. She wasn't broken and hardened the way Virginia had been. She made jokes. She couldn't be Virginia. But… she was. And she wasn't. How in the world could Gin be there and not be Gin at all? I tried to rack my brain for any plausible or even possible explanations but it was completely void. I couldn't think, I couldn't do anything other than look at her. It left me bewildered, perplexed… fascinated. I lost any and all notion of my surroundings, Apollo's music having long receded into the background.
And when she and her friend turned and faced me, my stomach dropped at the sight of her — the first time in almost eighty years I saw Gin's face with my own eyes. She walked towards me. No. Towards the bar. I watched her as she made her way over, sat down and laughed with her friend. She emptied a glass of water in one go and talked to the bartender.
I quickly beckoned him. "I want to buy that girl a drink," I said, never taking my eyes off of her. I had to talk to her and find out who she was.
He took out two tall glasses. "They already ordered, man. Next round?"
"Nah. Here. I'll have another Ardbeg, neat." I tossed a few banknotes on the bar, exchanged my empty glass for the new full one and watched the bartender take the absurdly girly drinks to the two friends. They talked a moment, then the bartender nodded in my direction, and the girl met my glance. Her cheeks turned pink — a color I'd never seen on Virginia. Her face had always been pale with ill health.
Her friend, who looked plastered, leaned in and whispered something in her ear. I was much too transfixed to think of entering her mind so I could overhear.
But then when the girl awkwardly bit her lip and her eyebrows knitted together subtly, I realized I'd been staring — I couldn't help it — and remembered that mortals generally found that intimidating. I raised my glass with a slight forced smile, and when she raised hers back at me, her frown vanishing, I knew there was no way back. I took a big swig from my whisky and stood up to make my way around the bar.
They were obscured by the crowd for a moment, and when they came back into my view, I saw her holding onto her friend's arm and looking in my direction with apprehensive eyes.
"Just wait one second, Gab," I heard her hiss into her friend's ear when I was close enough.
The friend — Gab — shook off the girl's grasp and leaned her elbow on the bar much too casually to be convincing. I didn't care. I wasn't even looking at her.
"Hiiii," 'Gab' drawled in a high-pitched tone that betrayed her level of intoxication.
"Hi." I didn't spare her a single glance — her friend captivated me fully and thoroughly. Her face… I saw it up close for the very first time and yet for the thousandth time. She was exactly the same as Virginia. She had the same wide eyebrows. The same nose that at the end tipped the tiniest bit upwards. She even had the same asymmetrical earlobes. She looked up at me with a mix of interest and awkwardness — as if she wanted to look away but stay and talk at the same time.
"I'm Noah," I continued. I'd decided on the name when I moved here. I'd used it before, most recently when I lived in the United States in the 1980s. Apollo had shamelessly 'borrowed' the surname — Chevalier — when he decided to perform for mortals again. Said it worked well as a stage name… never mind its meaning, which had zero significance whatsoever for him. I hadn't been too happy about it — the name was uncommon enough that now I either had to explain our connection when introducing myself, or use another false identity — but what Apollo wanted, Apollo usually got.
"I'm Gabrielle," the friend said, "and this is Emma."
Emma.
"Hi," Emma said — the very first time I properly heard her voice. And yet again… I knew this voice so well. I'd woken up to this voice. Gone to sleep listening to this voice. Heard this voice brittle with sadness, trembling with fear, tilted upwards with hope. Hearing it again lit a fire in my stomach that I hadn't felt in decades. "It's nice to meet you… Noah." She held out her hand to shake mine. Her grip was stronger than I'd expected.
Something about Emma's voice was different from Virginia's… She used it differently. She spoke in a register that was just the tiniest bit lower, articulated her words just a little bit less carefully. And, of course, she didn't have Gin's London accent.
Get up, I mentally ordered the man on the barstool next to Emma's — he stood up and stepped aside ever so naturally, as if he'd already meant to do that. I sat down, keeping my gaze trained on Emma as I did.
"Thanks for these," Emma said, vaguely indicating her drink with her hand.
Gabrielle's elbow, meanwhile, slipped off the bar and she sprang from her barstool in embarrassment. "Gotta pee! Bye!" she said, exchanged a look with Emma, and disappeared behind me. But she didn't leave — I felt her eyes on me, even as she struck up a conversation with someone just out of earshot.
I put on my best smile. If I wanted to figure out what the hell was going on, I would need to approach this calmly, and act normal, her normal, strike up a regular conversation, and most of all not scare her. But it was hard: I couldn't think straight, not with everything that I'd tried not to miss for decades right in front of me.
Emma didn't notice any of that, though. My smile had the same effect on her as it did on all mortal women: she leaned forward, her shoulders opened a little wider, the expression on her face became a little more eager.
"You're welcome," I said, "Though these wouldn't have been my choice. But I'm happy to bankroll you."
She laughed — and I nearly broke my glass with the force of my fingers upon hearing the sound. It penetrated me to my core; I'd never thought I would hear that laugh again, even though it had been seared into my memory for eternity. But Emma's laughter was just that: laughter, without any delirium or death. "What would you have bought me?" she asked.
I took a second to collect myself, then tilted my head and scrutinized her; her lips parted a little in response. It was a good question. Ginny had shared my love of whisky — when we could get our hands on it, anyway — but Emma, somehow, didn't seem like the type, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why not. "A Bee's Knees, maybe. Or a Southside. No. A White Lady."
She giggled. Giggled. "I don't know any of those."
Oh. Right. I was showing my age — these weren't nearly as popular as they had been in the 1920s. "A gimlet, then, or a Negroni."
"Hmm. Classy. I like your style." She smiled, looked over my shoulder, and nodded almost imperceptibly. I felt Gabrielle relax and avert her glance.
I inhaled deeply and caught a whiff of her soft floral perfume. Different again: Virginia had never worn perfume. And in the moment that she was looking away, checking in with her friend, I studied her; I found a sparkle in her eyes, a nervous bouncing of her left foot of which she didn't seem to be aware, a loose strand of hair that I yearned to tuck behind her ear the way I always did Gin's. But Emma lifted her hand now and tucked it away herself with her index and middle fingers as her glance returned to me. Her fingers curled inward a little in an attempt to hide her bitten nails.
"Do you have a last name, Emma?" I asked. I hadn't meant to ask a direct question this quickly, but the question had come out of my mouth before I'd even really thought it over and I needed to know. If her last name was Mayfield, maybe somehow Virginia's genes had passed on to this generation, despite her never having had any children. If it wasn't, at least I had something to hold onto when I delved into this.
She lifted her glass for a sip and smirked. "That depends on what you're going to do with that information."
What?
I was taken aback. Was this what it felt like to talk to a modern woman? And how… why did she talk to me like that?
I knew that women were bold and direct these days in a way they hadn't been since… Sparta, maybe. But I only knew that from stories my relatives told me, because even during recent meaningless hookups with mortal women, they hadn't been brazen with me. Here I was experiencing it firsthand… and not just from anyone. Virginia had been gentle and sweet. Meek and timid, even. Emma? Not so much, and as strange as it was to experience this straightforwardness from her, from Virginia's mirror image, it wasn't an unpleasant surprise.
I covered up my brief silence with a chuckle — though it wasn't insincere. "It does seem proper to know a lady by her full name."
"A lady, hmm?" She subconsciously leaned even closer in response to my grin and looked up at me through her eyelashes. "It's Sawyer."
"Emma Sawyer," I repeated, and went through all the relatives of Virginia's that she'd told me about. None of them were named Sawyer. I'd have to look up Gin's family tree. If she had one. Probably not.
"Yep." She took a sip from her drink, straightening herself now that she'd shedded that unnatural eagerness at the fading of my smile. "What about you, though? Or are you just Noah?"
I sighed. And there we were… This would go over well, but I wasn't here to talk about Apollo. Should I just use another name and spare myself the annoyance? No, I wasn't about to let my brother steal my name. Even if it was a fake one. I drank from my whisky before answering. "Chevalier."
"That sounds fam…" Her eyes widened when the realization hit her. "Holy shit!" If only she knew just how holy this particular shit of a brother was. She set her glass on the bar with a bang, causing some of the red liquid to slosh over the sides. "You're kidding!"
It was unbelievable how different Emma was from Virginia, despite their exact resemblance. Her uncontrolled movement, her lack of reticence, her cursing. I didn't think I'd ever heard a swear word escape Gin's mouth.
I couldn't help but smile at Emma's genuine bafflement and decided to play a little. It felt… if not quite foreign, at least curious. When had I last been upbeat? How had I forgotten how good that felt? "Am I?" I teased.
"You're… No, you can't be related. You don't even really look alike." She cocked her head. It was a cute look. Virginia had never done that. Virginia wasn't cocky. Emma was, apparently, and it looked good on her.
We had an eavesdropper. One of the people who'd looked up when she'd banged her drink down on the bar was now following our every word. Stop listening, I commanded, and he turned away, but I lowered my voice just in case. "I know. Luca is my older half-brother."
"Why aren't you backstage?" she asked conspiratorially, smiling now that she had learned a secret that no one else around us knew.
"I'm perfectly happy where I am right now," I said, shrugging, and while I said it I realized it was true — I didn't want to be anywhere but here, and it wasn't just because I saw Virginia again, or a facsimile of her, or whatever this was. I was having a good time with this Emma Sawyer.
She blushed — ah, beautiful — but when she picked up her drink from the bar her head suddenly jerked up, she muttered something to herself, and she hopped off the stool.
I followed her with my eyes, turning in my seat. When I saw where she was going, my lightheartedness dissolved in favor of a fierce, quickly building heat — some idiot was accosting Emma's friend. I flexed my fingers, downed my whisky, slammed the glass onto the bar and got up. If an insignificant, half-witted mortal thought he could harass a woman in my presence, he was sorely mistaken.
As I strode forward, Emma looked back in surprise and the man's friends jumped out of the crowd. I seized the assailant's shoulder — he let go of Gabrielle and swung a fist at me that was so inept it would have been hilarious, had I not been so chagrined — and spun to face the girls. "Ladies, time to go."
At my nod, they stepped back and quickly made their way to the exit. I breathed in deeply, closed my eyes a moment as I savored the rising pressure in the air, and turned to the six men with a delighted smile on my face.