III

"Killing your parents, kid?" Phil asked. "I know how that can be. I've killed a good number of cousins in my lifetime." Phil patted the potbelly peeking out from under his shirt.

"I didn't mean to kill them," Jack said and clutched the sides of his head. As best he could with his seatbelt, he curled into a ball. As Fēi Lín pulled out of the school and picked up speed on the country highway, Jack's bangs whipped around. One of his tears flew back and hit Phil in the eye, making him curse.

Luke should have asked where they were going, but he wanted to comfort this guy first. Maybe he shouldn't have cared so much or maybe he should have been scared of the supposed murderer, but Jack looked so genuinely distraught and Luke couldn't imagine a dude this pitiful hurting someone. "Children of Apollo don't really kill with their godly powers. They heal people," Luke said. The bludgeoning wind was so loud, he had to yell.

"Why do you keep calling me a child of Apollo?" Jack asked. He sniffed, managing to quell his tears.

Phil snorted. "Lemme guess. You've got a step dad. Who was your real dad, you think?"

Jack's eyes went wide at the assumption. "I—I do have a stepdad. My real dad was some race car driver that my mom met on her last series. He disappeared."

"Your mom was a race car driver?" Phil asked with a chuckle. "Yea, definitely a child of Apollo. I can't believe more monsters haven't come after you when you have pipes like that, and I mean that for both of you." Phil gestured between the passenger seat and where Fēi Lín had slowed down to pull into a pocket of urban living. Jack glanced down and Fēi Lín gripped her steering wheel, indicating they'd had plenty of scuffles.

"You ever sing anywhere else, kid?" Phil poked the back of Jack's seat.

"In the church choir and when I go candy striping at the hospital. Mom says—said that people feel better because they like hearing songs about Jesus."

If possible, Luke felt worse for Jack. It was always harder for people with strong religious ties to accept this stuff for what it was.

Phil choked. "Oh, oh, Holy Comus. Some of my relatives met Jesus. Great guy. But, trust me, he and the man upstairs have no time for the likes of us. Now that you've heard Greek gods are real, consider yourself forsaken."

Jack paled, making his freckles more prominent.

"Say something like that to Jack again, and I'll make you jump out of the Jeep," Fēi Lín said.

Phil snorted and shook his head. "All you youngsters and your active imaginations."

Luke didn't know how he felt about the God thing. He never had to have "faith" since he knew the Greek gods were real. He'd seen what their interactions had done to his mom and his friends. He'd rather focus on hating something he knew was there, rather than something that could be there.

They needed a change of subject and Luke needed to know more about these two and whether or not he should be recruiting them. He suspected, as Fēi Lín took a few turns around the neighborhood, that he was in too deep to turn back now. "How did your parents die?"

Jack shrugged. "We had an argument last night about…" He stared out the window. "Well, I wished—wished they were all dead. I went up stairs to shower. When I came downstairs, they were. They were covered in sweat and had dried vomit around their mouths and their eyes were bulging."

"You know, most people would have called the cops," Phil said, skeptically.

Jack shook his head. "I thought I would go to bed and they'd be better when I woke up, but when I woke up, they were exactly where I left them, except…" Jack clutched at his hair again. "Their skin sagged to the floor and their backsides were bloated and purplish. And they smelled…"

Jack cupped a hand over his mouth. If the poor kid threw up, Luke had to wonder if it would get caught in the wind current and hit Phil. Fēi Lín had slowed for a residential area, so it would probably just land on Jack's feet.

Luke had only seen dead bodies at a distance. That was the nice thing with monsters: they killed cleanly. Humans and demigods? Not so much.

"I—I thought, if I went to school, I would come home and they might be okay…" Jack finished through his fingers. "But, if all this is real, then they are really dead. They're really never going to be okay. And I really did kill them. I really—"

Jack sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. Something about this dude still didn't strike Luke as a murderer. Could someone, a monster, have scoped out his family? Did monsters do that? "Could someone else have killed your parents? Maybe they poisoned them?" Luke asked, not sure if this was making it worse.

At Jack's inability to respond, Fēi Lín said, "The Fishers were good people. Even though they didn't like me, they've always been generous with Nǎinai and me. Giving back to the community or whatever. It would take a messed up person to want to kill them, but those exist." Her eyes narrowed in the reflection of the rearview mirror. "It does seem weird that two strangers walk into town knowing my name the day that Jack's family is found dead."

Alarms went off in Luke's head. The sight of those freezing eyes under her shriveled eyelids—he thought about her threat to make Phil jump out of the car.

She rolled to a stop outside an apartment complex, the only one inside the tiny urban sector of town.

This was not how any of this was supposed to go. Luke hadn't been sure how to do his pitch, let alone convince her that Phil and he were innocent. He should have expected the Fates to give him terrible timing.

Before Luke could think of what to say, Fēi Lín beats him to it.

"Speak candidly and concisely," as she said the words, Luke could feel them take effect, burrowing into his subconscious so he couldn't imagine lying or taking long to answer. His panic mounted, trying to fight off the lulling effect. "If you try anything, I'll make you cut off your own fingers one at a time."

Luke couldn't bite his lip to calm his fear and anger. Although Phil and he should have been able to jump out of the Jeep and disappear into the small strip of shops, they were trapped without any physical restraints. She could stop them before they sat up. Worse, Luke was certain this girl could make them slit their own throats without losing any sleep.

Luke's heartbeat thudded in his ears when he realized how much they were at her mercy.

Author's note: And, as all of you now realize: Fei Lin. Not synonymous with mercy. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Stay tuned next week for the last part of this short story!