Page 50 of The Ferryman’s Rest Inn & Grogshop

“Noted.” I turned to Bracken. “Any requests? I’ve got a husband who’s loaded.”

Bracken smiled and shook his head. “Allowing me to accompany you is all the gift I need. This whole experience has been extraordinary.”

“Great,” Stheno said. “I’ll take his gift too.”

Chapter 17

AN OFFER I COULDN’T REFUSE

Everyone ate their Artemis cake while I polished off half a dozen of the crumbled protein bars. There were a couple of meat sticks left, so I ate those too. I gave Coco a pair of spare socks so Bracken could make her slippers again. When Coco tipped over and lay down on her backpack, I realized I was dragging too.

“Maybe we should sleep for a little while,” I suggested.

“God, yes,” Coco mumbled.

Bracken moved his backpack and reclined, using it like a pillow. “I second, or I suppose, third that.”

“Yeah, fine,” Stheno said, moving so she was leaning against the wall of the tunnel. I just realized she couldn’t lie down like we did because of the snakes. I wondered if she had a special pillow at home.

Still hungry but out of food, I drank more water and lay down, myself. Bracken dimmed the lights and I went under almost immediately.

I’m walking down a dark passage. Light leaks around a door ahead. As I get closer, I see Clive in his bedroom at the nocturne. His dress shirt is unbuttoned. He’s so gorgeous, I gasp. Clive spins toward the partially open door in a fighter’s crouch, eyes vamp black, fangs down. A thrill runs through me, but the door slams shut.

I go to the door and try to open it, but it will only budge an inch. I press my eye to the crack, looking for Clive, but instead find a dingy apartment and my mother frozen in a spell. Her sister Abigail is standing with a possessed man who is holding a large blade in his hand. Abigail is a sorcerer, one who has hunted us ever since I, an abomination, was born.

As far as Abigail is concerned, my werewolf blood forever poisons her pure wicche blood, so I need to be eliminated. Mom hid me behind a spell in the closet, going out to face her sister and her sister’s demon on her own, protecting me to the end.

With a sickening feeling of déjà vu, I watch the possessed man shred my mother, tearing strips off her, while I stand paralyzed in a closet. Once Abigail has wrung every bit of enjoyment and power out of the slaughter of her sister, she walks out, leaving the man dead with a bloody knife in his hand to take the blame.

I woke at a thumping on my forehead. “That wasn’t a good dream anyway,” a woman said.

I opened my eyes to a stunning, gray-eyed woman in ivory robes. An owl hooted nearby on a ledge of rock and I flinched. Sitting up, I looked between the goddess and the owl and thought, Oh, shit. It’s Athena.

“It is,” she said, looking me over with a haughty expression.

I stood and bowed. “I’m honored to meet you, my lady.”

“Hmm. I can’t say much for the company you keep.” She stared pointedly at Stheno.

I took a few steps to the side, moving closer to Stheno. “She’s my good friend. Even though she didn’t want to come back to the place where her sister had been hurt so horribly, she did. To back me up.”

Athena’s expression of disgust hadn’t changed.

“I know she said some hurtful things about you earlier, but I’m sure you understand that she’s still grieving her sister’s rape, the loss of Medusa’s children, her curse.”

“Her curse,” Athena sneered, walking over to Stheno and kicking her in the side. “I know you’re awake. Stand up.”

Stheno got to her feet but thankfully kept silent, staring down at the ground. I don’t think she trusted herself to look Athena in the eyes.

“I’m sick of this bitching and complaining. Thousands of years you three have been blackening my name and why? What I did for your sister was a gift!”

Stheno’s face came up and what I saw was pure rage. Shiiiiiiit.

Athena held up a finger, proving she too saw the violence in Stheno’s gaze. “Ask yourself, what could I have done about Poseidon? He controls the seas. If I had gone against him, thousands of my followers would have been swept away in tidal waves.”

Stheno opened her mouth and Athena held up a finger again. “Don’t argue. You know it’s true. You’ve seen what happens when Zeus or Poseidon are angered. I couldn’t undo what had been done to your sister. If I appeared to punish her, though, he wouldn’t feel the need to do anything more to pay her back for not thanking him for his attentions. If he’d understood that my curse was a gift, he’d have found a way to reverse it, or worse yet, get rid of the problem by killing her.”

Stheno continued to glare, but she seemed to be listening.