The Search for Juno

Chapter II

The lunch rush had passed, and now the day dragged sleepily on.

The sandwich shop at which Angie worked was nearly empty, save for an old man dripping remoulade sauce dangerously close to his open copy of Crime and Punishment, and her coworker snoring in the back. Angie sighed. She got paid far too little to deal with any of this.

She checked her watch. Two more hours until her shift ended, and she could go home. She'd been nearly done with her newest sculpture last night, and she probably would have finished it, had she not been interrupted.

Or, she thought sadly, maybe not. Maybe all of it was futile.

Angie didn't like it, but she had the feeling that something about her had changed now. She had killed a man, after all—perhaps a god, even, if everything that had happened the night before was not some strange, lucid dream—and nothing could be the same after that. Was she arrogant to come back to work here at this bland, hole-in-the-wall sandwich joint? To return to her online college courses, to return to her life as she knew it? It didn't entirely make sense.

The bell dinged as the door hissed shut behind a new customer. Angie stretched, then fixed her crooked name tag, which read Juno, even though she'd told her manager several times that she didn't go by that name.

"Welcome, what can we get for you today—" She blinked, not wanting to believe the face she saw before her. "I—Hermes?"

His face shadowed beneath his hoodie, he flashed a perfect grin. "We meet again."

"You can't be here right now. I'm at work. The hell are you doing?"

"Ordering a sandwich," he said, eyeing the menu above Angie's head. "What did you think I was doing?"

Anxious, Angie cast a glance down the back hall. Her coworker was thankfully still dozing off, a magazine over his face, and the man with the remoulade sauce still seemed oblivious. Angie sighed and closed her eyes. "I'm not an idiot, Hermes. I know why you're really here."

When she looked up again, Hermes was leaning over the counter, the grin vanished from his face, one dark eyebrow risen. She didn't like the look in those eyes, a strange amber-gold like honey dripping from a spoon. Maybe it wasn't so much that she didn't like the look, but that she could not decipher it.

"If I were you I'd say yes. Right now. Because someone is on their way to get you and I don't think you want to get got."

"Get...got. Sure. Okay."

"I'm serious, Angie," pleaded Hermes, straightening up, his hood flipping back as he did. "Don't you realize what you've done? Whether you meant to or not, you've angered the God of the Sea. As far as I know he's got the whole pantheon after you."

"How do I know you're not against me, then?" Angie snapped, and Hermes just blinked at her, everything gold, gold, gold in this light: his eyes and his skin and his aura, almost. He was infuriating to look at, and not just because he was annoying, but because he was far too beautiful to belong to this world.

The gods of Greek myth existed, and looking at Hermes, Angie no longer questioned it.

Still, she was stunned when Hermes's expression fell, almost as if with...sorrow. Could a god feel something like that?

"Maybe history has recorded me as a trickster," he said, dipping his head a moment, "but that's not all I am."

A seed of guilt formed in Angie's chest. "Hermes—"

His eyes flew wide, and he thrust out a hand, shoving Angie towards the break room. Angie all but staggered into the hall door with the force of it. She opened her mouth to speak, but he shushed her, mouthing the word Hide.