The Search for Juno

Chapter XXXVII

She didn't know why she'd expected something to be different. She didn't even know what precisely she had expected to be different in the first place. All Angie knew was that, when she and Hermes stepped back into her apartment in Phoenix, Arizona, the mundanity of it all was disconcerting.

Her thrift store, hole-ridden couch still sat there in the living room, slightly too far to the left as always, the accidental streak of grayish wall paint on the window (Angie was an artisan, not a painter) still untouched. A coffee mug sat on the kitchen counter, a rim of brown in its base.

Hermes swung the door shut behind them, clapping his hands. "Well?"

Angie turned. Though the lights were off, the room was suffused with that late afternoon, early evening light, an odd, washed sort of amber that softened everything upon which it fell. "I'll just go check out the bedroom," she said, and hesitated. "Also, I need to call my parents."

Hermes frowned. "And then what?"

Angie stopped. The twins hadn't followed them to Arizona—Alex had class to get back to, after all—and Clio had returned to her enchanted forest. Not, of course, to stay there, but to say goodbye. She'd meet them here in a day or two.

Is this what it would be? The slow introduction of a nymph and a former god into the ho-hum of Angie's pre-Poseidon existence? It couldn't be. But then again, what else was there for her, anyway?

And then what?

Angie sighed. "I don't really know."

Hermes kept frowning at her, his eyes lit with an almost paternal concern that, frankly, made Angie sick to her stomach. Before she could say anything, however, he just gave a succinct nod of his head. "I'll poke around here, then," he said, and then gasped, as if a lightbulb had turned on in his brain. "I know you left a can of Pringles around here somewhere. I remember, because I kept mentally debating on whether we should take them or not—"

Angie rolled her eyes, already pivoting in the direction of her bedroom. The sound of Hermes opening and shutting her cabinets with unnecessary force followed her until she slammed the door shut behind her.

Angie was so relieved to find all of her metal masterpieces still intact that she could have wept. She fell to her knees, picking them up one by one—a wire butterfly, an anatomical heart of motionless cogs and gears—every single one, letting her fingers slide over the sanded metal and hitch in the rivets of the welding work. The air percolated with old oil and cool earth. She was home.

She would have been, at least. Should have been. Wasn't this what she wanted? Since the second she'd stepped back from Poseidon's body, her legs quivering, all she had wanted was for her life to return to the way it had been before.

Angie set her sculpture down. How could she do that, she wondered? How could she do that after everything she'd seen? She wasn't even entirely human, and she was just supposed to live like one?

She busied herself with the things she'd really come here to do. She could think about what was left for her after that. She took a shower, conditioned and detangled her curls, which was an extreme sport, and tossed on clean clothes. Angie's fingers were hovering over the call button on her phone when Hermes knocked on the door. "Angie?"

Angie tossed the phone aside, not sure she liked whatever eerie uncertainty she heard in his voice. "What?" she said, crossing the room. "What did you break this time?"

"What? Nothing," Hermes said as Angie swung the door open. His face brightened with a pleasant surprise. "I just—oh. You smell nice. Is that your shampoo? Can I—"

"Touch my hair and I'll cut your hand off," she said with a sweet smile. "So what is it, Hermes?"

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the kitchen. "You're gonna want to see this."

Angie couldn't imagine what would be worth seeing in a kitchen that had been left vacant for over two weeks. If it was moldy bread or something like that, maybe she really was going to cut his hand off.

It was not moldy bread.

Angie standing beside him, Hermes knelt and opened the cupboard beneath the sink. Angie's heart skipped a beat.

Her eyes shone with gold, gold upon gold upon gold, the glimmering bars stuffed into the cupboard like toys in Santa's sack. And that wasn't it. Hermes opened the cabinet above the oven, and the one next to it, and the one next to it, and the one next to that. He opened the pantry, the hall closet, the fridge, the dresser upon which the TV sat. Everything was brimming with gold.

Before Angie could even think to ask what the hell was going on, Hermes nodded at her, and pressed a note into her hand.

To Miss Angie Nohl—

Found this lying around and figured it belonged to you. Please don't do anything stupid with it. Not that I believe you will. But still. Don't.

Warm regards,

Hades

P.S. You, Herm-Herm and Clio are welcome anytime down here for supper. The twins are okay, too, I guess.

"Hades, that lovely son of a bitch," Angie said, and she was so giddy she could no longer stand. She collapsed to the floor in a heap, throwing her arms high, her chest shaking with a laughter fervent enough to make her ribs ache.

"Actually," said Hermes after a moment, "he's—"

"Hermes?" She looked up at him. "I adore you, but I don't need a lesson on your psycho family tree right now."

His face flushed a gentle pink for a moment, before he grinned. "Well?" he said, taking one of the gold bars in his hand, and turning it over. "What are you gonna do with it then?"

"Brilliant question," Angie replied, sitting up again. "Good thing I just figured it out a millisecond ago."

Hermes quirked an eyebrow, but she waved him off, ordering him to bring her the cell phone she'd left on her bed. When he returned a moment later, tossing it at her, she called her parents first.

Her dad picked up. "Honey?"

"I'm back in Phoenix," she said, "but not for long. I'm moving to Vegas. Thought you should know."

"What?" There was a gasp, followed by an unintelligible babble. "Angie, what are you—"

"Let me call you back in an hour, okay? I'll tell you everything."

She hung up, and called her boss at the sandwich shop.

"Angie?" said her boss, her voice ripe with frustration. "No one has been able to get ahold of you for two weeks! I don't recall you ever asking for time off. This is grounds for dismissal, which I certainly would do if Bobby hadn't got arrested a week ago. A raging crack addict, did you know that? Makes the stuff in his basement, apparently. He hid it so well. Anyway, when can you come back?"

"I quit," Angie said, and hung up.

Hermes was watching her like she was a nuclear bomb on the brink of explosion, or perhaps more like she was the highly radioactive debris left behind afterwards. "Angie, what are you doing? Because it sounds a lot like you're ruining your life."

"Ruining my life?" Angie scoffed grandly, hopping up from the floor. She clapped a hand on Hermes's shoulder, her eyes bright. She was so sure. She'd never been so sure about anything, long as she lived.

"No, sir," she told him. "I'm changing it. Now, help me pack up here. Then we're going to get my girlfriend."