The Search for Juno

Chapter XXXV

The next hours were as strange and disjointing as a fever dream. With a plan to gather their things and reconvene later, Angie, Clio, and the twins bid their goodbye to Hades and Persephone. Maybe Angie had been imagining it, but there was an oddly poignant expression on Alex's face as he held Hades's gaze, as he told him, "Thank you." The knowing look Hades had shot him in response would probably haunt Angie's brain for years.

"Promise me you'll find Herm-Herm," Hades had said to Angie and Clio as they stood at the Underworld's gates, the living realm a heartbeat away. "I know it may seem like the world has ended for him, but it hasn't. Promise me you'll tell him that."

Angie nodded her head. "I'll do everything I can."

It was a shorthanded way of keeping herself from making a promise she knew she couldn't keep. Of course she was going to search for him, comb every corner of the Earth for him—she had no doubt, after all, he would do the same for her. What she was not sure of was what she would do when she found him. Consoling someone who's lost something tangible is one thing. Consoling someone who has lost their very identity is an entire different beast, of which Angie knew nothing about.

Angie stood in their dilapidated hotel room now, the window still busted from where Clio had smashed it in, a circle of broken glass scattered precariously across the worn carpet. She'd gotten what they were here for—a few extra clothes she'd left behind, a refillable water bottle, her wallet. Yet her eyes fell to the blue baseball cap resting on its side upon the varnished desk, as if tossed there haphazardly and long since forgotten. It was hers, of course, though Hermes had removed it from its rightful place on her closet shelf and claimed it as his for the past month.

She picked it up, weighing it in her hand. Hermes, you idiot, she thought. Just where did you run off to?

"Ready to go?"

Angie whirled, startled, to find Clio watching her from the doorway. The nymph leaned her hip against the jamb, and though there was a gentle smile at her mouth, her eyes were inexplicably sad: the grayish-blue of the sky just before the rain falls.

Angie closed the hat in her fist. "Yeah," she said. "Sorry, I was just—"

"Angie," Clio said, leaning away from the jamb with a quiet sigh. She came up behind Angie, her breath tickling the hairs at Angie's nape, and looped her arms around Angie's waist. "I know how you're feeling. I am quite worried myself."

For a moment all of Angie's muscles were taut as a guitar string. She was so close. So, very close—Clio's heartbeat thumped against her back. But Angie closed her eyes, listened to that rhythmic pulse, focused on the cool embrace of Clio's breath on her skin. And nothing was okay, really, but for just that second, it felt like everything was.

Angie leaned her head against Clio's. "I mean, I know Hermes—we know Hermes. First he discovers that his best friend betrayed him, then he loses his immortality? It's a one-two punch. The sort that would absolutely destroy him."

"We just have to believe that it won't," Clio said. "That maybe, somehow, we and everyone else are enough for him."

Angie lost herself in the lull of the afternoon for a moment, nothing more than Clio and herself and a dull buzz of voices from the hotel lobby. She could have stayed there, would have stayed there, even, if a sudden thought hadn't interrupted it all.

"I need to ask you something," both women said at once.

Angie turned in Clio's arms, blinking away the shock. "I—" Angie coughed. "Well, okay. You go first, then."

Clio's face was a vibrant shade of pink. "Oh," she stammered. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Whatever. Just go ahead."