I swallowed back my emotions, at a loss for words. “I’m… I’m glad we could help.”

  He looked around at the mythic beings who’d fled Typhon. They had ventured back and were now watching from amid the debris.

  “Come!” he called. “Say farewell to Everson! Soon we depart for Olympus!”

  Phrixus trotted up first and bent to one knee before Persephone with a soft “M’lady” before addressing me.

  “Well fought, Everson,” he said, returning to his gruff voice. “If there was more time, I would invite you to the vineyards of Thasos where we would drink the finest vintage and hunt the hills and dales.”

  “And I would gladly accept,” I said, a little disappointed that it would never happen. “Thank you, Phrixus.”

  I clapped his equine shoulder. As he rounded behind Hermes and Persephone, Madge came striding in on her powerful Amazonian legs. Unlike Phrixus, she only gave cursory nods to Persephone and Hermes before holding out her fist to me. I raised mine for the expected bump, but she met it with a punch.

  A pulled punch, but still. It freaking hurt.

  “That battle was pretty kick ass,” she said as I shook out my hand. “Sorry we bolted on you.”

  “Hey, you got me here, and that was no small thing.” I flexed my fingers to ensure they still worked. “Be well, Madge.”

  “You too, Everson.”

  Next came the nymphs, Ivy and Comet. They kept their farewell to simple curtsies, and I commended them for their battlefield prowess. I wasn’t just being polite. They would have been my top picks for teammates, and not just for their white and green hair. Their powers were too cool.

  Priapus waddled in behind them. Though he would have bottomed out my picks, I greeted him with a firm handshake. His fighting style was a little too unconventional for my tastes, but you couldn’t argue with the results.

  “Way to, you know, bat around out there,” I said. “Take care of yourself, huh?”

  “Yeah, goodbye, Everson,” he replied, but I could see his mind was elsewhere.

  He looked from me to Persephone, adjusting his legs in a way that made his tented pants a little less prominent. His wiry eyebrows rose in question. She smiled and nodded, confirmation that he would indeed be joining them in Olympus. With a chortling laugh, he hustled around to the rest of the beings.

  As I scanned the ruined landscape for any others, a hillock of debris shifted and a figure emerged. He shook out his scruffy hair, then squinted around as though he’d just woken up from an afternoon nap.

  “Koalemos!” I shouted.

  He shuffled in the wrong direction before spotting us. He tripped several times as he hustled in on his canvas shoes, his mouth breaking into a sleepy smile. I was tempted to run up and tackle the god of stupidity in a full-body hug, but there was the issue of transference—something Typhon had learned too late.

  But what was he even doing here? I’d watched Typhon cut him in half. I glanced over at Persephone. Magic haloed her scepter, while a mysterious smile played across her lips. It paid having an underworld goddess on your team.

  Koalemos shuffled to a stop in front of me. I pointed at his heart and crossed my arms over my own. “Huge, man,” I told him, emotions rising in my chest. “I couldn’t have done that without you.”

  “Righteous,” he guffawed. “But done what?”

  “Come, Koalemos,” Hermes called. “We’re off to Olympus soon.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He guffawed some more. “Guess I’m outta here, hombre.”

  Smiling, I watched him join the others. I was about to ask if anyone had seen Arimanius when I felt a brooding presence beside me. I turned with a start to find him fixing me with his graveyard stare.

  “Goodbye, Everson,” he said.

  I gripped his shoulder. “Mr. Funny!”

  His face creased up as though he were about to start weeping, but it smoothed again. “I think I’ll go by my real name from now on. To be ‘Mr. Funny,’ it seems you have to be funny first.”

  I chortled at that. “I guess you’re right.”

  His head tilted in sudden interest. “You laughed.”

  “Yes, I did,” I realized. “That was good.”

  His face began to glow. “Yeah? You know that reminds me of this woman I met at a bar once. She introduced herself as ‘Anita Bang.’ All I said was ‘How badly?’ and she threw her drink in my face.”

  I laughed harder. Not so much from the material but from seeing it finally click for him.

  His voice grew more animated. “And then I turned to my other side, and the fellow sitting there introduces himself as ‘Hugh Jassol.’ So I lowered my voice and said, ‘Maybe you should try being nicer.’ Next thing I know, wham-o!”

  This time it was the physical humor that landed as he mimed a fist being driven into his face. He crossed his eyes, tongue jutting from his mouth, as he wavered back and forth like a jack-in-the-box.

  That got the nymphs giggling and Priapus roaring.

  Straightening, Arimanius seized my hand and gave it several vigorous pumps. “Thank you, Everson, you’ve been great!”

  He joined his cohorts, who welcomed him into their huddle with kudos and claps on the back. He may have been a god of darkness, but for that moment, anyway, his face beamed like a sun god’s.

  Hermes stepped forward. “Yes, I do believe we’re all a little better for having known you, Everson. You’ll find that I’ve returned Alec’s sketchpad. It’s in the small pocket. Please take a look at it together.” He regarded me meaningfully. “As for your return, I noticed something about your sword.”

  He held out a hand for it, much as he had the morning I was preparing to steal Persephone’s scepter. Since that moment, he’d used me as a coin flip, saved me from the scepter’s influence, saved my life, and deferred to my lead when it mattered most. In other words, he’d gained my trust.

  I released the blade from the staff and offered it to him hilt out.

  “These runes your father designed, they’re not predetermined. They conform to energies introduced to them, so long as they align with your path.” He touched the first one. “He created this one for banishment.” He then moved to the next one. “But it appears someone else installed fire here, yes?” I nodded, recalling the efreet. When his finger came to a rest on the third rune, green light flashed. “There.”

  He returned the sword to me, his magic lingering in the rune. A rune that appeared to carry sharper angles than it had just a moment before.

  “You only need concentrate into the rune, and the bits of me that still move in your blood will carry you home. You may even find additional uses for it,” he added mysteriously. “Please wish your spirited wife well for me.”

  “I will.”

  He lowered his twinkling eyes to the backpack. “It’s ready to be opened.”

  I unzipped the pack, removed the Kleftians’ box from the pillowcase, and set it on the ground between us. As I knelt before it, light shone along the seam between box and lid making the glyphs glisten.

  Above me, Hermes took Persephone’s arm, gently, reverentially.

  “Go on,” he told me, eager to deliver the goddess back to her mother on Olympus.

  I placed my thumbs under the lid and lifted, something that many had attempted over the centuries, but none had accomplished.

  I expected resistance so was surprised when the magic broke with a small but satisfying snap.

  In the wool-lined interior, there rested a glowing green tablet—or rather a fragment of one. The Tablet of Hermes. Writing was etched in the stone: the universal knowledge he’d stolen from his aunts and uncles. I angled my head, but the tablet was already fading, crumbling to rubble, and then to dust. The wind lifted it from the box, whipping it past where the deities and beings had been gathered.

  Hermes and Persephone were gone, along with the seven others. All that remained were their objects, fallen to the ground, stripped of their old worship. And Alec. He stood in Hermes’s spot, peering around the ruined scene in confusion. His eyes took in his open pack and then the open box, understanding sharpening his gaze.

  As I straightened, his dark eyes met mine and his face filled with relief. We embraced, sharing that relief.

  He was alright. He was himself. He was free.

  When at last we separated, I caught an aching in his expression, no doubt reflected in my own. This was going to be the hardest goodbye of all. To delay it, I lifted his backpack from the ground and opened the small pocket.

  “Hermes said he put your sketchpad back,” I explained. “He wants us to look through it together.”

  I pulled out the familiar pad and handed it to him. I looked on as he flipped past notes and designs old and new, including versions of the siphon sigil Hermes had drawn for Persephone.

  At last, he arrived at a full page of neat writing. It was addressed to us. Alec read it aloud:

  “‘Dear Everson and Alec, It has occurred to me that while I will be reuniting with my father, and he, his son, I have denied you the same. How cruel that I brought you together only for you to remain apart. I haven’t the power to change that—it goes with me to Olympus. But I believe I have a solution. On the fifteenth day of each May, a festival known as the Hermaea is held in my honor. The worship should be enough, Everson, to carry you here and back on this day.’” I glanced at the third rune on my sword—what I would henceforth call the Hermes rune. “‘I’m sorry I cannot give you more,’” Alec continued to read, “‘especially after you both have given so much to me. Ever in your debt, Hermes.’”

  Alec lowered the sketchpad. “Every May fifteenth,” he repeated.

  “How does seven a.m. at Dewitt Clinton Park sound?” I asked. “That way we can get in a full day.”

  Alec nodded, then chuckled in disbelief. “Sounds too good to be true. But I have a question. In your academic opinion does this make Hermes a cultural hero, or is he still an amoral trickster?”

  He was revisiting our first debate, but though he tried, he couldn’t keep a serious face.

  I laughed loudly. “It makes him very confusing. I think we can both agree on that.”

  Alec smiled in accession and looked over the beings’ fallen objects. “Do we need to do anything with these?”

  “They’re clean now. In fact, they’re collectibles. Here.”

  Together, we gathered them up and placed them in his backpack.

  When we finished, our eyes fell to the empty metal box. The way it rested atop the debris reminded me of how I’d discovered it in the landfill weeks earlier. The main difference being that nothing powered the box now. Alec loaded it into his pack last. Though he didn’t say it, I suspected he would return it to the home Hermes had compelled him to steal it from months earlier. He’d carried the burden long enough.

  He straightened, peering toward a growing chorus of sirens in the distance. “Guess I should get going.”

  “Let me walk with you,” I said, helping him don his loaded pack.

  “That’s all right. You’re limping, and I’ve got my vagueness rune.” He slapped the thigh where it was tattooed.

  My urge to insist was strong, but the Street Keepers were no longer a threat, and I seemed to have reached a ceasefire with their Avenging Angel. Plus, this was part of letting go, allowing Alec to become his own man in this shadow reality. Thanks to Hermes, he wouldn’t have to navigate it entirely on his own now.

  “All right, buddy.” I pulled him into a final, fierce hug. The goodbye hug. “I’ll see you in May.”

  He snuffled once against my chest, then gathered himself. I clapped his shoulder and stood back.

  “Sure you’re going to be all right here?”

  He wiped his eyes and nodded resolutely. “It’s home.”

  “Hey… I love you.”

  “Love you too, Dad. Say goodbye to everyone for me. And tell them thanks.”

  “I will. Remember what you learned and keep practicing. We’ll pick up where we left off.”

  I was having a hell of a time keeping it together, but I had a family to return to. So did Alec. He hadn’t seen his mother in days.

  With a final nod, I raised the blade between us and focused on the third rune. Green light glimmered around the angular design. I felt the Hermes particles gathering inside me, charging up. Before I was ready, a flash swallowed me, and I caught a final image of Alec as a shadowy silhouette, waving goodbye.

  For now.

  53

  By the time I arrived back at Rizo’s Storage, the space Hermes had enchanted into a grand suite was a cement unit once more. Where the library had been was simply part of the back wall now. No bookshelves or walnut reading table. Just Bree-yark kneeling in front of the cauldron, smoking puddles of solvent around him as he dutifully stirred the scepter.

  I cleared my throat. “You can stop anytime.”

  He turned with a start and wiped the condensation from his goggles. “Everson!” he exclaimed.

  He leapt up, stripped off the glove, and play-boxed me in the stomach a few times before throwing his arms around my waist. I hugged him back, the other hero in our Greek drama. He’d broken down Typhon’s influence over Persephone when we’d needed it the most. When I had needed it the most.

  I filled him in as we loaded duffel bags and containers into his Hummer and drove back to my West Village apartment. His eyes glowed with amazement at the unfolding saga, though I also picked up hints of envy that he hadn’t been there to duke it out with the Iron Guard himself.

  “Alec wanted me to tell you goodbye and to thank you,” I finished.

  “Yeah, too bad I couldn’t see the pipsqueak off myself. How are you doing with that?”

  My chest hitched when I sighed. “Better than I thought I would. Your pep talk in Athens helped. And being able to visit him each year is about the best parting gift Hermes could have given us.”

  I’d already called home, of course, and Bree-yark and I arrived in the apartment to a celebration in waiting. Following a hot shower and a much needed change of clothes, I sat down to a huge spread of comfort foods that Mae had spent the morning preparing. She’d never had any doubt I would come back.

  Bree-yark, Ricki, Tony, and I wasted no time digging in. For her part, Tabitha found something to complain about with every dish, but I noticed she had no trouble putting away sizable portions of each.

  After we’d eaten and I’d retold the epic saga of our triumph over Typhon, Tony put on his favorite funk mix. I may or may not have danced on one leg to “Jungle Boogie.” I only wished Alec could have been there, too.

  As the music wound down, Ricki announced that it was time for the guest of honor to hit the sack. She was right. For three days, I’d been running on little but coffee and invigoration potions. My exhaustion was verging on delirium. After a round of hugs, and an extended kiss with my wife, I fell headlong into sleep.

  I awoke to a sunlight-flooded room, feeling as though I’d slept a solid twenty-four. A glance at the bedside clock showed me I’d come close. There was a note from Ricki saying she and Tony had gone with Mae to do some last-minute shopping for the baby.

  “There he is,” Tabitha muttered after I’d freshened up and emerged into the living room. “The conjurer of sadistic angels.”

  “At your service,” I said, flapping my hands like wings.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But the memory of you bolting around the apartment will never fail to cheer me up.”

  “Then you’ll be overjoyed to know I pulled a groin.”

  “Well, maybe if you’d warmed up properly…”

  Though we were back to our old dance, Tabitha’s role in the saga had proven unexpectedly pivotal. If the Avenging Angel had never terrorized her, I may never have made the connection back to my bloodline. And I would have seized Persephone’s scepter instead of the whip, dooming us all.

  I almost shared that before deciding against it. We were on speaking terms again, and it wouldn’t help for her to associate me with a violent angelic being any more than she already did.

  “Hey, how about some goat’s milk?” I offered.

  “Oh, I suppose, darling. If you can heat it evenly this time. The cold pockets hurt my teeth.”

  As I warmed up her milk in the kitchen, I thought more about the implications of the angelic connection. The whip I’d wielded had burned up, but the first one I’d procured from Red Beard remained in my basement lab, along with what was left of the energy I’d extracted. My concern harkened back to something Hermes said about not wanting to destroy Persephone’s shadow scepter in the actual present:

  “Her scepter has yet to cross the boundary from there to here, and it’s better we keep it that way. Hers is a powerful object, and all manner of distortions could result, none of them healthy to your reality.”

  A part of me feared the same was true of the whip.

  I’d left a message with Claudius the day before, explaining what the whip was and asking for the Order’s counsel on how to handle it. I was making a mental note to call him again when a knock sounded at the front door.

  I set Tabitha’s bowl of steaming milk beside the divan, and I hustled to answer it. “You’re going to make me climb all the way down there?” she asked, offended.

  A look through the peephole had me scrambling to open the locks. A casual observer wouldn’t have known it, but the older woman in slacks and a sky-blue blouse was one of the most powerful magic-users in existence.

  “Arianna!” I exclaimed.

  She smiled. “Hello, Everson. May I come in?”

  “Of course, of course.” I showed her into the living room and motioned for her to take the couch. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, I’m fine,” she said as she lowered herself, moving her long, white braid to her other shoulder. “First, congratulations on your success with the Greek crisis. You conducted your magic very well.” She meant it in the literal sense that I had acted as a conductor for my magic rather than micromanaging it.