Rise of the Blood

Chapter Four

Jesus didn’t turn back for home, though he complained loudly that he would talk to Apollo about hazard pay. We didn’t turn back either. It wasn’t so much bravery as stubbornness—on my part, at least. Zeus and Poseidon were not going to ruin the first reunion I’d had with my family since the Rialto Brothers Circus had given me the heave ho. They weren’t going to ruin my cousin Tina’s wedding with a funeral. I felt pretty strongly about that, since the funeral would likely be mine.

I could be flippant or I could be afraid. I’d found it was pretty difficult to be both at once.

The airline whisked us all off to a private lounge as soon as we hit the terminal, presumably so we couldn’t frighten other flyers with the horror story of our ordeal. Jesus helped himself to a good bit of the complimentary booze they supplied to help us drown out the horror and blunt our memory.

Finally, though, we were rebooked on a flight from our emergency landing airport to New York, where we’d catch the next leg of our flight. Jesus grabbed some of the free booze in their tiny travel sized bottles and brought them along for fortification. Nick and I didn’t risk it, both determined to stay sharp for no good reason I could tell. It wasn’t like we’d be any better in the face of a new attack than the last, but still, I wanted my wits about me, such as they were. Plus, I wasn’t so sure how ambrosia and booze would mix. Would the whole super-healing thing allow me to get drunk or would the ambrosia treat booze as some kind of poison to be fought? I didn’t really need my body becoming a battleground.

That thought lasted until takeoff. At the first bump on the runway, I shrieked and grabbed at the bottle of vodka Jesus had tucked into the seatback pocket in front of him. I downed it like a shot as Jesus eyed me sourly. “By all means, chica, help yourself.”

“Got more?” I asked.

He toed open the shoulder bag at his feet to reveal enough booze to open a fairy bar. Not that fairies existed…that I knew of.

I reached for two more bottles but was stopped by my seatbelt. Then we were lifting off, being bounced around by stray air currents, and my heart nearly stopped in panic. I grabbed Nick’s hand and he grabbed mine right back. Jesus gripped my other hand, and we sat there like a ring-around-the-rosie of fear.

Nick smiled at me, and those incredible midnight blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “It’s going to be okay,” he lied.

“How can you be so calm?” I asked.

He brought my hand to his chest, and I could feel that his heart had picked up all the beats mine had dropped. It was going double time.

“I’m not calm. I’m confident. The way your luck runs, you will not die before I get to see you in a puke-green bridesmaid’s gown. And take pictures. And hang them up around the precinct.”

That surprised a laugh out of me, and I felt the vice grip around my heart begin to ease.

“You’re right,” I answered.

His smile got even bigger. “Can I get that in writing?”

“Now that really would be the end of the world.”

This kind of moment, this banter, was exactly why I’d fallen for him to begin with.

“You still want that vodka?” Jesus asked, watching Nick and I have our moment.

“No, I’m good,” I heard myself answer.

“More for me.”

Nick and I smiled like fond parents half an hour later when Jesus fell fast asleep like a child who’d tuckered himself out. He snored softly, and his head lolled onto my shoulder. If there was drool, I’d never let him live it down.

I didn’t sleep. By the fifth hour, it was glaringly apparent that wouldn’t change any time soon. I didn’t know if it was the ambrosia heightening all my senses or my new oversensitivity that made every single air current feel like a death sentence. I’d become the princess and the pea, only with the outside air my mattress and the deceptively fluffy clouds pillows waiting to smother me. Paranoia was a symptom of ambrosia withdrawal. It wasn’t supposed to happen when I was dosed, which I’d made sure of before leaving the apartment. Maybe all that fear-fueled adrenaline had rushed it through my body faster than normal. If so, it was a terrifying thought. I’d need to find a new supply when we landed in Greece. I only had one contact there who could get me what I needed…and I hadn’t seen him since our crash landing when he and Serena had been whisked away to, I presumed, some kind of VIP lounge where they were pampered and placated. I had his number, but he’d pointed out recently and rightly that I only used it when I needed something—when it was convenient for me—and then I pushed him away again. I’d never been a user…before ambrosia. I didn’t want to become one now. I needed to quit it, regardless of the possibility of deadly withdrawal, but there was always a reason it was a bad time. I was in the middle of a case; my uncle had been taken by a killer cult; my cousin was getting married…

I didn’t want to go through the shakes, distraction, sweats, cramps and fainting spells I knew would come in front of my family. I was already the black sheep. I didn’t want to become the pariah.

After, I swore to myself. After Zeus and Poseidon were safely recaptured and Tina married off. Then…

In the meantime, I did have another god on speed-dial. If I got desperate… Desperate enough to become further indebted to the trickster god? Willingly? The conviction that I wasn’t an addict was getting harder and harder to maintain. I had to be going through withdrawal to even consider such idiocy.

“Go ’sleep,” Nick murmured when I’d shifted for the one zillionth time since takeoff. Fidgety, unfocused, barely able to sit in my seat…yeah, I recognized the symptoms. Maybe I hadn’t taken enough ambrosia to hold me over. Maybe I was building up a tolerance.

“Sorry,” I whispered back, endeavoring to be still.

If I wasn’t careful, this ambrosia addiction might kill me and save the greater gods the trouble.

We had a three-hour layover in New York. I was dead tired by the time we got there and yet wired, as though if anyone touched me, I’d flare up and short out. It was a fragile feeling that I didn’t like one bit.

After an internal slugfest between my id and my ego, I decided on an over-the-counter sleep aid for the nine-hour flight from New York to Athens. I’d already been up for almost twenty-four hours at that point, and I knew that if I didn’t get some sleep soon, I’d be insufferable…assuming that ship hadn’t already sailed. Plus, Nick deserved me passed out on his chest so that he could sleep himself. Jesus was on his own. Yes, he’d left drool on my shirt. I showed him the pic I’d snapped with my cell phone on airplane mode. All I’d had to say was “company website” for all the lost color from earlier to flood back into his face in a furious blush.

I grinned evilly.

“You’re a wicked, wicked woman,” he said.

“Don’t I know it.”

The sleep aid didn’t kick in until well after takeoff on the next leg of the trip, but once it did, I slept like a baby until the wheels touched down in Athens, jarring me awake. I cried out, and Nick’s arm tightened around me. I was crushed up against his chest, seatbelt buckle digging into my hip and no armrest between us. When I lifted my head, I saw that Jesus wasn’t the only one to drool. I wiped my mouth, trying to look like I wasn’t swiping away spittle, and patted Nick’s shirt as if I could blot it dry with my bare hands.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick said. “I’m not.”

That was the other great thing about him. As a police detective, he’d been faced with all manner of bodily fluids. A little spittle was nothing.

There was no coffee between us and customs. None. There was a terrifically long line of people. But it moved surprisingly swiftly. I understood why when we got to the front. After looking over our paperwork and asking a perfunctory question about the nature of our visit, the customs agent rubber-stamped us and sent us through. I didn’t really know what it was supposed to accomplish. Did they really expect someone to give “terrorism” or “smuggling” as the reason for their visit? Was it just to be able to say, “Ah ha, caught you in a lie!” when people were nabbed later?

Anyway, we were through and on to the baggage claim area when I spotted a placard with my name on it—last name at least—in the oversized hands of a suited-up chauffer who looked like the right-hand man of some Bond villain.

Of course, we were in Greece, where the name Karacis wasn’t exactly the oddity it was in America, so I wasn’t necessarily the target audience.

“Here!” Jesus said before I could think it through. He waved a hand so there could be no mistake where “here” was. “We’re Karacis.”

“Vittoria?” the chauffer asked, turning toward me.

“Tori,” I answered. “And you are?”

“I am Viggo. Your Uncle Hector has sent a car.”

My shoulders dropped about half a foot in relief. We weren’t about to be spirited off to some evil lair. (“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”)

But my Uncle Hector. He was nearly a myth, a barely remembered figure tossing me in the air and giving me pony rides until my sides hurt from laughing. But then there’d been some scandal with some princess or contessa or something, and he’d dropped off the face of the earth. I’d been too young to remember the details, and no one was going to share such secrets with me then. By the time I was old enough to ask the right questions, I was busy getting into trouble of my own. But rumor had it that he was richer than Midas and at least twenty thousand times cooler. I felt a childish glee about seeing him again…even if he was the one financing Apollo’s return to the big screen and, at least temporarily, my life.

“He’s here?” I asked stupidly.

“He sent a car and waits for you at the hotel, where he’s throwing a special reception.”

“A reception?”

I hadn’t gotten the memo. In fact, my plan had been to rent a car, drive to the hotel and fall facedown onto a bed to sleep the night away before making the two hour trek up to Mount Parnassus the next day for some sightseeing before the wedding festivities got under way. At the moment, I was most excited about the facedown, quickly unconscious part of that whole equation. I was hot, I was tired, and I probably still had slobber tracks on my face. I was not ready to face the family in my current condition.

Nick took in my shell-shocked look. “Yes on the car, pass on the reception,” he said for me.

“I’m afraid it’s a package deal,” he said with a smile.

“Now wait—” I was jet-lagged, and the heavy-handed tactics were making me cranky on top of it. Jesus held a restraining hand to my arm to keep me from unleashing a can of verbal whoop-ass.

“Did I mention that your uncle is picking up all accommodations and has arranged a limo to take you all to your destination on the morrow?” Viggo asked, sweetening the pot.

On the morrow… Who talked like that?

Before I could speak, Jesus jumped in to accept on our behalf. I gave him a completely ineffective death glare. “What?” he asked. “We go, we sip champagne, we vanish into the night. Quelle horreur.” He was Spanish…speaking French…in Greece. Well, why not.

I sighed. “Fine, I’m too tired to argue.”

“I didn’t even know that was possible,” Nick said. “But I’m noting it for future reference.”

I smiled tiredly at him and led the way to our baggage carousel, where for once I let someone else wrestle my baggage from the belt. Viggo was built for it, after all. In fact, in his huge hands, my big, hard-sided bag looked like a mere briefcase.

The car, when we got to it, was a sleek white thing with what looked like a boomerang mounted on the front. I knew that meant something about the make or model, but I was too fuzzy headed to think what. But the long and short of it was that it was fancy-schmancy, and where it swooped inward at the sides it was accented with silver-gray paint. It almost looked like one of the clouds that had practically smothered us on the trip over. I shivered.

“Cold?” Nick asked, already shrugging out of his shirt.

I shook my head, but I didn’t explain. I should be thankful about Uncle Hector’s generosity. I didn’t have any rational reason to distrust it, except that in Greece we knew the expression wasn’t, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” but always. After all, we’d taken Troy that way.

Just to be on the safe side, I called Yiayia as soon as we got into the car.

“Anipsi, you are here!” she said in lieu of “hello.”

“I am,” I admitted. “I’m, uh, on my way to the reception.”

“Wonderful! I should be up momentarily as well. We’re just putting the finishing touches on our couture.” We? “I understand that your friends have put in an appearance. You didn’t tell me—”

The phone seemed to move away from her mouth, and I heard a bit of a scuffle in the background. Or maybe not a scuffle, because…was that giggling? At her age?

“Yiayia,” I shouted, “What friends? What are you talking about?”

But then there was a thwump, as if the phone fell to the floor, and then…nothing.

Stunned, I hung up and tried again, but the phone just rang and rang and went to voicemail.

“Step on it,” I told Viggo. “Please hurry.”

My internal alarms weren’t blaring, but I still didn’t know the rules. Did they only go off when I was in danger? Was there some kind of range? Even without them, I had a bad feeling about things.

What friends could Yiayia be talking about? Zeus? Poseidon? Both were known to be able to change their forms…or at least had done so frequently when they were at full power to seduce a woman in the guise of her husband or by trickling in as a golden mist through a locked door. Could they be crashing the party? But how would they have gotten out of the States so quickly given their fugitive status? And why pose as friends at all?

“Something’s wrong,” I told Nick.

“What?”

“I don’t know, but Yiayia sounded…strange. And her phone went dead.”

“Maybe she lost reception?”

“Maybe. I’ll just feel a lot better when we’re there. How far are we?” I asked Viggo.

“Ten minutes,” he answered, holding up all ten fingers to show, leaving none on the wheel.

I gulped as another car barreled past, nearly smashing us against a white-washed concrete wall that was too close for comfort. I nodded quickly to show that I got it, the better to return his hands to the wheel as quickly as possible. He recovered his mastery of the road, and overtook the car that had overtaken us, as though they were in some kind of street race he was bent on winning. Just as he pulled past, he swung quickly right, off onto an exit that took us onto a much quieter street that led to another, and then past Hadrian’s Gate and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Oh, I’d missed Athens, where antiquity and the everyday sat side by side and there was beauty everywhere you looked.

“Is that—?” Nick started to ask, pointing up a hill overlooking the city that was capped by stunning near-ruins.

“The Parthenon,” I answered with a smile, suddenly feeling a lot less weary. “Yeah.”

His look of awe made me so proud of my country…well, my other country. I’d been born in America, but this was the culture I’d been born to and this was what ran in my blood. This. Beauty. Antiquity. Home.

But I was still worried as hell about Yiayia.

Viggo pulled into the miniscule drive before a big, white-pillared hotel that overlooked the Temple and Hadrian’s Gate. I jumped out before he even had the engine turned off, trusting that the guys could handle the luggage. I ran to the front desk, but was too jet-lagged to remember to speak Greek until I’d already started in English. “The Karacis/Galanos reception? Where is it?” I knew they’d never give me Yiayia’s room number, but even if she hadn’t made it up to the party, someone there would know where to find her, and these friends of mine…

“Garden Terrace, top floor,” the woman behind the counter answered back, also in English.

I thanked her and hit the button for the elevator, but lost patience with it when it didn’t arrive instantly and instead dashed for the staircase just beside it. I reached the top sweatier than I’d intended, but there’d been very little air in the staircase, and even less in my lungs by the time I reached my goal. The stairwell let out on a small alcove, and I followed the noise—and the signs—through a beautiful restaurant enclosed on three sides by glass to take advantage of the views, and out onto a devastatingly beautiful terrace. The outer door was on the Parthenon side of the city, and the view…stunning didn’t even begin to cover it.

But I wasn’t there for the view. In fact, I’d have been just as happy to turn tail and run.

The party was in full swing and none of it safely inside the restaurant. All of the partygoers were packed together on the terrace balcony enjoying the beautiful evening and the city’s most amazing sights. I took a deep breath, then another, trying to get my panicked reaction under control. Just the thought of stepping out onto that balcony—so high, a dead drop below, teeming with people who might accidentally jostle me over the edge… I knew it was irrational, that the hotel would have built the balcony walls high enough to prevent that, but fears weren’t rational, and heights…that was a phobia pure and simple. I didn’t look out the windows in airplanes. I’d never climb to the top of the Empire State Building, and I didn’t want any part of that balcony.

Still, Yiayia and answers. It was a toss up which would be stronger, my fear or my curiosity.

I made myself take a step, then another. And another. Toward the balcony. Toward the press of people, looking for familiar faces to latch on to. I didn’t recognize a good half of the people, and avoided everyone’s gaze, familiar or not, in my search for Yiayia. I didn’t see her. I ignored the waiter who stepped in front of me offering cocktails and stopped dead when I heard a tinkling little laugh. I knew that laugh. My head whipped around searching for the source, and I found her up against the terrace rail—my best friend Christie, and right beside her, hand resting on the small of her back, was Hermes.

Apparently, I’d found the friends Yiayia was talking about. Some of the tension eased up out of my shoulders, as my most immediate sense of pending doom started to ebb. I should have known from the lack of internal alarms that Yiayia couldn’t have been talking about Zeus and Poseidon, but how could I ever have guessed it would be Hermes and Christie?

“Christie?” I said, raising my voice to carry.

She turned from the rail and spotted me even from across the terrace. A smile burst over her face. “You’re here!”

The party seemed to part for her, and then she was kissing me on both cheeks in the European way.

“I’m here,” I answered. No debating that. “But why are you? Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what about your big shoot over in the Riviera?”

“I’ll get there! But it’s days away. Usually I get in a few days early to acclimate, but Greece…France…close enough! When your friend called and offered up his private jet—well, that beats a commercial flight any old time.”

I eyed Hermes. “Private jet?” I asked.

“Being the CEO of a worldwide messenger service has its perks.”

“What I don’t get is why you didn’t take advantage,” Christie said.

I wondered what story he’d given her, but all I got from the look on his face was a challenge. Was I going to blow his cover or maintain his secret identity? There was no fear of the outcome, only interest.

“Yeah,” he said prodding. “You know you can take advantage of me any time.”

Christie swatted at him. “Oh, you!” Like she’d already grown used to his flirting. Like it was old hat. Like it was cute. I gave Hermes the hairy eyeball.

“My tickets were non-refundable,” I lied…or not. Who knew with airline travel these days?

“Oh, well—”

“Can I get you girls a drink?” Hermes asked, sliding a hand down Christie’s back in a way that made me want to slap him. Setting them up…worst idea ever. “Tori, you look like you could use one.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Probably two of the more dangerous words ever spoken. I could just imagine him making it a double, but he was off like a shot before I could take it back.

“Oh. My. God. Why didn’t you tell me about him sooner?” Christie gushed the second he was out of earshot. “You’ve been holding out on me! I mean, sure I’d met him in the middle of all the insanity in San Francisco, but not met him, met him.” I was sure that made sense in her head, if not so much when it came out of her mouth. “And he’s so charming!”

“He is?”

“You don’t see it? How do you not see it?” she gasped.

“Well, of course, I mean, I just think of him more like a brother—”

And speak of the devil. “There you are!” A bearlike arm wrapped around my shoulders. “The prodigal sister returns!” Spiro slurred. He squeezed me too tightly and breathed his beery breath into my ear. “Who is this gorgeous creature you’re chatting up?”

Spiro would see it that way. Last I’d seen him, he’d been hopping mad about me exposing his little love nest with Lenny Rialto’s new wife. I hadn’t meant to reveal it, but that didn’t change the pyrotechnics that resulted and nearly got my family expelled from the circus. It had only been smoothed over with a lot of ouzo, guy talk and, I suspected but couldn’t prove, my brother subsequently seducing Lenny himself when they were in their cups. Oh, and the decision to let me go. Me and only me, for kicking over the whole hornet’s nest.

Rumor had it that our family line had started with the god Pan beer-goggling one of the immortal gorgons. If I’d taken after Medusa’s half of the family with my gorgon glare, Spiro had definitely taken after Pan’s with his libido. If it was pretty and over the age of consent, it was fair game.

“She’s off limits,” I stage-whispered back so that Christie would overhear.

Hermes reappeared at her side as if on cue. “Ouzo,” he said, handing me a glass. “And a white wine spritzer for you,” he continued, bowing to present it to Christie. A spritzer. Probably the girliest of all girlie drinks.

“Where’s Yiayia?” I asked Spiro, trying to distract him from Christie, especially with the god of chaos taking it all in. The last thing any of us needed was him having fun at my brother’s expense. “I tried to call her, but—”

The look of I-know-something-you-don’t-know that flashed across Spiro’s face was not comforting.

“Let me guess, it went to voicemail? She’s probably off with her new—cough—paramour.”

He actually said cough. But that wasn’t the startling part. Yiayia. Dating again. It was… Pappous was barely in his grave…barely two years in his grave, anyway, and I’d thought… Well, I guess I thought that all of her crazy obsessions had taken his place. I couldn’t imagine another person filling it.

“Her what?” As if I’d misheard.

“Anipsi!” Yiayia’s voice rang out behind me, cutting through the babble of the party all around the terrace.

I turned and…and…stared. Every bit as paralyzed as if she’d hit me with the gorgon glare. Yiayia and a young man. Young for her, anyway, by at least twenty years, and with a beard fully as long as her own, starting from some truly impressive mutton chops, flowing down over his chest and out to the sides in a thick handlebar mustache. All of it flaming red. He wasn’t wearing a kilt and a tam, but he might as well have been. He looked like he’d stepped straight away from the Scottish highlands.

Yiayia embraced me, her beard tickling my ear as I hugged her back. She took after the gorgon side of the family for sure, which was how she’d gotten the bearded lady gig with Rialto Bros. When I stepped out of her arms, I noticed that her eyes were glowing. Not literally, like Serena’s, but with happiness.

“Anipsi, let me introduce you to Fergus. Fergus, my favorite granddaughter, Tori.”

Fergus smiled, or so I assumed by the twitching of his facial hair. I couldn’t actually glimpse lips or teeth. I held out a hand and he used it to pull me in for a bear hug, thumping me gently on the back.

“Any relation of Lorelei’s…” I’d known they must be on a first name basis, but still hearing her given name on his lips sounded odd.

Plus, my brain stuck on the question of how on earth they found each other’s lips to kiss. While I tried to steer quickly away from that thought (avert! avert! avert! I insisted, scrambling all my brain cells to turn that ship around), I couldn’t help but wonder about the Velcro effect. Did it take real effort to disengage? Ack!

At least I was no longer thinking about my fear of heights.

“We met at an extreme beard and mustache competition,” Yiayia continued, heedless of the mound of mental floss I was adding to my shopping list. “Fergus beat me. The first time I’ve faced a worthy opponent since puberty.”

“Yiayia!”

“What? I can say puberty. There, I said it again. Puberty, puberty, puberty. Speaking of which, where’s your young man?”

I didn’t even want to think how those two things—Armani and puberty—connected up in her brain.

“He went to freshen up. I’d, ah, better check on him,” I said, retreating like the hounds of Hades were nipping at my heels.

I hurried back through the restaurant and to the elevator, using the time it took to arrive to collect myself.

Yiayia dating.

Hermes and Christie dating.

Apollo and Serena…dating?

My brother on the prowl.

What was it about weddings?

As I stepped into the elevator and contemplated which number to press, I realized I had no idea what room I was going to and no way to call Nick. Yes, finally, finally, it was Nick. With my whole family gone crazy…er than usual, he was the most familiar and least insane thing in my world. Unfortunately, we’d only arranged for one of our phones to work in Greece, figuring we’d be together the whole time and didn’t need the extra expense. I rode the elevator to the lobby, calling Jesus on the way down, knowing he had an international calling plan already.

“Hey, where’s Nick,” I asked, burning to get to him and a semblance of normalcy.

“In your room, I’d guess,” he answered.

“Right, which would be?”

“Oh, number 501.”

“Thanks.”

I disconnected, rode the elevator back up to floor five and knocked on the first door to the left—501. Right next to the elevators. Oh joy. I hoped they were quieter on the outside than on the inside. Nick opened the door at my knock and stood in the entrance in a white dress shirt open down the front, exposing an incredibly nice chest with equally nice abs. I stepped right up to that chest and wrapped my arms around him. Nick eased back into the room, pulling me with him and closing the door behind us.

“You okay?” he asked. He stroked my hair and held me to him, resting his chin on the top of my head, because while I was not diminutive, Nick was tall enough to make me look semi-petite. Or maybe it was being overwhelmed that made me feel small. I listened to his heartbeat and let his breath stir my hair, so content for a moment that I forgot he’d asked a question that required an answer.

“I am now,” I said.

I felt him smile against the top of my head. It made me smile back.

“But—” he said for me.

“But…you know that part in a story summary where it pretty much boils down to and wackiness ensues?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s ensuing.”

He pushed me back from him gently and smoothed the hair away from my face—pushed it aside, anyway. Actually smoothing or taming my vipers’ nest of hair would probably take years of training, not to mention a bullwhip. If Nick could truly accomplish that, he’d fit right in with my family of circus folk. Thank gods he didn’t.

He looked straight into my eyes, his own deep blue lit with amusement and, possibly, a four-letter word I wasn’t yet ready to contemplate. It began with an “l” and ended with commitment.

“Let me just button up, and I’ll help you face the insanity. I’m looking forward to it, actually.”

I smiled back at him, all gorgeous and refreshed as he was, and realized that as little as I usually cared about appearances, I was going to have to step up my game. “Give me a minute to regroup,” I told him.

I dragged my suitcase into the bathroom and did the best I could to make myself presentable, including the world’s fastest shower. At least Christie’s spa day had given me a head start. Even my eyebrows were more or less under control.

When I stepped out twenty minutes later, I was wearing a dress the color of a tawny port that made my amber eyes seem almost gold, low wedge sandals Christie had made me buy, and some smoky eyeshadow. I looked as good as I was going to get, which, even I had to admit, wasn’t half bad. I was no Serena Banks, but I would do.

Nick whistled, and I forced myself not to look around for the cause.

“Thank you,” I said, flushing. Not blushing. “Shall we go?”

Nick got to the door of the room before me and reached for it. “Anything I should know?” he asked.

“I think I’m going to let it be a surprise,” I said mischievously. “Jesus coming with us?”

“He’s right across the hall. He says to knock when we’re ready.”

We knocked and, for a wonder, Jesus was ready. He wore a shirt the color of which I didn’t know how to describe—as if lavender had a pinker twin sister—and a diagonally striped tie the same shade, but deeper and darker, together with bands of deep blue and white. He looked like an Easter egg, but then, what did I know? No doubt it was all designer. Certainly, it fit him like a glove, the shirt like it was tailored for him, showing off the many hours he spent in the gym doing Zumba or hot yoga or whatever the cool kids were doing this week.

“Oh wait, my cuff links!” he said when he was halfway to the door. He was back a second later with a pair of silver and blue cufflinks that…

“Is that lapis?” I asked him. Because the swirl in the Greek key pattern of the cuffs was the exact blue of the stripe in his tie, the color of Armani’s eyes, and the gorgeous lapis lazuli Greece was famous for. “Did you buy those just for the trip?”

Jesus looked away, and I had a sudden suspicion. “It was a bribe, wasn’t it? To work for Apollo.”

He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Maybe.”

I rolled my eyes, since staring him down wasn’t doing any good.

“Jesus.”

“Bosslady,” he said with the same amount of exasperation. “You don’t pay me enough to afford nice things. And anyway, he didn’t have to bribe me. Who could resist a free trip to Greece? I just didn’t want him to think I was easy.”

Nick snorted, and I shot him a look. “You’re not helping.”

He held up his hands as if to say that I should leave him out of it, but his amusement didn’t ebb.

I threw my own hands up into the air, an expression that always made me think about having to catch them on the way back down.

Then I grabbed each man by the crook of the arm and escorted them to the terrace—until the narrowness of the stairs forced me to let them go. When we got to the top I regained Nick’s arm and let Jesus fend for himself.

Nick didn’t slow as we hit the terrace and saw Yiayia with her young man, but he did mumble an, “Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” under his breath.

I smiled. As I’d known it would, having him there, even more disconcerted than I was, relaxed me. I could enjoy his reactions instead of focusing on my own. Meeting my family was definitely a spectator sport.

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused me.

“Yup.”

“Madre de dios,” Jesus said behind us, and I turned, already anticipating the reaction I’d see on his face.

And…it wasn’t what I’d expected.

He looked gobsmacked, all right, but he wasn’t looking in the right place. I followed his gaze across the terrace, tracking the source of his distraction. As far as I could tell, he was looking across at Christie, Hermes and Spiro, who were chatting away in a corner. Spiro was laughing at something one of them had said, the hearty sound carrying easily across the other conversations, just as Christie’s laugh had earlier.

Jesus had met Christie and Hermes before, but Spiro? Was he…oh hell to the no.

I snapped my fingers in Jesus’s face.

“Jesus. Jesus, snap out of it!”

He shook it off and turned on me with irritation. “What?” he asked. “I can look. You’re not the boss of me.”

“Technically, I am. Anyway, trust me, you don’t want him. Spiro’s a heartbreaker.”

His irritation ebbed away in the face of pure, unadulterated lust. “You must introduce us. Wait, you’re not speaking from experience, are you?”

I nodded very gravely. “Sadly, yes. He’s my brother.”

Jesus’s mouth opened and closed, and I grinned at the sight of him speechless for the second time in two days. It had to be some kind of record.

“Come on, let’s get a drink,” I said, turning for the bar, but keeping toward the inner wall, well away from the view and the drop off.

But when Nick and I reached it and turned to find out what Jesus wanted to drink we discovered he was no longer with us. Instead, he was back across the terrace staring in to my brother’s eyes as they shook hands.

Worse yet, my brother didn’t immediately surrender the hand he’d been given.