Hera’s eyes flashed electric blue. Then they calmed and adopted a mighty, motherly quality.

“You are right, stepdaughter,” she said, her voice throaty and deep. “We should have tossed that bit of gold to her the moment it rolled into the hall.” She had reached out then and lifted Athena’s hair gently off of her shoulder. Such an actress. The gesture had seemed so genuine; it had almost fooled Athena herself.

“You hateful witches,” Aphrodite had spat. Angry tears had welled in her eyes. “You’re jealous, that’s what you are.”

“Jealous?” Hera asked innocently. “Jealous of what? Your ability to sleep with men?” She made a soft scoffing sound. “I sleep with Zeus, the greatest of all. Athena—” She laid a hand on Athena’s shoulder. “Athena sleeps with no one, and has no wish to. So go. Go on, Aphrodite. Let your prince dip his little wick into some beautiful woman. What can it matter to us?”

Aphrodite had no response other than to burst into tears and flee. Athena and Hera had watched with catlike smiles. With acid and malice, they had planted the seed of the Trojan War. Aphrodite had cried to her lover, Ares, and he had pledged his allegiance. So she had stolen the Spartan Queen Helen, rather than merely allowing Paris to sleep with her, and Greece went to war with Troy, battering it to the ground, and Cassandra and all of her family with it.

It had been easy. Hera’s cleverness and natural wickedness lent itself to the plan. No one in the world could pull a double-cross or lay a trap like Hera could. A trap like the one she’d set for Athena and Hermes in that bar in the desert.

Athena had known almost immediately. The whole setup reeked of her so-called stepmother. Though she hesitated to impart this hunch to Hermes, who feared Hera above all other goddesses, and with good reason.

Athena leaned her forehead against the cool window glass, and watched the scenery flow by. In the front seat, the conversation stopped in favor of a low and off-key sing-along with Bob Dylan. George had his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow and tapped his stiff fingers against the steering wheel in time to the music. It made her smile, watching him and Hermes sing with their heads thrown back. When he didn’t have his eyeballs plastered to her chest, he seemed like a nice guy.

Hera orchestrated the trap and Poseidon sent his Nereids to do the dirty work. The glamour, though, she thought lazily, the spell to make those ugly Nereids look like people. That’s what gave you away, Aphrodite. That part of the trick was yours. The tables had turned. Allies had shifted. Two thousand years ago, the three of them had made the world burn. Now it seemed they would do it again.

* * *

“Tell me more about these witches.”

Hermes shouted at her from the shower. He was still in the shower, and had been for the last thirty-five minutes. Steam was beginning to curl out in ghostly fingers from beneath the door.

“What more do you want to know?” Athena asked, raising her voice over the noise of the jets of water. She stood at the mirror that stretched over the large basin sink, combing her hair.

“What do you mean ‘more’? You barely told me anything, yet.”

Which was true. They’d slept most of the bus ride up from Kansas City, causing curious titters from the other passengers as they eventually began to wonder if the two ever needed to pee. A couple of fourth graders traveling with an aunt had briefly entered into a very serious double-dog-dare situation regarding which of them would hold a mirror under Hermes’ nose. Then Hermes had started to snore.

“They’re Circe’s witches,” Athena called. “You remember Circe, don’t you? She led a coven on the island of Aiaia.”

“What?” Hermes barked, and she rolled her eyes.

“Come out of there already! Do you know how much water you’re running through?” She tugged at a tangle in her water-blackened hair. “And the inside of that room must look like a sauna.”

Moments later the shower shut off and he emerged, letting out a massive cloud of steam. He ruffled his hair with a towel and smiled, looking pampered in a white Holiday Inn bathrobe. They had rented a standard room after Hermes flashed his puppy-dog eyes. He’d had enough of hoboing.

“Check out the fog,” he said. “It’s like a Van Halen video.” He air guitared, and she smiled in spite of herself. “Nobody uses fog machines anymore. Except I saw the Foo Fighters do it last year. Mostly as a joke.”

Athena tossed her combed hair back over her shoulder. A large, wet stain had soaked into the front of her gray t-shirt. She tapped at the antique silver buckle that adorned her brown leather belt.