“I’m saying he might be alive,” Ares snapped back. “Look here, at the palm print. There was weight behind that.”

“Do you want me to get you a black light and those little flags with numbers on them? And get your damned wolves out of it!” Hermes darted to the desk and threw a paperweight at Panic and Oblivion. It landed among their paws and shattered. They whined and trotted away licking red muzzles.

Ares set his jaw and squeezed fresh blood from his mangled hand.

“Hermes,” Athena said. “Someone should try to track him, if he can be tracked.” She nodded reluctantly at Ares, as if to say, Let him do it. She didn’t want to leave the others, in case the Moirae or Achilles decided to double back.

“Where are we?” she asked, and hoped no one gave the obvious answer of Hephaestus’ house. That much she could tell. From the welded girders decorating the ceiling to the double fireplaces burning hot, the whole place felt like him. Blacksmith of the gods. It even smelled faintly of iron, though that might have been the blood.

“Buffalo,” Henry supplied.

Buffalo. So close to home. So close to her own bed she could practically feel the pillows rising up to meet the backs of her shoulders. She wouldn’t even make them hitchhike. They’d spring for a car. Hell, they’d spring for a driver.

She took a deep breath, and doubled over coughing. Minutes out of the underworld and the feathers came on fast. A bundle of them in her chest all at once, twisting through lung tissue and rib meat like flowers blooming in time-lapse photography. She hacked and spat and bled down deep, holding Odysseus at arms’ length when he tried to help. He couldn’t help. It had to run its course.

When she finally caught her breath, she’d worked up three medium-sized feathers and crunched them in her fists. Another wormed its way out through her third and fourth ribs. That one she yanked, foolishly and too hard. The gash it left was twice as big as if she’d been careful.

Odysseus finally got close enough to put his hand on her shoulder. She smiled at him with bloody teeth.

“Welcome home.”

*   *   *

Ares couldn’t find a trace of Hephaestus. There were no real clues as to whether he had managed to escape, though the sheer amount of blood on the walls and floor suggested he hadn’t. Ares returned empty-handed from following the trail ten minutes after leaving, and a search of the massive home had to be abandoned when they realized they’d be lost in the labyrinth in minutes.

Athena gritted her teeth. Another friend missing and probably lost. Her death of feathers returned with a vengeance. Not a great way to return to the world above. Adding insult to injury, they could not, as it turned out, get a car with a driver. That was thanks to the wolves. Nobody would allow them in a vehicle without being secured in crates, and Ares wasn’t about to secure Oblivion and Panic in crates. So Athena rented an SUV, and drove home with Odysseus sitting shotgun. Ares lounged in the rear seats and smeared blood over everything. The wolves they stuffed into the back cargo space.

Athena glanced into the rearview mirror at Hermes, behind the wheel of the Mustang with Andie and Henry. She wished he’d ridden with them, but he didn’t want to leave Andie and Henry by themselves. And no one could’ve convinced Henry to let Ares or his wolves set finger or paw inside his car.

Then again, maybe it was better. Even with steel and road between them, she couldn’t think of what to say. Part of it was tension, and Ares’ presence like a big, bleeding elephant in the room. But mostly there was simply so much. Where to begin? And once they started, where would it go? Farther, probably, than any of them had the energy for at the moment.

*   *   *

The house. Her house. Athena watched it grow larger as they approached, eyes wide and fingers hugging the steering wheel like an excited child. She wanted to stick her head out the window like a dog. Ares and the wolves had slept on and off during the drive back, but she couldn’t have, even had she not been driving. Odysseus didn’t sleep either. He’d spent too much time unconscious and she’d been below for far too long.

I never want to leave this place again.

But she would, if she survived. She’d seen enough things change during her long life to know that change was the only certainty. Just then, though, she let herself believe that pulling into her driveway was truly coming home. She and Odysseus and Hermes were home.

“I’m ordering from Stanley’s Wok.” Hermes popped out of the Mustang and pulled out his cell. “Any requests?”

Odysseus leaned his head back and moaned. “God, I missed Stanley’s Wok! Just get … the entire left side of the menu.”