8
Apollo
The day we leave for the house party, I pick up Cassandra on the curb outside her apartment. As I step out of the car, I can’t help looking around with displeasure. We’re a few blocks from the upper warehouse district, and while crime in Olympus isn’t something of overt concern, it doesn’t change the fact that Cassandra lives alone and the door leading up to her apartment doesn’t seem very secure. I frown at it as she comes through, battling two oversize suitcases. “I could kick that down with one blow.”
“If you do that, I’ll lose my deposit, so maybe let’s not.” She shoves one suitcase at me. “Here, take this.”
“I’m not going to kick down your door.” I reach past her and pull it shut firmly enough to hear the lock engage. Then I rattle it. “I wouldn’t even have to kick it. Gods, Cassandra, you should let me set you up somewhere safer.”
“It’s a moot point.”
Because she’s leaving. Right. I blink down at her. I didn’t realize how close we were standing, but I almost have her pinned between me and the door. The memory of our kiss washes over me. I can still taste her on my lips, even though it’s been days. It wasn’t nearly enough. I want her pressed against me. I want my hands all over her. I actually shift a little closer before I register the suitcase she keeps between us like a shield… I give myself a shake. “Sorry.”
“The door is fine.” She brushes past me and heads for the car idling at the curb. “I’ve managed to live here for years without someone kicking it down, so I don’t expect they’re going to do it in the next week.” She flicks her hair off her shoulder. “Not everyone can afford to live in a gilded tower, Apollo.”
“If you’d let me—”
“You don’t pay for Hector’s housing.” She starts to wrestle the suitcase into the trunk, and I have to abandon the one I’m holding to nudge her aside and handle it. Cassandra huffs out a breath. “Honestly, Hector’s been with you longer, and he barely makes more than me.”
Something akin to embarrassment heats the back of my neck, but I keep my expression impassive. “How would you know what Hector makes?”
“I asked him.”
It’s not, strictly speaking, forbidden for employees to talk about wages among themselves, but I wish Hector had been a little less frank. “You’re worth what I pay you.” Truly, she’s worth more. Her insight is priceless when it comes to divining people’s intentions. She’s much better at reading people and situations than I am.
“I’m not arguing that.” The way she says it makes me think someone argued it at some point, but she continues before I have a chance to question her further. “But there are plenty of people who already think I’m sleeping with you so you’ll pay my bills, so having you move me somewhere up-city would make that unbearable.”
I understand what she’s saying. I do. But I can’t help arguing as I wrestle her second suitcase into the trunk. “You don’t care what anyone in Olympus thinks of you. Why would you deprive yourself of a safe place to live just because people would talk? They already talk.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
I slam the trunk closed and circle around to hold the door for her. She looks lovely today, wearing a sundress with a floral pattern on it. I’ve never been so attracted to flowers in my life.
Cassandra slips into the car and sighs. “Gotta love air-conditioning. It’s hotter than Hades outside.”
“Hades isn’t that hot.” I’m a liar. He’s ridiculously sexy in a broodish sort of way, and he only seems to have gotten more so now that he’s happily married. Every time he looks at his wife, he practically lights up the room, which only increases his overall attractiveness. Not that he’s aware of it.
“Yes, he is, but that’s not what I meant and you know it.”
I do know it. I’m also not going to let her distract me from my earlier question. “Explain what you mean. What don’t I understand?”
Cassandra leans back against the seat. “You’re not an asshole.”
I blink. “Thanks?”
“It’s a compliment.” She sounds mildly furious. “If you were anyone else, I’d happily take you for everything you had, but you’re the reason I’m able to put Alexandra through school right now. Asking for more is just ridiculous.”
I try to parse through all that. The logic is a strange sort of twisted, but she’s right. It is a compliment. Still, there’s something I can’t leave alone. I stifle the urge to take her hand—there’s no one here to watch us—and settle back against the seat. It will take just under two hours to reach Minos’s country home. We have time. “Cassandra.”
“Apollo.” She mimics my tone. “You’re about to say something unreasonably logical, and it’s going to piss me off.”
“Without a doubt.” I spare a smile. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. I value your input. I’m not bringing you to this party because you’re a beautiful distraction. You see things I don’t. It’s why I pay you so much, and it’s why I’d happily pay you more. If the only criteria for this task were a pretty face and gorgeous body, there are plenty of others to choose from. I need your keen mind at my side.”
She looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. “I don’t know how to deal with what you just said, so I’m going to ignore it.”
“Cassandra—”
She holds up a hand. “We only have so much time before we’re at Minos’s place. I’m assuming we won’t easily be able to have frank conversations on the property?”
“No.” I shake my head slowly. She’s right that we need to tie up any loose ends before we get there, but I can’t shake the feeling that she just changed the subject because she isn’t comfortable with the compliment. That doesn’t make any sense, though. Cassandra is one of the most confident people I know. Why would she be uncomfortable with my honest appreciation?
It takes more effort than it should to focus properly. “We have to assume he’s bugged the place, both with audio and potentially video.”
She narrows her eyes. “He’ll expect you to sweep the room, at least, and remove anything you find.”
“Yes.” I am Olympus’s spymaster. Minos is canny enough to know that, and he’ll expect me to take precautions. That’s the true rub. He knows I’m coming to this party to find information and yet he still invited me. It’s a dare. “I have a solution to the cameras. It’s blunt, and normally I’d just play along and pretend I didn’t realize they were there, but I won’t let anything that happens at this party harm you.”
Cassandra waves that away. “My reputation has been in tatters since before you met me. Besides, this is a fake relationship, so it’s not as if we’re in danger of having him film and leak a sex tape. If it serves your purpose to keep the cameras in place, don’t let me be the reason you don’t.”
Sex tape.
An image slams into my head, too quick to resist. Me on my back, holding my phone. Cassandra astride me and…
I abruptly stare out the window. The city has given way to rolling countryside. I focus on the trees, counting them until I have control of my body’s response. When I finally turn back, she’s looking at me strangely again.
“I won’t let any harm come to you. The cameras go.” The statement comes out too harsh, too bold.
“Okay. I trust you.” Her easy belief in me is staggering, but she continues before I can fully process. “I don’t suppose you have blueprints of the house?”
“No.” The admission grates. “It used to belong to Hermes.” Hermes is one of the few members of the Thirteen that I have next to no information on. She took the title about a year after me. The Hermes title is transferred by virtue of stealing an unstealable object or acquiring a piece of information about one of the Thirteen that no one else knows. This Hermes did both.
She appeared out of nowhere. No past, no active connections to any of the legacy families, no motive that I can see. She stood before the rest of us and recited things about the others that not even I knew while holding an heirloom vase from my family’s vault. No one contested the truth of those facts, and she was instated as Hermes immediately.
Since then, she’s been an agent of chaos, but she seems to genuinely want to protect Olympus. I wouldn’t call her an ally, but she’s not an enemy.
I think.
Either way, despite her apparent lack of boundaries and deep love of breaking and entering, Hermes is intensely private when it comes to her own home. Frankly, I’m shocked she sold this place to Minos. The country might not suit her, but she’s owned the house since she took over the title.
“Well, shit.” Cassandra sighs. “Then it’s bound to be full of surprises. Hermes’s sense of humor is too twisted not to have secret passageways and the like. It would appeal to her.”
I can’t argue that, though the familiar way she speaks of Hermes has my curiosity stirring. “Most likely.”
She hesitates. “I’m still surprised you didn’t manage to get the blueprints. The house didn’t spring out of nothing. Someone built it. If you can’t get to it through permits, applying pressure to one of the workers is the next best thing.”
I love that she already made that logical jump. I shake my head. “I tried. She didn’t use any of the known contractors in the upper city.”
“She went to the lower city.”
I smile reluctantly. “That’s my theory. And they have no love for me as a member of the Thirteen, so it’s a dead end.” Not to mention Hades wouldn’t have thanked me for trespassing in his domain. There are circumstances when it would behoove me to test him, but not over something as mundane as this. It aggravates my curiosity to no end that I don’t know what Hermes did to the building after she acquired it, but ultimately it’s a country house that I would never set foot in.
Or so I thought.
Cassandra examines her long red fingernails. “Will Hermes be at the party?”
“I don’t know.” The guest list is another thing that’s been kept under wraps. Minos hasn’t kept a convenient list to peruse, at least not digitally.
“Poor Apollo,” she murmurs. Her eyes are alight with amusement. “It must be aggravating to have run into so many dead ends. So we need to map the house as quickly as possible, find out where Minos keeps the keys to the kingdom, and use them to unlock his mysteries.”
“Nice metaphor.”
“I try.”
We share a grin that quickly becomes…something else. It’s my fault. My gaze falls to her lips, and despite my best efforts, I can’t help thinking about that kiss the other night again. She’d tasted of wine and had practically melted when I deepened the contact.
Not even cold showers were enough to combat that memory over the weekend. I haven’t had my body take over so intensely since I was a teenager, but back then, I was jacking myself to whatever I could find on the internet that suited my tastes.
These days, my fantasies all revolve around one woman.
Cassandra frowns. “I don’t understand why this is all necessary, though. If Minos bargained for information in exchange for his citizenship, why hasn’t he given that information?”
“He has.” I shrug. “Or so he says. He was recruited to a militant group fifteen years ago, but according to him, he was part of a cell that was only informed about the Ares tournament. Which we already knew, since he showed up here for that event. We don’t know anything about their leader, their motivations, or their plans.”
“You think he’s still working for them?”
“That’s what I am to find out. He says he defected. We’re not naive enough to believe it. I need evidence of correspondence or a money trail or something to prove he’s still answering to the enemy.”
“Okay. That makes sense. We need to get you access to Minos’s personal computer, since I doubt he’s got paper files just hanging out with incriminating evidence.” Cassandra licks her lips. “I, uh, suppose we’ll be doing more kissing this week.”
“Yes.” The word is low. A command I’m practically daring her to challenge. If she did…
Well, it doesn’t matter, because she just gives a jerky nod. “All for the cause, right? I’ve kissed worse people for shittier reasons.”
I don’t like to think about her kissing worse people for shittier reasons. I have very intentionally not looked into Cassandra’s private life. Oh, everyone in the city is aware her parents were killed in a car crash after displeasing Zeus—and I know the truth behind that public lie—and that she and her sister were publicly shunned afterward.
That’s one thing. Her personal life is something else.
I don’t pry. I don’t check up on her. I don’t ask her who she’s dating or why she’s changed her perfume and started wearing redder lipstick about a year into working for me. I had thought she might be seeing someone, but she wouldn’t have agreed to Zeus’s bargain if she was. She wouldn’t be leaving her partner behind when she walks out of Olympus for good.
Except all that’s an excuse, isn’t it?
I don’t care if she is seeing someone. I will keep my priorities in order and find the answers Minos wants to keep hidden, but I won’t lie; I am greedy for every minute with Cassandra. After this week, all I’ll be left with are my memories of her. I only have seven days to shore up a lifetime’s worth of them.
I don’t know if it’s going to be enough.