“Well, it looks like you might be eating for the next few hours, so I guess we should go ahead.” Cassandra smiled and took off her coat.
“The maps are in Athena’s room.” Hermes jerked his head toward the stairs. “On her desk.”
“Sure, I’ll go get them.” Odysseus crinkled his eyebrows. “Bossy.”
Andie plunked down on the sofa beside Cassandra.
“Do you want me to light some candles or something? Set the mood for the voodoo … that you do…” Andie trailed off. She sounded like Aidan. Always wanting Cassandra to play the part. Trances and smoke and mirrors. Magic words.
“It’ll either work or it won’t.”
Odysseus returned with the maps and spread them out on the coffee table. A few were rolled and needed to be weighted down with coasters. Cassandra breathed deep. Odysseus, Hermes, and Andie all stared expectantly, but the green splotches of forest stretched out across the maps were just green splotches. Nothing jumped out three-dimensionally. Nothing moved.
“I don’t know what Athena thought would happen,” said Cassandra. “That I’d see a miniaturized Artemis X-ing her way through the Congo?” She looked up at Hermes. “You’re never going to find her. She’s probably dead, and how would you even know where to start?”
Odysseus pushed the maps closer. “Just give it a minute.”
She opened her mouth to say there was no point, but what came out was, “Taman Negara.”
“What?”
Cassandra didn’t know. The words meant nothing to her, but when she looked at the map again her finger struck the paper like a dart.
Hermes leaned in. “Malaysia.” He groaned. “Damn you, Artemis. Why not Guatemala? It would’ve been so much closer.”
“Have you ever been there?” Andie asked.
“I’ve been everywhere,” Hermes replied. “Though not for some time. We’ll have to fly into Kuala Lumpur. Get some guides. It’d be faster if I went by myself.”
“Everything would be faster if you went by yourself,” Odysseus said. “But you know how Athena feels about us going out on our own.”
Only Athena went anywhere alone. The others were guarded and watched, paired up in a buddy system like children. Cassandra, Andie, and Henry most of all. Odysseus and Hermes couldn’t leave until Athena returned to take over babysitting the mortals.
Cassandra watched Odysseus study the map. It was a wonder he was allowed to go anywhere. The way Athena looked at him when he wasn’t watching … telling people he was her cousin from overseas had been an idiotic choice. The minute anyone saw them together, they must’ve thought the pair were incestuous perverts.
“When you get back,” Andie said suddenly, “would you … I mean, do you think you could”—she nodded toward the sword—“teach me how to use that?”
“Since when do you want to learn?” Cassandra asked. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with your old life.” Your old life. The words stuck to her tongue. Memories stuck in Cassandra’s head from thousands of years ago. She hadn’t had the choice to remember or not. Athena hadn’t given her one. But Andie was different. And she’d decided to stay herself.
Resentment tightened Cassandra’s throat, but she took a breath. What was done was done, and if she was honest, she wasn’t sure what choice she would’ve made if she had been given one.
“It’s not that I want to be another person. Or the old me,” Andie said. “It’s just that I feel different. Stronger. Almost like my arms remember”—she looked at the sword—“holding something like that.”
“Rumor had it you were better with a bow,” Odysseus said, and to Cassandra’s disbelief, Andie blushed.
“And,” Andie said, “I’m quitting hockey.”
“What?”
“It just doesn’t seem important.”
“Before any of this happened, it was all you thought about.”