Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) Page 9

  Chapter 9

  I'd like to say that after our quick discussion with Odin, Thor changed tune. I'd like to say that after it was impressed upon him by his own ruddy father that this situation was of the important, potentially world-ending variety, that the hammer-wielding god got down to business.

  I would be lying.

  If I’d thought the prospect of Ragnarok was one that would put a firecracker under Thor's butt and get him at least acting, if not proactively, then I was wrong.

  Sometimes it felt like the triple-god was on the wrong side of adulthood. After countless millennia of being a tough and in-charge guy, he was still growing up.

  If I’d entertained a glimmer of hope that old golden beard would slick back his eyebrows and get on with saving me proper and saving the rest of the universe at the same time, I was sorely mistaken.

  Instead of going straight to the Integration Office, or making an appointment with one of the wise goddesses, or booking a ticket to an oracle somewhere – we ended up in the Ambrosia.

  Yep, that's right. The world was ending, I was being hunted by a trio of powerful and angry gods, and Thor sat across the table from me enjoying happy hour.

  Thor chucked back another ale. He jerked his head, slamming the glass into his face, the golden ale sloshing all over his cheeks and down his beard. Rather than pool down the sides of his mouth and splatter across his clothes, the liquid disappeared the instant it touched him.

  I glared at him. I sat in a large overcoat, which I’d borrowed off a passing mystery god, and had my arms tightly crossed around my middle as my eyes narrowed further every time Thor gulped back another ale. I was still in my bedraggled PJs underneath the overcoat, and they were still damp. My hair was a sandy, dirty, clinging mess that stuck to my neck and itched the skin something shocking. My feet were also bare and unclean.

  Thor looked the picture of perfection. Inexpertly-drinking perfection anyway. He was still in his shiny, powerful armor. I’d suggested – being dirty and bedraggled – that both of us should find the time to change before hitting the streets and finding out who wanted to destroy the universe. Thor had grabbed my wrist and pulled me on (something he was doing an awful lot, especially when I complained about anything at all). He had assured me there was no time to change. The universe was in jeopardy and we had to save it regardless of what we were wearing.

  He'd taken me straight to the Ambrosia. Fortunately, we had gone through the back door, as the sight of a giant, magical-armor wearing Nordic god and one dirty and bedraggled pj-wearing details goddess wouldn’t be a welcome sight on most city streets.

  Thor was slowly gathering his entourage around him. At first, his usual drinking buddies seemed unsure about my presence at the table. They rightly thought that having the immigration officer sitting next to them would spoil some of their fun (especially if their fun consisted of recounting all the illegal and frankly un-hilarious exploits they'd gotten up to like racing titans in diamond mines and setting off volcanoes to roast marshmallows).

  I sat there, dripping, itching, and seriously put out.

  What an ass.

  “Details,” Thor roared, downing his two-hundredth beer. He was acting drunk, though he couldn't become inebriated (no matter how much alcohol he consumed, I doubted anything could make him stupider). “Stop looking at me like that, Details,” Thor said as he banged a giant hand down on the table and leaned in with a massive ear-to-ear grin.

  All the other gods at the table cheered at the move. They would cheer at anything. If Thor declared that two plus two equals four, they would all give a rip-roaring cry of joy. If Thor declared that he was potty trained, then they'd bring the roof down with their cheerful shouts.

  I let my teeth sink so far into my bottom lip I could have chewed right through it.

  He pointed a finger at me. “You know what you lack, Details?”

  All the other gods leaned in. The god of merriment who sat next to me hiccupping with constant laughter, leaned in so far that he jostled my arm, making my wet, sandy hair slap me in the face.

  He was like an eager puppy waiting for his master to throw him a titbit. They all were – all of these gods were hanging off Thor's words as if being here with him was the best thing the universe had to offer.

  “You lack imagination,” Thor said, and there was a flicker in his eye. His tone was still jovial and his words still elicited a raucous and out-of-proportion laugh.

  “I lack imagination,” I repeated and shook my head. I wasn't about to point out that if these groupie-gods thought sitting and watching Thor drink beer with all the accuracy of a potato gun was rewarding, then they lacked imagination, too.

  “Yes.” He leaned back, resting his hand on the table.

  He looked serious.

  Everyone laughed and laughed.

  For my part, I let my fingers curl up until my neat nails dug neat and evenly into my palms. What a total jerk. “If I lack imagination, Thor,” I said, hardly able to unclench my jaw, “What do you lack then?”

  A quick hush of silence ran along the table. They were all waiting for Thor to come back with a semi-lame, but still laughable comeback, or for him to reach over and bang me on the head.

  “What I lack, Details, is something you will have to find out.” He smiled, grabbed his ale, and tipped it down his throat.

  This grew only a smattering of laughter.

  Damn him, I thought for the millionth time. Damn him for being who he was. Damn him for being powerful, damn him for being assigned to me, and triple damn him for bloody existing.

  I rose. It was a quick move and my chair tumbled out from behind me. I turned sharply. I was sick of this bloody—

  Thor grabbed my wrist quicker than I could blink. “You aren't going to go get yourself in more trouble, are you, Details?” he asked almost languidly, and he slowly turned his head over to stare up at me (though across at me was more accurate, because though Thor was still seated, he was a man of godly proportions).

  The groupies cooed and chuckled. Ah yes, they had all heard about my escapade in the flood drains several days ago, if not my recent adventures in Egypt and Greece. They were all under the impression that Thor was begrudgingly protecting me from some small-time immigration-officer-hating divinities. The begrudging bit was right, but the small-time bit was totally wrong.

  This was huge, this was enormous, this was terrible. I was being hunted for god knows what reason (because, presumably, some god did know the reason). Yet here Thor was, taking it as seriously as 200 ales and a happy-hour party could allow for.

  I yanked at my wrist, intending to pull it free. I could hardly move it. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I snapped at him.

  He held my gaze, almost looking like the Thor who had saved me from his perpetually evil, once best friend. He grinned. “Be sure to scream if any sea monsters try and attack you from the toilet.”

  The god-groupies howled with laughter. Apparently toilet humor was still comedic gold for all-knowing divinities.

  He let my hand go. I could have bloody slapped him, if it weren't for the fact it would shatter my arm. Still, the sentiment was there.

  I walked away so stiffly that my muscles were twanging.

  By the time I made it into the bathroom, my jaw was so tight my teeth felt as though they would pop from my mouth like a spring under strain.

  The bathroom of the Ambrosia wasn't what you would expect. It was a bath house, for one, and not a set of toilet stalls. Gods didn't need to go to the bathroom – they didn’t, to put it delicately, expend waste common to humans and animals. Gods were sustained on belief, not high-fiber cereals.

  Gods still had bathrooms. They had a few more baths, pools, palm trees in pots, and candles than your usual toilet stall.

  The bathroom of the Ambrosia was modeled on one of the old baths of Rome. There were beautiful frescos and statues everywhere. There were also, inexplicably, palm trees in pots. It was funny how gods picked up the apparent wealth-i
ndicators of whatever time they were in. In Rome, a couple of nice gilded statues and a sweet many-roomed marble palace were usually enough to indicate how posh a place was. In modern times, however, it was palm trees in pots. Lots of them.

  I’d put off coming to the bathroom the moment we'd gotten to the Ambrosia for several reasons. Firstly, I had stupidly harbored the hope that all of this had been part of Thor's plan. Perhaps he was coming here to get some god gossip – to try to find out from the other divinities what the word on the street was. The second reason, however, was that... I hated going to the public goddess baths. Why? I was unpopular wherever I went. Also, I was wearing human bed ware, I was hideously dirty, and everyone would know by now that I'd been saved recently, and humiliatingly, by Thor.

  I blew air through my teeth as I walked through the doors. They were gilded, of course.

  The bathhouse was huge – impossibly huge considering the small space the Ambrosia took up from the look of the building outside. This room alone sprawled more like a complex, with interconnected domed-ceilinged rooms housing baths of varying shapes and sizes. They were all magnificently decorated and smelt of wonderful oils and scents.

  They were also full of the kind of goddesses I didn't want to pull off my jacket to reveal my clothes in front of. There was a certain type of goddess who frequented god bars like the Ambrosia. The kind who would hang off a certain type of god's arm – like Thor – and giggle, twitter, and hiccup cutely every time said god said anything at all.

  I sucked at my teeth, my hand hovering over the tie in my jacket. I was a mix of angry, worried, embarrassed, and uncaring.

  A tall, slim, beautiful flower goddess walked past me, her skin glistening like the morning dew on my white roses. She looked down at me, her bright eyes lingering on the protruding bottoms of my dirty pants. She raised a single eyebrow, swallowed a smile, and walked off with a single high-pitched twitter.

  Twittering – it was something that birds did, I replied in my head.

  Damn it. I gave a heavy sigh, patted the tie on my jacket, and let my hand drop. If only I could return home and have a bath in my own modest non-gilded bathroom. I could hop into some clean, non-sea-monster ripped clothes, and climb into a simple, non-godly bed.

  Except I couldn't. I had to... what? Return to Thor's side and watch him drink the night away while all I could do was imagine what would happen to me next? Not that I could imagine it – I could only become bogged down by the details until they....

  I put a hand up to my head. The damn thing was throbbing with a familiar pain.

  I waited until it subsided, then shot several blinking glares at the room and the swanking goddesses around me. Sod this, I decided, and turned on my heel to leave.

  Someone grabbed my wrist. A tingle escaped across my back, but then the tingle died when a face came down by mine.

  Dear lord, it was Hera. Hera, known official wife-kind-of-thing of Zeus. Their relationship was complicated – everyone knew that. They had been on-again off-again for millennia.

  The same Hera had one manicured hand clasped around my wrist, and it was clasped tightly. Any tighter and I'd have to get some bolt cutters to snap her fingers loose.

  I took a quick look from her cast-iron grip up to her face. “Um,” I began.

  In all my time as Immigration Officer for Earth, I'd had precious little to do with Hera. Hera was a permanent resident. She rarely travelled away from Earth at all. From what I'd heard, she ran a successful wedding-planner business and had a couple of posh places scattered across Greece and Italy. She was what you might call one of the better-integrated gods. She had many dealings with the humans, and she kept all of them civil and within the non-interference rules of the Integration Office.

  Before her recent vise-gripping moment, I would have called Hera one of the better goddesses out there. She wasn't a walking bimbo, like some of them, and she stuck to the rules without complaint, unlike most of them.

  She was, however, staring down at me, her peacock earrings jingling as she shook her head from side-to-side. She looked angry, exquisitely angry.

  “What have you been up to?” she said, her lipstick-clad lips puffing out with each word. Her eyes glittered not in a pleasant, star-like way, but more like diamonds reflecting a ravaging, all-consuming fire.

  I stared up at her. Really? Could I add Hera to the growing list of gods who had it in for me? What had I done to her?

  Other goddesses started to gather behind Hera, and most of them had their arms crossed and their eyes narrowed. They were Hera's groupies, I realized with a swallow. Just as Thor had a table-full of his own giggling yes-men, Hera had a gaggle of yes-ladies. Most of the powerful gods and goddesses did.

  I slowly tried to pull against Hera's grip. It didn't work. She had a hold of me and had no intention of letting go. “Umm,” I answered, “I haven't been doing much,” I said, though it was a lie. I'd had an extraordinarily busy couple of days. Except, for my part, I’d only been running from things. I hadn’t been building things, destroying things, plotting things, or kissing things – I’d just been running.

  From the look in Hera's eyes, I could tell she thought differently. “Understand that he is my husband,” she said slowly. She obviously thought she was either talking to the hard of hearing or the extremely stupid.

  I blinked slowly back at her – confirming everything she thought about me. “Sorry?”

  “Even in this form, understand,” she leant in, “That he is mine.”

  Dear god.

  Hera's groupies all narrowed their eyes, several of them tapping their long fingernails against their bare arms. They looked ready – should it come to it – for a one-sided cat-fight.

  I gave out a pop of a laugh. I knew – hell, everyone knew – of Hera's extraordinary jealousy. Once upon a time I'd thought the goddess had been justified. Zeus was legendarily disloyal to his on-again off-again official wife-thing. That Hera put up with him was a miracle. Except now Hera was tightening her grip on my wrist and staring into my eyes, one lip kinking to the side like a sneering caricature.

  “Oh, I'm not with Thor,” I said in a high, almost wheezing tone. Also, I wanted to point out, Thor was not Hera's husband. Different pantheon, dear. But I knew Hera's legendary jealousy wasn't going to be put off by the fact her apparent husband had grown a couple of feet and had a yellow beard. Plus, the exact demarcation between gods with multiple identities was a confusing one at the best of times.

  I kept silent and tried to smile encouragingly.

  Hera pushed her face closer to mine, her peacock earrings brushing against my cheeks and making me blink. “Listen to me, you small-time goddess. I will not have—“

  I pulled at my hand. Guess what? I broke free. It was a sudden thing. Just as I’d momentarily been able to resist Thor dragging me back through the Door of the Dead, I was able to break free of Hera's grip. Which was somewhat surprising considering who she was and who I wasn't. Hera was a big-time goddess. As Zeus’ maybe-wife and as one of the official goddesses of Olympus, she was powerful, very powerful. As the numerous sea monsters that had attacked me recently had proven, a divinity or creature's power was what mattered when it came to strength. It wasn't going to be down to who had bigger biceps. It was down to who had bigger belief. So Hera should outweigh me, hands down....

  Except with one simple tug, I broke free.

  Hera looked pallid with frustration. Whether it was from a small-time goddess somehow besting her, or from the prospect that the same small-time goddess was wooing one of the functional god-identities of her maybe-husband – I didn't know. I did see her gaze shift ferociously from my hand to my face, though.

  I took several hearty steps backwards, bringing my hands up in a plea of defense. “Look,” I said as I continued to back towards the door. “I didn’t... I have not – I never would,” I tried to force the words out, but they were all frightfully jumbled. “There's nothing going on between us!” I managed as my back rested against the
doors.

  Hera didn't seem ready to take my jumbled plea as fact, and marched towards me, her arms held stiffly at her sides and her fingers curled wickedly.

  I ran. Again. This was starting to become a habit of mine. As someone who usually went from work straight back to feeding her cat and mulching her roses, I rarely had the need to run or jog. Sometimes I had to walk somewhat fast when I smelt my muffins burning, though.

  I pushed against the doors, opened them easily, and darted back into the main room of the Ambrosia. I headed unashamedly straight back to Thor's table. Though I did, for a split second, entertain the possibility of bolting from the joint. All this business of interacting with other gods was what had seen me being hunted, I was sure of it. Until that fateful day when I'd met up with Tolus and hopped down into the flood tunnels, I’d been a normal, decent, and self-contained goddess, always dressed sensibly and neatly. Now look at me? Running from the semi-wife of one of my current protector's other identities – this was the junk plot the pulp-fiction gods would churn out over too much coffee and too many giant chocolate-chip cookies.

  The thought of running home and trying to ignore everything until it went back to normal lingered. But I found my legs pulling me back to Thor's table. I was in such a state of confusion that I ran right into my chair. The only problem was, my chair was being occupied by a rock god. I ran into him and it was very much like running into a solid wall. I rebounded immediately and fell flat on my back with a resounding thud.

  Bloody hell.

  Thor leaned over the table and peered down at me, as the other gods laughed heartedly. It would have looked funny. One messy goddess in an overly large mysterious-overcoat running right into a giant rock-man and falling flat on her butt.

  Ha, ha, ha.

  I put a hand up and covered my face, blocking them all out as I lay there.

  Yes. That's it, I was going to stay here with my hand on my face, lying on the floor of the Ambrosia until everything went away.

  I heard Hera stomp up beside me. I heard her, because somehow those amazingly high high-heels she always wore made a distinct and angry clicking noise, somewhat like a fashionable and angry crab.

  I kept my hand over my face.

  “Details,” Thor snapped at me, and he almost sounded concerned, “Sea monsters in the bathroom?” he quipped, then his voice seemed to die in his throat.

  I fancied, though I still had my fingers clutched over my eyes, that he’d looked up to see Hera stamp over to him. Oh, the look on his face would be priceless.

  “Hera?” Thor's voice took on a controlled tone.

  “Thor,” Hera lingered on the th sound for too long.

  I was more than willing to continue to lie still until everything erupted, then crawl off under some table somewhere to curl up into a ball of abject pity – but then something kicked me. It was sharp, it was quick, and it was the pointy end of a shoe.

  “Ow,” I dodged to the side, removing my hand from my face.

  Hera stared down at me, her make-up clad eyes so narrowed they almost closed. Hera was one of the only other goddesses apart from me who regularly wore human clothes. Except whereas I tended towards sensible business apparel that could be bought for reasonable prices at the local clothing store, Hera wore high-end fashion. She was currently wearing a well-fitting, swanky high-cut skirt and flouncy blouse with a pair of monstrously pointy high-heels. She also had a shiny, expensive golden choker around her throat. Oh, and a wedding ring on. Zeus and her were obviously more on-again than off-again. Which would explain the malignant look she was giving me.

  She went to kick me again, but I dodged out of the way.

  Sea monsters, evil gods, and being kicked by divine wedding-planners – what next?

  I pushed to my feet, not wanting to get into a goddess cat-fight with Hera in front of a table-full of Thor groupies. They would take bets, cheer inappropriately, and ask the god of maize for some quick popcorn.

  I need not have bothered. Hera had her full attention turned on Thor.

  Thor slowly crossed his arms and stared at her. It was hardly an endearing, lovey-dovey move. Just the opposite. “How many times have I told you, Hera, when I’m Thor, I’m not Zeus,” he said his words slowly and clearly. It gave the impression that this was something Thor had repeated often in his life.

  “Don't you give me that multiple identities crap,” Hera spat as she clamped her hands around her middle and tapped one of her shoes over and over again. “When you are Zeus, you are my husband. And darling, underneath, you are always Zeus. The golden beard and hammer doesn't change who you are. It doesn't give you an excuse to be hanging around with tramps.” Hera sliced her gaze my way.

  Tramp? I was a tramp now? Technically, in my current garb, I did resemble one meaning of the word, but not the one Hera intended. The divine wedding-planner was suggesting that I – clean loving goddess of details who spent all her nights at home with a book and a cat – was the divine equivalent of a loose woman.

  I was wearing my PJs, for Pete’s sake. Any of the other golden-skinned, twittering, tiny-toga-wearing goddesses sitting at Thor's table were a better candidate for trying to catch the Nordic god's eye than me.

  Thor started off with a low laugh which only got louder until it boomed out in great whoops. “Tramps?” He slid his gaze over to me, caught my eye, then laughed louder.

  It was when everyone else – minus Hera – joined in that it happened. I snapped. I pushed to my feet stiffly.

  Screw it. I'd had enough with being the butt of his ridiculous jokes. Enough of waiting around with Thor as he drank away precious time that should be used saving me/the entire freaking universe. If he was this irresponsible, then so be it. I wasn't going to wilt in his company and receive volley after volley from his maybe-wife.

  “This small-time goddess—“ Hera began. Her tone was vicious on the word goddess.

  “Shut up, Hera,” I said firmly. There was such a note of... authority in my voice that the beer mugs on the table beside us rattled. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to your insults. I have told you there is nothing going on between your possible husband and me. If you don't believe me, that's an issue you are going to have to take up with your overactive, paranoid imagination. Now get out of my way.” I didn't puff out my chest as I spoke, I didn't glare, I didn't clamp my hands on my hips. I let the words flow. The details of them... seemed to flow together somehow – the tone, the timing, the volume.

  A terrible pain snaked through my brow, but I wasn't about to follow up on my single act of defiance against Hera with an “Ow, I've got a headache.” Instead, I held her gaze and walked off.

  Hera didn't lash out at me with her high-heels, nor did she call up her godly powers and try to zap my head off. Nope, she looked... shocked. It was probably the first time a so-called small-time goddess had stood up to the precious maybe-wife of Zeus. She must have been momentarily overcome by the suddenness of it... and the exact tone I’d somehow hit. It had been authoritative. It had suggested a power I didn’t have. It was the same tone Odin might have used to shock and awe anyone who dared scratch his throne.

  It left a tingling in my chest and arms, and the more I concentrated on the sensation, the more my head hurt.

  It didn't stop me from stalking away from the table, head held as high as I could manage.

  The place was as silent as deep space as I walked away from Hera. All the assembled gods and goddesses had stopped what they were doing – their ale mugs halfway to their lips or their heads half tossed back, mid-laugh. They were all waiting for what would inevitably come next.

  Hera's reaction to Zeus’ various lovers – whether confirmed, or innocent, as in my case – was the stuff of legend. The viciousness, the violence, the single-minded willingness to hunt them down and turn their lives into the embodiment of misery.

  While a majority of Zeus’ romantic-equivalent side-servings were of the pouting human damsel kind (though not so much these days with al
l the anti-interference laws), it wasn't unheard of for him to dip into the goddess basket, too. Based on experience, Hera had every right to believe Thor/Zeus was up to something. Based on how she reacted to such experience, every single god and goddess in this room knew she was about to attack me viciously and screaming at the top of her lungs from behind.

  As I mentally steeled for the attack, something happened: there was a rustling of leaves. It wasn't all that distinct, it wasn't all that loud, it wasn't all that noticeable. Somewhere far off, at the edge of the room (or at the edge of my senses), I heard the gentle shifting of leaves under a slight breeze. While it could have been a draft unsettling any number of laurels or tree gods, it felt different. The bare sense of it sent such a tingle through my gut that I felt giddy from shock.

  Blinking and twisting my lips in, I tried not to stumble as I walked, yet I couldn't help but slow.

  “How dare you!” Hera shrieked from behind.

  I hardly heard her. She sounded as though she was at the edge of hearing, and the incessant rustling of leaves was growing until it threatened to press in on me from above.

  I stopped moving, parking myself right in the middle of the room, jaw humorously slack as I stared above at the moving leaves I could hear but couldn't see.

  I got the impression of a warm welcome light filtering in through young, tender foliage. The green of spring and the golden glow of the sun beckoning me on.

  Then something smacked me right in the back of the head. It made a terrible thwacking sound and felt suspiciously like the back of a chair.

  I fell forward, but didn't drop to my knees. It was more of a dignified stumble. Though the chair had been flung at me with full-force by one of the most powerful goddesses of the Greek pantheon, it was more of a surprise and less of a concern.

  I wasn't injured.

  I turned to the side, putting a hand up to the back of my head. It didn't hurt. It was an automatic move at being struck with a heavy object from behind.

  Hera, face a hotter red than the lava that spewed from Mount Etna, still held the chair easily in one hand. With a vicious twist of her mouth, her eyes pulled shut from the anger clawing across her face, she swung the chair right at my head again.

  From her expression, to her movement, to the light glinting off the chair – I saw it all at once. Every detail.

  I put up a hand, grabbing the chair leg and stopping it in place an inch from my face. Despite Hera's huge, grunting effort, she couldn't shift it from my grip.

  I could feel the grain of the wood against the skin of my hand, and the wood only served to remind me of those rustling leaves.

  I was aware of the fact I stared over at Hera with a confused look on my face.

  She looked out of breath and shocked. “What?” she puffed at me as she tried to yank the chair from my grip. “How are you doing this?” she spat through a tight jaw.

  She gave another almighty (literally) tug on the chair, and the thing snapped in two. I kept one of the legs. She got the rest. The force of her effort sent her stumbling backwards, face still a picture of sneering shock.

  For my part, I kept my lips closed and my head cocked to the side, as my eyes wondered from side-to-side trying to locate the origin of that damn rustling.

  Hera – because she was Hera, and wasn't about to let the surprise of a small-time goddess besting her in a chair fight stop her – came at me again. Except this time it was fist-cuffs. With nothing but the look of calculated, frightful, impending vengeance on her face and her fingers curled into the equivalent of grappling hooks, the wedding-planner launched herself at me.

  I noticed it like you might when you take a quick glance out the window to check what the weather is outside. It was a fact, but not one that had much importance for me.

  Then reality snapped back with a twang. With no more edge-of-awareness rustling to keep me distracted, I realized in a single strangled heartbeat that Hera – a goddess ten times more powerful than me – was seconds away from ripping me to shreds.

  I screwed my eyes shut and gave a pathetic yelp as I slammed my hands over my face.

  I need not have bothered – Hera didn't reach me. There was a half-strangled puff of air, and I opened one of my eyes between the gaps in my fingers and saw that Thor had grabbed an arm around Hera, stopping her in place.

  Boy, was there a look on his face. Except it wasn't directed at his malevolent, paranoid, crazy, wedding-planning, half-wife from a different identity. Nope, he looked right at me. His expression was such a mix of angry, bothered, surprised, and something far, far deeper. Something... old was gathering and tugging at the edges of his eyes, like a long suppressed memory that could no longer be subdued.

  He held my gaze for all of about two seconds – though I'm sure time somehow squeezed several eons between that stutteringly short moment – then his cheeks stiffened and he turned back to his half-wife.

  Hera still steamed, but was turning her boiling inferno of a temper back to where it belonged – Thor.

  She rolled up a hand and thumped it against Thor's shiny breast plate. It gave a resounding twanging sound. “You always do this to me,” she began to mope, then hit his breast plate again. “Always.”

  Thor took a rumbling sigh. “How many times, Hera? When I'm Thor—“

  “You're still Zeus. When you are Jupiter, I’m Juno. I know the mysteries of identity, Zeus, don't you stand there and tell me it doesn't matter. You've been telling me the same old story for millennia – and guess what? It matters to me.” She placed a delicate hand on her chest and stared up at the blond-bearded version of her half-husband.

  “When you're Juno you are a lot less paranoid,” Thor mumbled to himself.

  Which was the wrong thing to mumble – even quietly – when he had an arm around the middle of his maybe-wife from a different pantheon.

  Hera sucked in a sharp breath of air from between her clenched teeth and hit Thor a lot harder this time.

  This was... great. Here I stood in the middle of the Ambrosia, in the middle of a divine domestic. If they started make-up kissing, I'd hit them both with my chair leg.

  I swallowed.

  I wanted to point out to Hera that Thor wasn't Zeus. I wanted to defend the buffoon. Though, as immigration officer, I knew the differences that allowed a god to have more than one functioning identity didn't run that deep. Hera was right: underneath it all was still the same god. He still represented the same forces, he was just given different names and systems of belief under different pantheons.

  That point didn't seem important to me. What was important was the fact that whilst entering Earth as Thor, he couldn’t be held accountable for the actions of Zeus or Jupiter. If it was good enough for the Integration Office, then it should be good enough for Hera.

  I watched them, a growing nervous feeling swelling in my stomach. I flicked my eyes away and tried to find something else to stare at. My gaze soon settled on the chair leg in my hand. The one that belonged to the chair I’d somehow caught after it had been swung by Hera of all people.

  How had I done that?

  ....

  I used to watch the leaves flutter above me.

  ....

  I blinked slowly. Words had formed in my mind – unspoken but undeniable. I hadn’t thought them. They had thought themselves.

  I slid my gaze slowly towards the chair leg still in my hand. Sudden Hera-chair-stopping powers, mysterious fluttering noises, and spoken words forming directly in my mind?

  Being a goddess, I immediately skipped through the possibilities, and none of them involved standard human causes of delirium. I wasn't dehydrated, I hadn’t munched on some suspicious fern shoots, and nor had I gobbled a brightly colored pill I'd spied in an alleyway behind a club. There were all sorts of divine sources of madness however, but none of them tended to involve chair legs as far as I knew.

  Was I tired? I hadn’t got much rest between being chased by Loki, chained to a wall, taken to Asgard, and coming to hap
py hour at the Ambrosia. Yes, that had to be it – I was exhausted.

  “Details—“ Thor was somehow right in front of me, his hands pressed into my shoulders. He gave me a tender shake.

  Blinking up at him, I realized I had allowed myself to become monumentally distracted by my thoughts. So distracted that I’d tuned out everything else in the universe.

  Everything – and that’s a lot of things.

  It hit me, and it wasn't another chair. It was the same pain I’d been feeling on-and-off for the past several days. No, not the same – this was worse by a factor of about a billion.

  I didn't shout anything indicative of my situation like “Ow,” “Blimey,” or “My head is about to explode.” I crumpled. It was too much. It was too severe.

  It felt like the universe was either trying to rip into my mind or rip free from it. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  Unsurprisingly, for the third time in three days, I conked out.