ã€ŠJake, Son of Zeusã€‹


 2 Chapter One

    For the fourth time in his life, Jake smelled bubble gum. He looked around, just to be sure he hadn''t mistaken it for a normal bubble gum smell. He stood stiffly between two tall rows of bookcases, which meant that he was not in a candy store. He wasn''t even in the section of books that were written about bubble gum. And this smell crackled like static when he breathed it in.

    Jake was pretty sure that he was about to die, but he shifted his stack of books to his other arm, walked to the end of the row of shelves, and peeked around to be sure, first on the right, then the left. No children or baseball players, gum-chewing or otherwise, could be seen or smelled. An old woman selected a yellowed book and moved away, but other than the sound of her hip-replacement shuffle, the library was still.

    Yet the dusty book smell was every moment more overwhelmed by the sticky pink scent of bubble gum.

    He tried to hum a song, a Christmas carol, sure that the sound of any voice would keep him from freaking out. He used to drive Rachel crazy with his Christmas carols, and he''d stamped out that habit so long ago that he couldn''t bring a single tune to mind.

    Jake turned back around, knowing what would be waiting with dark eyes and perfect peach skin between the two walls of books. He could feel the deep, thrumming anxiety in his chest that meant the other world was near. He felt it even more strongly than he would have if she had been trying to hide.

    There was nothing he could do, of course. Thirty years of running and hiding from them had taught him that running and hiding only worked half the time. The other half, you were possessed or electrocuted or shoeless unless you had power of your own or some knowledge of the pest. And Jake, having nothing else, knew more about pixies, brownies, fauns, centaurs, mermaids, and chimaeras than Homer did.

    He knew a few useful techniques, too, one of which was supposed to help you determine whether you were dreaming or awake, so you could judge whether to transform into carnivorous robot or hide behind something. The technique required that you ask yourself, "What did I have for breakfast?" Unless your dream involved breakfast, your dreamself can rarely remember. The inability to answer such a simple question will help your dreamself realize that the trees about to eat you exist only in the deep pocket of your subconscious that feels guilty for eating broccoli.

    However, on other occasions, your dreamself may reply, "Yogurt and granola, but I think that''s rather irrelevant just now," in which case you may be trapped in a cave by sharks carrying briefcases until your alarm clock buzzes. Or worse, your dreamself doesn''t answer because you''re not asleep.

    Jake, disturbed by the sudden appearance of the most lovely and sensual woman he''d ever seen in or out of his dreams, thought with hope, "What did I have for breakfast?" His dreamself hit the snooze and rolled over. His awake self answered, "Cocoa Puffs with Lily," then proceeded to swear.

    Between the high shelves, the woman took a step toward him, her eyes on his, her long white-blond hair hanging straight to her thighs, one of her long legs visible through the slit in her scarlet gown.

    Bubblicious, he thought crazily.

    "Listen," Jake said, clearing his throat, "I think you''re a very nice girl and all, but I really have to¡­"

    One shoulder of the dress slid down on her arm. Had he been saying something? He wasn''t sure. The tip of her tongue wetted her lip. The sound of her quick breath lingered in his ears. Two, three steps closer. The shelves around her seemed dry and colorless and uninteresting now, like the flat, vague backdrops in photographers'' studios. She opened her mouth wide enough, he thought, to swallow him whole.

    A massive biography of T.S. Eliot slipped from his hand, landing on the little toe of his right foot with such force that he was sure the toe had been severed. Jolted out of his stupidity, Jake dropped the rest of his books, forced his eyes from the beautiful creature and, staring down at the lumpy, ancient carpet, ran, limping slightly, from the library.

    Damn it. He''d really wanted to read that biography.

    Fifteen minutes later, Jake rushed up four flights of stairs and stumbled into his apartment, double-bolting the door, as though that had ever helped, before falling into his lumpy gray recliner.

    "You didn''t bring back any books," said E. E, who lay sprawled on the couch, holding the remote control in one hand while the other scratched his bare, skinny stomach. His light brown hair looked unwashed and uncombed as usual, but he hadn''t left his socks in the middle of the floor, a rare blessing. He took in Jake''s sweating face and blank expression. "Dude, did you finally get it on with Elspeth Mader?"

    "No," Jake replied, feeling a little gloom now amid the terror and adrenaline. He leaned forward to massage his calves. Ms. Mader''s skin was the color of soft serve chocolate ice cream. He''d never found any other way to describe it, and he had never been able to keep it from his mind when he saw her. He had hardly been able to restrain himself from licking her shoulder the last time she came to work in a sleeveless blouse.

    "No," he said again. "I ran into a siren."

    "That''s why I don''t go to libraries. Especially on Mondays."

    "You don''t go to libraries because of sirens?"

    "And vampires. Termites. Very dangerous places, libraries," E. E. said. "Lily left this morning?"

    "Yeah. Rachel came to get her before work." The pleasant, though unsettling, image of Elspeth Mader was replaced by one of his lovely brown-eyed wife. A picture of her wavy blonde hair and her heart-shaped face flashed in his mind like a slideshow of the dozens of photographs in every room of the house they used to share: Rachel in a ponytail and college sweatshirt, Rachel winning a cross-country event, Rachel in her wedding dress, Rachel holding newborn Lily, Rachel in the garden with her rose bushes, Rachel teaching Lily to read.

    Lily was Rachel in miniature¡ªangelic blonde with wide, kitten eyes.

    "I think we''ve finally reached an agreement about¡ª" Jake clenched a fist "¡ªvisitation. Two weekends a month. It''s not enough."

    "Of course you feel like that. You are a good dad." Before Jake could react to the shock of the compliment, E. E. continued, "It''s about the only thing you''re good at."

    E. E. began changing channels again, and Jake went to his room. His alarm clock said it wasn''t yet eight p.m., but he dropped onto his bed anyway, chose a book from the stack on the table beside his bed (Rachel had the nightstands, the dressers, their king size bed, and thirteen other pieces of furniture that he never thought he''d miss), and read until he fell asleep, still dressed in his suit pants and shirt. His almost black hair, which he''d meant to get cut weeks ago, tickled his eyelids until he sleepily brushed his hand over his face.

    Jake had encountered, or almost encountered, sirens three times before.

    On Jake''s only childhood visit to Olympus, he had walked past a window and breathed in the bubble gum smell. Sure that he had just passed a candy store of mythic wonderfulness, he walked back to the window, but his father took his hand and hurried him away.

    Then when he was seventeen, he had gone into the kitchen for a soda and found the siren standing just inside the doorway. He was an inch away from her when he realized she was there, and she had her arms around him before he could think to run. His mother, Delilah, came into the room just as the siren was pressing her lips to his. Delilah grabbed her by the hair and punched her face. The siren was so surprised that she didn''t protest when Delilah pushed her out the door. Jake tried to follow, but Delilah grabbed a bottle of vanilla extract and held him down while she poured it into his mouth, commanding him to swallow. He still didn''t know if it was the vanilla itself or the gagging that had made him reasonable again.

    The third siren sneaked into bed with Jake while Rachel was up comforting the crying newborn Lily. He thought it was Rachel at first, curling against him and wrapping him in her warm arms, but even half awake, he recognized that smell, and there was something un-Rachel about those soft, eager hands. Jake got to his feet and reached for the bedside phone in one fast, panicked movement. He called his father, who arrived in moments, wrapped his arms around the terrified siren''s waist, and vanished silently. Rachel never knew.

    But there were hundreds of other stories, and Rachel knew too many of them.

 3 Chapter Two

    Over breakfast and The New Yorker on Tuesday morning, Jake said, "Want to go get tattoos this weekend?"

    E. E. didn''t look up from his plate. Between bites of heavily buttered toast, he said, "Going through a midlife crisis?"

    "I hope not. I''m only thirty. I''d hate to think this was the halfway point."

    "It''s not a reliable indicator of lifespan."

    "Oh. Well, how would I know?"

    E. E. raised a finger for each point, as though this was a memorized routine. Of course, E. E. had wasted a lot of money studying psychology years ago, so it might have been. "Are you having trouble sleeping?"

    "Yes."

    "Do you have a weirdly strong urge to learn to play guitar or make clay ashtrays?"

    "No."

    "Hm," E. E. said. "Are you wondering about the purpose of your life? Starting to doubt your choice of career and/or life partner?"

    "Yes."

    "Do you think about death?"

    Jake paused. "Doesn''t everyone?"

    "No," E. E. replied. "Do you remind yourself of your father?"

    Jake stopped, stared at the floor in front of him. "No," he said. "Not a bit." He wasn''t sure if this was true, or if it was, if the thought utterly depressed him.

    "Well, maybe this isn''t a midlife crisis. Maybe it''s an identity crisis. You have the whole caught-between-two-worlds thing. You''re like a hyphenated immigrant¡ªa Chinese-American, Indian-American, Alaskan-American, except you''d be like a mortal-immortal. Maybe you''re having a midlife-identity crisis. You are pretty screwed up."

    "Thanks."

    E. E. made a motion as though toasting Jake with his toast.

    Jake sighed and continued, "If I had superhuman strength, or godlike wisdom, or irresistible charm, or anything that would offset this insanity, it wouldn''t be so bad. As it is, I can''t even get out of a speeding ticket."

    "Get a boob job."

    "Do you think I''m crazy for letting this get to me?"

    E. E. replied instantly, "Yes. Would this be a good time to mention that there''s something living in the Raisin Bran box?"

    "Is there ever a good time?"

    E. E. shrugged, his shiny brown shirt shimmering down from his shoulder.

    "Did you dig that shirt out of the 70''s?"

    "Been reading your fashion magazines again? Definitely a midlife crisis. You criticize me, but your clothing choices would make Gandhi slap you."

    "That doesn''t even make sense."

    "Yeah. I think I need to go do something manly for awhile. Want to belch and spit with me for awhile?"

    "Can''t we play your X-Box instead?"

    "Only if you stop commenting on my clothes."

    "There should be a law against brown shirts. Anyone caught wearing one should be stripped, flogged, and forced to wear chartreuse sackcloth for the rest of his life."

    E. E. muttered, "Midlife crisis or hormonal imbalance."

    Jake forced a smile that soon became a real one. He stood and said, "Would you like me to pour you a bowl of Raisin Bran?"

 4 Chapter Three

    Jake''s morning classes snailed by, as classes at Bee Caves High inevitably did. But Weathers had split the last doughnut with him, and Jake had managed to dart around a corner in time to avoid the principal, Mr. Gripp, so it hadn''t been the worst of mornings.

    At noon, Jake walked two blocks to Subway, bought a meatball sandwich and a Big Red, and settled himself on a dark blue plastic bench in the pocket park across the street. Young trees stood everywhere with perfect straightness and order, no limb or leaf out of place, like Lego trees on a flat Lego lawn. Ducks splashed in the mud-colored water of the pond, and sidewalks snaked in every direction, as though a curved cement path was somehow more in tune with nature than a straight one.

    Jake was halfway through both The Wasteland and his sandwich when a deep voice broke through his focus. Beside him sat a fat white duck, eyeing him with an expression of mild disapproval. "How''s it going, Jake?" said the duck.

    "Just fine, Dad," Jake replied, looking around to make sure they were relatively alone. "How are you?"

    "Can''t complain," Zeus said. "Finally sold the beach house in Hawaii. Living next to Shiva made me nervous. Everything else is good too, except Hera''s been a bitch lately, though that''s not exactly news. How''s Lily?"

    "She''s great. She''s already excited about starting kindergarten in the fall."

    "That''s wonderful¡­." Zeus drifted off, staring hazily at a very young jogger.

    Jake motioned to the jogger with his sandwich. "I''m pretty sure she''s a little young for you."

    "Nah. She''s what¡­nineteen? Twenty? That''s more than legal. Give me ten minutes to charm her with witty conversation¡ª"

    "Or scare her to death as a talking duck."

    "¡ªand she could be the next queen of the gods." A high pitched bleeping sounded from Zeus''s feathers. He lifted a wing. "Damn. Hera''s calling. That woman needs a hobby. She probably has a lust satellite-radar focused on me from space.??? Zeus beaked his phone, then sat nodding for a few seconds in thought. "You seeing anyone?" His voice was carefully casual.

    If Jake had been talking to anyone else, he would have said, "I''m married, remember?" But that excuse never seemed to have an effect on Zeus. Instead, Jake said, "No. I don''t really have time these days," which was a lie, but he felt that it was for his own protection.

    "I sympathize." The duck looked away after a moment, shifting its feet.

    "What is it, Dad?" Jake asked.

    The duck glanced back at him. "Well, it wasn''t my idea. Hera¡ªyou know she likes you despite¡­everything¡ªshe has a friend she wants you to meet," he finished in a rush.

    "No."

    "C''mon. She seems like a perfectly lovely girl."

    Jake stared at the murky pond.

    "You could at least meet her. Hera''s not going to leave me alone about it. She works at that coffeehouse just a few blocks from your apartment."

    "Is she mortal?" Jake asked. He wasn''t interested, of course, but he wondered what kind of girl Hera, who was after all known for her matchmaking skills, thought he needed.

    Zeus gave a half-smile. "It didn''t work out with Rachel. Do you really want to try the mortal thing again?"

    "It''s not going so well with Rachel because a nymph took up residence in the pool. And a cockatrice ruined the garden. And¡ª"

    "I get it. Being my son has just ruined everything for you."

    "No, that''s not what I mean," Jake said with a full-body sigh. It was what he meant. But Jake hated to see the duck lower its head in disappointment that way. Zeus was much easier to reject when he took a meaner form, like a Doberman or a truck driver. He had shown up on Jake''s front porch as a bunny once, when Jake was still living in the white brick house on Lime Street with Rachel, before Lily was born. Jake had avoided eye contact with his father throughout the visit, hardly able to stifle the weird impulse to pick him up and pet him.

    Now, Zeus''s soft duck head and sad, dented beak were turned away in an ungodlike pout. Jake said in a voice that asked his father''s understanding, "It''s just¡­impossible. I get nervous every time I open my closet door. I spend as much money on garlic and mugwort and ghost beads as I do on gasoline. I''m stuck between worlds. And there''s¡­there''s just not a good support group for this kind of thing."

    The duck nodded.

    Jake continued, remembering his conversation with E. E. that morning and countless conversations before, reminding himself painfully of that kid in his first period class who talked only about Star Wars, "It wouldn''t be so bad if I''d gotten something out of it, you know, god-like strength, the ability to control the weather. Even some painting skills would be nice. Don''t get me wrong. I''m enjoying the prospect of living through a car accident at some point, and the whole idea of being part god is pretty great. I just¡­I wish that I didn''t have to run like a little girl when sirens show up."

    "I could give you¡ª"

    "No, thanks. Gifts from the gods cause more trouble than anything. Haven''t you ever read Greek mythology?"

    The duck snorted, then looked quickly straight ahead and then back at Jake. "Listen, I''ll come by your apartment tonight. You''ve got to get back to work, and that raisin-skinned woman is looking at me funny."

    Jake looked across the pond and cringed. "That''s Moira Bags, the health teacher."

    "Want me to turn her into a bat?" he asked, squinting his eyes and pointing his wing at her.

    "No, thanks. I''ll see you later."

    The duck shivered and ruffled its feathers, and Zeus was gone. Jake looked up again and waved to Mrs. Bags, who looked at him in alarm before scurrying away. "That''s not good," Jake told the duck. It looked mindlessly at the remaining half of his meatball sandwich, and Jake, knowing the over-intimate tendencies of city-raised animals, wrapped up his sandwich, took up his book and his Big Red, and walked back to school.

    Jake had been in the building six minutes when he heard his name over the intercom in the giggly, girly voice of the principal''s secretary. He was to report to the Mr. Gripp''s office immediately. The temporary high of sitting in the sun, enjoying a good meal and a good book and chatting with his dad was stomped out by the dread of what was coming next. Jake lamented that he didn''t enjoy being belittled and bored more than he did. Yet another survival skill that had passed him by.

    The classroom wall clock read 1:08, and it was unlikely that Principal Gripp would be finished with him in two minutes. The first few students filed into the classroom. Jake flipped open the grammar textbook to a random page. Commas. Everyone needs extra practice with commas. He scribbled the page number on the dry erase board.

    "Do the exercise on page forty-one," he told the students. "Tell the others when they get here, and make sure you get it done before I''m back. I''ve been called to the principal''s office." A couple of girls laughed sympathetically.

    Jake opened the top desk drawer, pulled out his whistle, and stuffed it in his pocket. He hurried out.

    If Gripp, damn him, only kept him ten minutes, Jake might make it back before the class had fallen into chaos. The fact that they were sophomores, and this was the first period after lunch, might buy him another five minutes. If not, well, that''s why Jake kept a whistle in his desk.

    Down two more corridors, he maneuvered through the mass of students, imagining a scene in which he told Gripp just how much more difficult teaching high school was when the boss was a smelly, inconsiderate, football-obsessed, stuck-up, senile tyrant. The scene ended with Gripp melting like the Wicked Witch of the West and Jake taking a seat behind the principal''s desk. He was smiling when he reached the principal''s white door. Some rather harsh spray-painted words were still visible beneath the layers of paint. Jake''s smile broadened.

    He knocked twice and opened the door, then passed through the secretary''s office into the inner sanctum. Mr. Gripp (Principal Bigot, Jake thought with a deeply buried smirk) sat behind his desk, not attempting to budge his massive form as Jake entered. "I don''t want to take up too much of your time," Gripp said over his noisy nose-whistling. "I know you have a class starting soon." Jake glanced at the clock behind Gripp''s head. Class started a minute and a half ago. It hardly matters, thought Jake, as Gripp launched into a speech about the responsibility teachers bear, not only in the classroom and at extracurricular blah blah blah.

    Two or three long minutes passed. Jake''s eyelids began to droop, and he imagined that he would never be able to leave this room. He would sit forever, listening and nodding until his body decayed and all the books and papers and the cherry wood desk biodegraded, but Gripp would survive, somehow, and keep blabbering on until the sun became a supernova and the earth dried and began to burn as it was sucked into the swirling, blazing orb of the swollen sun¡­.

    "Mr. Foster?"

    Jake looked up at Principal Gripp, trying to act as though he had been listening. "Yes, sir."

    "Foster, I''ve heard some concern from the other teachers about you. I think you should consider taking some time off. I mean, you were talking to a duck? This is not healthy behavior. Not healthy at all," Gripp eyed him warily.

    "Haven''t you ever had a pet?" Jake asked lamely.

    "I have a cat. I say, ''Here, kitty, kitty,'' and ''Come eat your din-din,'' but Pipsy and I do not have twenty-minute conversations, especially not in the park where anyone could see."

    "Sir, there''s only two weeks left until summer, and I¡ª"

    "Finals time is stressful for everyone, but I can''t have you falling apart behind the wheel. I can''t have you going postal in a room full of kids, Foster."

    Jake, trying to envision what that would look like, said in his most assuring voice, "I''m fine, sir. If I start feeling at all¡­postal¡­I''ll be sure to let you know."

    Gripp''s tiny, buglike eyes tried to look inside Jake''s head, and Jake sat, smiling, trying to appear as sane as possible, hating himself more the longer he smiled. Are you wondering about the purpose of your life? Starting to doubt your choice of career? Does your pathological spinelessness make you want to stab your supervisor and then yourself with a red ballpoint pen? Why as a matter of fact, it does.

    Finally, Gripp nodded. "Go back to class. I''ll have someone check in on you from time to time over the next two weeks, and if you start to feel funny¡ª" Gripp pointed his index finger toward heaven in some unknowable gesture.

    Jake nodded and hurried out of the office. He turned a corner and realized he could hear his class from the end of the hall. There weren''t gang fights, exactly, at Bee Caves High, but the cheerleaders and the flag corps got into it sometimes, and his fourth period class was a mixture of both, with some boyfriends and groupies in the mix.

    He reached into his pocket and brought out his whistle. The mouthpiece had lost some of its shine in its years of use, but it still got their attention. He sighed and stood outside the door for a second, listening to Elspeth Mader, the science teacher, asking questions from her class across the hall, her sweet soprano voice full of feeling about binomial nomenclature.

    For a moment, he could hear her clearly. Then the familiar sound of someone being whacked in the head with a megaphone issued from his own classroom. What would it be like to work somewhere without whistles, without possessed teenagers and Principal Bigot?

    Jake swung open the door and entered, covering the sound of voices with the shriek of his whistle.

 5 Chapter Four

    All teenagers spend several hours a day actively despising their parents, but Jake had had an easier time finding reasons to despise his than his peers did. His mother was a lovely creature, impish and young-seeming all her life. Had Delilah lived in Jane Austen''s time, she would no doubt have inspired the creation of one of Austen''s most flighty, self-amused minor characters. She could be counted on for nothing. When he was little, he would wear every bit of clothing he owned before she would get around to doing laundry, and until then it would remain in a heap in his bedroom floor, and from their cozy nest in the heap, she would read him stories. He was doing his own laundry, his own dishes, and signing his own permission slips while his friends still had bedtimes. He walked the two miles to school because when his mother drove him, he was always late. He made his own doctor''s appointments, and by the time he started algebra in school, he was balancing the checkbook at home. He had plenty of reason to despise Delilah and worked hard at it, but it was that sweetness and innocence and fun that made it hard to remember to hate her all the time.

    Zeus was easier to hate. He mentioned more than once that there''s something about immortality that makes one lose track of time. Zeus missed seven of Jake''s birthdays, five Christmases, every Thanksgiving and Independence Day, and the first half of Jake''s high school graduation. True, he had missed some because of real emergencies or because Hera was being particularly nasty that week, but every missed appointment, every forgotten meeting, made Jake surer that it would''ve been better to stop breathing than to be Zeus''s son. Zeus always tried to make it up to him, but until Jake stopped being a teenager and started being human again, he made no attempt to hide or soften his resentment, no matter what Zeus''s bribery entailed. It was Zeus''s fault that Jake had to take care of things around the house, Zeus''s fault that Jake''s mother was impossible to live with and could hardly be left alone.

    But he never had the words to tell his parents, and once he was old enough to try to force himself to yell at them, the reasons didn''t seem as important anymore. Jake''s frustration was always silent. In the end, he was able to forgive his mother because she had never known how much and in how many ways she destroyed him.

    By the end of Delilah''s funeral, when the other black forms had made their way through the patches of shadow and sun to their cars, bowing their heads as though harboring guilty thoughts of what a beautiful day it would be to throw a Frisbee in the park, Jake was more of an adult than he had ever intended to be. He was alone in the world. In many ways, this was the best situation that he had ever been in. He was no longer his mother''s caretaker. And it was true that Zeus was there, but Jake had ceased to see him either as a burden or as a help. He had never asked Zeus for anything, and it would be years before that possibility would even occur to him. By then, Jake would be more in need of that help than he ever had been, even on that day, standing by his mother''s casket, not knowing what to do next.

 6 Chapter Five

    A burly, leather-clad man pounded on Jake''s door at eleven o''clock that night. His eye to the keyhole, Jake said, "Dad?" He didn''t really need to ask. No matter what form Zeus was in, Jake knew it was him both from the thrumming feeling in his chest, his immortal radar, and from the way you recognize someone from a distance sometimes, when you''re too far away to see the curve of the face and nose, the shape of the eyes. You know them by their posture and the way they move. You know them by the sound of their footsteps coming around a corner. Or you know them by the billions of threads that connect your two knots on the Loom.

    "No," the massive beast called back. "It''s Oberon, the fairy king."

    "Just checking," Jake said with a smile. He unbolted the seven bolts on the door and opened it. "Why can''t you always visit in human form?" Jake asked, as his father trudged into the living room. "It would make my life so much easier."

    "But it''s not near as much fun," Zeus said, giving him a roguish half-smile as he came inside. It was strange how his father, no matter what form he visited in, always had Zeus''s expressions. He even moved with a kind of power, not presidential power, though. More like rock star power. "Burt here," Zeus indicated his beefy body, "is experiencing a unique acid trip. He stumbled by as I was about to possess a Dalmatian, and I thought, hey, why not? Animals are fun, but kind of restrictive. No thumbs. Of course, anything is better than hanging out in all my eternal glory. There are enough people ticked off at me that I haven''t traveled un-incognito since 1974. And if you think possessing Dalmatians is distasteful, you should try being bodiless and insubstantial. It sucks. You can''t communicate with anyone who isn''t godlike. Plus, your couch is more comfortable when I''m in a fleshy suit." Zeus took a seat. "And you''ve seen my natural physical form a few times, enough to know that John Wayne himself, may he live forever, would cry little girly tears if that colossal shape appeared on his doorstep."

    Jake relocked the locks and said, "Can I get you something to drink?"

    "Do you have Dr. Pepper? I''m in love with that stuff. We tried to make some last week. You''d think the gods wouldn''t have a problem with something so¡­mortal, but we just can''t get the recipe right." Jake went into the kitchen, noticing that E. E. had done the dishes for the first time in the six months they''d been roommates.

    Jake took a Dr. Pepper out of the refrigerator, then smiled to himself and grabbed three more. In the living room, Jake handed one of the cans to his father and set the rest within reach. Zeus opened it with childlike joy and took a sip. "Dr. Pepper and LSD," he murmured, "what an interesting combination! Do you have any french fries?"

    Jake replied that he didn''t, but almost immediately began wishing that he did. The Whataburger two streets over made heavenly fries, like little salty sticks of joy.

    "So, the reason I came by¡­" Zeus said. "I need a favor."

    "I''m not going out with that girl."

    Zeus tilted his head. "What girl?"

    "The girl Hera wants me to date."

    "Right. Remind me to talk you into that later. No, this is something else." He looked serious.

    Without realizing it, Jake held his breath. Had Zeus ever asked him for a favor before? Jake couldn''t remember.

    Zeus pulled from his jacket pocket an ornate wooden box, the sides covered in carvings of ferns, vines, and blossoms of unrecognizable flowers. The pattern continued unbroken onto the top of the box where lay, as though on a square hill, a beautiful woman, barefoot, dressed in a long gown. Her attitude was slightly sensuous, but more playful, carefree with just a bit of thoughtfulness. She was real. It was impossible to imagine that an artist had taken this vision from his own mind. This woman had a history and a family. She washed dishes by hand. She laughed with her sisters. She was learning how to knit. She would sit cross-legged on the floor, slowly working stitches that would become surer and quicker with time. She liked to walk in the evenings, just before sunset, when children played in front yards and the world grew sleepy. She wasn''t young anymore, but she wasn''t old. She liked to think of it as a time when she possessed both the strength of youth and the wisdom of age, but she laughed at the thought, wondering if she had either. And with her laugh ringing like a child''s in Jake''s ears, he shook his head and stepped back from the box.

    Zeus chuckled as he handed over the box. "I had a similar reaction when I first saw it," he said.

    "What am I supposed to do with this?" Jake asked, holding it as though it were glass.

    "Just¡­don''t take it out of your apartment."

    Jake set the box on the coffee table, wanting to get it out of his hands so he could focus his attention on the god on his couch. "What is it?" he asked.

    "Nothing much. I just need to keep it hidden for awhile."

    "Then why the hell would you bring it here?" Jake tried not to look at the box, only feet from him. He could still feel its effect on him, and he didn''t know whether to feel excited or angry. "I can''t protect this. I can''t even protect myself. And E. E. is helpless. I found him the other day having a conversation with a bathtub naiad. One of these days he''s going to say something insensitive, and I''m going to find him strangled by seaweed."

    "Don''t worry," Zeus said, grinning. "No one will look for the box here. Even if they do, it''s reasonably able to take care of itself."

    "How¡­?"

    "I just need a place to store it, where someone will notice if it goes missing. Someone I trust." He gave Jake a hopeful smile.

    Jake sighed, glancing down at the box without meaning to. The woman had a small, twisting chain around one of her ankles, maybe a birthday gift from her mother, maybe a gift from a friend she''d had since childhood, someone as close as family. "How long do I need to keep it?"

    "Just a few months."

    "Months?"

    Zeus smiled as though Jake couldn''t help finding him charming. The timetable of the gods notoriously sucked.

    "Who''s after it?"

    Zeus raised an eyebrow. "What about your ''the less I know, the better'' philosophy?"

    "It''s more like, ''the less I''m involved, the saner,'' but whatever. If I''m going to be guarding the box, I should know something about what''s going on. What is it, exactly?"

    "You''re better off not knowing. But, listen, it''s no big deal. It''s not the holy grail or Vishnu''s shoes. Just a box," Zeus said, moving toward the door. "I''ve got to get back." Just before the door closed behind him, he said, "Oh, and don''t tell anyone it''s here, of course. Don''t let anyone touch it. And I wouldn''t try to open it if I were you."

    Jake sighed again as his father''s footsteps thundered down the hall. He carried the box to his bedroom, setting it gingerly on the table under his window. The navy blue curtains, too long because they were bought for another window years ago, whispered against the tabletop.

 7 Chapter Six

    Lily was with Jake for the second weekend in a row, the last weekend before school let out, while Rachel went to the horse races with one of her innumerable daft friends. After packing as much entertainment as they could into Saturday, Jake and Lily decided to have a lazy Sunday. Jake popped popcorn and poured a family-size bag of M\u0026Ms into a bowl. Lily put Aladdin in the DVD player, and she and Jake and E. E. lounged in the living room, watching Disney''s botched reproduction of yet another classic story. E. E. put his hands over his ears every time the genie spoke, and Jake avoided looking at Aladdin''s face until they gave up completely and started a game of Yahtzee.

    Lily asked, "Have you ever met a genie?"

    "Yeah," Jake said. "I did once, a long time ago."

    "What did you wish for?"

    E. E. raised his eyebrows, waiting for the answer.

    "Cheerios, bananas, and coffee."

    "What?" E. E. said.

    "You kind of had to be there."

    When Lily was asleep that night, E. E. mentioned his upcoming Friday night plans with a girl named Traci, one of a dozen girls E. E. had fallen in and out of love with in the past six months.

    "Why don''t you come with us?" E. E. asked. "She has a really hot friend." E. E. nodded conspiratorially, as though there was some secret meaning in his words.

    "I''m married, E. E." Jake wondered how many times he''d said those words, wondering when it had become comfortable, wondering when it would start to become uncomfortable again¡ªhow long after your wife kicks you out can you still claim to be married? Is there such a thing as a common-law divorce?

    "Right," E. E. said, then snorted.

    "What?" There was a defensive tone in his question, and E. E., who had started walking back toward his bedroom, turned around.

    "Nothing. It''s just¡­I''ve met Rachel. And she''s not¡­I just think you should give it up. Move on."

    "We''re just going through a rough time," Jake insisted. "She''ll get over it, and we''ll be fine."

    E. E. didn''t say anything.

    "Look, this is none of your business, anyway," Jake said. He stood and walked to his bedroom door. His heart was pounding so loud and fast that he was a little scared. He went into his room and began to pull the door closed behind him, careful not to slam it. He didn''t want E. E. to know how agitated he was, and he didn''t want to bother Lily, and that word still seemed to be hovering there on the edge of speech.

    Divorce.

    But before the door closed all the way, he heard E. E. mutter, "Yeah. Don''t let reality hit your ass on the way out."

    Jake stopped. A small, often ignored voice in his mind said that he should protest and he should defend himself, but he was so unused to paying attention to that whisper that he couldn''t think of a reply, let alone force it through his lips. He was used to feeling that way. He saw himself sitting in Principal Bigot''s office earlier that week. He heard himself a million times with Rachel, always saying nothing, accepting, bowing to her version of the universe.

    Jake clenched the doorknob, his ever-silent frustration pounding in his head and chest. We''ll be fine. We''ll be fine. Fine.

    Jake opened the door a few more inches, intending to go back into the living room, but again the words he should say paused behind his teeth before diving back down his throat, crouching and trembling somewhere in his stomach.

    He took a step backward and slammed the door as hard as he could.

 8 Chapter Seven

    "No," Rachel said, her voice firm, and Jake began to wonder why on earth he''d brought it up again.

    Even over the phone, he could picture the pursed lips that went with that tone. "I want Lily to know her grandfather," Jake insisted, "and I want Dad to meet Lily. What''s wrong with that?" He tried to come up with some convincing statement, something that would make her see his point of view. Rachel was good at that, good at finding the perfect words at the perfect pitch and volume to get her way. He''d never been good at fighting with her.

    "What''s wrong with that? My god, Jake, these people, these creatures, have plagued you your whole life, and me, too, for as long as I''ve known you. You really want to bring Lily into that world?"

    Jake didn''t point out that, as his daughter, she was already a part of that world. For months he had been expecting that statement to come from Rachel as grounds for keeping Lily away from him altogether. He said instead, "I want her to meet her grandfather. That''s it. You haven''t had any problems since I left, have you? Nothing will change." He wanted to suggest that he move back in and keep an eye on things, but she would laugh at him. And she would be right to laugh. Jake had been convinced for awhile now that he was cursed. It was true that all the children of Zeus were plagued by visits from the other world, but he seemed especially set apart. Everything he touched turned to sludge, and that was no way to run a life, a family.

    "But what if¡ª" Rachel protested.

    "Nothing will change. You know Lily doesn''t have any light of immortality on her at all, so they don''t take notice of her."

    "Your mother didn''t have any light," she sneered, "either, but someone took notice."

    Jake felt that was a cheap shot, but pretty much true. His mother, Delilah, had been lovely, but not in any remarkable way. The most remarkable thing about her had always been her incredible ability to deny reality and avoid doing anything that might seem practical or useful or responsible. His mother and father were deeply in love for nine days, until Zeus met a blonde volleyball player in the park one afternoon.

    "You''re right," he said, "but it''s not like Dad ruined her life. She was happy, maybe happier than she would''ve been otherwise."

    "But it doesn''t usually turn out that way."

    "No. It usually doesn''t."

    Rachel, unused to being agreed with, gave in after a few more verbal slaps. Lily would meet her grandfather during her next Saturday with Jake, and Jake was proud that he had fought for it and surprised at how easily he had won. Maybe Rachel realized since she wasn''t around to "keep an eye on things," that Zeus and Lily would probably meet anyway, either because Jake set it up, or because it just happened. Zeus rarely called before he showed up outside Jake''s door in a borrowed body.

    After hanging up with Rachel, Jake dialed his father and gave him the news.

    "Ooo," Zeus said through the phone. "That??s not a good day for me."

    Jake kicked the sofa.

    "Just kidding. I wouldn''t miss it. Put some ice on your toes."

 9 Chapter Eigh

    For his last three months of high school and the summer that followed, Jake stayed with the next-door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Marsh, an old couple who rarely spoke to him or to each other but sat for hours doing their respective crossword puzzles while Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless blared from their hearing-impaired speakers. Jake had been convinced that they were stereotypical in every way, and the only thing that ever made him think otherwise was a midnight journey to the kitchen for a glass of water, during which he passed Mr. March, who was walking back to his bedroom wearing only swimming goggles and Mrs. March''s favorite shawl. The old man didn''t look twice at him, just continued on down the hall and into his bedroom.

    Not long after Delilah''s funeral, the money from the life insurance policy (which Jake had set up over the internet and paid when the bill came twice a year, just in case) was gone, spent entirely on the funeral and a handful of outstanding bills.

    Jake went to commencement alone, and when it was over, he returned to the Marshes'' guest bedroom, breathing air poisoned with potpourri.

    The summer that followed lasted centuries. Jake worked two jobs to pass the time and to save up for a car to take to college. He stocked shelves at night, forty hours a week at the only megasupermarket in town, and forty hours a week during the day, he worked the front desk at the country club''s pro shop. He got off work at five o''clock in the evening, went to the Marsh''s house to sleep in the flowery guest bedroom, and woke up at eleven p.m. to start the day again.

    Stumbling toward the front door one evening, on his way to bed, Jake heard voices from next door, where he and his mother had lived for so many years. He''d put it up for sale the day after the funeral, hoping that it would sell before college started and at least put a dent in the cost of tuition.

    Jake pretended to check the brakes on his bicycle, glancing up as covertly as possible to see the young couple and the ancient real estate agent stepping off the porch onto the walkway.

    "It''s a mess in there," the young woman said. "The previous owners must not have taken very good care of the place."

    "Was that blood on the dining room ceiling?" the young man asked.

    "No, no," the agent said with a short laugh. She took a fast glance at her clipboard. "Spaghetti sauce. And you can rest assured we''ll have the place cleaned up before you move in, if you decide to take the house. Yes, the last owner was an elderly man. He wasn''t able to take care of himself very well these last years."

    Jake couldn''t figure out how that explained the presence of spaghetti sauce on the ceiling, though if he had been in that situation, he doubted he could have come up with a good excuse, either.

    "My god, he didn''t die in there did he?" the young woman said, turning back to look at the house as though she''d just exited a mausoleum.

    "No, no," the agent said again. "He''s in a nice retirement community in South Carolina, closer to his children and grandchildren."

    Jake snorted, then propped his bike against the side of the house and went inside to bed. It was funny, really, because Jake knew that the agent''s clipboard probably told her that a house prep crew and painters had been in the week before to get the house ready, and Jake had seen their vans parked outside last Tuesday. But the zoo of immortal creatures that still lived behind the stove and in the attic and under the bathroom cabinets and in the light fixtures were not happy that their hosts had left so suddenly, and nothing in the immortal world keeps quiet about being unhappy.

    What wasn''t funny was that Jake really was counting on the sale of the house for college money. He lay in bed for an hour, not sleeping even though he had been too exhausted to eat when he''d arrived. Finally, he got up and dressed and went next door, double checking to make sure the real estate agent''s car was gone from the side street before he unlocked the front door and went inside.

    Some of them came out when they saw it was him, and he did his best to convince them how much he needed their help. He told them about his mother''s death and his financial difficulties. He asked them to clean the house and behave themselves at least until the new owners moved in.

    They didn''t say anything, and Jake eventually left them, not knowing if they had paid attention or whether they cared. He hardly slept that night, and it was a week before the real estate agent returned, no doubt with a little checkmark on her clipboard that assured her the house was spotless this time. That couple didn''t want the house either. They didn''t say why.

    He read Ovid''s Metamorphoses and reread Bulfinch''s Mythology on his lunch breaks, and the few hours he was awake on his days off, he read Theology and everything else the public library had on mythology. The Marshes wouldn''t accept money from him for his time there, and he had no time to spend money hanging out with his friends, so he paid for airless tubes for his bicycle and didn''t spend another cent from May to August.

    One week before school started, Jake left his hometown with four thousand dollars in the form of a purplish Volkswagen with so many dents that it looked like a magazine clipping of a Volkswagen that had been crumpled up then uncrumpled and pressed as flat as a crumpled picture can be. Among the dents (which Jake speculated had been caused by hail, minor accidents, and frequent encounters with large, horned animals), places where the paint had chipped revealed the many colors the car had been before: yellow, black, aquamarine, silver, and fuchsia among them.

    That week, the house next door, where he''d lived his whole life and where his mother had lived most of hers, burned. Jake hadn''t had the money to pay the house insurance in years. He just stood in the street and watched.

    He never went back.

    Jake moved into his dorm room (which boasted cement brick walls painted glaring white and a floor with decades of fungus thriving in the spaces between the tiles), met his Norwegian roommate, Geir, and walked to his first class, Intro to Biology, enjoying the incredible feeling of freedom and newness of being on a college campus with its wide lawns of thick, healthy, collegiate grass and with ancient trees and with its busyness and purposefulness, of being independent and feeling right for the first time since his mother''s death. He had felt guilty then for feeling free of the burden of taking care of Delilah, but even if she had been alive, he would be here now, and he felt a sense of relief at being back on that track again, following the plan he had laid while she played Tetris and half-listened. Of course, in his mother''s addition to the plan, she had an apartment a mile from the university so that he could visit her every day. He spent his afternoons on those grassy lawns instead. He read for hours, some homework, some not, and if the warmth of the day or the tedium of the reading made him drowsy, he lay back and napped in the sun while other students, in their own places scattered over the lawn, studied or sunbathed or chatted or wooed girls with their musical skills.

    When he thought about her, he missed his mother''s face, her laughter, and her easy way of living. But he didn''t think about her often.

    He was here. That was the important part, the amazing part. This was college. This was where life begins. This was where you skipped class if you were up too late with friends or went to class in pajamas and slippers. This was where there was a coffeehouse and a library that were never closed and never empty. This was where everything that had been your life was gone, and there were a million new things to do and be.

    That was the best part. Jake could be whoever he wanted to be here. There were no restrictions, no ties to the past, not even, for him, family members who would show up and share embarrassing stories and childhood nicknames with your suitemates. He was free. He could be someone else. He could even hope that somehow he had left his immortal problem behind him, that maybe it had been his mother and not he who had been attracting the attention of the immortal pests all along.

    Jake made friends with the guys in his dorm who had PlayStations. It had been released the previous year, but most people Jake knew still played on Sega Genesis. He even woke up one morning to the unmistakable sound of the original Mario Bros. coming from a Nintendo across the hall. On Saturday afternoons, walking through the dorm halls, which had no soundproofing of any kind, was an auditory invasion. Gunshots and the cartoonish sounds of extra lives and defeated enemies punctuated the noise of ten kinds of repetitive, high-pitched music.

    To the music, he added his own, humming a medley of Christmas carols.

 10 Chapter Nine

    "Are you familiar with Greek mythology?" a voice asked from the doorway of Jake''s classroom.

    Jake choked on his coffee. "Sorry," he said, "I thought I was alone."

    Elspeth Mader, the science teacher, smiled and sat down at the student desk closest to him. He was pretty sure he''d had a dirty dream that began like this.

    "Greek mythology?" she asked again.

    "Oh. Yes. Yes, I''m familiar with it. Why?"

    "I came across a reference to ''Hephaestus,''" she said, unsure of her pronunciation. She spelled it out, her hands running over the graffiti scratched in the surface of the desk, then continued, "It''s in a book I''m reading. I would''ve just looked it up, but the internet''s down all over the school."

    Jake hesitated, straightening the stack of final exams on his desk. "Why would you think I''d know anything about it?"

    She looked at him with a confused smile. Jake wondered how anyone could have such perfect lips. "Because you''re the literature teacher???

    "Right," he said, mentally smacking himself. "Uh, Hephaestus is the god of metalworking, blacksmiths, and that sort of thing. He''s a son of Hera, maker of Pandora''s box, married Aphrodite¡­.It might help to know more of what you''re looking for."

    She smiled. "At least I know I came to the right place. There''s not much to it, really, just a line about the living metal of Hephaestus''s forge."

    "He made a throne that closed itself around Hera and trapped her," Jake said. "He made Hermes''s winged helmet and sandals, robot-like creatures to help him in his work¡­lots of stuff. Does that help?"

    "Yes. It''s perfect. But why did he trap Hera? Didn''t you say she was his mother?"

    "She was his mother, but he sent her the chair as revenge for throwing him out of heaven."

    "Why would she do that?" Elspeth asked, with concern.

    He had to smile at her to keep from laughing at her outright. She was lovely and intelligent, and Jake had once looked for every opportunity to talk to her. Once or twice he even thought she might be interested in him. And he was sure that, given the opportunity, he could find himself very interested in her, but the problem was bigger than just opportunity. He loved his wife. He loved her, and even if, sometime in a future he couldn''t imagine, he stopped loving her, there was still the otherworld to contend with. He had already put his mother, his wife, his daughter, and his roommate in danger because they were near him, and Jake wasn''t prepared to add to the list.

    Elspeth''s expression reminded him that she had asked a question. "Hephaestus was ugly," Jake replied, looking down at his desk, "hideous, and Hera was probably ashamed." He was about to add that Hera was the most vain and possessive person he''d ever met, but then he realized that would be an awkward thing to have to explain.

    Elspeth looked thoughtful. "I''d never imagined a god being ugly. You know, I guess I''d always imagined them as spirits, without having to worry about all the mundane mortal things like¡­like haircuts." She smiled, a little self-conscious.

    It was that self-conscious look that made Jake say, "For that they have Mr. Kurias, the barber of the gods."

    She laughed.

    "The gods do have a physical form¡­according to most myth writers, but they usually only wear it in the holy places, like Mount Olympus, or in emergencies. For travel, they tend to possess people or animals, occasionally an inanimate object. It helps them blend in. Plus, if you''re as widely hated as, say, Zeus, it helps to be able to travel incognito."

    Elspeth looked at him with interest. "You know a lot about this, don''t you?"

    Jake shrugged, turning away. "It''s everywhere, you know? Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and then there''s Homer and Ovid, and Byron and Keats and¡­." He looked up at Elspeth, then back down at his desk. "I spent a whole summer studying mythology once."

    "For a class?"

    "Yeah," Jake said.

    Lily looked nervous when Jake picked her up on Friday afternoon. He was jubilant, not just because Lily and Zeus were finally meeting, but also because school was out for summer, and he''d never gotten over being excited about that. He had two and a half whole months until he had to walk into that classroom again, and he had lists of movies he wanted to watch and books he wanted to read and places he wanted to take Lily.

    "Do you think he''ll like me?" she asked as soon as the front door opened.

    "What?" Jake said. Rachel stood behind Lily with the phone to her ear, one hand untangling the ends of her long blonde hair. She saw Jake staring at her, rolled her eyes, and walked into the living room.

    "Grampa Zoos," Lily said. "Will he like me?"

    Jake knelt down and hugged her fiercely. "Of course he will. Who wouldn''t like you?"

    Lily relaxed a little, and Jake stood up, took her overnight bag, and walked with Lily out to the car without another word to Rachel. Jake hadn''t realized how much stress a five-year-old could be under. Maybe that was her gift from the gods, to feel stress regardless of circumstance. "Can I buy him a present?" she asked.

    "I think it will be enough of a present just to get to meet you."

    She seemed to tense up again. The ignored voice in the unused part of his brain whispered a hint, and for once, Jake heard the whisper.

    "Lily?" She looked at him. "What did your mom tell you about Grandpa Zeus?" Aha! Jake thought as Lily squeezed her hands together and looked at the ground.

    "She said," Lily took a deep breath. "She said he was like a king, very famous and very dangerous. She said he wasn''t very smart but that he could be mean and could forget that other people have feelings."

    Jake thought about this. It wasn''t nice, what Rachel had told her daughter, but most of it was true. He helped Lily into the car, then walked around to the driver''s side. A curtain moved in one of the windows. Jake made sure Lily wasn''t watching, then he flipped Rachel off and hoped she saw.

    "She called him something else," Lily said when Jake had gotten in the car and started the ignition.

    "What?"

    "I don''t know. A¡­nipple-gazer?" Jake closed his eyes. "No, a navel-gazer. What''s a navel-gazer?"

    Jake tried to explain while offering a silent thanks to the universe that he wasn''t explaining what a nipple-gazer could be to his five-year-old daughter. "And your mom just said those things about your grandpa because she doesn''t like him. He''s not quite that bad. He''s not mean. Besides, he already loves you. He asks about you every time he visits, and he even has a picture of you."

    Lily nodded slowly, taking all this in. "Dad, why didn''t he want to see me before now?"

    "He has wanted to see you. It''s just that¡­since your mom doesn''t like him¡­."

    He glanced at his daughter, who was staring straight ahead through the windshield. She looked at him with an eerily mature "I get it" expression.

    "But that''s no big deal. You''re meeting him now, right? And I''m sure you guys will have a great time."

    Lily looked doubtful. They stopped at Wal-Mart and bought a case of Dr. Pepper before heading to the apartment.

    Saturday morning, Jake woke to the sounds of cartoons blaring from the living room television. Zeus was supposed to arrive at ten o''clock, but Jake hadn''t told Lily. He couldn''t stand to see her as bound up and nervous as she''d been the day before, and if Zeus was late, it would be worse. He could imagine her sitting, staring at the little digital clock on the VCR as it ticked past ten, past ten-thirty. Jake didn''t even think about what she would feel if Zeus didn''t show up, but surely, surely he would.

    Lily sat watching the PowerPuff Girls on the living room floor. She had already gotten dressed and brushed her hair. E. E., sprawling on the couch in cutoff sweatpants and a stained and holey t-shirt with "Hole" scrawled across the front, watched with her, two empty cereal bowls on the coffee table between them. Jake went into the kitchen and stood trying to decide between Cocoa Puffs and Raisin Bran. From the living room, he heard Lily ooo over something she saw in a commercial. The Raisin Bran box rattled when he touched it, so he poured a bowl of Cocoa Puffs instead and went to join Lily and E. E. just in time to catch the beginning of The Fairly OddParents.

    Half an hour later, E. E. stood and stretched. He went to his room and came out in jeans and a clean but no less ratty t-shirt featuring an equally obsolete band name. "Well, Lillian," he said, "I have an unemployed therapists'' meeting in ten minutes, so I better get going. I''ll see you later today."

    "Have a nice day, Edward," Lily said, grinning. E. E. stuck out his tongue at her, saluted Jake, and left.

    At ten-oh-seven, Lily turned away from the television and said, "Dad, when¡ª"

    The sharp knock on the door made both of them jump. Jake went to the door and looked through the spyhole. A kind-looking gentleman in his mid-fifties stood peacefully in the hallway. "How do I look, Jake?" the man said through the door, smiling at the spyhole. He looked clean and responsible, like a man with a 401K and a regular tee time.

    "Just fine, Dad." Jake unlocked the door and opened it for his father, who took a cautious step inside and focused immediately on the nervous little girl now standing in the middle of the room. They stared at each other, unsure and eager and, Jake was sure, a thousand other things as well. And Jake¡­well, Jake felt like a dickweed. He had been excited for days. Finally, these two people who mattered so much to him would meet. Finally, he would have something resembling a family. This day should have happened years ago. And that''s why Jake thought someone should kick him in the shins. A grandfather shouldn''t have to be introduced to his already walking, talking granddaughter. A granddaughter shouldn''t feel half-terrified to meet her relatively normal grandfather. They should know each other from the beginning, and it was Jake''s fault that they hadn''t.

    "I got you a present," Lily said in a burst, and ran into the kitchen. Zeus glanced at Jake, but before he could say anything, Lily staggered back into the living room, hugging five Dr. Peppers to her stomach.

    Zeus smiled widely. It was disconcerting to see his father looking so¡­fatherly. Zeus hugged Lily and thanked her. "I brought you a present too, but I have to run it by your dad first." Zeus motioned toward the door.

    Jake was all of a sudden very nervous. He followed Zeus back out into the hall. "Do you think she likes me?" Zeus asked immediately.

    In rare moments like this, Jake found it easy to forget that his father was anyone special. This ridiculously confident man was wide-eyed and tense today. Jake wondered if, had his father been in his natural form, the family resemblance would have been easier to see than usual. Jake felt no similarities between himself and the chief god of the pantheon, but he felt all too connected to this unsure man before him. And as much as Jake would have liked to torment Zeus, tell him that Lily had a high standard for grandfathers and he wasn''t sure Zeus measured up, the anxiety all over his father''s borrowed face made him unable to do it. "She likes you," Jake assured him. "She is just as nervous about you liking her." Zeus looked doubtful. "Now, what is the present?"

    Zeus reached for something he had leaned against the door frame¡ªa silver white feather as long as his arm.

    "What is that?" Jake said, unsure of whether to be nervous or awe-struck, but unable to keep from being both.

    "Feather from Pegasus'' wing. He starts to molt when it gets warm."

    "I don''t know¡­."

    Zeus looked at him seriously, hopefully. "It doesn''t have any kind of power. It''s just like a feather from a giant bird, except that this particular bird will lick you to death in search of caramel, and he grazes on Mount Olympus. Except in winter, which he spends in Calcutta."

    Jake raised his eyebrows.

    "He has a penchant for dal," Zeus said, as though that explained everything.

    Jake took the feather and turned it over and over in his hands. It was beautiful, and even though it was such an unlikely size, there was something indefinably real about it. Jake glanced up into his father''s eager face. "Yeah. Okay," he said.

    Lily was thrilled, of course. Zeus presented it to her in courtly style, and she looked as though someone had just handed her a Barbie mansion with all the accessories.

    Later that night, after E. E. had come home and resumed his hobby of lying around, Lily got tired of Candyland and moved on to interrogating her grandfather, whom she seemed to like immensely, even asking if she should call him "Grampa Zoos" or just "Grampa."

    "Where does magic come from?"

    "Life," Zeus said promptly, and Jake looked over into his face. That didn''t sound like a made-up answer. "All life is a kind of magic, but in some people and in some places it''s stronger than in others. When a person with a lot of magic makes an object, say a book or a sword or a cheesecake, sometimes they can put some of their magic inside of it, and the object is like their child."

    "Are there magic animals?"

    "Sometimes. But some animals are more likely to be magical than others. Phoenixes are always magical because they were born from the sun, which is such a magical place that no one can live there. Unicorns, dragons, hedgehogs, and chimeras are always magical, too. With other animals it varies, just like with people. Squirrels are more likely to have magical properties than, say, rhinoceroses. You wouldn''t believe how much impact the Capitol Hill squirrels have on your politics. They have their own little cosa nostra."

    Lily looked at him blankly.

    He continued, "People who have freckles are more likely to be magical than people who don''t. People who live near the equator are more likely to have magical properties than people who live near the North or South Pole."

    "What about Santa?"

    "He''s from Peru."

    "Do I have magic?"

    "Probably some. But there''s magic in millions of people. That''s why the beacon we talked about, the one that makes your dad crazy because the magical world notices him¡ª"

    "He found a baby hippocampus in his wine cooler yesterday," E. E. interjected.

    "¡ªthat beacon shines a little from you because you''re my granddaughter, but it''s unlikely that you''ll ever have hippocampuses in your wine coolers because thousands of people are just as bright as you, and millions of people shine at least a little. Some of them even have secret powers that they don''t know about."

    "I want to be invisible," Lily said. Jake made an effort not to glare at his father.

    "We''ll talk when you''re older," Zeus whispered with a half smile, and Lily beamed.

    Jake realized that he was clenching his fists and tried to relax. He''d survived growing up as Zeus''s son, so surely Lily would make it through as his granddaughter. He just hoped her growing-up years would be a little less exciting and painful than his. She was probably more in danger of being spoiled by him than anything more sinister. Zeus loved to bring Jake gifts when he was a child. Jake remembered getting an Arbor Day present one year. Jake had tried to reciprocate for a while. He''d even made up a birthday for his father, since Zeus claimed not to have one, but Zeus never looked happier than when he was pulling a wrapped present from behind his back.

    By the time Jake was eighteen, he felt too old for presents. He didn''t even look at the trinket Zeus brought to him the morning of Delilah''s funeral. He put it in his pocket, and for all he knew, it was still there. The pants were in a Goodwill store somewhere or smashed between other sets of long unused clothes in the back of the closet at the house on Lime Street, where he was no longer welcome.

    Of course, presents had been the last thing on Jake''s mind that day. He stood by the graveside, near the casket. Zeus stood beside him, saying nothing and ignoring the questioning stares from the service''s few other attendees. There was no wind and no rain, though the clouds waving their thick hands in front of the sun made the day seem to move back and forth between afternoon and twilight. It was good funeral weather.

    Jake, nineteen and in the habit of wearing his hair almost to his shoulders, stood beside his father, trying not to feel so sad that he couldn''t keep himself from crying, but sad enough that he didn''t feel the relief that had come over him twice since he heard that his mother had simply stopped breathing walking across her living room one morning. Relief was not the thing to be feeling. It made him sick when he realized what he felt.

    Jake tried to clear his mind and see just the casket, just the outline of his father out of the edge of his eye. He hated the people who stared. He hated them for their melancholy masks and their clasped hands. None of them had ever stopped in or called to check on them. None of them came for dinner or invited them to the movies. The grass grew knee-high when Jake was too busy to mow. The car had fallen apart months ago, and nothing but a wide oilspot marked the driveway, but no one called and asked if she needed a ride. Jake carried groceries home on his bicycle, a bag hanging from each handlebar and his backpack so heavy on his shoulders that his shirts stretched and his lower back ached for days.

    So he didn''t care about their solemn sympathetic blathering. They were here to relieve some guilt or acknowledge some debt to a woman they had never acknowledged in life. They were dementors, feeding on the grief, and yes, the guilt, of Delilah''s son. They were liars, too, because in their thoughts and in their conversation for as long as they remembered her name, they would make her into some kind woman whom they knew so well, who didn''t deserve to go so young, who left behind a son, a fine young man, who was so very close to her.

    Part of him wanted to snarl at them, slash with his claws.

    Zeus put a hand on his shoulder when the service was over. "I''m sorry," he said, and Jake knew that it was a much broader apology than just sympathy, and he felt a love for his father that he hadn''t felt since he was a little boy.

    Now, Lily and Zeus sat together on the floor, the discarded fragments of Candyland spread across the floor between them, talking about the cool things she could do if she were invisible.

    "Can you be invisible?" Lily asked

    "Not when I''m in this thing," Zeus said, pointing to his chest. "When I''m in my other body, my real body, I can."

    "Because you''re imm¡­?"

    Jake was sure that she was about to say "immoral," which would have been pretty funny, and he was waiting for it, but Zeus jumped in. "Immortal," he said. "And that''s sort of the reason, yes."

    "What''s it like?" Lily asked.

    "It''s like¡­" he thought, then smiled widely. "Like a light." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter and clicked it. An orange flame appeared, waving from Zeus''s breath. Then he took out another lighter, a dull silver one covered with runic letters, and lit it, but instead of fire, there was a flame-shaped darkness bursting out. Jake didn''t want to know what that one was for. And where had it come from? Jake sat up straighter. Either the old man who''d been body-snatched had had it in his pocket, or Zeus had just done a trick Jake hadn''t seen before.

    Zeus touched the two small flames together, and they made a strange, half light, half dark flame, like a swirl of vanilla and chocolate pudding. "Like your dad," Zeus told her. "He''s mortal/immortal. He has some of the benefits of immortality, but not all. He''ll live a very long time unless he starts smoking or steps in front of a bus. He can even live in my hometown, Olympus, if he chooses, like some of my other children."

    "How many children do you have?" Lily asked.

    "Oh, hundreds. Many of them aren''t alive anymore," Zeus said, his voice low. "And some don''t want to have me as a father, but some of them live with me and some of them I can visit as often as I want, like your dad."

    Lily was looking at the flames again. "Do I have a light?"

    "Sure," Zeus said. He clicked his lighters again, and there was a dark flame and the normal one. He touched them together briefly, the released the normal lighter''s button. The flame that remained was mostly dark. Bits of light like snow falling could be seen, but no real light. "You are almost as mortal as most people," Zeus said. "But you are a dark flame with diamonds inside. That''s the best kind of mortal." Zeus clicked the lighters and made Jake''s light again, the pudding one. "Now, look at this. You see how half your dad''s light shines out so you notice it a lot more than the dark places? That''s what your dad''s trying to get rid of. It''s like the beacon we talked about earlier. Other immortal and half-immortal people and creatures can see it or sense it, and they want to come close to it and say hi to the owner. This world isn''t friendly to the immortal world anymore. We have to make friends where we can."

    Lily then asked if she could have a pink flame, and the conversation deteriorated from there. But Jake was sure the talk hadn''t been completely for her anyway.

    Before Zeus left, he asked how the box was doing. Jake assured him that it was fine and resisted the impulse to ask for more information about it.

    One of the earliest questions Jake could remember asking his father (not the usual, why is the sky blue? or even, where do babies come from?) was a question like Lily''s: "Am I immortal?" Actually, he''d been around her age, so it had probably been more along the lines of, "Will I be a god someday?" or "How can I change into a turtle with a fire baton?"

    But he remembered Zeus''s answer clearly. His father had put an arm around him and told him that he was a child of a god and a mortal, like many of Zeus''s other children, and like them, he could expect to live an exceptionally long life and to have certain abilities. "Some of your half-brothers and half-sisters are Olympic athletes. Others are unusually successful stock brokers, womanizers, and magicians. More than half of them live in Vegas. You have a half-brother in Arizona who''s a talented automobile mechanic."

    "I have a lot of brothers and sisters?"

    Zeus said, half smiling, "Birth control isn''t foolproof."

    Jake accepted this. There were three things he didn''t know. The first was what a womanizer was. The second was what his special ability could be. The third was whether Zeus was being completely truthful.

    Years later, his special ability still on his mind, Jake stood before a room of high school students for the first time, writing "Mr. Foster" in large letters on the board. He turned to the class, who were chatting with friends, sending text messages, touching up nail polish, reading Sports Illustrated (or just looking at the pictures, or just looking at what was concealed within the pages), or napping.

    Near the end of the class, after he had passed out syllabi and discussed his plans and goals for the semester, they were all still chatting with friends, sending text messages, touching up nail polish, reading Sports Illustrated, or napping. The only difference was that many who had been awake in the beginning were now snoring audibly over the babble.

    When the bell finally, finally rang, Jake too put his head on his desk and thought that he could, at least, mark teaching off his list of possible abilities. Of course, by this time, he could also mark off scuba diving, electronics, sales, and definitely womanizing.

    And he knew that Zeus hadn''t been entirely truthful because the truth was that Jake had no abilities at all.

 11 Chapter Ten

    E. E. burst into the living room that evening, after ten minutes spent in his bedroom, and announced, "I suck."

    Zeus had left an hour before, and Lily was coloring in a coloring book on the couch. She glanced up long enough to reply, "No you don''t. You''re nice." She picked up her Dr. Pepper and took several long gulps.

    E. E. actually seemed to brighten a little. He sat down across from Jake and calmly said, "I''m the worst writer in the world."

    "You''re a writer? What have you ever wrote?" Lily asked.

    "Nothing. That''s why I''m terrible. Hey, Lily¡ªKnock knock."

    "Who''s there?"

    "Owls."

    "Owls who?"

    "I know that."

    She laughed and Dr. Pepper came out her nose.

    "The search for your muse not going so well?" Jake asked.

    "Not even a little."

    "You''re good at knock-knock jokes, apparently," Jake said.

    "You''re right. Maybe that''s my true calling. There''s nothing embarrassing about being a knock-knock joke writer. Nothing profitable about it either, though. I have a dream that one day I will never again sell cherry blossom lotion to underclothed middle aged men for rent money."

    Lily looked up from her coloring book with a confused expression. She said, "I dream about dinosaurs," then returned to her coloring.

    Before Rachel came to pick Lily up Monday morning, Jake handed Lily a shiny keychain in the shape of a sailboat. "Put this behind the refrigerator when you get home," he told her.

    She put it in her pocket. "All the remote controls are missing," she said.

    Jake grabbed a handful of coins from the bowl by the door and gave them to Lily too. "Two or three times a week, put a couple of coins back there for him, too. Can you remember?"

    "Yeah," she said. "And don''t let Mom see, right?"

    "Right." Jake watched her put the keychain and coins away. He wanted to tell her not to worry about it, just to eat her vegetables and mind her mother and not worry about those other things. But there was no one else to take care of those other things, and they must be taken care of.

    Rachel came and left with Lily, and Jake stood in his empty apartment, his empty, powerless, grieving apartment.

 12 Chapter Eleven

    The box Jake kept safe for Zeus faded in and out of his attention, as though it were a usually introverted child who sometimes wanted to be entertained. After a lot of thought, Jake moved it from his dresser top to the closet. He hoped separating himself from it by a door and a couple of feet would help him forget it, but even then, he thought about it, and without realizing what he was doing, began trying to figure out how to open it. After an hour in bed, Jake went to the closet, switched on the light, and examined the box. There were no seams that he could see, where the top would meet the bottom. It seemed completely whole, and it was heavy enough to be solid all the way through. In fact, now that the thought occurred to him, he figured there must be something very heavy inside or the hollow place inside was very small. The woman on top seemed to be inviting him to focus his mind completely on what might be inside.

    Twice, he found himself standing at the closet door and forced himself to go back to bed. He couldn''t be sure whether it was a desire to keep it safe or a desire to be near it and open it that brought him ever more strongly to that spot.

    He fell asleep thinking of the box and the woman on top, who moved in his dreams with a serious grace.

    Most of the time, though, Jake dreamed about Rachel. Often the three of them were together, and he would be driving down an endless, winding road beside a postcard ocean. Rachel would be beside him, Lily leaning forward between the seats, and they would be laughing or singing along to the radio. Or they would all be stretched out on a picnic blanket beneath trees so thick with leaves that Rachel would think it was evening and time to leave, and she would lift the end of the blanket and begin to shake the leaves off no matter how desperately Jake tried to convince her that it was just shadow, not night, that they still had hours, as much as half a day, together. But she kept shaking the blanket, and Jake would have to shield his eyes from the brittle leaves and twigs and insects that shrapnelled off in every direction.

    Sometimes, though, it was just the two of them. Rachel would wear a thin summer dress and come to lie next to him on the white blankets in the white room where sunlight seemed to come, not just from the wide open windows, but from every surface. She would bring him wine or cookies or breakfast and sit with him, talking and laughing, until he set the food aside and pulled her against him.

    In those dreams, he never asked himself if he was dreaming. If the thought even began to push at the edge of his dream, he immediately curled around Rachel more tightly. But it didn''t matter. The dreams always ended, and Jake got out of bed and went to make coffee under the bare yellow kitchen bulb, trying to decide whether he wanted to remember the dream or forget it.

    He measured out coffee grounds and filled the decanter with the distractedness of habit. Surely, she would forgive him for whatever it was he had done. Surely, he would find a way to extinguish the light of immortality in him that drew the insects of the immortal world into his life. Surely, he would get to go home again.

 13 Chapter Twelve

    "Daddy!"

    Lily had thrown open the front door before Jake was out of the car. He swept her up in a hug when she reached him. He marked his life by these moments. The weeks between were bearable, nothing more. He hardly slept at night, and the days passed blurrily, all of them alike. He had been teaching, eating, and grading papers, and now that school was out, one of those distractions was taken away. To fill that time, he thought and read about how a half-mortal might extinguish his immortality and win back his wife.

    He hugged Lily close. "How about the zoo today? Does that sound fun?"

    Lily nodded and opened her mouth, probably to lament (again) the lack of penguins at the Bee Caves Zoo, but Rachel, who had followed her daughter out into the warm sun, said, "You don''t have to do that, Jake."

    "Do what?" he said, hearing the defensiveness immediately in his tone, and grimacing.

    "Plan a major event every weekend you have with Lily. You could just spend time with her."

    "I am spending time with her," Jake shot back. He wasn''t sure whether anger was better or worse than defensiveness, but it was better than crying. He gave himself a mental thumbs up and managed to smile at Rachel. "Besides, every day I get to spend with Lily is a major event." He turned to Lily, who was still hugging him tightly. "Isn''t that right, Pumpkin Seed?"

    She giggled, then chanted back, "Right, Tuna Fish."

    Rachel look perturbed, her carefully colored lips pressed so tight together that little lines appeared around her mouth, and Jake wondered what it would look like if her foundation hardened enough to actually crack and crumble under the strain of those lines. She said, "How are you and the gods?" It was her way of asking whether or not he was free of the supernatural world yet.

    "We chat often," Jake replied.

    "Oh," she said. Jake knew she wouldn''t even discuss patching their torn marriage unless she had assurance that her backyard would not blossom with lava and reveal a pouting Hades in search of gardening advice. Again. But he pretended not to see that she looked a little relieved.

    Jake didn''t point out that their daughter was also a descendant of a god and his worries that, despite Zeus''s assurances to the contrary, it wouldn''t be too many years before she started drawing the attention of the immortal world, especially if she was as beautiful a young woman as her mother had been. He only hoped that Lily would have some recompense, some power to help her handle the pestilential otherworld. Zeus had also insisted that this was unlikely. And it was true that if Lily had any unusual abilities, Jake hadn''t seen a sign of it yet. He had considered testing her, the way Zeus had tested him on occasion throughout Jake''s childhood, but he was afraid Rachel would be far more irritated than his own mother had been when Zeus had dropped him into the Minotaur cage. Or when Zeus had left him in his stroller in the middle of Main Street. Or when Zeus had thrown knives at him from across the kitchen.

    Jake smiled in memory. When Jake had asked his father about the tests later, Zeus had said, "I was just curious."

    "Were you disappointed?" Jake had asked. He tried to imagine those knives and Zeus''s expectant expression.

    "Of course not. In fact, once you turned eighteen and stopped hating me as much, I was proud of the man you were growing into. I''m even prouder now. You don''t realize how many dull people and assholes there are in the world until you meet someone who isn''t."

    It took Jake a minute to realize this was a compliment.

    Now, though, Jake was smiling dazedly at the doorframe, which annoyed Rachel for some reason.

    "I was late for work last Monday," she huffed, "because Lily wasn''t ready when I came to pick her up." Her voice was hard. Jake watched her, the knives still soaring in his thoughts. Had he really been such a terrible husband? Would it have made a difference if he had loved her more, shown it more, or was this all inevitable? Just the result of being a son of a god? Rachel looked up at him, must have seen some glimmer of what he was thinking. Her voice softened, just the smallest amount. "If you could have her ready by seven-thirty this time, I would really appreciate it."

    Rachel walked back toward the house without another word. Jake watched, knowing, as he always did when she walked away, that he couldn''t feel more bereft than he did at that moment.

    When Lily was buckled in, Jake backed out of the driveway and headed back into the city. Lily started singing her zoo song, which included animals that Jake hadn''t heard of and wasn''t completely sure existed. The fifth time she started over, Jake put his hand to his temple.

    "Hey," he said suddenly, reaching into the glove compartment for his long neglected cell phone. "Do you want to call E. E. and ask him if he wants to come to the zoo with us?"

    Lily said, "Yes! E. E. makes a sound just like a elephant."

    Jake turned the phone on, selected the number to his apartment, and handed Lily the phone.

    Lily listened for about thirty seconds, then said in a serious voice, "This is Lily Foster. May I please speak with E. E.¡­um? E. E¡­.um?" She whispered loudly to Jake, "What''s E. E.''s last name?"

    "Olszewski," Jake said.

    Lily stared at him as though he must be joking. She said into the phone, "May I please speak with E. E. O.?"

    Jake laughed out loud.

    At noon, Lily was trying to catch the attention of the spider monkeys, while Jake and E. E. sat on the bench across from her. E. E. was enjoying a double scoop of pistachio ice cream rolled in Oreos.

    "That is one great kid, you''ve got," E. E. said between spoonfuls.

    "I know," Jake said. Lily was making a monkey sound, which sounded to Jake like a goose honk with a Latin beat.

    "I bet you miss seeing her every day."

    "Yeah."

    "You have her, what, four days a month?"

    "Do you have a point?"

    E. E. seemed to think about it before answering, "I guess not. It just seems wrong. That''s all."

    Jake nodded slowly. Wrong wasn''t even the word for it. Catastrophic was better. Atrocious. Devastating. Kind of like what you imagine hell might be like, except there''s a glimpse of heaven every other weekend, just enough to remind you how much hell sucks. In case you forget.

    "So Rachel''s still being a bitch?" he asked.

    "She''s not a¡ª" Jake said.

    E. E, sniffed a laugh. "Dude. Next time you see her, ask her to let go of your nuts."

    Jake watched Lily make monkey gestures and sighed. "Yeah. Okay."

    By the time E. E.''s cone disappeared, they had moved on to the reptile house, and Jake was thoroughly absorbed in his thoughts.

    "You still want to be with her? With Rachel?" E. E. asked, then snorted and tried to lick the ice cream out of the corner at the same time. The sound that came out was actually quite a lot like an elephant sound. "That''s a stupid question. It''s obvious you do. So what''s the problem?"

    "The same thing that''s been the problem all along. Zeus. Hera. Athena. Pixies. Satyrs. Sirens. Nymphs."

    "Is that the whole problem?"

    And nothing but the problem, so help me gods. "Of course," Jake said, then thought about it, then decided he didn''t want to think about it. If he could solve this problem, then he could handle any other little problem there might be without trouble.

    "So," E. E. said, as though pointing to the obvious solution.

    "So?"

    "So get rid of them. Tell them to bugger off."

    "If it was that easy, don''t you think I would''ve done it already?"

    "No," E. E. replied, matter-of-factly.

    "What?"

    "No," he said again, standing straight and turning away from the python exhibit. "I think you like it, the whole misunderstood son of god thing. You don''t fit anywhere, so you''re special, right? Don''t look all shocked. I get it. I mean, it''s the only thing that makes you interesting, isn''t it? That makes you unique? Why would you give that up?"

    Jake tried to talk and couldn''t. He swallowed, rubbed his eyes, then choked, "Are you kidding me? You think I like it? Do you think I wanted my father to show up in a coat made of seagull feathers halfway through my high school graduation?" He swallowed, frustrated that his voice came out in a mildly inquisitive, disbelieving tone instead of with anger. "Do you think I invited Dionysus to our wedding, or a hag along on our honeymoon? Do you think I wanted to find sprites under our bed the last time we¡ª"

    "Got it. That''s enough. The kid''s listening."

    Lily had turned away from the snakes, and Jake realized that his voice had been echoing against the high ceiling more loudly than he''d thought. An old woman with her granddaughter was staring at him with her mouth open. E. E. saw her and said in a bright announcer voice, "That''s right folks! Join us at three o''clock in the arboretum for the first-ever production of¡­The Incredibly Average Son of Zeus! Six dollars per ticket, three for kids and old people."

    Lily giggled and straightened her frog-shaped hat.

    "Hey, Lily," E. E. said. "Knock knock."

    "Who''s there?"

    "Ima."

    "Ima who?"

    "What''s a who?"

    Lily laughed so hard she almost fell down.

    "I''m just saying," said E. E. in a quieter voice, "that maybe you haven''t explored all your options because you''re not entirely sure you want to be free of this¡­this¡­."

    "Curse?" Jake supplied. "Burden? Millstone?"

    E. E. looked at him as though waiting for him to finish.

    Jake forced a friendly smile. "Okay. I know I haven''t explored all my options. I''m not even sure what my options actually are. So what do you suggest, O Guide to the Immortal World?"

    "Talk to your dad, and when he pretends not to have any idea what you should do, go talk to someone else."

    "Who?"

    E. E. shrugged. "Who are you supposed to talk to about stuff like this?"

    The operator, Jake almost said. Directory assistance. Customer service''s 24-hour, toll free hotline. Then the real answer came from the ignored whisper in his mind.

    The Fates? Jake shuddered.

    Later, while they waited in line to pay seven bucks for a bottle of water, Jake asked Lily questions about her ballet class and listened to E. E. falling in love with a girl in line behind them, trying to focus on both conversations so he wouldn''t start considering the idea E. E. had formed in his mind. Jake knew only a few basic things about the Fates, but he knew enough to know that he didn''t want to know anymore. He knew enough to know that it would be dangerous to know any more. The Fates wove the destinies of humanity on their loom. They spun the thread, wove it into the pattern of life, and cut it. Sometimes they cut it just because it interfered with their pattern. Other times, they cut it because they get tired of dealing with someone. Jake had heard that they once cut a thread because a Pizza Hut employee had put Canadian bacon on their vegetarian pizza.

    The girl chatting with E. E. read the flavored coffees from the menu and said, "Wow, cr¨¨me brul¨¦e coffee. Doesn''t that sound delicious?"

    "Cr¨¨me brul¨¦e does. Coffee doesn''t," E. E. said. Jake didn''t turn around, but he knew E. E.''s expression without looking. It was that wide, welcoming, Big Bad Wolf smile.

    "Not a coffee drinker?" she asked.

    "No drugs for me, thanks."

    "Isn''t that a unusual for a writer?"

    Jake shook his head. For some reason, E. E. thought he could pick up girls by pretending to be artistic. Jake suspected that E. E. claimed to be a not-yet-published writer because it sounded more masculine than admitting to being a part time cashier at Bath \u0026 Body Works.

    "Yeah. It wasn''t always this way, though. I tried it all when I was in college¡ªcaffeine, nicotine, methamphetamines, anything I could smoke, swallow, or shoot up." Jake listened with more interest. E. E. was an accomplished liar.

    "Wow," the girl said.

    "Yeah. Just in search of the muse."

    "Did you ever find one?"

    "No. I did find out how many brain cells I was losing. I read about it on the internet."

    Jake focused his attention back on Lily, only catching random words of the rest of E. E.''s conversation. He heard mention of the Muses, so he wasn''t surprised that, when he paid for his overpriced water and turned around, the girl was gone.

    It was dark when Jake, Lily, and E. E. went back to the apartment. They climbed the stairs slowly, with the heavy raw sleepiness of a day in the sun, when the sunburn begins to announce itself by lighting up the coals just below the eyes and everyone''s throat feels full of sand, even if there was no beach.

    Lily slept on the fold-out couch that night, watching Beauty and the Beast until she couldn''t hold her eyes open any longer. Jake replaced the Pringles can she cradled in her arms with her stuffed moose and watched her blanket rise and fall with her breath, her small hands flexing in dreams.

    Two weekends a month.

    Years passed between those weekends, but a part of him felt some relief that she was so rarely with him. Jake could imagine a life for her away from the beings that had destroyed his marriage. He wanted her to go to college, find a good job, marry (if she had to) a man who would respect her. He didn''t want pixies showing up during her final exams. But, he reminded himself, that would never happen. Zeus said it didn''t work that way, that Lily would never have the problems Jake had.

    And for about thirty seconds, that comforted him, but then he was thinking about his growing-up years and all the unpleasantness that nothing, not being half-immortal or, Jake was sure, being fully immortal, could have prevented.

    Adolescence. Dates. Braces. First days. Those memories were still uncomfortable for Jake, but what was worse was the realization that Lily had all of it still ahead of her. He wished he could live it for her, or at least curl her up in his arms and tell her that none of those things mattered. But if he did it now, she wouldn''t know what he was talking about it, and if he tried to do it later, she wouldn''t want his comfort.

    And what if Zeus was wrong? God knew it had happened a thousand times before. What if Lily would attract the immortal world? Or worse, what if they would come to her just because she was his daughter? Or because she was around him? What if that orange light of immortality spread onto her like a disease?

    His stomach clenched and whirled. Lily shouldn''t be allowed to see him at all. She should be kept away. She should be safe and happy. Rachel would have no problem making that happen, Jake was sure, though she claimed she didn''t want Lily to grow up without her father.

    He could see her, his beautiful daughter, safe and happy, with an empty seat in the audience of her every spelling bee and play and swim meet and ballet recital and graduation. He saw her forever looking out into that audience for him and never seeing him and never knowing that he did it so that she would be safe and happy.

    Jake couldn''t do it, he knew. She was his daughter, his lovely, and as selfish as he felt, as much as he hated himself for knowing it, he couldn''t give her up.

    Tonight, though, even knowing it wouldn''t help, Jake sat up for hours, watching her hands move in sleep and praying.

 14 Chapter Thirteen

    Later that evening, after checking on the box in the top of his closet, Jake realized that E. E. had been right. He needed information. He would start with Zeus, who wouldn''t be willing to tell him anything about becoming mortal. But maybe Jake could trick some clue out of his father. Jake just needed some idea about what to do next.

    Once Lily and E. E. were both asleep, Jake grabbed a handful of M\u0026M''s from the dish on the counter and proceeded to pace.

    After half an hour, there were no M\u0026M''s left in the apartment, and he was even more convinced that his father would be no help whatsoever. Every scenario he saw in his head ended in Zeus slamming the front door on his way out. But Jake needed answers. "And where do you go for answers?" he asked aloud. "That''s right. The internet."

    Jake went to his room, switched on his laptop, and while he waited for it to boot, he thought that surely, surely he was not the first person to want to be free of the immortal world.

    He opened his web browser, typed www.google.com, typed "how to become mortal," and got a few million hits, including websites on the differences between venial and mortal sins and a website on cough syrup, but nothing looked helpful.

    Zeus came to see his granddaughter on Sunday afternoon, and even though he showed up unannounced as usual and in the guise of a member of a barbershop quartet, Jake was happy to see him. He was going to find out something about becoming mortal. Because if Zeus didn''t give him information he could use, he would have to find answers elsewhere, and he had no idea where else to look.

    "I read something interesting about you on the internet last night," Jake said, once Zeus had said his hellos and grabbed a Dr. Pepper from the refrigerator.

    Zeus looked a little squeamish. "You can''t believe anything you read on the internet. Bunch of lonely geeks sitting around telling lies."

    "You were nursed by a goat?"

    The squeamish look intensified. "I was a kid. I didn''t know what I was doing. And that goat kept me from being eaten. You wouldn''t be here if it wasn''t for her."

    "Where can I find the Fates?" Jake asked. After a lot of thought, he decided that the best strategy would just be to spring the question on his father. Maybe he would at least be able to tell something from his reaction.

    Zeus fell off his chair and started choking.

    Damn.

    When Zeus was back on his feet, breathing somewhat normally again, he said, "Pardon me if I sound a little like E. E. here, but dude, that is so not a good idea."

    "Why not? Can''t you take me, or put in a good word for me? I read somewhere that they''re your daughters."

    "That''s a dirty lie."

    "So?"

    Zeus looked at him, and Jake had never seen his father looking so unsettled. "I suppose you want the truth?" he asked, hedging.

    "Yes, please." Want the truth? Of course. Expect it? Not even a little.

    "The Fates are immortal, eternal, and powerful. Gods don''t mess with them. Even I am a shaved poodle in comparison to the Fates. They''re women, Jake." He stopped, as though he had just unraveled a mystery.

    Jake couldn''t imagine what this could mean. His father, seducer of hundreds throughout the centuries, was afraid of the Fates because they were women? "Yeah," Jake said with a cough. "I read that they''re women. But what¡ª"

    "Women are freakishly powerful creatures," Zeus explained. "The Fates are women magnified and injected with super-proteins and buried in Miracle-Gro. Don''t expect them to want to sit around and discuss football. Usually they just snip your thread if you get too chatty."

    "I''ve heard that actually."

    "''Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife,'' Jake," Zeus cautioned.

    "You''re quoting the Bible now?"

    "Those guys knew what they were talking about. Jezebel, Bathsheba, Esther, Delilah¡­."

    "Esther was okay," Jake muttered.

    "''Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'' or annoyed or interrupted while she''s weaving."

    "Dad! I don''t need proverbs right now, entertaining as it is to hear you moralizing. I need help." Part of Jake wanted to say it out loud, that he needed help because he needed Rachel, but this was something Zeus knew already, and Jake couldn''t keep repeating it. It scratched the inside of his throat. "I need¡­I need help."

    "You need to meet this girl that works in the coffeehouse on Cypress St. Hera''s friend. She''s perfect for you¡ªshe''s very funny, in a repressed sort of way." Jake glared, and Zeus continued, "Fine. You''re on the right track. I''ve never heard of anyone wanting to give up immortality, or," he sniffed, "disassociate oneself from godlike company, but if anyone knows how, the Fates do."

    "That''s not my first choice, though. Do you know anyone a little less temperamental I could ask about this?"

    "No."

    "Can you tell me how to find them?"

    "No."

    "Come on, Dad. I need help here."

    Zeus hesitated, straightening his handlebar mustache. "There''s a party tonight at Ares''s apartment in Mexico City," he said. "I''ll take you."

    "Well¡­that sounds great, but what does that have to do with¡ª"

    "Pete will be there. You can ask him."

    "Pete the record-keeper?"

    "Yeah."

    Jake could see how eager Zeus was for the conversation to end, so he said, "Thanks," and tried to think of something else to say to shoot the sound-sucking bats from the air between them.

    "See you at eleven," Zeus said eventually. Then he stood, hugged Lily goodbye, and left the apartment. But he closed the door gently.

    "What do you wear to a party with the gods?" Jake called from inside his closet late that evening.

    "Do you remember me saying I''d backslap you if you ever asked me a fashion question again?" E. E. called back from the living room.

    "No. I do remember you saying something about pulling my hair and stealing my lipstick."

    "You need a gay friend."

    Jake picked a shirt and a pair of pants and went to the living room. "Do you think this would work?"

    "Do you think I care?" E. E. said, not looking up. "I don''t know why you''re trying to change things anyway. To be a part of the immortal world seems amazing. I''d give anything¡ª"

    "To be a pawn of the gods?" Jake interrupted. "To be surrounded by the immortal world and not to have any power of your own? To be thrown around and manipulated and pestered to death? You bet. Sign me up."

    "Yeah, you whine a lot, but what''s the worst you''ve had to deal with? A siren in a library. Big deal. And she didn''t¡ª"

    "I lost my wife. I''d take a thousand sirens and a million ticked off brownies if it meant I could keep her."

    E. E. was silent for a moment, but he sucked at it. He tried to make his tone jovial, and he put on his psychology voice, which had a hint of an Austrian accent, "From vhence came all this ''ostility?"

    Jake tried to stop being angry with him, which was much harder than pretending to, which he did immediately, smiling and returning his own voice to a normal volume. He folded the clothes over the top of the recliner. The inside of his stomach felt acidic with frustration and fury. But E. E. didn''t mean anything by his meanness. He just had no mouth control.

    And there was more to his "hostility" than that. There were years and years of suspicion and panic and trying to choose between glancing behind him and not wanting to know if something was there. He breathed in until he couldn''t force more air into his lungs.

    Jake sat down and focused on his hands. "I didn''t mind until I was older, you know. My mom never minded. She knew it was all because of me, but she¡­she was great. The pixies in her tulips didn''t bother her. She left plates of milk out on the kitchen floor at night, in case anything in our house got thirsty. We would even have one of her centaur friends over for dinner whenever we could afford it. My life was magical, and I didn''t even know it. I got a little irritated from time to time, when my model train disappeared or because I could never have friends over. Trickets and wribbles don''t understand when you tell them to keep out of sight. But¡­it was so great, you know? There was this unexpectedness about living in that house. I think people who have a house full of animals, not just a cat and a dog, but birds and a rabbit and a hedgehog and a hamster and a snake and a few fish and a house goat also, might understand better than anyone. It''s a kind of chaos that doesn''t leave much room for anything else." He stopped talking at some point and fell into memories of her, his impossible, amazing mother.

    "I''m sorry," E. E. said.

    Jake looked up. "Oh. No, don''t worry about it. You''re right. It''s been great, but a house-full-of-pets kind of great. It''s exciting until something births kittens in the middle of your bed."

    E. E. gave a short laugh.

    "I think they killed her," Jake said, then had to resist the impulse to put his hand over his mouth. He''d never said that aloud, never even formed the words in his head because it didn''t matter if it was true. He had no way of knowing, no way of changing anything. He felt sick that he''d even said it.

    "They¡­why?" E. E. was staring back at him, and Jake was suddenly aware that he was talking to a former counselor. Something in E. E.''s posture or composed expression, the way he didn''t talk a lot about himself but always seemed to pull buckets of words from Jake. The way Jake knew that if he just kept talking long enough, all of the problems would be in words, and words were solvable.

    "I didn''t mean¡­" Jake paused. "Someone would have found her. She would have had friends and family checking in on her. But the monsters were the only ones there when she collapsed. They didn''t help her, and they had long since scared away everyone else. And she was young. My mother was young, still in her early forties. She didn''t smoke or drink much, and when she remembered to eat, it was all health food. Hippie stuff like flaxseed and wheat germ."

    E. E. listened to him babble, but Jake had stopped even glancing in his direction.

    "How does a woman like that have a heart attack walking across her living room?" Jake asked. "How¡ª"

    "Sometimes things like that just happen, Jake," E. E. said.

    "No," he said, shaking his head so hard that he couldn''t see E. E. or the apartment walls around them. "Things like that don''t just happen, not when they happen to someone who''s yours. Things can just happen to other people, but to a young, healthy woman in contact with the immortal world, they don''t." Jake stopped, surprised by the tears in his eyes. Had he ever cried for her? He couldn''t remember. "It doesn''t matter. There''s nothing I could, nothing I could have done, anyway."

    E. E. started to speak, then paused. He seemed to choose words carefully. "You''re determined, then? You''re going to go to the Fates? You''re going to mortalize yourself?"

    ??If I can."

    E. E. nodded. "I hope you can."

    Jake had to force a smile, but he felt a tense rope along his spine slacken. Someone supported him. Someone knew all the horribleness of Jake''s life, and someone was rooting him on. His own personal cheerleader.

    "Me, too," Jake said. And Zeus''s familiar knock echoed through the room.

 15 Chapter Fourteen

    By one in the morning, Jake was so tired that he couldn''t keep the room in focus, which helped him ignore the feeling that everyone in the room was watching him, marking him as an intruder.

    Ares pushed open the kitchen door, holding a case of Dr. Pepper under each arm and in each hand. He was met with exclamations of joy. He called out, "I also have a couple of A\u0026Ws and Mountain Dews in the fridge, in case¡ª"

    "Mountain Dew tastes like mermaid spit," Poseidon shouted from the far corner of the room. He was met with roaring laughter and agreement.

    A nymph in a corner of the room called, "Let''s play the Seven Degrees of Association to Kevin Bacon game!"

    At least twelve people said, "I know Kevin Bacon," at the same time, and there was a tremor of drunken laugher that followed. Jake hazily noticed bottles of rum and vodka amid empty Dr. Pepper cans.

    Several other games were proposed, and groups broke off to play Scrabble, craps, quarters, and Risk, which was, according to Zeus, a favorite of the gods. Zeus led Jake to the craps table, near where Pete stood watching, commiserating with the losers. Zeus introduced Jake and Pete as a young woman walked passed, turning her head and saying, "Cluck, cluck" to Pete.

    "What''s wrong with her?" Jake asked.

    "She has allergies," Pete answered absently.

    Zeus introduced them, and Pete took a long look at Jake. "What can I do for you?" he asked. Jake must have looked surprised because Pete added, "You have that ''Bless-me-father-for-I-have-sinned'' look." He grinned.

    "I was wondering if you could tell me how to get in contact with the Fates," Jake said, hoping this would be a short conversation so he could go home and go to sleep.

    Pete examined Jake''s face as though checking for signs of insanity. Jake wondered if he found any. "You¡­" Pete turned back to Zeus. "This is him," he said. "This is the discontent, half-mortal son of Zeus." He gave an awe-filled chuckle. "Well, I think you''re batty, but I''ll tell you, more because I''m curious about how things will turn out for you than anything else. Corner of 3rd and Maple in your hometown."

    "In Bee Caves?"

    Pete looked at him the way he would look at the village idiot. "It''s not the only way to get there." He shook Jake''s hand and gave him a grin. "Nice to meet you, Jake. I hope you don''t die."

    Pete walked over to the group playing Twister, leaving Jake feeling his vague discomfort morphing into panic.

    E. E. burst into the apartment the next afternoon, wielding a rolled newspaper.

    "Look at this," he said, spreading the newspaper out on the coffee table, knocking magazines and empty soda cans in every direction. He pointed to something in the middle of the classifieds page, and Jake leaned close to the paper to read.

    Want to be a poet? a painter? a sculptor, musician, or weaver? Try Multipurpose Muse-in-a-Box! Call 555-6873 to order.

    Jake looked up to see E. E. fidgeting with excitement. "No," Jake said. "You don''t want to get involved in that world. Muses aren''t always nice, you know, and they''re demanding, often demanding more than mortals can give. People go crazy, E. E. Look at Anne Sexton, Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain¡ª"

    "So you think it''s real?"

    "No," Jake said quickly. "Just a hoax, I''m sure."

    E. E. picked up the paper as though it was made of gold and went to the kitchen.

    For some reason, this made Jake think of Elspeth Mader and her concern for Hephaestus''s relationship with his mother. He imagined her sitting where he was, eating Cheerios, and he immediately went to the kitchen and took the batteries out of the phone while E. E. glared at him.

    "Just trying to make my science teacher proud," Jake muttered, imagining E. E. trapped in Hera''s chair with no bargaining power.

    "So what am I supposed to do?" E. E. said. His excitement had fizzled, and he had returned to his usual emotionally repressed self.

    Jake shrugged and returned to the living room to continue not thinking about the box in the top of his closet and the drive he was talking himself into taking.

    An hour later, E. E. came out of his bedroom and sat across from Jake.

    "So many great writers have been drug users. Don''t you think that''s significant? I think there''s something to it¡ªa connection to the afterlife or the supernatural or something." E. E. gazed at his flip flops.

    "So?"

    "So, I''m emulating the greats."

    "Do I need to pump your stomach?"

    "What good would that do? No, I''m seducing the muse here, Jake."

    "What have you done?"

    "I swallowed three aspirin."

    "You...?"

    "Yeah. Maximum dosage is two. I can''t even begin to describe what this is like...what I''m feeling." He leaned back, gazing into the blank wall above his head for a few seconds before his head snapped up, and he said, "I''ll write a sonnet. That''s the way to a girl''s heart, I''ve heard."

    "You''re going to write a poem to the Muses? That''s so¡­traditional."

    "Just wait. They''ll notice me." E. E. stared at the opposite wall, nodding in thought. "I need inspiration. Let''s go."

    "Where?"

    But E. E. didn''t answer, and Jake rushed to keep up as E. E. left the apartment and walked three blocks to a little pub connecting two towering office buildings. Jake stayed close to E. E., but the half of him that wasn''t worried that E. E. would drink himself over a cliff or max out his Visa buying shots for everyone in the room¡ªthat half was doing a happy dance because if he was at Fuzzy''s Corner, he wasn''t on his way to the Fates'' house.

    "Why are we here?" Jake asked as he followed E. E. inside.

    "Because this is what real people do, Jake," E. E. said. He sat at the bar and grabbed a handful of peanuts.

    A man leaving the pool table approached the bar stool between Jake and a group of equally burly, unwashed tattoo canvases. The man glanced at them, then at E. E., who had finished off half the peanuts and was starting on the second half to the amusement of the room. Jake watched him, too, wondering how much inspiration E. E. would find in the bottom of the bowl. E. E.''s agitation scared Jake as much as it entertained their neighbors.

    "Hey¡­" Jake said, but he didn''t know what to ask. How''re you doing? Good peanuts?

    E. E. glanced up, gave a fast smile, then looked back down, chewing constantly.

    "Fags," the man next to them said in his alpha male tone. He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, just in case his drunk and obtuse entourage didn''t know whom he meant.

    Without thinking (because if he had been thinking, he obviously would not have done this), Jake pulled out the bar stool just as the man started to sit down. He tottered over in slow motion, grabbing for a handhold as he realized he was falling. The glasses in the bar tinkled in the shock waves of the man''s fall. Then the bar was silent except the soft swoosh of the door through which Jake and E. E. had just run as though hell itself was at their heels.

    Two miles later, in the women''s clothing section of a Dillard''s, E. E. panted, "Why would you do that?" He had his hands on his stomach, but his vague frenzy seemed to have passed.

    "Bigotry." Jake sat down on the floor. A middle aged woman looked at him strangely as she passed carrying an armload of pastel suits. "The same old asshole slaveowners who spit out kids and raised them to be the same way¡ªto put tacks in people''s chairs, to steal lunch money, to love white protestant men and hate everyone else."

    "We''re white protestant men," E. E. pointed out with a laugh. He slid against the wall until he was sitting next to Jake.

    "Aren''t you Catholic?" Jake asked.

    "Oh, yeah," E. E. said, then laughed harder.

    Jake didn''t laugh. He couldn''t seem to catch his breath. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. "God I hate this world," and to Jake''s horror, he felt the heat of tears behind his eyelids. Too much, was all he could think. This is all too much. The bigot in the bar was just the Bedouin who broke the camel''s back, or the straw that jammed the straw dispenser.

    E. E. said, "Nah. You just need a vacation. Forget the Fates for awhile. Get out of town. Go on a gay cruise."

    For a moment, Jake didn''t know what to say, then he started laughing so fiercely and so suddenly that he felt like he had the attention of everyone in the store, but he didn''t care.

    He laughed until the grief swelled in him like skin over broken bone.

 16 Chapter Fifteen

    Walking back to the apartment from Dillard''s, Jake and E. E. watched the sidewalk and the sky, not talking about their mutual insanity.

    At the bottom of the stairs that led up to their fifth floor apartment, Jake stopped. There was no point walking up all those stairs. He would just have to go down them all later, and he suspected it would be harder to make himself do that than to climb into his car and search the stations for songs about the death he was surely driving to find. My Chemical Romance, maybe.

    He said, "Well, I''m off to see the Fates. Want to come?"

    E. E. nodded, unsurprised, but said, "I think I''ll pass. See you when you get home."

    "Hope so."

    Jake wanted to say something else, to keep talking and delay the moment, but also to leave on different words than those. After the day''s gay jokes, he wasn''t about to tell E. E. that he valued their friendship, and the only other thing he could think to say alluded to an episode of M. A. S. H., which E. E. abhorred as something even more death-filled and depressing than The Black Parade.

    So Jake pulled his keys from his pocket and picked a direction to walk in, not remembering if his car was that way or not. When he''d gotten half a block away, he glanced back at the empty doorway of the apartment building.

    In it you''ll find my will. I''ve left everything to the Hawkeye Pierce Memorial Brothel.

    3rd and Maple. Jake repeated it until it was a mantra. Find car, unlock, open door, sit, search for seatbelt. 3rd and Maple. Listen to the whiny teenager sound of the engine starting. 3rd and Maple. He drove away from the apartment, trying to keep his mind off his destination.

    His mother would never have been able to find it. Delilah got lost twice a week. She''d be lost in thought and wind up in Nebraska, but no great inventions came out of those long thoughts. No great novel. Not even a pyramid scheme.

    That same bad sense of direction leaked into every area of her life. She could never remember times or dates or even in what order things had happened in the past. Not whether or not the Civil War happened before or after Custer''s Last Stand, but whether her trip to South Padre Island was before or after her last weekend rendezvous with Zeus, when Jake was at band camp one summer.

    She made no good decisions. Though, he realized, she would disagree.

    "The decision that brought me you was a good one," he could hear her say.

    He didn''t tell her that there was a difference between a bad choice with unawful consequences and a good choice.

    Does this decision fall in either category? The ignored voice whispered to Jake.

    The street numbers counted down as if to a shuttle launch or a New Year''s celebration. It didn''t seem to fit. Jake wanted to count up, one two three, preparing himself to dive, to perform some feat of strength or daring.

    3rd Street.

    He took a right, and the gas stations and liquor stores and used car lots dwindled to neighborhoods.

    He knew Maple Street before he was close enough to read the sign, and he knew the house as soon as he saw it. The small creatures of the immortal world sent an anxious pounding through his chest. Maybe it was the immortality in him recognizing the immortality in them. Maybe something in him sensed their presence, and Jake''s responding anxiety attack was Pavlovian. He didn''t know.

    But the house on the corner of 3rd and Maple sent such a thrumming through Jake''s body that the front bumper of his car came within inches of the driver''s side door of an oncoming car. Then he swerved and almost took off the door of a parked truck and one of the truck owner''s legs.

    He pulled off the road as soon as he could and got out before he could provide anyone else with a near-death experience.

    The house was nothing special. It was in a middle-income neighborhood, safe enough that parents let their children throw footballs in the street. The house itself had a healthy lawn and bright yellow siding. The blinds inside the windows were open, but the glare made seeing inside impossible. Massive wind chimes hung from the porch roof, releasing a gonging melody like church bells.

    Jake stood on the sidewalk, hyperventilating. He could leave. He didn''t have to go inside. No one was making him do this. He could go home now, and everything would just continue on the way it was.

    He walked forward. When he made it to the porch, the wind chimes near enough his ear to make his brain vibrate, he stopped again to hyperventilate some more.

    There wasn''t a doorbell. Jake knocked.

    And then he was lying on his back on the sidewalk, his tailbone aching.

    Hm. Some dormant stubbornness in Jake put him back on his feet and brought him back to the porch, where he stood, trying to force his mind past the terror and the wind chimes and the pain.

    Zeus had been afraid of the Fates because they are old, temperamental women. Old women like knitting. Jake searched for more stereotypes. They like choirs and doilies and good manners.

    Good manners.

    Jake kept his hands away from the door and said, "I beg your pardon, but there is a question I would like to answer if you don''t mind. Please."

    There was a pause, as though the door was considering his words, then it swung open, and Jake repressed a laugh of triumph. But the laugh was forgotten as he stepped into the house. Three women sat in an unremarkable living room, looking up at him. Two sat on a wide, comfortable-looking couch, and the third sat on a matching armchair. They were old, but not decrepit. There was no hint of illness or tiredness about them. They had soft wrinkles and silver hair, but Jake knew they would stand from their places at the couch and chairs with ease, just as he knew that what he was seeing was not any kind of truth, only a face put on for a stranger.

    "Thank you," he blurted.

    "What do you want?" one of them asked.

    "Excuse me? I¡ª"

    "You want something from us. They all do. What is it? A magic carpet? Limitless wealth? An Everlasting Gobstopper? No, wait. I can tell by the shape of your nose. You want a love potion."

    Jake imagined Rachel leaning close to him like she used to, her head against his chest, and he could breathe in the strawberry scent of her hair.

    "No, Atta, that''s not it. This one doesn''t have trouble getting girls. He''s a son of Zeus, can''t you tell?"

    The two of them looked at him the way they would examine a half-pleasant and only mildly interesting portrait. The third seemed to watch them all vaguely, like a predictable television show, her eyes drifting from their faces to the lamps to the windows and back again.

    "I want to be mortal," Jake said. Their obvious concealment, whatever they were concealing, made him nervous. He wanted to be outside, where there was air and a firmer idea of reality. "I want the immortal world to leave me alone."

    "Of course you do," Atta said. "We know you, Jake. Of course."

    "Have you tried eating more garlic?"

    "Gracious, Chloe! He''s not trying to keep away vampires. Next you''ll suggest he wear a crucifix."

    "No, never. That just attracts attention."

    "How about bathing in the River Styx? Would that help?"

    "You''re always trying to get people to bathe in Styx. People come back exactly the same except they have leeches on their bottoms."

    In the middle of a giggle, Chloe sneezed, and for a moment the image of the room shimmered and Jake saw past it, saw the women as young, beautiful, shining creatures. There was no white in their eyes, only a shining, coal blackness. Their skin was milk pale, their long pianists'' fingers making music at a loom. No, Jake thought as the image vanished. Not a loom, The Loom. Strands colored like the fragments of light in a diamond, strands as thick as an arm and as thin as spider''s web, strands straight, twisted, smooth, rough-textured, shining, darkening, steaming, iced over¡ªmore numerous than numbers, woven already and always being woven by wise hands that knew the time for compassion and the time for cruelty. The finished but never finished section, where the living strands met and crossed and knotted and vanished, was the whole universe of time, every breath and heartbeat and blink of mankind. And it is beautiful the way your mother''s voice is beautiful when you are a child. It is beautiful like falling asleep for the first time with your forever and only one. It is lovely and breathless and infinite.

    When the old women in their sunlit house leapt back into his eyes, Jake doubted his mission for the first time. Why would he give up what anyone else would kill to have? Wouldn''t he kill to put his hands in the threads of the looms, to feel their living warmth, to¡ª

    "Someone slap the boy," Atta said. "Chloe sneezed and he caught a glimpse of The Loom. Snap back to yourself, kid. Just like his father. Can''t resist a pretty thing."

    Jake was about to protest, but the look on the women''s faces stopped him. They understood, of course. They knew that it wasn''t simple prettiness that was making his eyes burn and his whole body tremble where he stood.

    "You want to be excommunicated from the eternal world because of your wife and daughter. Right?" Chloe asked.

    "Right," Jake said. Rachel and Lily. Thinking of them cleared his mind like morning coffee.

    The two women''s eyes met for a moment. "It can be done."

    "Go home. We''ll discuss this and send for you."

    Jake wanted to stay in that room as much as he had wanted to leave it minutes before. If he was ever here again, he swore he would come prepared with pepper and cats and ragweed and every other allergen known to man.

    But for now, he gave a clumsy bow and a "Thank you," and he left the Fates and returned to the world.

 17 Chapter Sixteen

    The only thing to watch on their four hundred channels was a documentary on pseudo sciences that Jake and E. E. watched with Thursday afternoon apathy. Hideous scientists appeared one by one to declare that there was no scientific evidence for astrology, ESP, UFOs, cryptozoology, and phrenology.

    Jake filled E. E. in on his visit with the Fates, and now he waited, hoping for a distraction, not knowing if it would be hours or decades before he heard from them again. Only the knowledge that Zeus would show up soon to see how things went kept Jake from pacing.

    Dr. Angus Powell, of UCLA, boomed on the television, "Tabloids and hippie gurus have been promoting theories for decades, and the evidence is simply not supported by the scientific method. Therefore, these ideas, Feng Shui and palm reading and the like, have no basis in reality."

    "Sad, isn''t it," E. E. said as a parrot-like woman replaced Dr. Angus Powell onscreen.

    "What?"

    "What do you mean, what? You know that some of that stuff is real. Maybe not palm reading, but there are a whole lot of people out there that can magically evaporate in and out of our living room whenever they want. You know there really are naiads and dryads and flying horses. Don''t you think it''s sad that these people spend so much energy combating ideas that really are real?"

    "I guess."

    "It would be sad even if they were right, to spend your whole life thinking that nothing existed that couldn''t be explained. What a horribly boring world."

    Jake thought about it, and when Madame Missy came on screen to do a crystal ball reading for Dr. Angus Powell, he smiled. What a boring world, indeed.

    Zeus arrived in a middle-aged banker suit as the program ended, and Jake, full of energy and bored with the apartment''s blank walls, suggested they take a walk while Jake recounted the same story he''d given E. E. hours before. Zeus looked uncomfortable from beginning to end. He finally opened his mouth to speak when a flushed woman in a lilac suit shouted from the corner that Jake and Zeus were approaching. "¡­a question we all must ask," she said, forcing tracts into the hands of the crowd. The tracts covered the sidewalk around her in every direction. Jake watched the woman hand pamphlets to a tall man and a woman with bowl-sized glasses, who both accepted the pamphlets and dropped them where they stood. The circle of tracts around the lilac woman grew.

    When Jake was close enough, he could see a tacky picture of a man with a briefcase on fire. He laughed out loud.

    "Do you know Jesus?" She swallowed a bucket of air, preparing to continue bellowing.

    The question had apparently been rhetorical because when Zeus shouted back, "Yeah!" she looked up at him in surprise. "He goes bowling with my daughter on Friday nights."

    A few people around him chuckled. The woman stared, wordless.

    When Jake and Zeus turned the corner and could no longer hear the woman, Jake asked, "Is that true? About Jesus?"

    "Nah," Zeus said. "My kids are the biggest group of Pharisees outside Vatican City. Anyway, Jesus is a nice guy. He doesn''t deserve to be pamphleted. She should be glad she only had to deal with me, though. Jesus would have really laid the smack down on her. Figuratively, of course. But there are too many pamphleters around for twenty Jesuses to personally smack, and he''s busy enough these days. I remember how it was before I retired. No time to yourself." He sipped his Dr. Pepper slushie. "How''s E. E.?"

    "Fine. Why?" Zeus was apparently not eager to continue their conversation about the Fates.

    "He still looking for a muse? I can fix him up, you know."

    "No," Jake said quickly. "A gift from the gods? You really haven''t read any mythology, have you? E. E.''d be thrilled until he was chained to a cliff and an eagle was pecking out his liver for eternity."

    "Eagles don''t really peck. It''s more of a rip and swallow technique."

    "Whatever. Just please don''t interfere with E. E.''s life. He''ll find his muse or he won''t. Either way, he''s keeping his liver."

    "You''re so melodramatic. Prometheus was an extreme case. Punishments aren''t usually so creative."

    "What did he do?" Jake asked, as happy to turn the conversation away from E. E. as his father had been to stop talking about the Fates.

    "Honestly? And you criticized me for not having read any mythology. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and gave it to mortals, which directly violated Decree 28, Paragraph 9, established at the Third Olympian Assembly." Zeus gave Jake a "well, duh" expression.

    "And the edict was¡­?"

    "Keep unto gods what is gods''. Basically, you can''t release secrets, weapons, or gifts more valuable than, say, a 1956 Ford Fairlane, without prior consent from the Council."

    "Isn''t there some sort of ''punishment should fit the crime'' clause? I mean, Prometheus'' punishment seems extreme. What happened to other people who broke that law?"

    Zeus snorted. "No one else broke it."

    "Not the Manhattan Project people?"

    "Nah, that was totally you guys'' fault. Anywho, I better go. I have a date. Are you sure about the Fates thing? You''re going to try whatever they suggest?"

    "Absolutely."

    Zeus shrugged with a defeated attitude and vanished. Jake looked up and down the street, but no one had noticed.

 18 Chapter Seventeen

    Ten years ago, the frustrating, purposeless haze that Jake saw as the defining characteristic of his life was split with an alien spacecraft-style beam of cornea-searing light. He was set free of the Matrix, born again, enlightened.

    Because of a blonde.

    Jake met her at an intramural softball game, the only one he ever attended. She was cheering and shouting the typical nonsense from among her friends on the sidelines, "Focus. Pay attention. Here it comes. Keep your eye on¡ªGo! Go!"

    Her hair wisped and waved around her in the wind as though she was at that moment posing near a fan for the cover of a chick magazine. Even her absurd yelling did little to alter that image.

    Jake would never have dreamed of approaching her. He had been no cooler then than he was at present, and he had never been confident or successful where women were concerned. Zeus had once asked if it made Jake question his paternity, but Jake had looked so disconsolate that he''d never made the joke again.

    But the Fates had either been in his favor that night, or they weren''t paying attention.

    Jake''s roommate, Geir, had only been in the country a few weeks, and he had, without knowing it, brought a nisse with him from Norway. The nisse, who said his name was Asbj?rn, was pixie-like or brownie-like in almost every way. He cleaned the room while the boys were in class. He kept the room free of bugs. He made sure the alarm clock went off. But he was more than a little grumpy about being stuck in a dorm room when he was used to having a whole house and garden as his domain. Jake bought a large flower pot and filled it with an assortment of rocks and plants (Geir assumed it was a strange American custom), but Asbj?rn was unhappy, and he liked to show it.

    Before long, the nisse was sneaking into Jake''s backpack and peeking out in the middle of class, jumping down to frolic in the grass whenever Jake went outside. Jake tolerated this since his room smelled considerably less like feet than the other rooms, but he had already begun to grow tired of the little pest before the day of the intramural softball game.

    Jake was sitting with Geir and their friends Sam and Peanut. Asbj?rn had hidden in Jake''s back pocket, and he dived out and into the grass at the beginning of the game. Jake didn''t pay attention. He was watching the girl with the long blonde hair, and he assumed Asbj?rn could stay safe and out of trouble for an hour at least. And if someone stepped on him, it wouldn''t be the greatest tragedy.

    But while Jake watched her and while she watched the game, Asbj?rn must have grown tired of eating ants and making grass skirts. Jake didn''t notice that he wasn''t nearby until he saw the little vermin climbing up the back of the blonde''s t-shirt and into her hair. All the moisture in Jake''s mouth and throat evaporated.

    The nisse had a tight hold, and as Jake watched, Asbj?rn turned himself upside down, wrapping arms and legs around a thick section of her hair, and began nibbling the ends.

    Before he thought about it, Jake jumped forward, grabbed Asbj?rn, and stuffed him back in his pocket, half hoping his little neck would snap in the process.

    Asbj?rn had a grip on her hair, though, and Jake saw her head jerk back an inch before Asbj?rn let go. She spun around and looked at him with confusion and mild annoyance.

    "Can I help you?" she said.

    "There was a¡­." Half of Jake''s mind berated his stupidity. The other half fought for something to say that would not make him look stupid in front of the world''s most beautiful creature. "A¡­." Brownie? Pixie? Imp? "Bug!" he said, as though it was a revelation. "There was a bug. In your hair. I got it out." He tried to breathe normally, and when that didn''t work, he tried to at least keep from drooling. "Sorry if I tugged your hair a little," he added.

    "No," she said, giving him a small smile. "Thanks."

    She turned back around and he returned to his place beside Geir, who was grinning widely at everything, Sam, who gave him a knowing nod, and Peanut, who had been focused on a spot above and just to the right of the game for about half an hour. Jake spent the rest of the game staring at the back of her head, trying to stay upright and taking deep, dry breaths of the grassy air.

    Two weeks passed before he saw her again, though he kept an eye out for her everywhere he went. Eventually he realized that he couldn''t depend on her to magically appear in the English building or the dining hall. He brought a stack of homework and two novels and spent every moment he could for three days outside the gym, unable to study because he was sure that when he saw her, he would say or do something to humiliate himself.

    Day three of the stakeout arrived, and Jake slung his backpack over his shoulder and left his bench two minutes before his Renaissance Literature class was starting. He had taken four steps away when he saw her out of the corner of his eye. His head turned one way, his foot stepped another, and he landed flat on his back in a puddle left by the sprinkler system. His spine made a loud popping sound as he landed on his backpack, soaking the contents.

    He lay still for a moment, hoping she hadn''t seen and that she would enter the gym without noticing him, but a few seconds later, her face appeared in the sky. She leaned over him, frowning. "You okay?" she asked, reaching out a hand.

    He tried not to pay attention to her short shorts and tight shirt with just the little straps distracting from the curve of her neck and shoulders as he stood, feeling the puddle water leaking from his backpack and drenching the back of his jeans.

    He nodded. Nothing he could say could make him seem less like an idiot.

    "Hey, you''re the bug guy, right?"

    "What?"

    "The guy at the game who pulled the bug out of my hair," she said.

    He nodded again, not sure whether to be pleased that she remembered him or disappointed that she referred to him as "the bug guy." And then the often ignored voice made a brave suggestion, and he thought, what the hell. Might as well¡­.

    He tried to fall into a cool guy pose and failed, then said quickly, "I think you''re incredibly beautiful. Can I take you to dinner this weekend?"

    She took a step backward, her eyes widening like the blooming of a flower. "Who are you?" she asked, but she didn''t sound angry or scared, and he was prepared to take confidence from any little sign.

    "Jake," he said. He wished he had something witty to add to it. He thought about doing a James Bond impersonation, but that could drastically backfire. Instead, he tried not to talk again and tried to keep breathing as he waited for her answer.

    "I''m Rachel," she said, and her blonde ocean fell across her face as she took a pen and paper from her purse and wrote down her number.

 19 Chapter Eighteen

    Jake was still waiting for word from the Fates that night. No day had ever been longer in the history of any universe. He finally decided to get some sleep, kicking off his shoes on the way to his bedroom, but he walked through the doorway to find that his room was no longer there, just a blank white wall. He turned around, and there, of course, were the Fates in their daylit living room.

    Atta waved hello.

    He took a few steps toward them in his socked feet. Thinking he should say something, if for no other reason than to be sure he wasn''t dreaming, he said, "Thank you for getting back to me so quickly."

    The silent one only watched him, but Atta and Chloe smiled. Politeness seemed to be effective. He wondered whether Emily Post had connections in the immortal world.

    "We have a plan," Atta announced with a pleased smile.

    "That''s¡­" An image of Frodo carrying the Ring to Mordor flashed in Jake''s mind, and Jake felt himself saying, "You do know that I have no kind of powers or anything, right? No superhuman strength, no incredible powers of intellect, no luck when gambling."

    The one who hadn''t spoke yet laughed a surprisingly youthful laugh. "You have a power no other son of Zeus possesses, in equal measure to Zeus''s own power."

    Another Fate whispered, "Has she ever spoken before?"

    The other replied, "I heard her whispering the answers to Jeopardy one day, but it''s been a few hundred years."

    "Wait, what does that mean?" Jake asked, a little desperate. The idea that there could be something, anything that could help was like a fire inside. He took a step toward the Fates before he realized it probably wasn''t a good idea. "What power? What¡ª"

    "Don''t get excited, boy," Chloe said. "She got all the questions in that category wrong. I think she only watches because Alex Trebek''s a fox."

    "So you think she''s wrong?"

    Chloe glanced at Atta, who examined him like an abstract painting and said with a grandmother''s gentleness, "I know she is, dear. I can see through you clear as good vodka, and the only thing un-mortal about you is your half-immortality. No power or ability beyond mortal skill."

    Jake watched the quiet one, feeling the loss of a thing he hadn''t known he was still hoping for. Sure, he''d known he wanted it, some recompense for meeting sirens in libraries, but he''d wanted it the way you want to win the lottery, a vague desire, an ever-growing list of vacations you''d take, cars you''d buy, people you''d bribe if you won, but never forgetting that it won''t happen. Someone will win, but never you.

    The crazy Fate said he had it, but the kind, sane ones said he didn''t, and he felt the same shocked disappointment that he''d felt when he failed a final exam he was sure he''d passed¡ªa no-that-can''t-be-right followed by a what-the-hell-do-I-do-now? He had an absurd desire to lie down in the sunny yellow carpet and grieve for a few hours.

    Atta and Chloe waited without speaking, and Jake looked at them, understanding that they understood how much he wanted to be away from them right now, understanding that they were waiting with immortal patience for him to tell them that he was ready to move on, ready to hear their plan.

    And because he did want to hear their plan, and because years of living with Rachel had made him an expert at repression, Jake nodded slowly and said, "Okay."

    Chloe smiled and said, "We''ve found a way for you to become mortal, if you still want to."

    Jake couldn''t find a place to focus his eyes. He didn''t want to see their faces or their fake house. He wanted to close his eyes and remind himself why he was doing this, why he was here.

    "Okay," he said, but only because he couldn''t think of anything else to say.

    "It''s difficult and very dangerous," Atta added.

    "Of course it is," Jake said.

    "You must commit a sin."

    "Like murder?" Jake asked. "Or like looking lustfully at another man''s wife?"

    "Somewhere in between. You want something bad enough to get you kicked out of the immortal world, but not so bad that you end up chained to a cliff with eagles eating your liver for eternity."

    "Okay. How is this going to make me mortal?"

    "The Council of Olympus will sentence you based on your crime."

    "The Council?" Jake asked. He''d heard of it, but he couldn''t remember when or where.

    "Think of an immortal Supreme Court. Except these guys give much longer sentences."

    "Can''t you just do it? Snap your fingers or boil something''s eyes?"

    "We could," Atta said. "But it would really hurt."

    "The Council, then. How can I be sure that I won''t spend eternity shoveling coal?"

    "You probably ought to have a good defense lawyer on hand, just in case."

    "Hold on. Can''t I just ask the Council to sentence me or curse me or whatever?"

    Chloe said, "Would one of your sheriffs or mounties put you in prison if you asked? There''s a system, a protocol, which must be followed."

    "So what do I have to do?"

    "The sin you must commit must be bad enough to separate you from the immortal world, but not so bad that you''re chained to a rock and you''re liver is eaten by eagles forever. So you must go to Hephaestus''s fiery forge¡ª"

    "Release form!" Atta said, placing a thick stack of papers and a Bic on the table nearest Jake. "It''s the standard jargon. You are acting on your own accord based on recommendations, not commands, from the Fates. You take full responsibility for any damage to yourself or to anyone or anything else. The Fates are not held liable in the case of your dismemberment or death, etc."

    Jake tried not to think about what he was signing as he leaned over and scratched his name onto the form.

    "''Kay. Go to Hephaestus''s forge. He''s at a dinner party, which will make this quite a bit easier. You''ll need to find his hammer¡­." She detailed the rest of the plan to Jake, who tried to keep everything straight.

    "Ready?" she said.

    "Now?" he said, panicked.

    "Yep." Atta licked her palm and slapped him in the face, and his eyes turned to the quiet one, taking in her dull eyes and twitching mouth, and then, Jake couldn''t see anything. He felt things happening around his skin¡ªwind, first, as though he was flying (or falling) hundreds of miles. Then wetness and cold that grew colder, as though he was sinking into the depths of the ocean. He hadn''t realized that there had been light before, like knowing the sun is up without opening your eyes because you can see the brightness through your eyelids, but when he fell into darkness, he realized that there must have been light earlier. But it was cold and dark now, except, slowly, it was no longer cold. There was warmth like turning on a hot faucet to warm up tepid bathwater. And then it was like being in a hot tub, and the darkness was visible by a dull red light. Smith light. And then it was like being boiled alive.

    Jake''s knees smacked the stone floor, and he took in great lungfuls of sulfurous air. If he hadn''t been drenched, he thought he might be sweating, though in no danger of passing out from the heat. This wasn''t a comfortable room, but it was fit for human habitation. All the walls were stone, and dripping lichen grew on the ceiling in most places. The lichen grew sooty and black towards the opposite end of the room, and at the very end, it stopped altogether. The ceiling was charred black there because beneath it lay the forge and the metalworking tools of the blacksmith of the gods.

 20 Chapter Nineteen

    Jake had never been in a sadder, more terrifying place. The man who lived here must be lonely. There was nothing that suggested home¡ªno decorations or bed or luxury of any kind. There was a low wooden stool and a low table out of the way of the forge, but other than that, it was a comfortless hole.

    But Jake''s heart was beating a Russian folk song beat because this wasn''t just anyone''s hole. This was Hephaestus''s hole, and Jake could see the tools on the blacksmith''s bench. The tongs were as long as thick as Jake''s unsteady legs. Hephaestus''s gloves were bigger than dinner plates.

    Jake found a wall and leaned against it. Why was he doing this? What kind of crazy man would screw with the gods? And Hephaestus in particular? None of them was exactly stable, but this one once trapped his own mother with a jeweled throne. This one once hit Zeus in the head with an axe. No sane man would sneak into this guy''s house.

    He was descending into genuine panic now. More than ever before, Jake wished he had something, some power from the gods to help him play this stupid, dangerous trick. Even a little Cowardly Lion courage would better than nothing. Even shoes.

    But his mind was full of the quiet one''s lifeless eyes and Atta''s confirmation of what he''d thought he''d already accepted.

    Jake sank to the floor. What the hell was he doing here? What was he doing?

    Then, he thought of Lily. He had been sick with anxiety the day she was born, and he hadn''t even known why. He wasn''t afraid for Rachel''s life or for Lily''s, but maybe it was the idea of being a dad, of everything being different, of taking on a new world that had scared him so severely. And it turned out to be the start of the most wonderful time of his life. Those days were good days for his marriage, too. He got up to take care of Lily even when it was Rachel''s turn, and the instant he returned from work, he picked her up and took her to the nursery and read her stories and made her stuffed giraffe dance for her. Rachel thought he was wonderful to take on so much of the parenting duties, to give her the rest she needed, and to take care of the baby after a long day of work on so little sleep, but as much as he appreciated her appreciation, he never did those things for Rachel. He wanted every moment he could steal with Lily. He wanted to watch her expressions change. He wanted to see every new thing, every new advancement, every new step on the ladder to adulthood. Lily''s teenage years, the years when she would surely be ashamed to claim him as her father and would scoff at the idea of an afternoon at the zoo with him, hung over Jake like a leaden cloud. From the day she was born, he wanted every second to cherish his daughter.

    Lily. That''s why a crazy man would steal the blacksmith god''s hammer. That was a world enough of reasons.

    Jake hyperventilated for a few more minutes, then stood.

    The three foot long hammer was resting against the anvil closest to the fire. Jake found that he couldn''t exactly lift it, but he could hold onto it, and he hoped that was all he needed to do. He heard heavy, bearlike footsteps somewhere beyond the walls as he wrapped his hands around the small tree trunk of a handle. Whatever composure he''d retained abandoned him. Jake held on to the hammer''s handle to keep the handle and himself from tipping over, then he clicked his heels together and said, "There''s no place like home."

    Jake tumbled onto the shag carpeted living room of his 3rd Street apartment with a sigh of relief. Then Hephaestus''s hammer landed on his little toe. He screamed like a siren. E. E. pelted out of the bathroom in a towel. He managed to tilt the hammer far enough for Jake to pull his squashed toe out from under it, and Jake lay back on the carpet, sure that when he pulled off his sock, his toe was going to come off, too.

    "What the hell is that?" E. E. asked as he went to his room to get dressed.

    "How much Greek mythology do you know?" Jake called after him. He resisted the need to whimper, but remained flat on his back until the exploding spots of color faded from his vision.

    "More since I met you than I knew before," E. E. said, his voice muffled. Metal hangers clinked in his closet.

    "It''s Hephaestus''s hammer."

    E. E. emerged from his room wide-eyed and fell onto the couch. "The blacksmith god, right? Man, he''s going to kill you."

    Jake filled E. E. in on his second visit to the Fates and everything that followed, skipping over his little panic attack on Hephaestus''s floor.

    When he finished, E. E. said, "So now what?"

    "I don''t know. Wait, I guess."

    "You know I think you''re crazy, right?"

    Jake pushed himself up into a sitting position and stared at his bloody sock. "Yeah."

    "I just¡ª" E. E. paused. "I just wonder¡­what difference this is supposed to make."

    "I told you. I need the Council to kick me out of the immortal world. Then, the centaurs and nymphs and gods and pets of the gods will leave me alone. I won''t be a part of their world anymore."

    "So you''re going through all of this for¡­peace and quiet?"

    "And¡ª"

    "And for Rachel and Lily, right?"

    "Right," Jake said, but he said it so quietly that E. E. didn''t say anything else. Jake knew what E. E. was getting at. Jake was risking an awful lot, enduring an awful lot, for a woman who had kicked him out and a child who, well, a child who would probably love to find pixies in her swingset. As for the peace and quiet¡­.

    "Peace and quiet would be nice," Jake said.

    E. E. looked doubtful, but Jake had already won this argument, and he watched E. E.''s doubt change to a desire to start the argument again, but that was replaced by acceptance and a "whatever" shrug.

    "You should never have made that horcrux," E. E. said, and left the room chuckling.

 21 Chapter Twenty

    After their fifth or sixth date, Rachel had hesitantly followed Jake up the stairs to his apartment. He had kept it immaculately clean for four weeks in anticipation.

    She dropped her purse inside the door and looked around the living room. Jake watched her eyes fix on the two garlic plants growing in pots beneath each window, the acorns and lavender on the windowsill, the horseshoe nailed above the door, and the tiny cricket cage in which a small, noisy cricket that Jake called Adolf lived.

    He was so accustomed to all these things that he hadn''t realized how much of a freak he would seem to her. He was at least glad that she hadn''t seen his drawer full of bright yellow underwear.

    "Um," Rachel said, but she couldn''t seem to think of anything else.

    "I''m a little superstitious," Jake said, trying to sound blas¨¦. "Have a seat."

    As she crossed to the couch, Jake hid a bowl of blue beads and multicolored rabbit''s feet under a stack of bills. Jake went to sit beside her, and after a horrible fifteen seconds of silence, she put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him forward into the most life-changing kiss of Jake''s life.

    Jake woke up beside Rachel sometime before dawn. The house was silent except for Adolf''s occasional chirp. He buried his face in her hair, and her strawberry scent was like electricity all through his body. He breathed her in, sure that this breath was the only one he would ever need again. He replayed the most delicious of last night''s moments, feeling her hands and mouth and her legs tensing around him again. He had traced the curve of her hips to her stomach up into the warm, sheltered place below her breasts. He had touched her until he was able to believe that she was really there and that he was allowed to touch her.

    In the predawn silence, he stayed near her as long as he could, trying to keep still so he wouldn''t wake her, but he only lasted a few minutes before he had to get up and go to the bathroom. He carefully separated himself from her silk skin and stepped silently from the room.

    He glanced at himself in the bathroom mirror, surprised by how happy and alert he could look at four a.m. He''d been pretty sure last night that Rachel had used the commodore until she''d broken him, but he seemed to have survived.

    Jake was too awake now to consider returning to bed before Rachel woke up, so he left her curled up under his navy blue sheet and went to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of milk, and searched the cabinets until he found a bag of Cheetos that had only recently expired. He opened the bag over the sink, opening it too hard as he always did and sending four or five Cheetos spiraling in every direction. Three landed in the sink, but before he could go in search of the others, a white vapor spiraled up out of the bag, materializing into a two-foot wispy presence with a goatee that hovered over the remaining Cheetos and raised a hand in greeting.

    "Hail!" it boomed.

    "Shh," Jake said with force. He set the bag in the sink, walked into the hallway, and peeked in the bedroom door. Rachel hadn''t moved. He closed the door carefully and went back to the kitchen. "Get out," he said.

    "I am the jinn Bakri. You have released¡ª"

    "If you can''t talk quieter than that, don''t talk at all."

    "You have released me," Bakri whispered, "from my prison. For that you may have three wishes."

    "I wish for you to go far away from me forever," Jake said, scooping the Cheetos out of the sink and into the trash. Cheetos covered in genie spit didn''t appeal to him.

    Bakri shook his head. "Look, you''ve got a great opportunity here. Don''t blow it."

    "Keep your voice down. I don''t need the help of a guy who couldn''t escape from a bag of chips. What were you doing living there anyway? Was Wal-Mart sold out of lamps?"

    "Right, make fun of me. I''ve been breathing processed artificial cheese dust for three years. Who hasn''t fallen on hard times once or twice? And here I am, trying to do a nice thing, give a little back. I could''ve zapped your soul from your body and turned your chunky biodegradable remains into my new penthouse."

    "Sorry," Jake said. "I''ve just got a girl here who''s not used to genies in the kitchen when she wakes up." He opened the refrigerator. "I just hope she isn''t used to eating breakfast either."

    "First off, it''s jinn, not genie. Think Arabian Nights, not Robin Williams. Second, did I not mention the wishes thing? Three wishes¡ªthat''s coffee, pastries, and eggs, and I''m out of your hair. Or orange juice, waffles, bacon. Tea, crumpets, and a red coat. Whatever you want."

    Jake took a deep breath and a drink of his milk. "You''re not going to mess with me on this, right? If I ask for waffles, you''re going to give me a stack of waffles and not a million waffles that fill up the house and suffocate us?"

    "Of course not. I mean, you have treated me with nothing but rudeness, but¡ª"

    "Or one giant waffle that is as large as the city and crushes everyone''s homes?"

    "Feeding the homeless is against the rules? No, I''m not going to be tricky. Just be specific."

    "Okay." Jake thought about it. "How about one average sized," he measured it out with his hands to demonstrate, "box of Cheerios with no added poison or snakes or preservatives. Let''s see, I have milk. Two small bananas, not on the tree, not peeled. And two cups of coffee."

    "Sir, your wish is my¡ª"

    "And you can put it all on the dining room table."

    Bakri vanished in an unimpressive twinkle and the food appeared on the table, set out beautifully with napkins and spoons and bowls, and saucers under the coffee cups.

    "Not bad, Bakri," Jake murmured. He picked up a cup and took a sip, then almost spilled the boiling coffee all over everything. He set the cup back down and ran to the bathroom, sticking out his blistered tongue and examining it in the mirror. "Basth-tard," he said.

 22 Chapter Twenty-One

    The third time Jake tripped over Hephaestus''s hammer that week, E. E. said, "You can officially no longer complain when I leave my socks in the living room." Jake managed a laugh. "When is he coming to get that thing?"

    "I have no idea," Jake said. What if it just sat there forever? What if Hephaestus had others, and hadn''t even noticed that one was missing? The thought of staying at home thinking about these questions, dreading the arrival of an angry god, sitting on the couch and staring alternately at the hammer and the TV all day for the fourth day in a row, depressed Jake. The day of waiting for news from the Fates now seemed like a day at the beach with a Frisbee and a six pack in comparison to hanging out with the hammer.

    "Let''s go do something," Jake said. "I think the new Will Smith movie is playing at the Cinemark."

    "Can''t. I''m having lunch with Polly."

    "Polly? When did you get a Polly?"

    "Couple weeks ago. Polly Orr," E. E. said with a grin, but it wasn''t the normal what-a-stud-am-I? grin. It was a how-could-I-be-this-lucky grin that Jake had never seen on E. E.

    "How did I not know?"

    "You''ve been a little busy." There was nothing accusatory in E. E.''s voice, but Jake felt bad all the same. They weren''t self-proclaimed best friends or anything, but considering that neither of them had much of anyone else¡­. He just should have noticed that something was different, especially because, now that he thought about, the signs were neon and a story high. E. E. wasn''t at the apartment as much. His sarcasm had leveled off, and he had been downright serious on more than one occasion. And he''d been writing a lot. Jake mentally slapped his forehead. Every morning for well over a week, Jake had gone into the dining room to find E. E. already awake, with his notebook out and a pencil scratching across the page as fast as thought. This was a man whose previous writings wouldn''t fill an index card. Of course something had changed to change him so much, and for the first time all week, something hurt more than his little toe. He hadn''t noticed a thing.

    "So. When do I get to meet her?" Jake asked quietly.

    E. E.''s eyebrows rose in surprise. "You want to?"

    "Of course."

    "Well. Okay. Come to lunch with us."

    "Are you sure?" Much as Jake looked forward to being away from the hammer that sucked every bit of joy from the atmosphere as effectively as a dementor, an uncomfortable hour with his roommate''s new girlfriend didn''t sound much better.

    "Yeah. It''s not a date, really. Just lunch. I''ll call her and let her know."

    Jake, E. E., and the inimitable Polly Orr had an early lunch at Paolo Fuentes''s MexItaly Restaurant. Carvings of unnaturally vibrant birds adorned the backs of the chairs (Jake counted seven species on the way to their table), and something he was sure was a MIDI version of a Disney song beeped from the speakers in the corners of the room.

    Polly shook Jake''s hand and smiled when she met him, returning the usual pleasantries¡ªnice to meet you, he''s told me so much about you, glad you could join us. She was plain, or maybe she was pretty in an inconspicuous kind of way. There was nothing about her either ugly or striking, but Jake forgot about it almost as soon as he realized it. There was so much confidence and ease in her every word and movement that he was thinking how incredibly beautiful she was before their food arrived.

    "Did E. E. tell you how we met? There''s this poetry reading at a shabby little pub on Seventh Street every Thursday night. I''ve been going forever because my sister Clio has a thing for a history professor who''s there every week. I even saw E. E. a couple of times there before he read his Ode to the Muses, and after I heard it, I knew I had to talk to him. It was beautiful, like a love poem."

    "It was trash," said E. E. with a grin.

    "It was honest," Polly protested. "There''s a serious lack of honest poetry in the world."

    "Are you a writer, too?" Jake asked.

    Polly gave a small laugh. "No. I''m just an appreciator. And I''m an amateur at that. My real, forty-hour job is at the zoo."

    "You''re a zebra?"

    "I''m an Aquarist."

    "You''re a seahorse?"

    E. E. threw a tortilla at Jake. "You''re trying to break into the hammer appraisal field, right, Jake?"

    "An Aquarist?" Jake said with a cough. "You''re in charge of the aquariums?"

    "Not in charge, exactly. I do a lot of water testing, a lot of paperwork, that sort of thing," she said. Polly took E. E.''s hand, and Jake was amazed to see E. E.''s smile widen. He''s been twitterpated. He''s completely lost his head.

    Jake took a long drink of his root beer. "Do you ever get to swim with the manatees?"

    "When my boss isn''t around. What do you do?"

    "I work with hyenas."

    "Jake teaches sophomore lit at Bee Caves High School," E. E. said.

    "Hyenas," Polly said, and she laughed.

    "By the way, Jake," E. E. said, "Elspeth Mader called for you yesterday."

    "Really?" Jake wheezed.

    E. E. looked at him with concern. "No, I was just messing with you. Are you okay?"

    "Fine," Jake tried to say.

    E. E. grinned. "Is she that pretty?"

    "Who?" Jake asked, focusing in on his sopapilla.

 23 Chapter Twenty-Two

    Jake and Rachel dated. He introduced her to his Peanut and Sam, who made lewd jokes and gestures for ten minutes after she left. Once the previous semester had ended and Jake had left the dorms for his own apartment, Geir latched onto his new roommate, and Jake rarely saw him.

    "So how much did you pay her to go out with you?" Peanut asked. His parents lived a mile from the university, and the three of them often wasted time in their basement den once they''d spent their last paychecks.

    "Nah, Jake doesn''t have enough money for a chick like that," Sam said, tapping his foot spastically and itching the back of his head. Sam''s mother painted portraits of people holding vegetables for a living, and years of sitting next to open jars of paint and sucking on the brushless ends of brushes had damaged Sam. He always looked like someone who had a Starbuck''s discount card.

    Peanut kicked off his Payless shoes and grinned at Jake. "Does she know you''ve been stalking her?"

    "I haven''t???"

    "There was a dry spot on the bench near the gym when I walked by there once last week because you were glued to it while it rained."

    "You saw the bench without Jake on it? That''s never happened to me. What was it like?" Sam said.

    "Like the other benches, but creepier," Peanut said.

    Sam laughed. "I bet she breaks up with him tomorrow. Over the phone."

    "I''ll take the bet," Peanut said. "I think she''ll break up with him after the weekend. A girl''s gotta eat."

    Sam and Peanut amused themselves for another hour while Jake sat half-listening, half imagining Rachel''s form under his navy blue sheet, making his pillow smell like strawberries. They were right, of course. Rachel would be gone in a few days, but was it wrong of him to try to keep her as long as he could? To listen to her talk until she had nothing else to say? To sleep with her as many times as he could before she realized she was too good for him? He couldn''t blame her for that. It was, after all, completely true, and even if she didn''t leave for that reason, she would leave when he found a minotaur in his bedroom closet. Or, more likely, she would leave when he started acting weird because he was trying to hide the minotaur from her. Jake had had enough two-week girlfriends to know how it would go. Vicious Tricia, his almost-date to senior prom, had been the one to reveal to him that not all women were as comfortable with the creatures of his father''s world as his mother was. But it had been stupid of him to think that a girl would be comfortable with the knowledge that something was living in her corsage.

    Rachel got revenge on him for forcing her to spend an hour with Peanut and Sam by introducing him to her three closest friends. All their names began with C, and he could never remember who was who. It took them fifteen seconds to decide they didn''t like him, and they didn''t try to hide it.

    "What''s your major?" one of them asked.

    "English," he said.

    She gave Rachel a look that said, ??Why couldn''t you have picked a pre-med or a business major?" Or possibly it said, "Do you really want to live off a teacher''s salary? Oh my god, he doesn''t want to be a writer, does he?"

    Another one asked him, "What do your parents do?"

    "My mom died. My dad''s a social worker in California," he replied, surprised to find that the old lie had finally become comfortable.

    One of them telepathed to Rachel, "Weak genes." The other followed with, "Hippie."

    Rachel rolled her eyes at them, then added her own question. "What were you for Halloween last year?"

    "A Greek god."

    "Which one?"

    "Eros," Jake said, beginning to smile.

    "Why?"

    "Because that man has his priorities straight."

    She grinned. Her friends gave him dirty looks and never said another word to him. Jake didn''t care what they thought, or what Sam and Peanut said, or what Zeus meant when he warned Jake that some people didn''t have the kind of creative mind necessary to accept the existence of a world beyond their own. That world, Zeus said, is hard enough to accept sometimes.

    But Jake didn''t have the brain space to worry about that. He was too busy memorizing the curve of her shoulder and the one lock of hair that always escaped her ponytail, sure that she wouldn''t be there when he went to pick her up on a Friday night or that he would hear her voice in the background when he called, telling her roommate that she was asleep and couldn''t come to the phone. He thought about her so much that he failed a class. Every time he went back to his apartment, he checked his answering machine and his email, just in case she had tried to contact him while he was out. He picked up extra hours at Corndog Heaven so he could take her out whenever she wanted to go. He bought her favorite CDs to keep in his car because she would lean her head back while he drove and sing along softly, always perfectly on key. He asked her questions about everything he could think of just to hear her voice.

    And he made sure they spent as little time in his apartment as possible, sure that if Rachel had seen Bakri emerge from the Cheetos bag, he would''ve lost her completely. They graduated from college, and not long after that, Jake went to visit her. The first day, they took a walk, late at night in her hometown. The streets were silent at that hour, a few stars bright enough to shine through the glare of porch lights, and Jake asked her to marry him. They got married there, with all of her family gathered around them. Jake''s only guests were Sam, Peanut, and a god in a late middle-aged man costume, who brought a box of horseshoes as a wedding present. "Hephaestus made them," Zeus whispered. "Pandora and I added them with a few other things to her little jewelry box and did a little Shake-n-Bake. It won''t keep everything out. You know nothing will. But you and Rachel will be safe from the worst intruders."

    Jake hugged him. Of all Zeus''s presents throughout the years, Jake appreciated that one most.

    One week before the wedding, Jake made himself do what he''d been postponing. He took Rachel out to dinner, and while they waited for their order, he told her everything, thinking that surely this would make everything okay. "My father is Zeus," he said. She just smiled with mild interest. "I''m half immortal, and from time to time, mythological creatures show up wherever I am." She raised an eyebrow. "Everything from nymphs to manticores." He opened his mouth and closed it, fishlike.

    Her lack of response bothered him more than if she had called off the wedding immediately.

    "Do you understand what I''m telling you?"

    Her eyes lost all life. "Of course I understand," she said, looking down to straighten the napkin on her lap. "Don''t do that. Don''t treat me like I''m stupid."

    "No, honey," he moved to her side of the table and put his arms around her. "That''s not what I meant. Not at all. I just¡­." He shook his head and kissed her until the waiter arrived with their plates.

    And he didn''t say another word about it.

    Late that night, when they were in bed, Rachel rolled sleepily to his side of the bed and put an arm across his chest. He pulled her closer and kissed her forehead, wondering if everyone felt this blessed at least once in life, hoping everyone did.

    "What are you thinking about?" she mumbled.

    "Is there anything that would make you stop loving me?" The words were out before he thought about them, and as soon as he heard them, he held his breath, hating himself for sounding so much like an insecure teenager, but anxious for Rachel''s response. Maybe he didn''t need to tell her every little detail. Maybe open communication was overrated. Maybe her answer to this question, maybe this promise, would be enough.

    She raised her head enough to kiss him. "No. Nothing. Never."

 24 Chapter Twenty-Three

    Memories of Rachel curling around him like a boa constrictor, Jake tried to sleep. It hadn''t been easy with the hammer in the apartment, but he found it particularly hard that night. He finally gave up trying to sleep in his room, and grabbing his pillow and blanket, he went to the living room.

    E. E. had fallen asleep watching Frasier reruns, and he was still there on the couch, face down now, one leg and arm thrown up over the back of the couch so that he looked like he was holding on in case the couch tried to buck him off. Jake looked longingly at the soft couch before laying out as well as he could in the gray recliner, but after awhile, as the night stretched on and the sounds from the surrounding apartments faded, Jake was glad that E. E. was so close, even if he did have a whistling nasal snore.

    E. E.''s whistling fused into a train as Jake fell asleep. The train was speeding up, even though the conductor could see Jake on the tracks, and without the slightest deceleration, the train hit him, lifting him off his feet as it killed him.

    Several moments passed before Jake realized that he really was lifted off his feet, though he wasn''t dead yet. The whistling, both snore and train, had stopped, and Jake saw E. E. sitting up on the couch, staring dazedly at the gorilla man that was holding Jake off the floor by the front of his t-shirt.

    Hephaestus was an ugly, car-sized man. His filthy skin could hardly contain the steel globes of muscle that swelled his legs and arms and neck. Wires grew from every pore, and the air became stifled by the smells of sulfur and fire and grease and¡­cinnamon? Jake sniffed. Definitely cinnamon. His tangled black hair fell down past his shoulders and blended in with clothes so sooty and ripped that their material and original color were unknowable.

    "My hammer, Indiana Jones," the beast growled. Jake''s eyes flicked to the hammer, which seemed small in comparison with its wielder. Hephaestus didn''t turn his head, but Jake wasn''t surprised. He could hardly have missed seeing it. Besides, Jake was smart enough not to assume that Hephaestus was obtuse just because he was a giant god with biceps any boxer would cry for. Jake didn''t accept the stereotype that brains and biceps couldn''t coexist, though he secretly believed that it was a little unfair for the universe to grant so much to one person, like the prom king when Jake was a senior at Llano High¡ªTravis Knox, who was also valedictorian, varsity MVP, and quite a poet. Vicious Tricia had hooked up with Travis after the event. The thought of kicking him in the shins still brought a smile to Jake''s face.

    Hephaestus gave Jake one tiny shake with his one-handed grasp, just enough for Jake to hear his vertebrae realign, and threw Jake back onto his recliner, where he wondered if he would be allowed to try to go back to sleep anytime soon.

    Hephaestus grabbed his hammer and raised it, lifting it over his head like a kid with a new Happy Meal toy, except the kid had godlike wrath and the Happy Meal toy was seconds from evening out the bumps in Jake''s head.

    "Uh, Mr. Hephaestus?" E. E. said tentatively.

    Hephaestus turned, lowering his hammer a bit. "Yes?" he asked politely.

    "I think there are some extenuating circumstances you should be made aware of."

    "Did your friend steal my hammer?"

    "Yes, but¡ª"

    "Did you help him?"

    "No!" Jake and E. E. said at the same time.

    Hephaestus turned to Jake with a why-is-this-guy-bugging-me expression, and Jake blurted in desperation, "I''m Zeus''s son, Jake, and the Fates told me to¡ª"

    "You looking for diplomatic immunity? Because it doesn''t work like that on this side of Olympus. Besides, your dad and I don''t exactly get along." Hephaestus had lowered his hammer a little more while he talked, but he raised it again.

    "Why?" E. E. asked. Hephaestus stared at him. "Why don''t you and Zeus get along?"

    Jake tried to send E. E. a telepathic message: You''re stalling. I get it. But why? It''s not like the police are going to bust in if we delay long enough. Even if they did, it wouldn''t do much good. As it is, you''re just delaying my death a few minutes, and while I appreciate the effort, it''s really unnecessary. I''ve screwed things up so drastically that a few minutes really isn''t long enough to alter anything. But thanks, all the same.

    E. E. didn''t answer, but Hephaestus, after a long minute of contemplation, did put his hammer down and take a seat on the ottoman. "To be honest, we didn''t get along from the beginning. I''m Hera''s son, and I have no father, but I¡ª"

    "What, like a virgin birth?" E. E. asked.

    Hephaestus snorted. "Nah, just like a lot of willpower. Anyway, it''s not like Zeus was my dad, and I know that Hera gave me life just to tick him off, but what''s a little boy to do without a father figure? Then there was the time I split his skull open with an axe. And the time my sentient golden plow made a maze in his marijuana field."

    "You have a long history of not getting along," E. E. said, nodding in sympathy. "But how much of that is Zeus''s fault? It seems like Hera probably influenced how you thought of Zeus, at least in the beginning. I mean, from what I understand, she bad-mouths him a lot." E. E. glanced at Jake, who gave a small nod.

    Hephaestus stared at his hands. "Yeah. That''s right."

    E. E.''s eyes scanned the carpet, as though looking for something else to say. He almost bounced in his seat when he found it, and for the first time, Jake appreciated the fact that E. E. had wasted four years getting a degree in psychology. "Zeus and Hera, though," he said. "They have quite a history. Now, it''s awful that they used you against each other, but parents aren''t perfect. Sometimes they do things that they shouldn''t. I''m sure if you asked Hera, she would tell you that she was sorry¡ª"

    Jake coughed to get E. E.''s attention and shook his head emphatically.

    "And Zeus," E. E. rushed on. "He should have been there while you were growing up, but you have to forgive him for that. Your anger isn''t hurting him. It''s hurting you. He may not even have realized you needed a dad or thought of him that way."

    Hephaestus put his head in his hands. "Do you have any beer?" he mumbled through his fingers.

    E. E. replied, "No. But Jake has a couple of wine coolers. He''ll grab you one." E. E. looked across Hephaestus''s hulking back and made a phone signal, his thumb to his ear, his little finger to his mouth, the other fingers curled.

    Jake waved his hand at E. E.''s signal and mouthed, "No, I''m a moron. I obviously can''t think for myself," even though E. E. would have no idea what he was trying to say.

    Jake walked quietly to the kitchen. They would be able to hear everything he did, so after he grabbed the wine coolers from the refrigerator, he put his hand with the phone in the refrigerator and closed the door as far as he could to muffle the sound and dialed Z-E-U-S. He couldn''t risk talking, but he left the phone in the doorway as he carried the wine coolers back to the living room. He just had to make sure that his father heard enough to know he was in trouble.

    "Here you go, Hephaestus," Jake said loudly, handing over the wine cooler. "Please don''t kill me."

 25 Chapter Twenty-Four

    In a reel of memory that not even a three hundred-pound blacksmith god could pause, three miraculous years passed. Jake and Rachel found their house. Jake made friends with the brownie that lived behind the refrigerator and placed tiny pyramids and charms out of sight in every room, and most of the worst creatures left him alone. There was a hag hiding in his carburetor for awhile, but Jake hit her with a broom and she left.

    Rachel lived oblivious to it all, and Jake thought with pride that he had managed to give his wife a normal life. Peanut mowed their lawn once every two weeks until he moved with his parents to Oregon. Rachel planted daffodils and strategically placed shade trees, and they spent a hundred evenings on the front porch, drinking cocoa on cool nights and lemonade or frozen margaritas on warm ones. Everything was just fine.

    Then, there were cake batter footprints.

    But before that, Rachel''s mother called for the last time.

    Jake had come home from work to find Rachel at the kitchen table leaning with her forehead against one of her golden yellow placemats, her hair falling forward in a wavy, sunny blonde ocean. The only sound was a distant babbling, from which he caught the words, "stupid" and "not surprising."

    "What''s going on?" Jake asked.

    Rachel lifted her head, and Jake could see the phone held to her ear and the shininess of her cheeks.

    He went to sit next to her. He kissed her salty face and leaned close to the phone, so he could hear her mother''s voice clearly.

    "¡ªcan''t believe that''s all they''re paying you. I''m sure you''re not working very hard though. That must be nice. Your father worked so hard all those years, and we live very nicely off his retirement checks, but kids your age never can manage money or plan for the future. And that husband of yours is just a teacher. When do you think he''ll grow out of that and get a real job? Teachers get paid next to nothing. It''s a glorified babysitting job these days. God knows you didn''t learn a thing the whole time you were going to school. He gets paid pesos for doing nothing then goes and spends it all on whores, no doubt. I don''t have a grandchild yet, so you can''t be doing it right, or at least not very often. You''d think you would''ve figured it out by now, but¡ªwait, hah!¡ªI just realized who I was talking to. You''re not bright enough to figure it out on your own, are you? I''m sure that husband of yours could find a book for you at least. Of course¡ª"

    Jake took the phone from her hand and turned it off. A small sound of protest came from Rachel, but she was crippled now, as she always was after those calls.

    Then Jake led his wife upstairs to the bedroom and held her close and whispered truths to her to replace the lies until she fell asleep. The phone rang seven times that evening, but neither of them got out of bed to answer it. And when Jake woke up the next morning, he erased the messages without listening to them and unplugged the phone before he left for work.

    Rachel calmed herself after those calls and after stressful days at work by making chocolate cake from scratch. She said it cleared her mind, the measuring of ingredients, the stirring, the careful decoration. Jake suspected the eating was a big part of it too, though he never said so. She had five different chocolate cake recipes and seven vanilla icing recipes. Their third anniversary had recently passed, and Rachel wanted to try out the new cake decorating tip set and stencils that she''d helped Jake pick out as her anniversary present. She''d been so absorbed with the process of arranging her supplies that she''d forgotten to preheat the oven, so she left the batter on the counter while she made room for it in the refrigerator.

    "It only took a minute, maybe two," she told him when he got back from the barber''s late that afternoon. Her voice was shaking like a muscle forced to its limit. "I turned back around and¡­." She shook her head, grabbed his hand, and pulled him into the kitchen. The batter was still on the counter, and trailing away from the bowl toward the gap between the counter and the oven were the little batter footprints.

    "A mouse, maybe?" Jake asked. He didn''t know why he said it. He knew it wasn''t a mouse.

    Rachel shook her head and pointed to the next to the last footprint. Most of the batter had worn off, so the image left was a perfect human foot, in miniature. Jake could count the five tiny toes.

    "I want to know," she said, her whole body quivering now, "what the hell is going on here."

    "It''s okay, Rach. I told you about it, remember? The creatures that show up from time to time. Nymphs to manticores?" Her wide, startled eyes and nasal breathing frightened him. He expected her eyes to turn yellow and her back arch as she morphed into a werewolf. He shuddered.

    Her voice was calm, but growing louder. "I thought¡­I thought you were joking."

    "Joking?"

    "You''re creative, you know? I even thought it was something dirty at first. Then I thought maybe, maybe, there was a little mental illness problem, but you didn''t say anything else that was more weird than what you usually say, so I, damnit! I just forgot about it. Now tell me what the hell that thing is."

    "It''s a brownie."

    "Like an elf?"

    "Sort of."

    Rachel thought for a second. "Can you kill it?"

    "What? No. No, and if you tried you''d piss it off and you''d have to deal with a humphrey, and instead of silly little cake batter footprints, you''d wake up to find that something had shoved cake batter in your every orifice and was dressing in your clothes."

    "Can you get rid of it?"

    "No, but listen. Brownies are mostly harmless. They''re good, even. If you''re considerate of them¡ª"

    "I don''t want to be considerate of pests in my house. Get it out of here, Jake." She slammed the bowl of batter into the sink¡ªit shattered¡ªand left the room.

    Fred''s little hat appeared over the edge of the counter.

    Jake whispered, "I''m sorry, Fred. I know this was your house first, and I''m not going to try to force you out of it. Please forgive her. She doesn''t understand."

    Fred''s hat nodded and disappeared.

    Fred wasn''t stupid. Despite Jake''s assurances, Fred stayed out of sight and out of mischief for a time, regardless of whether he thought Jake had the power to evict him. Jake was equally not stupid. Attempting to get rid of Fred would lead to the scariest encounter with the immortal world that Lime Street had ever seen.

    Jake hung out in the kitchen for half an hour, and when he came out, he smiled at his wife, saying nothing. Rachel, of course, believed Jake had taken care of the problem. She seemed nervous in the kitchen for a while but seemed to find it easier to pretend that nothing had happened.

    So Fred continued to live almost invisibly behind the refrigerator, and Jake thought of him often. Other pests came and went, but Fred had a home here. Jake had been able to put it out of his mind in the past. He had been able to ignore Fred''s permanent presence, and he admitted that one reason he had been so tolerant was that brownies had a tendency to be more useful than otherwise, so long as you knew what you were doing. But now, Jake couldn''t walk into the kitchen without seeing again those cake batter footprints and his wife''s awful expression.

    Now, Fred was a constant reminder of their abnormal life.

    Jake even tried just to think of him as a rat or as a pet hamster that had escaped, because it''s not good to show resentment or displeasure to brownies. They will be your honored guests or they will be the thieves that break in while you''re sleeping and break everything they don''t steal.

    The pests of the immortal world that seemed to seek haven, or at least understanding, from Jake, whom they sensed as one of their own, had always irritated him. But seeing his wife that way, scared and confused and forced into a world she knew nothing about and seemed unable to accept, Jake first began to wonder if there was a way to sever himself permanently from that world. For weeks, until the first time Rachel suspected she was pregnant, he thought of nothing else.

 26 Chapter Twenty-Five

    Zeus arrived at the apartment minutes after Jake''s call. He burst into existence with a thunderous, angry sound in the middle of the living room, just where Hephaestus''s hammer had been for the past three days. There was still an imprint in the carpet there between Zeus''s feet.

    Jake was happy to see that Zeus hadn''t felt the need to travel incognito this time. His natural form was much more intimidating, matching Hephaestus in height, though not in width. Zeus looked strong, but he had obviously spent more time playing golf recently than working at the forge. Hephaestus made an impact when he first appeared, but when confronted with Zeus''s regal power, the aura of a man who was accustomed to being obeyed and to subduing (or destroying) without hesitation those who disobeyed, Hephaestus looked more than a little intimidated. Jake was suddenly glad that Zeus''s anger had never been directed at him. Grateful as he was to see his father now, he would''ve rather faced death itself than this planet of a deity with an angry face.

    Zeus''s short black curls stuck to his scalp with sweat. He had a small scar beside his mouth, a mark about which Jake had wondered, but never asked. Zeus reached out one of his pianist''s hands (Jake remembered thinking when he was a child that his dad''s hands were the size of the universe, though he had rarely seen Zeus in this form. Strange that now, when everything else seemed smaller than it had when he was young, his dad''s hands seemed not to have changed.) and shook hands with Hephaestus.

    "Nice to see you," Zeus said. "Ardalus showed me the shield you made him for Christmas last year. It''s a remarkable piece of work."

    "Thanks," Hephaestus said.

    "So you''re here hanging out with my son?" He said it with a smile, but a paternal fury showed through.

    "Zeus, I¡ª"

    Jake coughed, and Zeus glanced at him. "I took his hammer," Jake said, twisting the cold bottle in his hands.

    Zeus''s expression went from anger to amazement to my-child-is-a-damned-idiot to understanding. "The Fates told you to?" he asked. Jake nodded.

    "God, Jake," Hephaestus said in awe. "You don''t want to get mixed up with the Fates. Might as well feed your toes to pigeons. It''s safer, less painful, and a lot more fun." He chuckled, then glanced nervously at Zeus.

    "I really didn''t mean anything by it," Jake said. "I''m trying to get a trial before the Council to¡ª"

    Hephaestus cut him off. "The Council? Might as well add eleven more appendages to the pigeon feed. What are you trying to do?"

    Zeus answered before he could. "Be mortalized."

    Hephaestus''s eyes widened and darted from Zeus and Jake and back. Jake said, "The Fates told me I had to commit a crime and be sentenced by the Council to be excommunicated from the immortal world."

    Zeus stared at him. "That''s risky. The Council isn''t the friendliest bunch. Imagine the characters from Kafka''s Trial experiencing heroin withdrawals."

    "You knew that the Council could make me mortal?"

    "Yeah, but I thought it was bad enough you were talking about making a deal with the Fates. I wouldn''t send my goldfish to the Council, let alone my kid." Zeus was still looking at him, worry deepening the lines in his face. "Don''t agree to this, okay? Give me some time to see if there''s something I can do."

    "Dad, I¡ª"

    "Lily needs her father, complete, with all of his limbs, and present, not wandering through the labyrinth or chiseling Rushmore-sized busts of the Council forever."

    Jake sighed and nodded his agreement, trying not to think of whatever it was he had signed in the Fates'' living room.

    "I''m sorry about this, Hephaestus," Zeus said. "But I hope that we can keep the Council out of this."

    "Of course. Let me know if I can do anything to help." Hephaestus shook hands with E. E. and Jake. While he stood and straightened his clothes and lifted the hammer onto his shoulder to prepare to leave, E. E. stood and whispered something quickly to Zeus.

    "Just a second," Zeus said to Hephaestus, who turned with a hopeful expression. He listened the rest of E. E.''s message, after which E. E. stepped away and sat down hard on the couch. Jake couldn''t imagine what was going through his mind. There were two gods in his apartment, and he was daft enough to interfere, to whisper messages to the thunderbolt-holder, the chief god, who until a few months ago, he didn''t even believe existed. E. E. had to be cursing the day he met Jake at Paolo''s Creamery, and Jake couldn''t blame him.

    "We''re having a picnic next weekend," said Zeus, cheerily. "Just me and Hera and some of the kids. Frisbee, maybe a little baseball. Would you like to come?"

    Hephaestus did a very poor job of concealing his excitement as he accepted, said goodbye, and vanished.

    "Are you okay?" Zeus asked. Jake nodded, but Zeus leaned close to him and looked him over anyway, turning Jake''s head from side to side as though to confirm that he wasn''t bleeding from his ears. "So," he continued, turning to E E., "Hephaestus saw me as a father figure?"

    "Yeah," E. E. said, downing the rest of his wine cooler. He didn''t look up.

    Zeus shook his head in a slow, sad way. "Hera did everything she could to keep him away from me. We argued a lot back then. And Hephaestus never¡ªbut I should''ve¡ª" Zeus shook his head again. "Maybe I can make it up to him."

    Something Zeus had said clicked into focus. "You''re having a picnic with Hera?" Jake asked.

    "Yeah. You want to come?"

    "No. No, thanks." Jake thought of Hera''s message that she''d found a lovely girl for him and shuddered. "I just¡­I mean, that''s unusual."

    Zeus gave a half-grin. "We''ve been getting along wonderfully ever since we split up. She was always so jealous, and I, well, I was never a good husband. Now that she has no reason to be jealous, and I don''t have to pretend to be faithful to her, we have a great time."

    Jake couldn''t imagine Rachel wanting to hang out now that they were apart. He had an image of sitting with her on their pale blue picnic blanket, listening to her discuss her new boyfriend, trying to find something to say that didn''t let on how much the thought of her touching another man made him want to rip out his eyes so he would have something to stuff in his ears.

    He shuddered and finished off his wine cooler, too. Jake said, "Thanks for coming. You were very¡­diplomatic."

    "It''s good not to tick off guys with giant hammers."

    "I''ll try to remember that."

    Zeus made sure again that he was okay and that E. E. was too, then he vanished, leaving the living room empty of overlarge, immortal men.

    E. E. took a deep breath, and Jake noticed that his hands were shaking. They sat for a long time there, where they had been sleeping, ages ago.

    "I think I''m going to be moving out," Jake said.

    E. E. raised his head long enough to look Jake in the eye and nod, then he let his body fall over on the couch. He closed his eyes and lay there. Jake didn''t know when he finally fell asleep.

    Jake was awake for a long time, looking at the hammer mark in the carpet, just feet from E. E., thinking about Hephaestus and Zeus and Hera and E. E. and Rachel, wishing the same wish he''d been wishing over and over again from the day Rachel told him to leave:

    Let things go back to the way they were.

    Let me have my life back.

 27 Chapter Twenty-Six

    "Did you read the instructions?"

    "Damnit, Jake, it''s not that complicated. I''m not stupid."

    "I would never say that you were," he replied.

    Rachel must have heard the hurt in his voice because she sighed, set down the thin white stick that reminded Jake of a digital thermometer case, and wrapped her arms around him. "Maybe it''s wrong. They''re not always accurate. Or maybe it''s just too soon. I''ll try again in a few days." It was a short hug, and when she pulled away, her whole self pulled away until he felt like he was sitting next to someone he''d never met.

    Jake didn''t know how she could be so calm. Rachel had been in a daze. She had morning sickness and cravings for bananas five times a day, and she was so sensitive to smells that he''d had to eat his meat lover''s pizza on the front porch because she started gagging as soon as he''d brought it inside.

    When she told him what she suspected, he had pulled her to him and told her how thrilled he felt. He''d felt her muscles relax under his hands, and he was glad that he''d lied instead of telling her how deeply terrified he was. In a moment, all of his life plans seemed wiped aside like heavy dust. He was going to be a father. There would be no room for anything else. Suddenly his paychecks seemed laughable, nowhere near enough to cover what a baby must cost. And what about all the other things he wanted to do but couldn''t now that he was going to be a father? What about all his plans?

    It wasn''t until later, when the idea of a baby had sunk in enough for him to think about it clearly, that he realized he had no plans. There was nothing he wanted to do that he couldn''t do and still come home and take his son bowling. The money concern was real, but if they were careful, his job probably paid enough. He hated teaching English to a group of ridiculously stereotypical teenagers, but something better was sure to open up soon. And if he ever put together that ska band, Rachel and the boy could be his groupies.

    After that and some hyperventilating, Jake really was thrilled. He went with Rachel to buy the pregnancy test and picked up a stuffed moose and a pack of socks with little soccer balls on the ankles. Rachel radiated happiness, and the cashier looked at them as if they were idiots. They held hands driving home, and Jake paced like a waiting room father while she took the test.

    And after, still sitting beside the little stick with the awful minus sign in the window and the useless little socks, he felt like an idiot. He watched his wife sit motionless beside him, staring ahead, and he wondered what she could be thinking, whether she felt empty. He wasn''t sure what she was seeing in the air in front of her, so he didn''t know what to say. She had wanted it, he knew, wanted it so much that her body had told her it was true. He couldn''t figure out if he should touch her or not, or say something or not. For something they hadn''t been expecting to happen, the unhappening of it was strangling. The word that seemed to beat against his ears was childless. It was such an ugly, empty word.

    Eventually, the desire to do something, even if it was the wrong thing, moved him to reach out for Rachel. He hugged her close, and the world''s best idea came to him in an instant. "Hey, let''s have sex."

    "What?" she said, surprised. Then, coming slowly out of her haze, she said, "What?" again and started laughing and pulling away. When she looked at him, Jake was pretty sure she already knew what he was thinking.

    He said, "Maybe you''re pregnant already, but if you''re not, I think you should be. Let''s get you knocked up."

    Some of the excitement he''d felt in the drug store when he held the little socks returned. That word was still there, childless, but it was a temporary matter. He pulled her towards him and she, smiling, wrapped her arms around him.

    The morning after the Hephaestus debacle, Jake woke to a small but steady scratching sound, like something trying desperately to claw its way through a pantry door. He had a mild headache and remembered that he''d had four more wine coolers before he was finally able to fall asleep. Four wine coolers and not a glass of water all day.

    He dragged himself into the kitchen and toward the coffeepot, which was, oddly, half full of more or less fresh coffee. Jake poured a cup and followed the scratching sound to the dining room, where he again found E. E. writing in his notebook. The only thing different was that this morning, E. E. was writing as fast as he could, his microscopic words filling line after line as though he couldn''t get it all down fast enough.

    E. E. didn''t look up when Jake came in, and without pausing his writing, he said, "You''re not moving out. Ever."

    "What?"

    He finished the sentence he was writing before standing up, taking his empty coffee cup with him back to the kitchen. Jake followed and watched E. E. slosh coffee into his cup and head back toward the dining room. "Last night was this amazing catalyst. I''m not even writing full sentences¡ªI can hardly jot down a basic idea before another one occurs to me. I''ve already forgotten four in the fifteen seconds I''ve wasted talking to you."

    E. E. returned to his chair at the table. He picked up his pencil, glanced at Jake, then put his pencil back down. "Last night¡­that was by far the most terrifying and bizarre thing that ever happened to me," he said.

    "Yeah, it''s near the top of my list too," Jake said. "But one of the weirdest parts was you distracting Hephaestus from hammering my skull. How did you do that?"

    "Unleashed my hitherto unseen powers of psychoanalysis. No, I just thought, this guy is dirty and ugly, and I bet he doesn''t have many friends. He''s probably lonely, so I thought, why not just talk to him, pretend like I care about his dysfunctional childhood. I just had a moment of inspiration or a flashback to my college psych classes. And you weren''t doing anything, just sitting there waiting for your concussion."

    "Yeah, it turns out I don''t react well under pressure."

    "Good to know."

    "I''m sorry," Jake said, and he was about to clarify that he was sorry about all of it¡ªthe whole night, the whole experience of living with him, and most of all about putting E. E. in danger.

    But E. E. was already shaking his head. "Do you know what I would have given to write like this? A million nights of immortal interruptions. A million billion Hephaestuses and hammers and Zeuses and lousy wine coolers. Speaking of which, that is not a guy''s drink. You ever buy them again and I will kick you out. Now go away."

    Jake grinned and left him alone, going back to his recliner and listening to the mouselike scratching. Jake relaxed, sipping his coffee, allowing a vague smile to cover his face until he realized that he''d said he was moving out, and E. E. had told him to stay. And Jake was just selfish enough to accept that. He tried to tell himself that it wasn''t permanent, that E. E. could ask him to leave any time, but he couldn''t make himself feel like less of a jerk. He pushed the thought aside, trying to make himself wonder what E. E.''s story was about, but that overwhelming stench of jerkiness that had settled around his neck didn''t dissipate.

    Jake set down his cup, and stood, thinking of taking a shower or searching for something to eat for breakfast, anything to nudge him in the direction of normality. He yawned widely as he left the living room. Then he opened the door to the bathroom and found himself shoeless in the Fates'' house again. He turned around in a circle. The door was gone. And he really did need a shower.

    "You failed," Chloe said. Atta and the quiet one stared at him.

    "No, I got the hammer. It''s just¡ª"

    "We can''t help you if don''t take our suggestions seriously," she said, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair.

    "Listen, I don''t think I''m going to be trying again¡ª"

    "But you signed the paper," she said, confused.

    "I know, but now my father says he''ll help me find a way¡ª"

    "I''m sure your father is all eagerness to help you cut yourself off from his world, genius boy. Never mind that, though. You signed the contract, and we will make sure that you stand before the Council. After that, you''re on your own."

    Before Jake realized what was happening, Atta was standing in front of him. She licked her palm and slapped him again. And he fell from a great height onto a fluffy red rug. Jake moaned, pretty sure that he had whiplash. A thousand words that Delilah had taught him never to say tumbled through his mind.

    He didn''t notice the noise from the next room until it stopped. The door opened a fraction, and there was a roar of fury as a woman more incredibly sensuous than a siren stepped out.

    She grabbed him by the lace collar of the gown he was wearing and lifted him to his feet. His reflection in the full-length mirror on her wall made him gag. He could see form-fitting red teddy through the thin cloth of the gown, and he wore lipstick, bracelets, and pumps to match. E. E.''s comment about his wine coolers came screaming back to him.

    "Who are you?" the woman bellowed. If he hadn''t been so humiliated, he would have been drooling over her as she yelled at him.

    "I''m sorry. The Fates just¡ªWhat the hell am I wearing?"

    She ripped the gown off him and, unaccustomed to the high heels, Jake fell back onto the carpet. She screamed, "The Fates just told you that you''re my next husband? The Fates just sent you here for some much needed erotic therapy? The Fates are a sick joke, and no one wears my lingerie but me. Did you think I''d find it sexy? Did you think¡ªno, I don''t even care. Take it all off and get out."

    "But¡ª" Jake looked around. His clothes were nowhere. But finding a way back to his apartment naked did sound better than running around town in lingerie. He took everything off as fast as he could, remembering the bracelets just before he reached the door. He had trouble getting them past his hands, but he managed and set them on the table by the door just as the woman changed her mind.

    "Wait," she said in a soft voice. Even in his state of shame and mild panic, Jake turned around. He felt drugged and stupid. The crazy hope that she found him attractive, even that she wanted to wear the red teddy, flashed in and out of his mind.

    She wrapped an orange bathrobe belt around his head, fitting it into his mouth and tying it in the back like a misplaced collar and leash. Jake allowed it. His heart had never beaten so fast. The woman screamed so loud Jake''s eyes watered. He tried to get the belt off his head so he could run, but she yanked it tight and kept him there until four men dressed in black with dark glasses and earpieces clomped into the room.

    "This naked man broke into my apartment," she said, yanking hard on the belt again.

    Jake tried to say, "She makes it sound so much worse than it is."

    "I demand that the Council meets at once to punish him."

    The men nodded and dragged Jake from her room.

 28 Chapter Twenty-Seven

    The ceiling of the councilroom seemed a mile overhead, and clean but ancient stone benches stretched to Jake''s left and right and behind him like the endless pews of an austere church. Sunlight crisscrossed in through the high, clear windows surrounding the upper dome of the councilroom. The buzzing silence was soon broken by the echoing footsteps of the entering Council members.

    Jake stood, handcuffed and still naked, at the front councilroom. If nothing else can be said in favor of the immortal world, Jake thought, at least their courts aren''t backed up. Six months in a holding cell in this place would not be great.

    Near Jake, a thin man with a legal pad stood. He announced, "Jake Foster, son of the god Zeus and the mortal Delilah Foster, accused by the goddess Aphrodite of breaking and entering, unsolicited exposure, attempted thievery of two articles of clothing and four accessories, seeks the justice of the Council." He took his seat.

    Jake closed his eyes. He''d been exposed in the presence of Aphrodite. Part of his mind was shriveling with shame, part swearing that he would spend a lot of time working out before he was naked with a goddess again.

    When he managed to open his eyes and meet the stares of the Council, he was surprised at how normal they seemed. They looked a great deal like the current Supreme Court Justices, except they wore sneakers and jeans and t-shirts, and they sat in their row chairs in casual positions, one even propping his feet up on the table. Zeus had said they were like characters from Kafka''s Trial experiencing heroin withdrawals. Jake hoped he was wrong.

    They stared at him for a few seconds, then leaned in together to whisper for no more than a minute. When they sat facing him again, the Council member in the middle, a grinning, wrinkly man who seemed to be the Head Councilman, banged his fluorescent green gavel once and said, "The Council finds Mr. Foster guilty."

    The thin man with the legal pad stood again. "And the sentence?"

    "Well," the Head Councilman began, but the woman to his right cut him off.

    "Normally we would punish unsolicited exposure very harshly, not to mention the other crimes. However, certain members of the Council understand the appeal of the goddess," she made a disgusted face in the direction of the Head Councilman, "and other members just really don''t like her."

    The Head Councilman continued, "Thus, because of the Council''s empathy and, uh, prejudice, Mr. Foster will suffer nothing worse than community service. Say, 8,766 hours. Oh, wait. You''re mortal, aren''t you? Two hundred hours. And five years of probation."

    Jake took a deep breath.

    "The consequences of breaking probation?" the thin man asked, scribbling on his legal pad.

    "Immediate beheading, disemboweling, and a chair in Hades. Are these terms acceptable?"

    The expressions on the Council members'' faces told him that any answer other than "yes" would not be tolerated. One of the members had already fished his car keys out of his pocket.

    "Yes," Jake said, and the Council was gone from the hall before the bailiff, who had been waiting out of sight behind the door through which the Council had entered, had removed Jake''s handcuffs. The auditorium, nearly empty to begin with, was soon deserted. Jake said, "What now?" as the bailiff walked away, but neither he nor anyone else answered.

    Jake found a used tennis outfit in a corner of the councilroom, in a stack with two cheerleader outfits, a pirate costume, and fourteen Kit-Kats. He slipped on the tennis outfit, complete with shoes, and grabbed a handful of Kit-Kats.

    Past the doors of the auditorium, a wide, high-ceilinged hall stretched ahead. Jake couldn''t see the end of it, but a block of sunlight to the right caught his attention, and Jake hurried in that direction, eager to find a way out of crazyland. But the view beyond the doors was more like a clip from any part of Lord of the Rings than anything in Jake''s world. Men and women of incredible proportions walked the rustic stone-paved road, and among them were horned, winged, speckled, furry, and howling creatures, some pulling and pushing carts and rickshaw-like carriages, others meandering and conversing and, Jake couldn''t be sure, but he had a strong suspicion, copulating.

    The buildings along just the small stretch of road Jake could see represented twenty different architectural styles from twenty historical periods, in forty or more colors. Like The Lord of the Rings, Jake thought, set in Poland.

    A man about Jake''s own age leaned against a column just outside the door. "Excuse me," Jake said, "could you tell me how to get back to¡ª" He paused. What was the term? The mortal world? The other side? Earth? The man walked away before Jake could decide.

    He asked four more people before an elderly gypsy woman seemed to appear beside him, jangling with the objects pinned inside her shawls.

    "Need a wristwatch, boy?" she asked.

    "No, I need a way to get home."

    "Need me to call you a cab?" she said, then snickered.

    "I live¡­."

    "You don''t live on Olympus."

    "Right," Jake said, but he realized for the first time that he was here again, this place he''d read so much about, dreamed of so many times since his only other visit, when he was a kid. He knew he was in the immortal world, of course, that had been obvious from the moment he''d seen Aphrodite, but that hadn''t connected in his mind with the realization that he was on Olympus. Olympus. For a moment, he forgot what an awful mess he was in, staring around at the city of legend, the festival city, where the spirit of Mardi Gras and Oktoberfest lived year round. For a moment, he forgot that he hated this world and anything connected to it, that it had ruined his life, and he simply let the awe overtake him.

    "You have any money?" the gypsy woman interrupted.

    "No," Jake said, feeling a small degree of panic breaking through the awe. He couldn''t remember the last time he''d been anywhere without cash or a credit card or his driver''s license. The spark of anger at the Fates that had been kindled earlier burned with new energy, but at the same time, Jake wanted to laugh at himself for everything he was feeling, all these adolescent emotions jumbled up in him, struggling for domination. He took a long breath and looked out past the woman at the colorful crowd and the hodgepodge of buildings, listening to the different languages and the melody of the laughter and conversation mixture.

    "You have gameroom tokens?" the gypsy woman said, taking as much of a step toward him as she could, robbing him of his personal space completely. "You have jewelry? Food?"

    Jake looked at his hands, and there were the Kit-Kats. He''d almost forgotten them. He held them out, and the gypsy made them disappear, replacing them instantly with a tiny whistle on a thin silver ring. "What the hell is this?" he asked.

    The gypsy shuffled away through the crowd, and Jake followed, intent on getting his Kit-Kats back, but she moved through the crowd easily, as though she were a part of each body on the street, and after a minute of forcing his way through and trying to see over carriages and heads, Jake could no longer see her.

    He examined the whistle. It was small and unremarkable, even a little rusted in the edges, but Jake had seen enough of the immortal world to know that worthless pieces of junk were often powerful magical objects in disguise. He slipped the silver ring onto his little finger, the only one it would fit, and hesitated. Nothing had happened yet, but he was suddenly convinced that something would happen if he blew the whistle, and a large and growing part of him wanted a chance to look around the city. He might not have a chance like this again.

    Jake picked a direction and walked down the street, feeling like an obvious tourist as he turned his head in every direction, looking in shop windows, reading every sign with words he could understand. He passed a bakery, an apothecary''s shop, three movie theaters, a hot dog vendor, children playing hopscotch, an adult bookstore, several people on unicycles, and a women''s clothing store for women with three or more arms. He was also pretty sure that he caught a glimpse of the Hindu elephant-head god, Ganesha, purchasing a pair of sunglasses.

    Jake imagined the awe that a handful of others throughout history must have felt after being snatched out of their incredibly dull lives and dropped in the immortal world with nothing but a tennis outfit and a vague sense of panic that they might never get home again intermingling with the amazement and honor of actually walking, thinking, breathing in the home of the gods, or at least, the place where the gods do a lot of their shopping.

    A small gold coin on the sidewalk caught Jake''s eye, and he stopped to pick it up. On one side was unmistakably a griffon, with the words "Fifty Zloty" etched in a banner across the bottom. On the other side was a profile of a man who looked strikingly like Abraham Lincoln.

    Jake wanted to buy a trip home, or at least get some normal clothes, but after browsing through a couple of shops, he realized that his coin was about the equivalent of a seaweed wrap filled with vegetables and rice and a Barq''s, the only recognizable brand name in any of the stores he tried. He was feeling the absence of breakfast that morning, so he invested his fifty zloty as well as he could and continued down the street.

    Some of the vendors boasted signs and shouted slogans like, "Keep your shoes safe from trickets!" and "De-manticore your hobbit-hole!" and "Unpixie your whiskey!" But Jake walked past, hardly glancing at their rows of charms and protective potions.

    Rachel had been six months pregnant the first time she mentioned that Jake might find a way to protect the family. "I''ve already done everything I know to do," he said, surprised that she''d asked. Rachel never talked about the immortal world, though more than one of its emissaries had appeared since the cake batter footprints incident. She even refused to watch the SciFi channel with him. He admitted that the subjects of some of those shows were too familiar to be entertaining, but a little Star Trek Next Generation never hurt anyone.

    She nodded but didn''t say anything.

    Jake knew she had to have noticed the charms and magical objects hidden throughout the house. He thought of mentioning them, but he knew she would say, "Things happen anyway."

    And she was right. The charms, all the charms Jake had ever tried or heard of, were useless. Last week, Rachel had found seventeen newspapers on the welcome mat and seventeen smeared trails across the dusty porch, as though each paper had been dragged up and left there, one by one. The week before, all the canned goods had disappeared. Jake never found out what happened to them. Other happenings had been easier to hide from Rachel. Jake had begun waking up before dawn to walk through the inside of the house, being careful not to look into mirrors or to catch his reflection in windows or water glasses until the sun was fully in the sky. Jake would drop pieces of foil or buttons or coins behind the refrigerator, check the inside of the milk carton, the sinks, the shower, and the bathtub, and burn a sprig of peppermint near each doorway. When it was light, Jake walked around the outside of the house and shook pixies out of the rose bushes. He would continue this ritual throughout Rachel''s pregnancy and until he moved out, not long after Lily''s fifth birthday.

    Now Rachel was asking for something he couldn''t say he could give her. "I''ll talk to Zeus," he said. "I don''t know what else to do."

    Zeus''s suggestions all involved bringing protective magical creatures into the house. Jake couldn''t imagine telling Rachel that the guest bedroom had to be converted into a stable for a young unicorn or that she had to wear a baby sloth in a pouch around her neck.

    Around that time, Jake would catch Rachel eyeing him, and he knew she was thinking what he had often thought: he was the problem. If Jake went away, Rachel and their little baby would likely never be bothered by the immortal world.

    But Rachel was there and the baby was coming. Rachel was there and the baby was coming, and Jake was just selfish enough to stay.

 29 Chapter Twenty-Eigh

    Just before sunset, when vendors were packing up their merchandise and the store clerks were locking their doors, Jake took a final glance up and down the street and prepared to blow the whistle, thinking with mild disgust of the whistle in his desk drawer at school, used to bring order to chaos. He didn''t know where this whistle would take him exactly, or what it would do, but he intended to be far away from Olympus when night came. It seemed the only wise course of action.

    Jake lifted his little finger to his mouth, then lowered it in doubt. He could call Zeus, of course, if there was a phone, but Jake hadn''t seen one. He knew better than to ask where he could find him¡ªZeus traveled in disguise for a reason. The old elementary standby, to find a policeman or a fireman or a nun in times of trouble, seemed laughable in this place, where no one seemed to be in charge of anything. He could make his way back to the courthouse, but no one there had seemed particularly helpful.

    Surely¡­Jake looked at the whistle. Surely, it would be fine. Suddenly, staring at it, pulled in by its humble shine, he didn''t care so much about trying to find another way. He wanted to know what would happen when he blew it. He wanted to know where it would take him.

    He lifted the whistle to his mouth, and pausing, he drew a picture of his apartment in his mind, for good measure. Then he took a breath and blew long and loud. But before he was finished blowing, the air coming out of his mouth seemed to reverse itself, but he wasn''t sucking in air, the whistle was sucking in air, and then he felt something he could only later describe as what it felt like to be snorted, as the whistle sucked him in entirely.

    For the nth time in the past week, Jake fell on his back in an unfamiliar place. The benefit this time was that he was wearing shoes, he still had his clothes, and he was not in the presence of sadistic and powerful mythological beings. He was alone, and he was fairly sure that he was now in the desert, probably somewhere near Giza or near a mirage because he thought there were pyramids on the horizon.

    The whistle was no longer on his finger. Jake kicked the sand around to see if it had fallen off, but for all he knew he was just hiding it better, unless, of course, he was inside the whistle. That would make things more complicated.

    He dusted himself off as best he could and began walking toward Giza. "The most surprising thing about all this," he said out loud to himself as he trudged through the soft sand, "is that nothing at all about this is surprising."

    After ten minutes, he was fairly sure he was more sunburned than he had ever been in his life.

    After fifteen minutes, his legs ached with the effort of walking through the sand.

    After half an hour, he was so thirsty that he began thinking about that passage in Coleridge where the sailor bites his flesh so he can drink his own blood. The thought had always disgusted Jake before, but now¡­.

    After an hour, Jake was sure that he was going to die. But he was so tired and thirsty that he was looking forward to it, if he wasn''t dead already. If he was, that presented a whole new series of problems that he didn''t want to think about. It wasn''t until he stepped under the canopy of trees and stuck his head under the little spring that he believed he''d reached an oasis. He drank as much as he could, then stood up and mumbled the chorus to "Champagne Supernova," which he later took as a sign that he had obtained some brain damage from the sun, as he walked around in search of something to eat.

    The oasis, probably no larger than his apartment, seemed to be devoid of stupid animals or those so unaccustomed to humans that were trusting and easily caught and eaten.

    There was, however, a phone booth.

    Jake stood and stared at the phone booth for quite awhile. Palm trees shaded it, and a little dune was piled up against one side, no doubt blown there by the desert winds. On the other side of the dune, still in the shade, a stack of palm leaves had been gathered to form a kind of bed, though any other sign of humanity, if there ever had been other signs, had been blown away. He drank more water and sat for a few minutes as he waited for the phone booth to disappear. The sun must have affected him more than he thought. The booth was impressively detailed for a hallucination, and if it was a manifestation of something in his subconscious, he thought it might have something to do with Christmas.

    A family who lived a few houses down from his and Rachel''s white brick house on Lime Street was fanatic about Christmas, the kind of people with forty plastic reindeer on every square foot of roof and lawn that appeared just after Thanksgiving every year. Jake deplored their tackiness, even more so because night and day the house glared so determinedly in the direction of the street that Jake couldn''t ignore it. He tried staring straight ahead, staring in the other direction, and closing his eyes as he passed it. Somehow it was always there, smiting his eyes.

    The third year, Jake developed an avoidance tactic. The least horrific aspect of Santa''s Sweatshop was a real, glass-walled phone booth, like something pulled right out of an Audrey Hepburn movie, which stood in the middle of the lawn. The fact that it held a giant stuffed Santa was irrelevant. The phone booth was beautiful, like an ancient steam train or an antique car. Jake focused on the booth as he passed the house every day and thereby survived a whole holiday season without dreaming of dressing like an elf and strangling the family with tinsel.

    Jake stood, futilely brushing the sand off his shorts, and approached the booth, sans Santa. He no longer thought that he must be in Egypt, or in any other part of the world he knew, which made the prospect of a phone booth on an oasis a little easier to cope with.

    If you only ever had one call to make¡­.

    Jake checked his pockets. No change. He stepped inside the booth, closing the door behind him for no good reason. It was cooler inside than he''d expected.

    If you only ever¡­.

    He would call his father, of course. It was the sensible thing to do. No one else would be able to save him. No one else would be able to help at all. He took a deep breath in and sighed it out. The booth smelled like peppermint. Jake picked up the phone and put it to his ear. A dial tone. He would call his father, of course. Zeus might not be answering, or the number might not work, or there might not be any way for Zeus to find him or help him.

    If you only ever have one call to make¡­.

    His fingers punched another number, one that had been his for so long that it seemed to say something about him, it seemed to mean "Jake and Rachel Foster," more a part of his own identity than his birthday or his social security number or #37, the vegetable moo shoo he always ordered when he and E. E. ordered in.

    Rachel picked up the phone.

    "Hey, it''s Jake," he said, feeling that if he gave her the time to ask who was calling, and she did, he might truly fall apart. "Is Lily around?"

    Rachel was silent.

    "I just wanted to ask her about her day. I''m not calling to slander you or undermine your authority or¡ª"

    "Just a second," she huffed.

    Jake stood with the phone in his hand, looking out at the shining desert from the shaded booth. He couldn''t believe it had worked. He had been sure that it wouldn''t.

    A full minute later, Lily''s voice came through the receiver like sunshine and weekends and sand castles on the beach, and not for the first time since Rachel had asked him to move out, Jake felt a little like crying. What if he never got home? It was hell enough to lose his wife, but to imagine Lily growing up without him¡ª

    "Hey, how was your day?" he said

    "Boring!" she said with excitement. "I watched six episodes of Fairly OddParents and got a haircut and went to the store for gross-shries and ate french fries."

    "French fries?"

    "Yeah. Mom called me a¡­a¡­Mom, what did you call me?...a addict."

    Jake laughed. "Your mom''s a pretty funny lady. What was The Fairly OddParents about today?"

    He listened as she chattered about Timmy and Vicky and dinosaurs, and he focused entirely on her words and the sound of her voice. Jake let his knees give in, and he fell, a little harder than he''d intended to, onto the dusty black skid-resistant floor of the phone booth. An incredible pressure seemed to be building between his eyes, and as he listened, it spread to encompass his whole head and trickled down his throat and into his stomach. His entire nervous and digestive systems were in pain. He couldn''t breathe. All he could do was press the receiver harder against his ear and rest his forehead on his knees.

    "There was a plane, too, over our house. I said it was a alien, but Mom said it was just a plane. Just a plain ol'' plane."

    I don''t know what I''m doing anymore.

    "But I think it was really a alien. Do you think there are aliens?"

    "Yeah," he said with a snort of manic laughter. "Yeah, I do. But don''t tell your mom I said so, okay?"

    "Okay," Lily whispered, then in her regular voice again, "Mom says I have to come eat dinner. When can I come see you again?"

    Jake shook his head and made himself say, "Soon. Eat your vegetables."

    "Oka-ay," she sighed. "Loveyoubye." And she was gone.

    Jake stood, hung up the receiver and immediately picked it up again, but there was no dial tone. Somehow he knew there wouldn''t be.

    He slept cramped on the floor of the phone booth that night, mostly protected from the icy night wind, though he couldn''t say how many hours of sleep he actually got. As soon as he was no longer thirsty, after repeated trips to the spring, hunger flamed up in him as ferociously as thirst had hours before. But there was nothing he could do.

    Every time Jake woke up, he checked the phone for a dial tone.

    Sleep finally came in a rush after dawn, when Jake was finally warm enough to leave the phone booth and stretch out on a stack of palm leaves on the ground. Finally comfortable, he slept.

    The sun was hanging in a late afternoon sky when Jake woke up. For a few minutes, he lay staring at the palm tree tops, wondering how such tall plants were able to fit in his low-ceilinged bedroom, how they were able to put roots into the carpet.

    When the reality of the desert beat its way into his brain, another panicked thought surfaced. The box. The hidden box in the top of his closet that no one was supposed to touch or know about. If he were stuck here, E. E. would eventually notice he wasn''t around. He would go into Jake''s room, maybe looking for some clue ¨C a missing suitcase, a suicide note, a flight number jotted on a scrap of paper. If he didn''t find the box, someone would, whoever came to clear out his room when everyone was pretty sure that he was dead. They would be right, of course. Jake wouldn''t last here.

    But visions of what could happen when the box was passed around the homicide department of the Bee Caves Police Department like Captain Trips motivated him to try not to die for a few days. He groaned and pulled himself to the spring, where he drank a meal''s worth of water and hoped that his stomach would think it was receiving pancakes with cherry topping and hot butter and a fried egg or seven. For no reason other than boredom, Jake straightened his clothes, finger-combed his hair, and dusted his sand-blasted skin. He tried the phone six or seven times, but there was still no dial tone. He dialed anyway, as he had the night before, but nothing happened.

    An hour later, Jake lay back down on the palm leaves, thinking that a nap would help pass the time until he died. Whatever came out of that box at least had to be better than this. It was a long while before he managed to quiet his mind enough to sleep again, but the palm mat was comfortable, and there was nothing else he could do.

    He felt that he couldn''t have been asleep more than an hour when he jerked suddenly awake, sitting straight up and staring out over the desert. There was a pale, moving spot on a sand dune over a mile away. Jake didn''t know whether to call out or hide. He had no illusions about how he would do in a fight, nor was he certain that a hungry desert wanderer would retain an aversion to cannibalism. After a few more days, Jake might start to sympathize.

    He had a fleeting thought that it had probably been more than two hours since he''d checked the phone last, but if he moved, the distant spot might notice him. He stayed on his palm mat. While he waited to see if the spot would approach, he tried chewing on the palm leaves and on the sparse grass and occasional bush within reach of the mat. Everything tasted like potent brussel sprouts, only raw and without butter or seasoning. He couldn''t make himself eat it yet.

    Another hour passed. The dot was larger, and Jake was fairly sure by this time that it was a man. He caught himself once falling asleep. The desert heat made his lungs ache. The third time he snapped awake, the man was stepping under the cover of the trees, close enough that Jake wouldn''t have needed to raise his voice to speak to him.

    Jake absorbed the information his eyes were trying to send to his brain. He observed the tennis outfit, the man''s incredible thirst, and his bewilderment over the existence of a phone booth in the middle of a desert oasis. But it wasn''t until the man entered the phone booth and closed the door behind him that he understood that he was truly seeing himself, seeing himself arrive at the oasis in the same way, at about the same time, as he had yesterday.

    Other Jake had looked around thoroughly, in search of food, Jake remembered. He had passed near the palm mat, had looked at the palm mat, but hadn''t seen Jake.

    And now! Now Other Jake was lifting the phone''s receiver and speaking to Lily. Jake stared, his heart racing. We''re definitely not in Egypt, Toto.

    Then another incredibly horrific thought invaded his mind. How many invisible Jakes were there in this oasis? How many sitting, watching, for how many days? Was this an illusion, or was he just one echo of Jake, one of millions of Jakes in millions of worlds in millions of dimensions?

    Jake curled up like a child on his mat and tried not to think. Eventually, long after Other Jake had hung up the phone and arranged himself on the floor of the phone booth, Jake slept again, trying to keep his thoughts away from the now painful hunger, praying that something would change in the night.

    Other Jake began to snore loudly not long past noon, waking Jake, who stood immediately and ran to the phone booth, shutting himself in despite the heat and taking his post by the phone. Just as Jake had, Other Jake had abandoned the phone booth hours ago and made himself a palm mat in a shady place.

    Jake lifted the receiver. Still no dial tone. He replaced it and waited. A cluster of trees blocked his view of the direction from whence Other Jake had approached the day before, but he could see Other Jake and knew that in an hour or two, he would wake up and notice the spot on a distant dune. Jake had no doubt that Other Jake would see it, just as yesterday, and that Other Jake 2 would soon come stumbling into the oasis.

    Jake checked the phone every few minutes and watched Other Jake like a lioness tracking a herd of giraffes, except that neither of them was moving. His sleepiness of the day before had evaporated. He would do something, even if it was futile.

    Sooner than he expected, Other Jake 2 arrived, drank deeply from the spring, scouted for food, and stared in bewilderment at the phone booth. Eventually, Other Jake 2 approached the door. Jake sat on the floor, braced himself against the opposite wall, and propped his feet against the door, holding it tightly closed.

    Other Jake 2 pushed on the door for several minutes, then paused and stared around in confusion as though¡­had he expected the door to open for him easily, as it had for the others? For the first time, Jake was sure that this was nothing but an illusion, maybe just the universe''s most elaborate mirage. Other Jake 2 tried harder, throwing his whole wait against the door.

    He had been too afraid the day before to speak out to Other Jake, sure that if Other Jake noticed him, it would cause a rip in the space-time continuum or universe would implode or some other nonsensical Star Trekkian tragedy would occur. Now Jake bellowed from within the phone booth, "Push harder, you wimp! Yeah, lean into it. Keep slamming into that door until your shoulder comes out of socket. Loser! Sucker! Pansy!"

    You''ve gone crazy, his mind told him. Totally bonkers.

    He kept yelling and taunting, unsure of what response he was looking for until it happened. Other Jake 2 punched the door with his fist, and yelled, "Shut up!"

    The wind rustled the leaves overhead, but there was no other sound. Other Jake stared blankly at Other Jake 2. Other Jake 2 seemed to have realized his mistake, but was trying to find his poker face again. Jake sat, close to tears and close to laughing out loud, in triumph.

    He stood and swung open the door, wrapping his hands around Other Jake 2''s throat. "Who are you?"

    "Jake Foster," the man wheezed.

    Jake took one hand away and punched Other Jake 2 in the nose, thinking how odd this must appear to Other Jake, who sat on his palm mat looking confused and a little scared. If he honestly couldn''t see Jake, it must seem that, after flailing himself at the phone booth and screaming "Shut up" to no one, Other Jake 2 began having trouble breathing, then said his own name, then suddenly jerked his head backward and began bleeding from the nose.

    Jake was so frustrated and famished, so on the edge and losing balance, that he laughed loudly before tightening his grip on Other Jake 2''s throat again.

    "No! Tell me what the hell you are and what I''m doing here." Jake shook the man a little to encourage a quick response.

    The man gagged on the blood streaming down his throat.

    "You''re a quick one, Jakey," a voice said.

    Jake turned, his hands still lightly throttling Other Jake 2. Other Jake still reclined on his palm mat, but he was smiling now, like a kid at the movies.

    "But you''re not hurting anyone but yourself," Other Jake continued.

    "Get me out of here," Jake said, trying not to plead. "I know you can. Let me go home."

    Other Jake pouted. "But we''re lonely. We''re hungry for some fun, something to distract us from this awful heat."

    Jake immediately let go of Other Jake 2''s throat. "You''re not going to have any fun with me. I''m through entertaining you." He went into the phone booth. The sun was setting, and it would be uncomfortably cold in an hour.

    Jake closed the phone booth door and sat on the ground, staring straight ahead. He was still miserable and hungry and his every crevasse was caked with sand, but he had a small victory. Something had changed. He was taking control.

    The phone rang.

    Jake''s insides leapt and twisted with surprise and then with hope. He jumped to his feet before he stopped to think, and his hand was on the receiver when he saw the Other Jakes watching with matching grins. He sat back down, and their grins drooped.

    No. Everything is a trick. Everything is a joke.

    The phone kept ringing long into the night. Jake became so tired that he would fall asleep in the pauses between rings, only to be jolted awake again an instant later, the shrill bell jangling in a panicked voice.

    He couldn''t remember the last time he''d been to the fountain, and his throat seemed to have caved in. He would die out here while his mirrors stood feet away giggling like middle school girls at a football game.

    Once, the ringing stopped, and Jake was so thankful that he almost cried, but the pause lasted ten seconds, like someone hanging up and redialing to make sure he had the right number. Then it came again, sound waves rolling in and breaking against the crumbling rock of his brain.

    Sometime near morning, a strawberry milkshake and a porterhouse steak and a bowl of potato soup, all on fine china, appeared just outside the phone booth door. The moon and stars seemed to focus all their light on that beautiful feast. It hurt Jake to even look away, but the steak would probably taste like sand, the soup like tree bark, and the milkshake like pureed palm leaves. Jake closed his eyes so he didn''t have to see it. Every cell in his body was crying out for food, for drink, for a bath, for any symbol of civilization that wasn''t a phone booth.

    He almost broke and opened the door when he thought about the spring, how the water had tasted like real water, not the best water ever, but not the chlorine that came out of the tap, either. Whether that steak was real or not, it might taste real. It might alleviate the psychological part of his hunger. But he squeezed his eyes more tightly closed and braced his feet against the door.

    Jake almost broke a second time when the smell invaded the phone booth, stealing in through the cracks, overpowering even the faint plastic smell of the booth and the smell of Jake''s three-days-in-the-sun body. He held his breath until he couldn''t anymore, then breathed out and in through his mouth and held it again.

    Someone knocked on the door. Jake kept his eyes closed. It would be a lie. Whatever it was, it would just be a lie. They''re just having fun with you, the way you would always tell the freshmen in college that the pool was on the roof, and laugh when they''d get in their trunks with their towels draped over their shoulders, their shades on and their flip-flops, and head up to the roof, where the door inevitably locked behind them. It''s just a game, just a¡ª

    "Daddy?"

    Jake''s eyes opened. He couldn''t have stopped it even if he''d known what to expect. Lily stood, leaning against the phone booth door, shivering in the pre-dawn chill. She was holding the soup and drinking it, but she still seemed cold.

    "Daddy, can I come inside?"

    Jake stared at her. Her perfect blonde hair, a little blonder in places than it had been at the beginning of the summer, was tied back like Rachel wore it, in a low ponytail with some wispy parts loose. She was wearing an outfit he''d seen her in a million times, shorts and a shirt with little strawberries on it.

    "Daddy?"

    What if it''s really her? He didn''t have to think that twice. Jake moved his foot and let her in, motioning for her to sit by him as he closed the door with his foot.

    The telephone rang on, and Lily or Not Lily snuggled next to him and leaned her head on his arm.

    "I¡ª" she began, but he shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

    Somewhere out of sight, they were watching.

 30 Chapter Twenty-Nine

    Rachel''s obstetrician said that Lily was a textbook birth. Rachel said she''d like to watch him push the textbook out through his vagina.

    The contractions began at one in the morning on the due date, and by four a.m., Jake was holding his little girl for the first time. She was disgusting of course, covered in whatever fluid and muck accompanied her from the womb, but after he held back a gag, he was able to see how small and beautiful and perfect and amazing she was. It was the first and last time in many years that nothing, not work or his immortal problem or lunch or sleepiness, was crowding for a place in his thoughts. He held his tiny daughter, wrapped in her pink delivery blanket, and he couldn''t breathe.

    A nurse had to shake his shoulder and take Lily from him so they could take her to get cleaned up.

    Jake went to his wife''s side and kissed her. "You are so good at that. Let''s have another."

    Rachel gave a weak, half-asleep laugh. "Give me a little time to recover," she said.

    Jake and Rachel had decorated their new daughter''s nursery with cordial tigers. Her blanket and the border along the top of the walls featured baby tigers playing with rattles and bottles and balls. Lurid orange tigers climbed on the letters of Lily''s name that hung across from her crib. Jake''s favorite was the alarm clock tiger sitting companionably with its elephant friend.

    In a few years, the crib and most of the tigers were replaced by the Disney Princess d¨¦cor and a child-sized canopy bed with bubble gum pink hangings. Jake never said anything against it, but the room made his teeth hurt. Only the alarm clock survived the tiger purge, and the elephant now wore a tiny tiara that had formerly belonged to Barbie.

    No more snack hallucinations or daughters appeared as the morning approached. The Other Jakes probably thought there was no point once he gave in to the Lily scam. The worst part of that was that Jake couldn''t think of a way to figure out if she was the real Lily or just another trick. If the Other Jakes could pull a perfect picture of his daughter out of his mind, they could also pull out any little tidbit he could think to ask her to prove she was real.

    But almost as soon as he thought this, an idea came to him that he prayed would work. He stopped thinking about it immediately, and turned to the little girl.

    "Lily, when is your birthday?" he asked, knowing she would know.

    "February 4th," she said, looking up at him like he was crazy. "Daddy, why¡ª"

    "Don''t worry about it right now, sweetie. How many chairs are there around Mommy''s kitchen table?"

    She thought for a moment. "Six."

    "How many goldfish do you have?"

    "One."

    "What''s his name?"

    "King Midas."

    "What''s your mom''s name?"

    "Rachel."

    "What''s your middle name?"

    "Rosemary." She was answering faster as he gave her each question. He didn''t want to give them time to think, and even as he came up with questions to ask, he tried to keep his mind blank and closed.

    "What grade are you in?"

    "Almost kindergarten."

    "And how old are you?"

    "Five."

    "Who is E. E.?"

    "Your friend."

    "Who is Wendy?"

    "Mom''s friend."

    "Who is Mr. Gripp?"

    "Your boss¡ª" The image next to Jake sucked in its breath as though thinking hard to remember if this bit of information was something Jake''s daughter would know.

    "Have I ever called him Mr. Gripp in front of you?" Jake asked calmly.

    "No," the image said quickly. "Mom did. Mommy did. You always call him Principal Bigot."

    The image smiled sweetly, but it was too late. Jake didn''t know if Rachel had ever mentioned Principal Bigot to Lily. It didn''t really matter. Jake had seen what he''d been looking for, the flash where, just for a moment, the image faltered.

    Still, if he was wrong¡­.

    "Stay here," he said, standing and pulling the phone booth door open.

    "No!" the image said. "Daddy, don''t leave me alone! I''m scared. Daddy, please."

    Jake looked at her, trying to make himself feel sure about his decision. "Trust me," he said, unsure whether he was talking to himself or to whoever sat on the floor of the phone booth, knees-to-chest in a ball of panic.

    The sun was full in the sky now, and the first bit of warmth radiated from the sand. Jake approached the Other Jakes, who were reclining in a shady place with a good view of the phone booth.

    "I''m leaving," he said. "You can follow me out in the desert and watch me die if you''re into that sort of thing, but I''m not going to stay here and be your toy."

    Other Jake 2 looked Jake up and down. At least, Jake thought it was Other Jake 2. Neither was bleeding from the nose anymore, but he figured they were manifestations of the same creature anyway. The girl, too.

    "There''s no one out there to help you," Other Jake 2 said.

    "I wasn''t counting on it."

    Other Jake snorted. "You''d rather die in the desert than stay in the oasis? Aren''t you¡ª"

    "I''m through discussing it,??? Jake said, and he turned toward the open desert, toward the place where he thought he''d seen pyramids before. They said there was no one out there who could help, but they weren''t exactly trustworthy.

    He''d trudged nearly two miles straight away from the oasis without glancing back when Other Jake appeared, looking sullen.

    "I''m bored with you, dear," he said, then his Jake-face rippled off like Rachel''s white silk nightgown falling to the floor, and a tall woman with dripping oily skin and dirty hair was revealed in Other Jake''s place.

    The oily woman said, "You''re not nearly as much fun as the old gypsy woman. She was willing to bargain." She straightened her tattered dress. "I considered letting you die out here. The show would be quite good, but sweet men like you are rarer than snowfall in this place, and besides, if you died I couldn''t use you."

    "I''m not¡ª" Jake protested.

    "Don''t reject a deal before you''ve heard it, sweets. If I send you back, you must pass the ring to someone else within an hour, or I''ll bring you back and make you amuse me. The gypsy woman had a whole week to pass it off, which was obviously too much time. I bet she made a profit from it, too. Well," the woman said, and then she shrugged as though to say she had learned her lesson.

    Jake didn''t say anything. He was so hungry, so desperate, but the thought of bringing someone else here in his place made him lose his appetite completely.

    The oily woman seemed to know what he was thinking. Jake gave his head a little shake. Of course, she did know what he was thinking. She said, in a harsher tone, "If I''m going to be stuck here forever, I''m going to have some entertainment, and I can''t assure you that you can only die once in this place. I could probably watch it happen again and again."

    "Okay," Jake said. He had to get back to Lily. That was most important. Besides, he had an hour. He could figure something out.

    The oily woman motioned to his hand, where the ring fit snugly around his little finger once again. "Blow, boring Jake," she said, and he did.

 31 Chapter Thirty

    Jake was home. He was waking up on the couch, stretching and thinking about Cocoa Puffs and hot coffee. The clock read 7:45, which was about right. When school was out, he was usually getting up around now. He stretched again. Why was he so tired? What time had he gone to bed the night before? He tried to remember. He tried to remember what he''d had for breakfast. He tried to remember what day of the week it was.

    And then everything came back, settling into his head like a dirty fog.

    The ring was on his little finger. He smelled like he''d spent days in the sun without a bath. He was starving and sunburned.

    He had an hour.

    E. E. came in through the front door with a greeting and a "Where the hell have you been?" and a "God, you smell awful." Jake pushed past him, wondering briefly if E. E. had spent the night at Polly''s.

    Jake stumbled down the four flights of stairs and out onto the street, glancing down as an afterthought to make sure he had clothes on. Tennis outfit, tennis shoes. Once this is over, he promised himself, he''d be a jeans and t-shirt and flip-flop man until he died.

    He went down the street at a full run, unsure of what he was looking for. Someone. Someone who deserved to be tortured in the desert.

    Of course, all the nuns and small children were on the street today.

    But something about being back in the city cleared his head. Everything before seemed a dream. Was this what post-traumatic stress was like?

    Jake took in the colors of clothes and stores as though he''d never seen them before, breathed in the exhaust-filled air that had all the comfort of familiarity, and he kept running. Every time his right tennis shoe hit the sidewalk, he''d think, I have to find someone, someone to give the ring to. Every time his left tennis shoe hit the sidewalk, he''d think, this is the last time the immortal world will screw with my life¡ªdid I miss a day with Lily?¡ªdid I miss a conference or an episode of BattleBots or that Keats documentary on the History channel or paying rent?

    It was his own stupidity that had landed him in hell''s desert. If you don''t accept candy from strangers, you certainly don''t accept magical whistles. But it didn''t matter. With every left step, he was less desperate and more angry.

    Then, like a miracle, like an IRS refund check, he saw it.

    A month ago, a little deli on the corner of 2nd and Cypress had sold out to a music store, and posters had gone up all over the area: JOIN US FOR OUR GRAND OPENING! JULY 5! BEDOUIN RECORDS!!!!

    In addition to the balloons and streamers and the group of people clustered outside, Bedouin Records had brought an old friend to the store to help them celebrate their opening day.

    Angeline, the camel.

    She seemed fairly relaxed in the midst of the crowd. Jake pushed his way through to her. Angeline''s owner, a man who wore a screaming orange and yellow tank top with Florida printed across in large letters, held her rope and smiled as children petted Angeline on the nose.

    "So, what do camels eat?" Jake asked, trying to sound casual. How could Mr. Florida know what a sinister question it was? It was stupid, he knew, but he wanted to make sure the camel was going to be okay. He glanced at Mr. Florida''s watch. 8:15. Had it really taken him half an hour to get this far? And what if it didn''t work?

    "They eat oats. Hay. Yeah, oats and hay."

    "Could they live off palm leaves?"

    Mr. Florida scratched his chin. "Yeah. They''d have to have water, though. Palm leaves and water. Yeah." He patted Angeline''s side. "She''s getting old. Needs peace and quiet."

    Okey-dokey, Jake thought, and as soon as Mr. Florida turned his head, Jake took the ring off and put the whistle up to Angeline''s mouth. He heard the sound as a little of her breath passed through the whistle, then the next sound, like a small, high-pitched snort, and Angeline and the whistle-ring were gone.

    Jake took a deep breath of relief and stepped back into the crowd as half of the people gasped and screamed and began searching the street frantically and the other half applauded the amazing vanishing camel trick.

 32 Chapter Thirty-One

    Jake and Rachel had that kind of happiness that doesn''t notice time passing. Their house came to feel like the house they''d always had. Their marriage was comfortable and automatic. Jake got a haircut every four to six weeks, switched to 2% milk at Rachel''s insistence, took in their Volvo for maintenance, exclaimed over every new garden plant Rachel purchased, insisted that he preferred her to stay home with Lily, and made his morning rounds to depixie the garden and see that all was well.

    Lily was crawling, then walking, then running through the house as Rachel yelled at her not to run in the house, not to touch that, not to play around the fireplace, not to yell, while Jake said, "She''s a kid. Kids do those things. She''s not hurting anything." Rachel rolled her eyes at him and flipped through her parenting magazines, sure that somewhere she could find a cure for tantrums or a recipe for a quiet, respectful child. Jake rolled his eyes at her and pretended to be his daughter''s puppy dog so that she would squeal with disgust and joy when he licked her forehead.

    Those memories were the ones that mattered later, when everything broke and his daughter stood beside him while he kneeled on a wet lawn with his hands wrapped around a humphrey''s neck.

    Those were the ones that mattered later, much later, when he stood on the roof of his apartment building and looked longingly over the edge, at the long drop to the earth.

    "You can''t trust street vendors, Jake. Everyone knows that," Zeus said. He was examining Jake with a serious expression, actually taking his arm and turning it one way and then the other, leaning close to get a good look at his skin, which looked orange under the kitchen light.

    "I was desperate," Jake said. His face was red with shame, as though he were a child caught doing something foolish, but his sunburn hid it fairly well. He tried to force the feeling away, but the anger that had ignited in Aphrodite''s apartment blazed on the same fuel as shame.

    He felt a magnification of the irritation he''d had as a senior in college. A week from graduation, each of his professors and all the administration had him engaged in a pointless hopscotch of tasks¡ªpaperwork, pop quizzes, signatures, robe fittings, class ring swindling¡ªbefore they would give him his diploma and let him move on with his life. Again, he felt a desperate desire to move on to the next game.

    Jake had only been out of the shower for four minutes when Zeus arrived, wondering, as E. E. had, where the hell he''d been for the past four days. Jake had stood in the kitchen in his towel, blissfully chilly and clean, eating chunks of French bread torn off the loaf with every kind of meat he could find in the refrigerator.

    It was the first time Jake could remember not wanting to see his father since he was an absurdly egocentric teenager trying to learn to play the electric guitar. Jake didn''t want to be reliving his stupidity right now. He wanted to eat and sleep and read a book good enough to distract him from his misery. And he wanted to see his daughter.

    He''d called Lily as soon as he''d gotten home from meeting Mr. Florida and his amazing camel. She was happy. She said she remembered telling him about watching The Fairly OddParents but that she''d never been in a phone booth or a desert. He''d had to explain what a phone booth was and repeat that he was asking about a desert, not a beach. The sand factor had gotten everything confused.

    "You should really have someone take a look at that sunburn," Zeus said.

    "I''m fine."

    "Do you have aloe? I''ve heard aloe''s really good. It¡ª"

    "I have aloe. Have you found a way to make me mortal?"

    Zeus looked away.

    "You said you''d figure something out. Now I have community service and probation, and I''m still half-part of your impossible world." Jake heard his voice rising and thought again about his teenage self. "And as soon as the Fates realize that their plan didn''t work, they''re going to try again. Whose bedroom am I going to end up in next? Athena''s? Hera''s? Apollo''s?" Zeus still didn''t meet his eyes and his whole body seemed to droop as Jake yelled. "I don''t know what else to do. I could have died out there. If I''d been sucked into the desert during the school year, I would''ve lost my job. And what if Lily had been with me? God, I''m so¡ª" He opened the refrigerator, threw the salami back inside, and slammed it shut, and then slowly, "I don''t know what else to do."

    "Listen, I know this isn''t what you want to hear, but I don''t think there''s a way to fix this. You have half my chromosomes, and I don''t think there''s a cure for that. And," Zeus paused, looking away. "I don''t want you to do it."

    "What?" Jake said in a long exhale, leaning against the counter. He was so tired. He wanted answers, wanted the cure, but at that moment it was second to his desire for clean sheets and a fluffy pillow. And maybe another shower.

    Zeus glanced at Jake and then lowered his gaze again, as though he were about to reveal a shameful secret. "You''re my son. I want you a part of my world. Actually, I want you more a part of my world than you are now. I want you and Lily to spend some time at my house. I want to have you both there to help me pick out a Christmas tree and decorate for Oktoberfest. I¡ª"

    "I don''t belong there," Jake said, his voice now quiet, too.

    "It''s as much a part of your heritage as your mother''s hometown is. Maybe more, since you''ve never been into livestock."

    "Couldn''t I still visit you? I mean, if I get mortalized?"

    "I¡ª" he slapped his hand on the counter, "that''s not even the point. I don''t understand why you don''t want to be a part of my world. I know, I know all your reasons¡ªnaiads in the bathtub, etc. I just¡­and it''s best for you, you know? Being half-immortal. I''ll have you around longer. I''ve lost so many, and¡­and the parenting books forbid my saying this, but you''re one of my favorite children."

    Whatever anger Jake might still have had at his father died.

    "I see so much of myself in you," Zeus said, putting an arm around Jake''s shoulders, "and I didn''t get to see you enough when you were growing up. I want another century or two to get to know you, to do all the things that we never could when you were younger and that you don''t have time for now that you''re an adult. I want to take family vacations. I want to go throw baseballs in the park and teach you to ride a bicycle. And there''s this place on Via Cesare Sersale that really does have the world''s best pizza. We have to go there."

    "Dad, I''ve got to¡­."

    "I know. You think you''re doing what''s best for your daughter and for your wife, and I admire that. I just think you''re wrong." He squeezed Jake and stepped away. "I feel like an ass saying this, but I can''t help you. If you want to give up my world, you''re going to have to do it on your own."

    Jake thought about it, nodding. "That''s fair," he finally admitted. "You know I''m going to keep trying, though."

    "Yeah, I know." Zeus opened the fridge and took a Dr. Pepper. "Just be safe, okay? And don''t be stupid."

    Jake barked a laugh. "I might not have any choice. I am a lot like you."

    Zeus told him to go to bed not much later. He would hang out and wait for E. E. to come home so he could challenge him to a game of Speed Scrabble.

    Jake went to his room, dropped his towel, and lay down, his eyes falling on the photograph on the table beside his bed. The frame was propped up against an overfootnoted American literature anthology. Jake couldn''t remember now who had taken the picture, but he remembered finding it easy to smile with Rachel leaning against him and with two-year-old Lily just inches away, too entranced by a plastic spoon to notice the camera. A pale blue picnic blanket was spread across the grass, and the afternoon sunlight brought out the red in Rachel''s hair, a luminescent copper in the vanilla curls that you couldn''t see at all indoors. After the picture was taken, she''d turned her head to kiss him, a casual, friendly kiss, and then she''d begun clearing up the picnic supplies, bent over so that Jake got a delicious profile view of all her curves.

    When he closed his eyes, he could still see her.

    He managed to sleep half an hour before he snapped awake, sure that there was hot sand in his shoes, thinking he should try the phone again. When the reality of being home replaced the jerked-awake panic, Jake tried to sleep, but his heart was beating too fast, and he felt like he couldn''t get enough air.

    He got out of bed, ran his fingers over the box in the top of his closet, grateful it was still there and safe, wondering for the hundredth time what it could be. He pulled on a soft t-shirt and shorts over his sunburned arms and legs, grabbed a pair of socks, and left the room, turning the light out on the picture of his exquisite wife as he went.

 33 Chapter Thirty-Two

    About a year after Lily was born, Jake was pretty sure that Rachel was having an affair. He never had proof, but he wasn''t sure he wanted any, even though sometimes he sat for an hour wondering what kind of invertebrate doormat would suspect his wife of cheating and do nothing about it. But then, he spent a lot of time convincing himself it wasn''t true. They had run into the guy, brown-shirt Douglas, at the library once and another time when Jake and Rachel and Douglas were all chaperoning a dance in the high school cafeteria, and both times Rachel had blushed and stopped breathing until Douglas walked away, brushing microscopic crumbs from his pressed brown shirt. It was always, short-sleeved or long, silk or cotton or rayon or flannel, collared or v-necked, always a brown shirt of the exact same shade as all his other shirts, as though he''d dumped all of them in a bathtub of potato-brown dye. Rachel watched him walking away, and while she stood catching her breath, her husband stood beside her, a milky vinegar taste rising from his throat.

    Rachel knew Douglas from her job at the gym, where they''d been chums until Rachel found out she was pregnant and quit. After that, she always talked about how happy she was to be staying home with Lily, but how much she missed her job. Since then, she would tell him from time to time that she was going to lunch with friends from work or on an all-day shopping trip, and he never asked questions.

    Instead, he went to work and came home without ever checking the numbers on the caller ID or signing onto his wife''s email account. Instead, when she rolled away from him at night, he thought of her red-faced and breathless at the high school dance until he couldn''t focus his mind anywhere else, but he never said a word.

    Jake played in the floor with his daughter, pressing the buttons on her noisy toys to see the amazed look on her face and making her stuffed animals attack her until she giggled. "I''m doing this for you," he said. "Whatever happens, you''ll have two parents, and you''ll never have to choose between them."

    Rachel came home from a shopping trip one day about six months later. Her hair was five inches shorter than it had been when she left. It still hung past her shoulders, but the change was startling, even more so because she hadn''t prepared him or asked his opinion as she usually did. She looked younger and lighter and healthier, and Jake wondered if it was the haircut or something else that had made such a difference. It hadn''t been him, surely. He hadn''t done anything romantic in months. Every time he tried to plan a weekend away or a nice diner, he imagined her standing near Douglas in the library, so flushed she looked sunburned.

    It was this youthful new version of his wife that convinced Jake. For most of a year, he had blocked himself off from any possibility of discovering her adultery, but whether he acted on the information or not, he had to know.

    With hesitation at first, Jake checked Rachel''s dirty clothes, her bureau and closet, her desk, her computer, and her car, but he found nothing. He followed her one Saturday afternoon, but she went where she said she was going, to visit one of her C friends from college who had just bought a house across town. He followed her the next weekend, a shopping weekend, but she met a red-haired woman with a hug, and they rode together in Rachel''s car to the mall, where they stayed for four hours. Jake watched her car from across the street at a McDonald''s so Lily could play on the playground while they waited. Eventually, the two women returned to the car slowly, each weighed down with bags in each hand that bounced off their thighs as they walked.

    He''d been stupid. Sitting at a red plastic table in a yellow plastic chair for four hours was proof enough of that.

    Afterward, Jake decided to not to think about Douglas anymore. So Doug made Jake''s wife shiver. It happens. Maybe Jake made someone else''s wife shiver without even knowing it. Maybe whole hordes of women were shivering every day in his presence. Maybe Elspeth Mader was shivering over him right now. Maybe it was just a passing thing, what Rachel was feeling. Maybe she wouldn''t leave him.

    Jake took his socks into the living room and sat across from his father. "Since you''re here, I could use your help getting community service hours out of the way. I''d like to have it done before school starts.??

    "I''m sorry I wasn''t there," Zeus said.

    Jake looked up, pausing in the middle of wiggling his toes, enjoying the warmth and softness. "What?"

    "At your trial. If I''d known¡ª"

    "You would''ve been there. I know."

    Zeus nodded. "Okay, let''s see. Two hundred hours of community service, right? I''ll talk to my secretary later. I''m sure she has a list of good community service projects."

    E. E. came through the front door with a box of doughnuts as Zeus was talking. "You can proofread some of my stuff for service hours." He opened the box and set it on the table.

    Jake leaned forward and looked inside. Lined up one after the other, the doughnuts looked like rounded sand dunes in the distance. He took a chocolate-covered in one hand and a raspberry-filled in the other. Between bites, he said, "Is that allowed?"

    "Yeah," said Zeus. "You could probably proofread and tutor to get rid of a lot of your hours. Can''t charge for it, though."

    E. E. gave an evil laugh, went to his room, and emerged a minute later with a two-foot stack of papers, which he set beside the doughnut box.

    "God," choked Jake. "Is that everything you''ve ever written?"

    "No, that''s just this month, minus yesterday''s and today''s. I''ll get you the rest later."

    E. E. went to the kitchen, and Zeus stared at the papers, then at Jake, then at the closed kitchen door, then back at the papers. "He used to be pretty worthless as a writer, didn''t he? I mean, I never read anything, but he had writer''s block for a living. And he used to be surlier, right?"

    Jake said, "Yeah. But three or four months ago he met this girl¡ª"

    Zeus dropped his doughnut.

    "¡ªand since then he hasn''t done anything but write and, well, spend time with her."

    Zeus picked up his doughnut and examined it before taking a bite. "Have you met her?" he asked as he chewed.

    "That''s disgusting," Jake said, pointing at his father''s open mouth. "Yeah, I met her a couple of weeks ago."

    "What was she like?"

    "Why?" Jake asked. Zeus had never taken much interest in E. E., beyond laughing at his jokes and taking his advice about Hephaestus.

    "Just wondering," Zeus said, attempting to sound innocent.

    "She''s nice. Kind of plain."

    "What color hair does she have?"

    "I don''t remember. Why does it matter?"

    "Eyes, clothes, piercings¡ªcan you remember anything?" Zeus asked.

    "No, I¡ª" Jake stopped. Why couldn''t he remember anything, anything at all about her? He couldn''t picture her in his mind. Every time he tried, the face changed into some other face, as though his memory of her was trying to meld her with other faces. "Who is she?" he asked quietly, keeping an eye on the kitchen door.

    "I have a guess, but let me see what I can find out," Zeus said.

    "Is E. E. in danger? Should I keep him from seeing her?"

    "No, no, don''t do that. If she''s safe, you''ll be messing up a good thing for him. If she''s not, well, then she might be dangerous, and you don''t want to get into that, or get E. E. into that, unprepared."

    Jake nodded, feeling a little sick. "Go," he said. "Find out what''s going on. We''ll worry about community service hours later."

    Zeus gave his son a one-armed hug. "I''m glad you''re okay," he said, then grabbed another doughnut and left.

    Jake sat in the living room, thinking how disappointed E. E. would be when he learned the truth about Polly. When he went back to bed a few hours later, the photograph of Rachel, Lily, and him brought back other memories.

    He remembered waking up and the grief filling his lungs before he remembered what he had to be sad about. He remembered stiff hotel sheets and the smell of the crickets rotting behind the bureau reminded him. He remembered too clearly leaving home, driving out of the neighborhood, and realizing he had nowhere to go. His world was the white brick house on Lime Street, and whatever friendships he''d had before he met Rachel had faded years ago. Peanut emailed him occasionally, but he was living in Oregon with his wife and in-laws. Jake had gotten a phone call from Sam six months ago, outlining Sam''s plan to walk across the continent of Africa, but he hadn''t heard anything since. Sam had probably found the least dangerous animal in Africa and provoked it until it ripped out his throat. Sam was like that.

    Oregon and Africa were both inconveniently far away, as was Norway, to which Geir had returned after his physics teacher had rejected the erotic epic Geir had written her instead of studying.

    Jake pressed his fingers against his temples. Everything would be fine tomorrow. He just needed a place to sleep, just for one night. His friends were out of state, his mother was dead, his father unlikely to be much help. The other teachers at Bee Caves High came to mind, but he almost laughed at the thought of calling to ask if he could sleep on one of their couches. Besides, it was summer, and he had no way to reach them because he was sure no sane high school teacher would list his number in the phone book, and he''d rather sleep in a cardboard box than show up begging at their doorsteps anyway. However, the thought of going to Elspeth Mader for comfort was momentarily appealing.

    Then a Motel 3 (half as good as a Motel 6? he thought) sign lit up on a side road, and Jake patted his back pocket, realizing with relief that he''d remembered to grab his wallet.

    Somehow, day-long minutes later, he found himself lying there, staring at the grimy motel ceiling and shivering, even though it was eight p.m. and still ninety-nine degrees outside. He didn''t expect to sleep, of course, and hours passed before he stopped thinking about being awake and finally dropped into the pit of sleep, a part of his mind still hoping that he wouldn''t dream.

    It never crossed his mind, not until months had passed, that this was permanent. Jake stayed in his hotel room most of the next day, drinking tap water and pretending to watch the news. He knew Rachel was furious with him. He knew that she had been infuriated for a long time by their little immortal problem, but he figured that he would go home that evening with roses and apologize profusely. Then she would ignore him for a few days to punish him for crawling back or to punish herself for allowing it. And that would be it. Everything would be the same as it had been. They''d fought before. She''d never told him to get the fuck out of her house before, but it was just a new development in the same old fight. Jake imagined he''d be back here every few months, and after awhile, it would stop crushing his soul, and he wouldn''t mind it any more than sleeping on the couch.

    Later, Jake wondered if he''d shown his fear of losing her instead of hiding it, whether she would have held on to whatever last splinter of love remained for him and let him come home. But it seemed like all she had needed was to get him out. It seemed like the hard part was over for her.

    He was there on the porch, holding the roses, about to say what he''d prepared to say, that he loved her and needed her and would do anything in his power to make her happy.

    "No," she said, before he began.

    Jake felt his hands tighten around the stems, thorns pricking his palms.

    "I can''t do this anymore, Jake."

    Jake felt the familiar symptoms of a hang-over, but he hadn''t been drinking. Rachel was speaking in soap opera dialogue. The world couldn''t really be like this, where one person could make a decision this wrong alone. Someone needed to step in and tell her she was being foolish, that she should try to sound more sincere. His silence scared her, he could see, and he tried to say something, but there was no voice, no sound left.

    "If you could," she stopped, pressing her lips together before starting again. "If you could be¡­"

    He heard all the words she didn''t say. Mortal. Safe. Normal.

    "Then, we could talk about being together again. But I just can''t take this, when every day I don''t know when Lily¡­"

    He shook his head. She shouldn''t blame it on Lily. Lily had always been safe, and the Weird things had always been exciting and interesting to her. Jake was sure that''s why Lily liked him so much. She identified him as something magical.

    "Until then," Rachel took a step back, "it''s over, Jake."

    Until then, it''s over. Part of him wanted to scream that it didn''t make sense. But he didn''t have time. The door was closing, and he was sure that if it did, he''d lose more than a wife.

    "Lily," he said, desperately recovering his voice. She opened the door a little more. "I still have to see my daughter."

    Rachel looked shocked. "Of course you''ll still see her. God, I''m not a monster, Jake." She came forward until her feet were on the threshold. "Get an apartment and a couch for her to sleep on. She''ll spend weekend after next with you."

    "Next weekend," he insisted.

    She looked at him for a few seconds, and Jake had the horrible feeling that she was wondering why he wanted to spend time with Lily. Why, as though there were fewer than a thousand reasons. She nodded and closed the door. He couldn''t live with Lily, but Lily could come stay with him. Lily needed to be safe. Lily needed to be protected. Lily, his wife''s catch-all excuse.

    Jake had a moment''s quiet anger before the grief bit into him again. He threw the roses on the lawn and returned to the Motel 3. That night, he cried as he hadn''t cried since his first dog, Plato, died when he was seven years old.