Page 3 of Wildfire

“Melinoe,” he called to his sister’s goth girlfriend, “a pleasure as always.”

She scoffed and turned back to her drink as he sidled up to them. Hades’s eldest daughter hadn’t liked him since he and her brother broke up, but he would’ve thought handing Lysandros a tweed-clad mortal lover would win him back some friendship in the underworld. Lysandros was happy now, wasn’t he?

Whatever. She could hate him all she liked. Hebe was who he wanted to see anyway.

His sister squeezed his hands when he was near, only letting him go so he could wave the bartender down.

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she crooned, wrapping her arm around his waist and leaning into him. At this side of the bar, people made space around them; the concentrated influence of three entire gods standing in their midst carved out a space amid mortals even though they’d forgotten to revere them.

Hermes beamed. Hebe was one of his few siblings who actually liked him, and whom he liked in turn. He pressed a kiss to her curls.

“You know what happens when you tick Dad off—flee for your life, run to the ends of the earth, all the normal fallout.” The bartender came up, and he ordered himself a gin fizz and turned back to find her frowning up at him.

“Actually, I don’t.”

Hermes laughed. No surprises there. Zeus usually got along with his daughters. It was his sons that he took issue with. “Lucky you, then.”

The smile she gave him felt tight and strange. Perhaps she wasn’t as lucky as he assumed, but at least she’d never had to flee Hera for her life. She’d never gotten that sidelong look from their father that said he didn’t entirely trust her. Not that Zeus or Hera loved their children unconditionally—oh no, one need only look at Hephaestus to realize two godly parents weren’t anything to be jealous of.

She shook off whatever bothered her quickly. “So, if you’re back in town now, does that mean things are okay with you and Dad?”

Hermes stared behind the bar, watching the reflection of colored lights from the dance floor behind him in the curves of glass bottles. After those crazy mortals had tried to raise Cronus, he and Zeus had reached an accord of sorts. There were bigger things to worry about than petty quarrels between Olympians.

“I don’t know. I guess. We’re working on something together.”

Hebe lifted her own glass and took a deep swig, glancing away and leaving him to wonder how much she’d heard about it.

“Ah, yes, Zeus is so well known for his fruitful collaborations outside the bedroom,” Melinoe said. There’d been bad blood between the underworld and Olympus for millennia, and Hermes was particularly well placed to get crushed in the middle of it. With that in mind, he’d plugged his ears to the whole affair.

“Actually, he had me hunting down cultists, not potential lovers.” Hermes grinned. “They were trying to raise Cronus. But we snatched ’em before they could get too far. Hebe, I was hoping you could help me with something else.”

Her lips tipped wistfully upward. “Oh yeah?”

“Never heard that before,” Melinoe grumbled.

Hermes nodded, ignoring the goddess of goths. “Yeah. Something weird has been happening—first time, I thought it was a fluke. Somebody’d picked the girl up before I got to her and I was just, uh, losing my touch or something.” It’d happened before—a god got complacent, and next thing they knew, they were fading out entirely. But Hermes was thriving in the twenty-first century. A mortal could shoot a message across the planet in seconds. No reason for him to fade out, so he’d convinced himself there was nothing to worry about. “But I found another body today—soul missing. Someone’s killing people and snatching their souls before I can escort them to the underworld.”

With her bottom lip jutting out, Hebe tipped her head to the side. For once, she seemed just as flummoxed as he was.

“Honestly, no. I haven’t heard anything like that. I mean, if you can give me some names, I’ll keep an eye on their social media profiles for you—see if there are any hints from their friends. Don’t know what a mortal would do with another person’s soul, but even I can’t keep up withallthe trends on the internet. Mages are shooting back and forth theoretical ideas all the time.”

Hebe knew what was going on in the world almost better than anyone. She hardly missed anything unfolding on Twitter, knew all the trends on Instagram, even kept an eye on the news. Being goddess of youth at a time when the youth of the world was increasingly stressed about injustice, global warming, and the resurgence of fascism meant that Hebe not only had string lights on her shelves that photographed beautifully for her hashtag bookstagram following, but she knew pretty much everything pretty much everywhere. If she didn’t know what was going on, he’d put good money on no one else knowing either—at least no one inclined to talk.

Hermes sighed. “That’d be great. I just—things are tentative with Dad, and he seems off, and I don’t want to fuck up again. If someone is snatching souls, I’d like to know why.”

After the Fidelis Filii had tried to sacrifice an immortal to make their leader a god earlier that spring, Hermes wasn’t putting it past anyone to do shady shit for personal gain. What was the weight of someone’s soul against the power a well-informed mage might get from it?

Hebe cocked a brow at him. “You don’t think Thanatos is just really on the ball?”

Hermes frowned. “Both victims were young. No sign of health problems.”

Their resident expert on all things underworld, Melinoe shook her head. “Not a chance. God of merciful death, remember? He’ssonot the type. And he’s too busy sailing the ocean with his boy-toy pirate to do overtime right now.”

Hermes pinched the bridge of his nose. Maybe this was all nothing. He’d never had to deal with missing souls before, and maybe he didn’t now. He was just supposed to escort them to Charon. If they weren’t there to escort, even if it seemed fishy, how was that his problem?

“Oh!” Hebe made a short, delighted sound, and he turned to see what she’d focused her attention on—a man at the center of a small crowd, fire dancing between his fingertips.

“A real-life flamethrower,” Melinoe griped, frowning. Her dark gaze settled on his sister’s cheek, and Hermes thought her sour mood had more to do with Hebe’s interest in someone else than any distaste for tall, handsome mages.

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