She shoots a look at the back of Charon’s head. He doesn’t appear to be paying us the least bit of attention, but he’s too close to miss any of it. Eurydice clears her throat. “I’m not allowed to participate or go into the club without Charon as an…escort. I just get to watch on the nights Persephone and Hades aren’t down there.”
“I see,” I say slowly. That’s an interesting piece of information that I don’t bother to file away because I have no interest in helping Minos do whatever he plans to do to Olympus. Murder and mayhem and chaos. He’s a bastard and a half, and I have no doubt that he’d sacrifice Theseus at the altar of his ambition.
Theseus already got hurt. I don’t want him to get dead, too.
I take another long drink of the champagne bottle. My stomach isn’t feeling too great. Or maybe that’s because we’re crossing over the bridge to the lower city. Apparently there’s a barrier here similar to the one that surrounded Olympus, keeping it separate from the rest of the world. Magic or some fancy tech that might as well be magic? I have no idea. I suppose it doesn’t matter. The alcohol fuzzes my brain, making it hard to tell if it’s the same sensation I felt entering the city or if I’ve just drunk too much.
I mean, I’ve definitely drunk too much.
It doesn’t take long for the car to roll to a stop in front of a nondescript gray building. I frown out the window at it. “This looks like a place you take people to murder them.”
Eurydice gives a choked laugh. “The other entrance is in my sister’s house, and that will create more questions than I want to answer. Come on.” She slips out of the car, leaving me to follow.
I’m distantly aware of Charon coming around the car and following us up to the large door. I’m so far past buzzed that I start to list to the side, and he has to move fast to catch me. He slips an arm around my waist and keeps me on my feet. “You sure about this, Eurydice?”
“Yes.” She opens the door. “Come on.”
The room is kept atmospherically dim in a way I might appreciate on a different night. Not right now, when the strangely reflecting light on the ceiling makes me dizzy. I try to focus on Eurydice’s back, but everything is a bit watery right now. “I drank too much.”
“You’re safe here, Pandora.” She leads the way through a series of couches and chairs, circling a low dais in the center of the room. The place is packed, and the couples and throuples and moreples in various states of undress and sexual revelry only add to my dizziness. I’m pathetically grateful when Eurydice stops in front of a private booth tucked back against a wall. Charon helps me slide into it, but I keep sliding, slumping down against Eurydice. She laughs a little and helps me right myself. “She’ll be here soon. But let’s get you some water in the meantime.”
She?
Time ceases to have meaning. Water appears at some point, and Eurydice coaxes me to drink a little, but my stomach is still swirly in a really worrisome manner. Damn it, I shouldn’t have drunk so much. I never do this. I have fun, but never recklessly. Even before I came to Olympus, I knew better, but these days the stakes are so much higher.
My blinks are getting longer and longer when the room seems to darken. I blearily look up, only to realize it hasn’t. There’s a woman standing over our table in a gorgeous red dress that screams sex. It coats her lean body lovingly, kissing the curves of her breasts and hips. As she shifts, it presses to the mound of her pussy in a way that makes my mouth water. From this angle, with her height, I can almost see beneath the short hem, and that’s probably wrong, but I can’t quite remember why.
Then my gaze reaches her face and my stomach drops. This isn’t some stranger. No, the woman I was just ogling is Aphrodite.
Theseus’s wife.
5
APHRODITE
“Did you drug her?” I peer down at a nearly passed out Pandora. When I pulled Eurydice aside at the reception—wanting a little revenge after the stunt my husband pulled with Adonis—I told her to get Pandora to the club. I didn’t expect this.
“No, I didn’t drug her.” Eurydice rolls her eyes. She’s nursing a glass of white wine and surveying the people in the club behind me. It’s late enough that there are plenty of people in various stages of fucking, putting on quite the show. She meets my gaze. “She drank too much because she’s worried about Hephaestus.”
I refuse to feel even a twinge of guilt. Best I can tell, Pandora exists outside Minos’s cozy little family unit and is only there because of her connection with Hephaestus. It doesn’t matter. She’s here, which means she’s the enemy. All’s fair in love and war. “We’re all worried about Hephaestus.”