Hermes smiled and spread his hands. “Guilty.”
“How come you’re taking these retired gods on this road trip, then? Aren’t you retired, too?”
“To answer your second question first: not as long as I remain on those flower delivery vans. As for the first bit, they were bored and I’m also responsible for treaties, commerce, and travelers. In the interest of keeping peace in the family, I try to get some of them out every year. This year, we’ve just finished a color tour of Northern Ontario. Zeus took a million pictures, most of them overexposed, and any leaves that weren’t dead when we arrived were as soon as Hades finished admiring them. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He stood and twitched at the creases in the front of his khakis. “…I’d best wash the road dirt off before supper.”
“Hermes.”
One step from the door, his name stopped him cold.
Claire stepped in front of him and held out her hand. “Before you go, maybe you’d like to return the butter knife you slipped up your sleeve.”
“That I slipped up my sleeve?” He drew himself up to his full height, the picture of affronted dignity. “Do you know who you’re talking to, Keeper?”
“Yes.” The missing knife flew out of his cuff and landed on her palm. “The God of Thieves.”
Hades and Persephone were first down for dinner. Trailing half a dozen multicolored gossamer scarves, white hair swept up and held by golden combs, Persephone appeared in the dining room as though she were entering, stage right, and announced, “It feels so nice and homey to have an attendant spirit, doesn’t it, dear?”
Murmuring a vaguely affirmative reply, Hades came in behind her, brushing the ends of scarves out of his way.
Behind the Lord of the Dead, looking perturbed, came Jacques. As god and goddess took their seats, he wafted over to the kitchen. “I am not a servant,” he muttered as Claire folded napkins down over the baskets of fresh garlic buns. “Pick this up, put that there…. Who does she think she is?”
“The Queen of the Dead,” Claire told him. “Not that it matters, you’re noncorporeal, you can’t touch anything.”
“The things they have, I can touch. And also, I cannot leave them. I come when she calls. Like a dog.”
“Jacques, get that scarf for me.”
“What do I say? I am to fetch, like a dog.”
“Jacques, do hurry, it’s on the floor.”
He paused, halfway through the counter and turned a petulant expression on Claire. “For this, I deserve a night of flesh.”
Claire shook her head in sympathy as the goddess called for him a third time. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“I am?”
“Jacques, my scarf!”
“Is he?” Dean asked, glancing up from the salmon steaks and watching Jacques fly across the room with narrowed eyes.
Claire shrugged. “I said perhaps. He’s stuck working for them, I just wanted to make him feel better about it.”
He waved the spatula. “I’m working for them.”
“Yes, but you get paid.”
With his face toward the stove, she almost missed him saying, “I could be made to feel better about it”
All at once she understood. “This is the night you go out drinking with your friends from home, isn’t it? And I never even thought to ask you if you’d mind staying here, I just assumed.” This dinner had nothing to do with lineage business, and she had no right to commandeer a bystander’s support. “I’m sorry. There’ll be a little extra in your pay this week.”
He looked up, turned toward her, flushed slightly, and after a moment said, “That wasn’t what I meant.”
Afraid she’d missed something, Claire never got the chance to ask.
“Sexual tensions,” Aphrodite caroled from the doorway. “How I do love sexual tensions.”
“Not at the dinner table,” Hera snarled, pushing past.
“Fish.” Dripping slightly, Poseidon wandered into the kitchen and peered nearsightedly down at the platter of salmon. “Finally, an edible meal.” He straightened and blinked rheumy eyes in Claire’s general direction. Fingers of both hands making pincer movements he moved closer. “Wanna do the lobster dance? Pinchy, pinchy.”
“No. She doesn’t.” Still holding the spatula, Dean moved to intercept. He didn’t care who the old geezer was, a couple of his granddad’s friends had been dirty old men and the only defense was a strong offense. The God of the Oceans bumped up against his chest.
“Ow.”
“Serves you right.” Aphrodite pulled her husband from the kitchen and steered him toward his chair. “You promised you’d behave.”
“My nose hurts.”
“Good.”
When all the gods but Zeus had assembled, Hermes cleared his throat and gestured toward the entry into the dining room, announcing, “The Lord of Olympus!”
“Where’d the trumpet fanfare come from?” Dean murmured into Claire’s ear.
Claire shrugged, an answer to both the question and the gentle lapping of warm breath against her neck.
Striding into the room like a small-town politician, Zeus clapped shoulders and paid effusive compliments as he circled the table. The recipients looked sulky, senile, or indifferent, depending on temperament and number of functioning brain cells. Finally settling into his seat at the head of the table, he lifted his sherry glass of prune nectar and tossed it back.
With the meal officially begun, everyone began buttering buns and helping themselves to salad.
“Stupid, irritating ritual,” Hephaestus muttered as Claire set his plate in front of him.
“If it makes him happy,” Hermes cautioned.
“What’s he going to do to me if he’s unhappy, run over me with that domestic hunk of junk you’re driving?” The God of the Forge smiled tightly and answered himself. “Not unless he wants to trust to secular mechanics the next time it breaks down.”
“It’s so pleasant to be ourselves,” Amphitrite said quickly as Zeus frowned down the table. “But shouldn’t you be eating with us, Keeper?”
Claire had already been over this with Dean. “As guests of the hotel, you’re my responsibility. Besides, Dean did all the cooking.”
“And it looks like a lovely meal. I find men who cook so…” Aphrodite’s pause dripped with innuendo. “…intriguing.”
“You find men who breathe intriguing,” Hera muttered.
“Harpy.”.
“Flotsam.”
“More nectar?” Claire asked.
“I thought dinner went well,” Austin observed, climbing onto Claire’s lap. “Everyone survived.”
“You have salmon on your breath.”
He licked his whiskers. “And your point is?”
“Pick it up. Put it down. She drops a stitch in that infernal knitting and I must pick it up for her. If I were not already dead, that woman would drive me to chop off my own head.” Jacques collapsed weightlessly down on the sofa beside Claire. “I thought that you should know, His Majesty, the Lord of the Dead, is downstairs talking to Hell and Her majesty wants him to come to bed. She is getting—How do you say?—impatient?”
“…them to sit down and they did, but what they didn’t know was that I’d shown them to the Chair of Forgetfulness and they couldn’t get up again because uh, they, uh…Who was I talking about?”
THESEUS AND PIRITHOUS.
“I was?”
YES.
“Oh. They weren’t the ones with the pomegranate seeds?”
NO.
“Are you sure? There was something about pomegranate seeds.”
THE LADY PERSEPHONE ATE SEVEN POMEGRANATE SEEDS AND HAD TO REMAIN WITH YOU IN TARTARUS FOR PART OF THE YEAR.
“No, that wasn’t it.”
YES, IT WAS.
Hades’ voice brightened. “Do you know my wife?”
Listening at the top of the stairs, Claire was tempted to leave Hades right where he was. Another hour or two of conversation and Hell would seal itself. Unfortunately, there was an impatient goddess in room two. Fortunately, it took very little to convince Hades, who’d forgotten where he was, to return to her.