At the newsagent's on the corner, Sam's eye was caught by a headline one morning. It was on the front cover of the Daily Mail, a paper that liked to take an occasional libertarian poke at the Pantheon when it was feeling brave.
CHASTENED?
The headline ran, in 40-point capitals, above a library photo of Zeus looking curmudgeonly and disgruntled. Against all her better judgement Sam bought a copy, but the article turned out to be nothing more than a few paragraphs insinuating that the Olympians might be a little cheesed off about losing their monsters, Hercules, and Hermes. All of it was furtively and carefully worded so that there was no reasonable way anybody could take offence. The copy got no further from the newsagent's than the litter bin on the pavement outside.
She was bored, she had to admit it. Day merged into day and nothing much changed. As her time as a Titan receded further into memory, she found it harder and harder to believe that she had wielded guns, punched through walls, run at extraordinary speeds, and stood face-to-fang with nightmarish creatures and expunged them from the world. But if that all seemed so dreamlike and unreal now, how come ordinary life wasn't acceptable? Why was everything drab and pointless here in Kensal Rise? Why, having been Tethys, was it so difficult to go back to being just plain Sam?
A phrase came to mind: cold turkey.
She'd been on a wild, dizzying trip. She'd come back down to earth with a bump.
It had been her choice to end it, though. She had to keep remembering that. No one had forced her out. She'd taken that step entirely on her own and, indeed, against everyone else's wishes.
And so, like a habit-kicking junkie, a reformed alcoholic, she was having to learn not to look too far ahead or expect too much, to take each day as it came.
Until the day they came.
Ramsay and Mahmoud.
53. DRIFTING SHIPS
S he was making lunch — chicken salad — when they appeared on her doorstep.
"Dead posh round here, isn't it?" was the first thing Mahmoud said when Sam opened the door.
Sam immediately went on the defensive. "Didn't use to be. Past ten years, we've been getting the overspill from Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. People priced out of the market there but still wanting to be close to all the trendiness. All the bloody celebs as well. When I was young, Kensal Rise was famous for was murders and Irish navvies. Now it's all gastropubs and organic greengrocers. I keep meaning to sell up and move." She avoided meeting Ramsay's gaze. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Oh come on," said Mahmoud. "Isn't it nice to see us? It's nice to see you."
"Did Landesman send you?"
Ramsay snorted. "Nope."
Sam relented, a little. "Then it is nice to see you. Come on in."
She made lunch for them too. Mahmoud explained that they had come entirely off their own bat. Landesman didn't even know they were here. In fact, not having Sam's address, and not wanting to ask Landesman or Lillicrap for it, Mahmoud had had to ring an old friend on the force and ask him to look it up for her on the internal police database.
"Mr Landesman thinks I'm just taking Rick sightseeing for a couple of days."
"Shucks, I just lurve your quaint li'l ole country, ma'am," said Ramsay.
"He must suspect something, though," Sam said.
"Well, if he does, so?" said Mahmoud. "Sam, I won't beat around the bush. We want you back. Please. It's not been going all that brilliantly without you, duck. Not to put any pressure on you or anything, but… No, I will put pressure on you. Frankly, it's been crap at Bleaney lately."
"What's happened? What have you been up to, mission-wise?"
"Zip," said Ramsay. "And that's just the problem. We've been sitting spinning our wheels. Getting on one another's nerves, and worse. Kayla and Therese — Christ, we've had to separate those two a coupla times. Going at it like cat and dog. Once they nearly came to blows, and believe me, angry like they were, I did not much want to have to step between them and break it up."
"Kayla's been starting it," said Mahmoud.
"Yeah, but Therese ain't exactly been turning the other cheek. The least thing can set them off. And then there's Dez."
"Dez has been…" Mahmoud mimed tipping a bottle to her lips. "A lot. Upset about Anders, but also just bored. We've been hiding the booze, and confiscating his own stash of it when he's not looking, but he always seems to be able to get his paws on more. Cadges off the techs, we think, or maybe bribes Captain Fuller to bring him some over from the mainland. Every night he's sloshed, every morning he's in agony from a hangover. Neither's pretty."
"Why no ops?" Sam asked.
"Landesman," said Ramsay. "Says leave it be for now."
"But he was all about keeping the momentum going."
"Was. Now? My guess is he's lost his nerve. New York, then you, and all that stuff about his son. Not that he shows it, but he's rattled as all hell."
"And the Minotaur? Is it OK?"
"Pining," said Mahmoud. "Sits in his pen, eats just enough to keep going, but he looks so sad all the time. Bereft. He tolerates me feeding him, but he'd rather it was you."
"It's a he now?"
"I'm kind of fond of him. And with privates like those — I mean, how can he not be a he?"
"Ah, they're not so impressive," Ramsay quipped. "I've seen bigger. In the shower this morning, as a matter of fact."
"Oh?" said Sam. "So who were you sharing the shower cubicle with?"
"Oof! The Akehurst slam dunks another one!"
Sam did not smile. "Nobody else quit? It was just me?"
"You upset about that?"
"No. I just thought, once you all knew who Zeus really is and why Landesman wants to topple the Olympians so badly…"
"…we'd turn our noses up and walk away?" said Mahmoud. "I can't say the idea never crossed my mind. But having sat and thought about it, I decided Landesman's motives aren't so different from my own. It'd be hypocritical for me to pull out just because he turns out to have a personal involvement in the campaign too."
"Also, he upped our pay," Ramsay said, "and I'm sorry but I don't have your high standards when it comes to money, Sam." His quick glance round her modest but well-fitted kitchen was a kind of footnote: We don't all have terraced houses in central London with no mortgage.
"Fred did almost bail," Mahmoud added. "He was in two minds for a while, but then he said something like, 'Leaving won't change anything. Staying, I can still do some good.' I think, like the rest of us, he hasn't got a lot to go back to. Bleaney's as much home to him as anywhere."
"Landesman hired himself a bunch of drifting ships," said Ramsay, "and gave us fuel for our tanks. Whatever his flaws, whatever kind of a man he really is, we owe him for that. Myself, I still want to see this thing through to the end. I couldn't stand to leave the job half finished. That'd be harder for me than pulling out. I respect what you did, Sam, and I know you did it 'cause you felt you had to. But I'm here — we're both here — to ask you to reconsider. As a friend," he said, "and I think we are friends if nothing else, I'm asking you to get back with us and give Titanomachy II a kick-start to get it going again."