I was tired of being sick and I was sick and fucking tired of Zeus’s house even though it’d only been my home for two months.
So, when another Friday rolled around, I begged Mute to take us all up to Z’s cabin outside Whistler. I missed my man so much it made my heart palpitate just to think of him and the cabin was our place. Mute wanted to refuse me, I knew, but he couldn’t deny me anything, especially not when I was like this. We couldn’t go on his bike obviously but he borrowed a truck from Hephaestus and the four of us loaded it with all the yummy health food we could find and about twenty cherry lollipops because they were still my weakness and we headed up into the mountains.
It was exactly what I needed. I felt like a teenage girl having a slumber party with her friends as we all got into our jammies—even Mute who wore, hilariously, sleep pants that looked exactly like his normal blue jeans and one of his standard black tees—and made a mound of pillows in front of the TV so we could sprawl out comfortably to watch our Banshee marathon on HBO.
I was lying diagonally with my head on Mute’s stomach, his hands in my gold hair he loved so much, and my legs over H.R. who had Bea curled into her side when Zeus called.
“Little warrior.” His rumble came over the phone and pierced my heart like an arrow. “How’s my girl?”
“Better,” I said, because even though I had the portable respirator beside me and my body ached like it was decomposing, my mind was happy and that was enough for me. “We’re watching a super violent show.”
He laughed and I could picture him leaning against his bike in the open air outside a bar while he talked to me, rolling a cigarette in his hands by habit but not smoking it because he’d made a promise to me to quit.
“Glad to hear it.”
“Tell Dad I say hi,” H.R. called out with popcorn in her mouth and more in the fist she was ready to shovel in just as soon as she had the space.
“Tell my other girl I love ’er, yeah?” Zeus said, hearing her over the phone.
“I will but just saying, you never told this girl you love her,” I pointed out.
“Love you, little girl. Loved you for ten years and love you for ten decades more,” he told me as if it was the simplest thing to do, to declare your undying love for a person like it was nothing special.
To Zeus, it wasn’t the miracle it was to me. To him, it just was.
There was a beauty in the simplicity of that that I knew I’d never cease to appreciate.
A low rumble sounded through the cabin and at first, I thought it was the TV show but Mute had turned the volume down low when I picked up the phone.
Immediately, my protector slid my head off his lap and went prowling to the window. I watched frozen but electric with static as his posture slammed ramrod straight.
“What is it?” I asked even though I knew whatever it was couldn’t be good and I knew it even before Mute reached into his boot for his knife and ducked down beside the couch to grab his gun.
“What’s goin’ on?” Zeus asked me, somehow sensing my fear through the radio waves.
“Mute,” I whispered as he took up his spot beside the front window and used a single finger to push aside the curtain slightly.
He looked out the pane then turned his head until our eyes locked. His dark gaze was filled with muted horror.
I was on my feet in a second, wincing at the tender pain in them but so far past caring I barely noticed.
“H.R., I need you to take Bea into the back, hide in the closet or under the bed or something, okay?” I asked, already hobbling over to the duffle bag I’d packed for the trip.
Ever since he’d given it to me for Christmas, I’d carried the gun Zeus gave me everywhere I went.
“Lou, what the fuck is goin’ on over there?” Zeus barked into the phone.
I was startled to find myself still holding it loosely in one hand. I tucked it against my ear as I searched for my gun and watched as H.R. kicked into gear like the biker girl she was and raced to the kitchen to grab a knife. Bea sat in the middle of the sea of pillows looking so young and so afraid it made my heart ache.
“Loulou,” Zeus snapped again.
“Sorry, sorry. I don’t know what’s happening but Mute is standing at the window looking out at the front yard of the cabin like someone really bad is outside.”