Page 19 of Bows & Eros
Hermes considered this, tapping his chin. "I don'tthinkso," he said after a moment. "It is my understanding that the arrows only enhance the visibility of an existing connection, like say a thin string ties two hearts together and the arrow simply turns the string into a bigger, brighter rope. If anything, the boy and I just expedited the good people of Crete along on their inevitable personal journeys today."
I forced myself to swallow, pushing the lump of nervousness in my throat as far down as it would go, which was approximately the space in between my collar bones. "Why didn't it work on Edna?" I asked. "The diner owner."
Hermes turned to me, and for a moment, I was utterly positive that he could see right through the windows of my eyes and into my mind. His eyes even flicked to my handbag, where the crumpled airplane from the diner seat was stashed.
"It did," he said simply, and in a smug singsong tone that implied a refusal to elaborate further.
"Hermes!" Ethan snapped, clearly irritated by the way his old friend was looking at me, hovering just a little too close for comfort.
"She really is exquisite," Hermes said to Ethan with a shrug. "I was just appreciating the splendor of it."
I pushed my index finger into his chest and used it to create an arm's length between us. He laughed, Ethan scowled, and I was immediately better able to breathe. My heels sank into the crunch of snow at the edge of the sidewalk and I hugged my arms around myself, impatient.
"I walked the lad home," Hermes said with a shrug. "He wanted me to tuck him into bed, but I suspected you might take issue with me going past the door."
"You suspected correctly." Ethan heaved a great sigh, icy fog exploding from his mouth, and turned to me with exhaustion etched into his handsome face. "After all this, he's back at the house."
"Ah, isn't that always the way?" Hermes observed blithely. "Things are always in the last place you look, and so on. I will say the boy started wavering in his enjoyment of our fun as it grew dark. I think he's rather convinced that he's in big, big trouble now. I told him that it's impossible to ground a winged demigod, but he didn't find it very funny."
"Winged?" Ethan repeated, outraged.
Hermes flipped a careless hand in the air. "It isn't so literal as you're thinking. After all, I'm winged too, aren't I? And I certainly get around."
"What did you do to him?" Ethan asked, his patience clearly cracking more by the second. "How do we undo it?"
Hermes scoffed, placing a delicate hand to his chest, as though he'd been accused of something heinous. "Me? I didn't do anything. The boy has inherent talents. I'm a little jealous, truth be told, but I think it was all a little overwhelming all at once."
"Oh, do youthink so?" Ethan snapped, his color gone high. "Youthinkthat was abit overwhelmingfor a ten-year-old?!"
I put my hand on his arm, certain that his ire was having the opposite of its intended effect on a very entertained-looking Hermes. "He shouldn't be alone," I said softly. "You should go and be with your son."
"Yes, go on," Hermes said with a laugh. "Perhaps I can walk the fair Miss Avri back to her own home."
I opened my mouth to decline this oh so generous offer, but there was no need.
Ethan turned toward me as though the other man had not spoken or indeed was not there at all and said, "Please, come with me."
"To your house?" I replied, truly surprised.
"To talk to Aaron. You know I'm not ... that I haven't ..." He shifted, looking more than a little pained as he tried to find the words, his eyes sliding off to the side, away from both me and from Hermes. "You're good with him, Noor. Please."
And how could I say no to that?
CHAPTER10
We pulled into the garage of the Weaver home in silence that wasn't exactly tense, but certainly held the energy of our nerves. The snow had eased to a fine dusting, and though Pastor Dan's borrowed truck had only one working headlight, we had managed to travel back to the house without any difficulties.
As soon as I had agreed to accompany Ethan for this task, we had turned to say our farewells to Hermes, only to find that he had vanished. Not even his footprints remained, just smooth, powdery snow where he had been standing only a moment before. Neither of us had acknowledged the strangeness of it, likely because we'd hit our quota on daily tolerance for the weird and nonsensical many hours prior to that moment.
Maybe hewaswinged.
My head was starting to hurt.
Ethan had already exited the truck and made it around to wrench my door open on my behalf before I had processed the fact that we had arrived. I accepted his hand—still covered in that brown and turquoise mitten, and hopped out as delicately as I could while the garage door groaned its way shut
That half-finished sculpture loomed behind him, its one outstretched arm seeming to point to the interior of the house, where Aaron awaited his reckoning.
I must have been staring at it over Ethan's shoulder, because it made him turn and look as well, pulling off that silly red and white hat and ruffling his sandy hair with his fingers as he did. He squinted at it, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and then gave a little huff of discontent, as though I'd looked at his homework before he'd finished filling it out.
