Caged Lightning Read online

  “Only money,” he repeated, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe I could dismiss it so easily. For that matter, Artemis probably had bucketloads of cash stashed away, too. Maybe I could skip talking to Apollo altogether and fix it myself. The thought had a certain appeal.

  I took a long sip of beer, cold and satisfyingly sharp on my tongue. Of course, I’d have to face him sooner or later. I had questions that needed answering. But no need to rush. Maybe Winston and I could drown our sorrows together. Tomorrow would be soon enough to face my brother. Perhaps even the day after.

  “I took Councillor Steele back to Crosston this afternoon,” Winston said, after a long period of frowning at his glass of water. Of course, to achieve the proper effect, I’d have to persuade Winston to try something a little stronger than his current tipple.

  I determinedly contemplated various spirits, trying not to notice how my heart leapt at the mere sound of Jake’s name. And how it sank again as the meaning of Winston’s words sank in. He was gone, then. We’d definitely need something stronger than our current drinks. Maybe Winston would like rum?

  “He burst into the temple in a tearing hurry,” Winston went on, “demanding to be taken to the Ruby Palace. He quite scared my acolyte.”

  “So you took him.” Apollo had given Winston a ring that allowed him to teleport between the god’s temples, just as Apollo himself could. I’d told Jake about it last night. Last night, when the future had seemed so full of promise—before Jake had recoiled in horror at the sacrilege of bonking a goddess.

  “Of course.”

  “Are you always so obliging to random fireshapers?”

  “Councillor Steele is not a random fireshaper. We may not have been formally introduced, but I know who he is. I’ve seen him at the temple on feast days.” That would be the Great Temple of Apollo in Crosston, not the hastily rented house that served as a makeshift temple here in Berkley’s Bay. “He seemed … not himself.”

  My turn to stare moodily at my drink. “He got some bad news.”

  Winston didn’t ask, and I didn’t elaborate. Seemed like there was nothing but bad news lately. A traitor among the gods; Zeus falling apart, perhaps dissipating into the electrical system; shadow shapers everywhere, spying on us. Killing us.

  I was sitting facing the door. Old habits. At least I didn’t have my back against the wall—that was progress, surely. So I was the first to see when the inner door thudded open and a shining figure appeared in the doorway. Not literally shining, though I knew from experience he could do that, too—just shining in that extremely blond, exceptionally gorgeous way of his. The eyes of every woman in the room—and possibly some of the men—were drawn to his magnificence like a magnet. I was probably the only one there who didn’t want to jump his bones. Because, you know, eww. He was my brother.

  I sighed as his gaze fell on me. “And speaking of bad news …”

  2

  I stood, legs trembling, as Apollo approached. He wore tailored pants and a slim-fitting shirt that clung to the hard contours of his chest, both black, as usual. Maybe I should take him clothes shopping, give him the sisterly hint that there was a whole rainbow of other colours he could try.

  He stopped in front of me, blue eyes intent, and I swallowed nervously. What did one say in a situation like this? Hi, I hear you’re my brother, nice to meet you? Or maybe, Sorry for thinking you were a dick all this time, how about we start again? He said nothing for a long moment, while his gaze bored into me. Was he disappointed in me? Did he even know yet?

  Then a smile of such delight and relief spread over his face that he looked like a different person. I’d never seen him so happy.

  “Arti,” he breathed. “It is you!”

  He hugged me so hard I thought my eyeballs would pop. Maybe that’s why they started to leak a little. No one had ever sounded so happy to see me before. I had vague memories—most of them sad—of my imaginary brother, but this was different. I could really get used to being this popular.

  “I couldn’t believe it when Jake told me.” He pressed a kiss into my hair and his arms tightened around me, though a moment before I would have said it was impossible for his grip to be any tighter. “I thought they had you, too.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, stepping back and giving me a little shake by the shoulders. “I was looking for you everywhere, and all the time you were right here, wearing this form. It’s not that different, but you felt human, so I never even thought …” His brow furrowed in a frown of confusion. “Why can I sense you now, when I couldn’t before? What have you done?”

  Music still blasted over the pub’s speaker system, but most of the conversations in the room had died. I took a step back, uncomfortably aware that more than half the people in the room were staring at us, including Winston, who looked between us with raised eyebrows. Tomorrow, the rumours would be swirling around the town.

  Apollo still stared at me, tears in his eyes, as if afraid I would disappear again if he looked away.

  “Maybe we should discuss this somewhere more private,” I said, dashing the moisture away from my own eyes. “Let’s go back to my place. You, too, Winston.”

  Apollo nodded, as if dazed, and let me drag him out into the night. Winston trailed obediently behind us, looking mystified. Mentally, I steeled myself to break the news to him, and to Syl, too. Might as well get it all over with at once. At least she wouldn’t do a Jake on me. She had no great reverence for the shapers’ gods. Maybe Lucas had even told her already. He’d found out before I had.

  She was watching TV, as it turned out. Lucas was sprawled on the couch beside her, his long legs stretched out in front of him, one arm draped loosely around her shoulders. They looked so ridiculously normal, Syl slumped against his side, their dark heads close together. Just a regular Thursday night at home. I wanted to plunk myself down on that couch with them and pretend that that was my life.

  But it wasn’t even Syl’s. She looked up as we came in, alert for danger. If she’d been in cat form, her ears would have been pricked. She was no more used to “normal” than I was.

  Her lips curved into a welcoming smile as Apollo and Winston came in behind me. “Hi, guys. Want to watch the latest home renovation show? With all your money, you ought to be able to afford a decent reno, Apollo.”

  I snagged the remote control from the arm of the couch and switched off the TV. Obviously, Lucas hadn’t said anything to her. Damn. “We need to talk.”

  Her feet hit the floor as she sat up straighter. “What’s wrong?”

  Lucas also straightened, mentally preparing to meet a threat.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Apollo said, as I opened my mouth to reply. “I have my sister back.”

  Syl glanced at the closed door, as if expecting this sister to walk in.

  I sank down on the nearest armchair. Apollo perched on its arm, as close as he could get without actually sitting in my lap. Having lost me once, he clearly wasn’t risking it again.

  “It’s me,” I said. “I’m his sister.”

  Winston gasped and fell to his knees on our stained old carpet.

  Syl took a little longer to figure it out. Her eyes were huge and, unconsciously, her hand sought Lucas’s. “You’re … a demi-god?”

  “I’m …” I looked down at the floor. The sight of their joined hands pained me. If only Jake were here.

  “She’s Artemis,” Apollo said, smiling fondly at me. “I’ve been looking for her everywhere, and she was hiding under my nose all the time.”

  “Mine, too,” Syl said faintly, giving me a wounded look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know. Oh, for God’s sake, Winston, get off the floor.”

  He teetered a little as he attempted to rise, so I jumped up to give him a hand. He was older than dirt and shouldn’t be kneeling for anyone. The stupid man shied away from my hand, so I hauled him bodily to his feet.

  “My lady,
you shouldn’t—”

  “Don’t you ‘my lady’ me,” I snapped at him. “My name’s Lexi, and don’t you forget it.”

  Shocked into silence, he nodded and hurriedly sat down in the other armchair. Possibly before his knees gave out on him.

  Apollo frowned. “What’s wrong, Arti?”

  “Oh, nothing. Except I’m now a goddess and I still have no memories. I have no idea what’s going on.”

  His eyes widened. “You don’t remember being Artemis?”

  “Nope.”

  “What … not any of it?”

  “Not a thing. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just some guy I met a couple of weeks ago.”

  He said nothing, though hurt shadowed his eyes. Maybe I could have put that more diplomatically, considering how happy he’d been to see me.

  “And that’s why you were all shiny at the end, there, in Brenvale?” Syl asked. “Because you … found your godhood, or whatever?”

  I nodded.

  Apollo sighed and ran a hand distractedly through his golden curls. “You’d better tell us exactly what happened in Brenvale.”

  I sat back down, leaning forward in my seat, and did just that. Lucas added a couple of details, since he’d been the one passing messages between me and Hades as I discovered the truth, locked in my cell with Cerberus, and he could explain more fully what Hades had said. But the story still didn’t take long—there wasn’t much to tell beyond the fact that Artemis had decided to hunt shadow shapers and Hades had helped by hiding her divinity, but it had worked too well. Artemis had forgotten herself and had ended up believing her cover story—that she was a human called Lexi. Me.

  Syl rounded on Lucas, pulling her hand from his. “You knew this and didn’t tell me?”

  “I …” Lucas looked decidedly uncomfortable as he glanced from Syl to me and back again. “Lexi said she’d tell you herself. It wasn’t my place to go blabbing.”

  Not his place? That was an odd thing to say. I wouldn’t have blamed him for telling Syl—she was his girlfriend and my best friend, not some random person on the street.

  “Telling me would not be blabbing,” she muttered darkly, but she left it that. Lucas was good people. Not everyone would be able to resist telling a story like that. Whatever his reason for keeping mum, I was lucky it wasn’t all over Berkley’s Bay by now. Imagine if Tegan had heard! She dealt in gossip as much as she did in haircuts. “But this is good news, right? You’re the goddess of the hunt, so hunting for Zeus should be easy for you.”

  “Not if he’s lost in the wires. I can hardly hunt him there. We’ll have to search for the pieces of the lightning bolt instead.”

  Her face dropped. “And now your avatar’s out in the open, the shadow shapers will be after you to steal your power.”

  Apollo spoke for the first time since I’d finished my story. “Jake said you didn’t remember, but I must admit, I didn’t quite believe him. I didn’t think it was possible for one of us to forget our own identity. But if Hades was involved, that explains a few things.”

  “Didn’t Jake tell you that he was?”

  The sun god looked a little sheepish. “I didn’t really wait for the whole story. Once he told me you were Artemis, that was it—I came straight here to see for myself.”

  I bristled a little on Jake’s behalf. “Did you think he’d make something like that up?”

  “I hardly dared to hope it was true—it seemed impossible that I wouldn’t have been able to tell. It doesn’t matter what outward appearance we wear, gods know when they’re in the presence of another god—we can feel each other’s divinity. And everyone’s feels slightly different, so we always know who we’re dealing with. Since I couldn’t feel yours …” He shrugged. “But now I can. Impressive of Hades to manage to hide that. Do you think you could do it again?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  I rolled my eyes. He thought it was that easy? “The price for not broadcasting your divinity to other gods is apparently losing your memory. That might be too high a price to pay for the ability, no?”

  He frowned. “You really don’t remember anything?” He couldn’t seem to wrap his head around it, as if being a goddess somehow made me bulletproof. “Like, what’s the name of the Sapphire Adept?”

  “Melissa Durante,” I said, without thinking.

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Syl objected. “She remembers how to speak, and read and write. She probably still knows her times tables, how plants synthesise light, and the history of the Human-Shaper Wars, too. Those kind of factual memories are different to our own personal memories. The brain stores them differently.”

  Apollo sighed. “I don’t suppose knowing how to contact Poseidon would be a factual memory, by any chance?”

  Nothing sprang to mind. “Nope.”

  “Damn. You were always his favourite—something about the closeness of the moon and the tides. You had some special way to find him. I’ve been trying, but so far none of my usual sources have come up with anything. I think he’s the logical place to start. We know for sure he has one of the pieces of the lightning bolt, and he may know who has the last one. Unfortunately, he’s hard to track down when he doesn’t want to be found.”

  My turn to sigh. Nothing was ever easy. Hades had confirmed that Poseidon had a piece of Zeus’s lightning bolt, so I guess it made sense to start our search with him. If we wanted to reunite the three pieces and give Zeus the strength to return from his strange exile, we would have to locate the god of the sea eventually.

  “Will your memory come back?” Syl asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

  “Hades said he didn’t actually take it, so he thinks it’s still in there somewhere, buried deep. He’s hopeful it will return.” Not half as bloody hopeful as I was. This was such a frustrating way to live, with people expecting me to know things I didn’t. Who knew what bombshells my memories had in store for me, and when they would choose to drop them? Hades had told me he and I had actually been there when the lightning bolt had come screaming out of the sky to land at Poseidon’s feet. But, like so many other things, I could only take his word for it, since I couldn’t remember it for myself.

  Apollo clenched his fists. “Time. It always comes back to that. Zeus is running out of it, and we don’t have enough of it to sit around waiting for your memories to return.”

  “Maybe if you went somewhere familiar—familiar to your old self, I mean,” Syl said, “it might jog your brain into remembering.”

  Syl was in problem-solving mode, but I still wasn’t one hundred per cent sure I wanted that old self back. “Doesn’t it bother you that I might become someone else if I recover those memories?”

  It sure seemed to bother her boyfriend. Lucas sat on the couch beside her with his arms folded across his chest in a defensive pose, looking quite unlike his usual laidback self. He wasn’t saying much, either, which was also unusual.

  She shrugged. “I’ve never been friends with a goddess before. Should be fun. There’s got to be a few perks, right? Just don’t turn me into anything freaky and we’ll be cool.”

  “I’m a goddess, Syl, not a magician.”

  “That never stopped Zeus,” she muttered darkly. “He’s always turning people into weird shit in the old stories.”

  I turned to Apollo, who was frowning at us. Hades had said we’d been close, and that if anyone could tell me about my lost past, it would be my brother. “What do you know about my old life? Could you take me somewhere familiar?”

  “You were living in Albany, in one of the southern shaper territories, before I was captured,” he said. “You had a sort of combined gym and martial arts school there, for women only.”

  Martial arts? Not an archery range? I was handy with a knife, but I’d never found myself busting out any karate moves in a fight. I tried to picture myself throwing fancy kicks and punches, but no memories came bubbling to the surface. And who had I been teaching? “Did I have
friends?”

  He blinked in surprise, as if wondering what kind of weirdo loner wouldn’t. “Of course. You talked a lot about Ophelia, your partner—”

  My stomach dropped in horror, and I almost forgot to breathe until he completed the sentence.

  “—in the gym.” Only a business partner. Not competition for Jake. “A couple of other women, Brianna and Claire. You used to go on hunting trips with them into the mountains.” He smiled fondly. “You were always boasting about the size of the wild boars you would bring down on those trips, with nothing but your bow and arrow.”

  “Show-off,” Syl said. “Sounds like you.”

  In other circumstances, I might have stuck my tongue out at her, but my brain was fully focused on the partner thing. If he was about to tell me I had a boyfriend—or a girlfriend, for that matter—that I couldn’t remember, things were going to get mighty awkward. “What about a … a non-business partner? Did I have anyone … special?”

  I held my breath until he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not recently, anyway.”

  Well, that was a relief. Jake was my one and only.

  Apollo eyed me shrewdly. He knew why I was asking. “Jake seemed upset when I spoke to him earlier.”

  What did I say to that? “He is.”

  “If it’s any consolation, he’s not too happy with me, either. I told him I’ve decided to make him Ruby Adept. He was so horrified he almost argued with me.”

  He smiled, but I gritted my teeth. Jake’s ridiculous obedience to the will of the gods didn’t extend to satisfying their romantic wishes, unfortunately. And dammit, he would be so busy as Ruby Adept that he wouldn’t have any trouble avoiding me. Why couldn’t Apollo have picked someone else?

  “The investiture will be in a couple of days. You should come.”

  Jake wouldn’t have changed his mind about us in a couple of days, but my stupid heart lifted at the thought of seeing him again anyway. “I’d like that.”

  “Good. Once the ceremony’s over, I can leave Jake to handle the Ruby Council and we can focus fully on the search for Poseidon. I’ll send you something suitable to wear.”