“Dionysus!”
He turned to see Medusa pushing through the crowd, and a wave of relief shuddered through him.
“Medusa, thank the Fates,” he said as she approached. “I was worried.”
Her brows rose, surprised. “You were?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I always worry about you.”
Her cheeks reddened. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. I thought about what you said. I went to Janet’s house to apologize and convinced her to come tonight.”
Dionysus’s eyes shifted to see Janet lingering behind the gorgon.
“I’m proud of you,” said Dionysus. “Though I have questions about how exactly you found her house.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “I followed her home.”
Dionysus rubbed his forehead. “Medusa. We don’t do that.”
“You told me to apologize,” she argued.
He sighed. “We’ll talk about this later. Take your places.”
“Go get ’em, Tiger,” Ariadne said.
He rolled his eyes. She’d started calling him that as a joke since it was one of his main animal forms. He wasn’t sure he liked it yet, but it sounded better than the alternatives which included jaguar, lion, bull, and serpent.
Dionysus approached his choir, assembled to the left of the towering tree. It was probably the largest pine he had ever seen thanks to Hephaestus who had taken Aphrodite’s need for “the most perfect Christmas tree” to heart and used his knowledge of genetics and genomes to create several seeds. They were planted in an orchard on the fringes of New Athens and every year they held a tree cutting ceremony.
It was tradition, and for the briefest moment, Dionysus considered that if this was their present, then the future was, indeed, bright.
A tapping sound from the conductor, whose orchestra was set up on the other side of the tree, signaled the start of the program.
There was silence as the music began with the soft chime of bells, swelling to include the rest of the orchestra. At its peak, the choir joined. They moved through song after song, the transition between each filled with applause. To Dionysus’s relief, Janet kept her tone low, the choir’s combined voices melodic and unified.
As they neared the finale, he noticed Medusa’s attention had turned to the tree, eyes narrowed. Dionysus followed her gaze and observed a few branches moving.
What the fuck…?
He returned his attention to the choir just as they reached the climax, ending on a final, powerful note.
It was at that moment, Persephone flipped the switch Hades was holding. The lights on the tree flickered and then burned steadily, so bright, even Dionysus struggled to look, except that he had to because as soon as the tree illuminated in its full, stunning glory, it also started to smoke, and there were high-pitched screams coming from inside.
Suddenly, hundreds of Kallikantzaroi scrambled from the branches, burned from the light, turning to ash before they even hit the ground. As they fled, other items fell with them—cookies and candy, silver and gold bells, round baubles, screwdrivers and hammers, knives, even reels of tape.
“Hey!” a mortal exclaimed. “Those are my socks!”
“Those are my grandmother’s antique spoons!”
“That’s my wig!”
The crowds’ voices rose as they discovered where all their stolen goods had gone, but those faded in the background when Dionysus spotted a familiar black box.
He swiped it from the ground and then approached Ariadne, lowering to one knee.
“Ariadne—”
“Yes,” she said before he could finish, a wide smile plastered on her face.
