Chapter 5
The front room was a decoy. Which explained why a hot witch who was apparently hundreds—thousands?—of years old, and immortal, would leave it as such a shithole. The real gem lay behind the wall, and I was pretty sure I could spend an eternity here.
“If one picture ends up on the ‘Gram,” the crone said, snapping her fingers in my dreamy face, “I will make you suffer for an eternity. Do not push me.”
I held both hands up, somehow dropping my phone into my bag at the same time. “Wait, how do you know about Instagram?”
The witch snorted. “Girl, I have like a hundred thousand followers on there. Islandwitch201, all one word. Look me up.”
A hundred thousand.Motherfucker!
“Yeah, sure, I’ll totally look you up.”
#NeverHappening.
“I’m CaliBlonde414 if you want to follow me,” I added.
She gave me a fake smile and we both knew that neither would be following the other.
Pissed off, I couldn’t stand to look at her any longer, so I decided to take in more of the gorgeous room. There were no windows, seeing as this was her secret lair and all, but she must have used magic to give one of the far walls a perfect beach scene. It looked real. I could almost feel the sunlight and hear the birds as I stared out across the blue water.
“It’s a memory of mine. Maui,” she said, noticing my focus. “The water is about the only good thing in this godsforsaken world.”
Cronus’ chest rumbled. “We didn’t forsake it. We’ve been trying to bring it back under control. Humans are like a fungus. You get rid of one and another ten pop up.”
Okay, not creepy at all. And yet vaguely accurate.
The crone made her way back to a small room off to the side, sliding open the barn doors to present us with what looked like a weapons forge. “It will take me a day and night to complete your weapon. You will remain here. You will not use your power and bring more gods to my door. You will not have sex on my bed.”
Cronus and I just stared at her blankly, then she shut the barn door silently. Shaking my head, I turned and took in the room. Light wood floors, almost whitewashed, with paneled white walls, gave it a very coastal Hampton’s vibe. Her couches were the big, squishy variety, somehow still looking elegant and refined—white—of course—with thin blue piping across the cushions. There were rugs scattered everywhere, and they were thick and expensive, my feet sinking into the weave as I crossed to sit gingerly on the couch. I was probably covered in sand from our run here, and I wondered how she would react to meaccidentallymessing up some of the sterile cleanliness of this place.
“What is she going to do with your blood?” I asked Cronus, who had not moved, still staring at the now closed door she’d shut. “She’s clearly willing to put up with a lot, so … it must be powerful.”
He shot me a disparaging stare. “Human, have you not been paying attention at all? I’m the strongest of the Titans. Their leader. My family feared me so much they locked me away for a thousand years because they couldn’t kill me. I’m probably the only god that Narida doesn’t have blood from. She’s a collector of powerful energy. I have no idea what she plans to do with all of her collections—so far she’s done nothing.”
I stared at him. Was he for real? “Did you not … uh … how do I put this? Maybe think that your blood was the last blood she needed to complete whatever dastardly plan she has in the works?”
Narida.He’d used that name already, but I’d forgotten until right now. Pulling out my phone, I decided to see if I could Google her.
Narida, the powerful crone,I typed into the search bar. As usual, about a million hits came up, and I clicked into the first few to find they were mostly cosplayers. “She won’t be on your Google,” Cronus said, taking a seat beside me. I hadn’t even realized how much the distance between us had been straining me, until he sat down.
Not wanting to, but needing more information, I pulled up her Instagram. Islandwitch201 was a very focused poster. She had a minimum of three posts a day, and they varied around the island life here. A few were her in a bikini, but only from the back. There was not a single face photo in her entire two-thousand-plus posts.
I took a quick chance to pop over to my Gram and grinned when I saw that I had gained two thousand more followers from the picture with Cronus, and I officially had 12K likes. It looked like the hashtag#INeedaGreekGodwas trending.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
Maybe this would be my big break. Get me to 50k likes. I needed more pics of Cronus though. If he’d allow it. One of the comments was from Shauna asking where the hell I was. Oops. I’d have to shoot her an email when things slowed down.
“When you don’t age, it’s not smart to have your photo out there,” Cronus told me, pulling my concentration back to him. “Gods try to stay off the radar of humans, because if they knew about us, they would start panicking and all hell would break loose.”
Probably why he allowed one photo and one only.
“Is that why you hate humans and want to kill them all?” I asked him.
He shook his head, scowling at me. “We never wanted tokillall of them. We’ve been protecting your primitive species for eons. But now that my brothers and sisters are gone, the gods have been doing whatever they want under Zeus’s rule. That all ends for them now that I’m back.”
“You’re kinda scary,” I said, not joking.
