“I’m sure I did,” Andie said. She looked over her shoulder at her car, and at the road. A worried gesture, like she was doing something illicit. “Can I come in?”
“Door’s open,” Athena said. By the time she got downstairs Andie had taken off her coat and was toasting her fingers over the fireplace. Athena joined her, spreading her hands close to the flames.
“I thought you said you weren’t cold.”
“I wasn’t. Cold doesn’t really affect me.” She turned her hands. Currents of heat flickered against her skin. “But I feel it.”
Andie seemed uncomfortable there without Cassandra, and with Odysseus and Hermes gone. It was no secret that she and Henry thought Athena the strangest of the three, and the most godlike.
“Cassandra doesn’t know you’re here,” Athena said, because it was obvious. “So why are you?”
“Didn’t Hermes tell you?”
“Hermes didn’t have a chance to tell me much. It was a scramble to get all the travel arrangements made, and then they left.”
“Oh.” Andie cleared her throat and gestured to the sword, mounted inches above their heads. “Hermes said he would teach me to use that. But he’s gone now, and Cassandra said he might be gone for a while. So I was wondering if you would teach me. Or at least start, until he gets back.”
Athena didn’t answer, and after a minute, Andie started to babble.
“I mean, maybe it would be better learning from you anyway. You’re, like, the battle goddess, right? Or are you really as big a jackass as Cassandra says, and coming here was a huge mistake?”
Athena snorted.
“Flattery’s not necessary,” she said. “I’ll teach you. Come downstairs.”
“Now?” asked Andie.
“Why not?”
“I—” Andie’s mouth closed slowly. “I hadn’t figured on starting so soon. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d say yes.”
“Well, I did. So do you want to learn, or not?”
“Yeah. I do. It feels like I should.”
Athena raised her brow. “No matter what Cassandra and Henry think?”
Andie pushed past her toward the basement.
The basement was floored in sealed concrete, the walls bare aside from a few other swords and knives. It wasn’t much more than a large open space and a partially finished laundry room. A speed bag and a black heavy bag hung in the eastern corner beside a set of free weights and a bench.
Andie whistled. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t anything so humble.”
“We’ll have to get some mats,” Athena said. “We can’t be slamming you down onto concrete.”
“What is this?” Andie asked. She ran her hand over the black leather surface of the heavy bag. “Don’t tell me you use a punching bag. Or free weights.”
“Please,” said Athena. “I could juggle every one of those weights with my fingertips. This is for Odysseus.”
Andie walked to the speed bag and gave it a gentle push.
“He was some great warrior, wasn’t he?”
“He was.” In her memory, Athena could still hear his scream and see the flash of bronze as he charged into swords and arrows. “One of the best. He still is.”
“Better than Henry used to be? Better than Hector, I mean?”
Athena cocked her head. In a fair fight, Hector would have won. But Odysseus had never been bound by the rules of a fair fight.
“It would depend on the day,” she answered finally. “Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know.” Andie shrugged. “Because it feels like I should. It feels like who I am.”
They still are what they were. That’s what Demeter had told her. So was this black-haired girl really a warrior? Even without her memories? Athena’d be lying if she said she wasn’t curious to find out.
“Cassandra doesn’t want me to,” Andie went on. “She says she wants to kill Aphrodite, but what she really wants is for all of you to go away. For everything to go back to the way it was. She wants Aidan back. But none of those things are going to happen. Are they?”
“No.”