In my head, whenever I thought of The Quiet Cloud Institution for the Mentally Ill, I pictured somewhere like Arkham Asylum, or wherever it was that they kept Renfield in Dracula. Some hideous, Victorian gothic building, surrounded by high railings, encrusted with gargoyles, and looming stark against a permanently dark sky, crisscrossed with forked lightning.

Why I pictured it this way probably says more about me than it does the place itself. I had been going there regularly since I was twelve and it had never looked anything like that. The building was squat and anonymous - one of those official buildings that could be anything from a school to a funeral parlor - the gardens surrounding it were pleasant and well kept, and the staff were unfailingly polite and helpful. If you had to have a relative spending the remainder of their life in an institution, then Quiet Cloud was probably as good as it got. Which meant shit, because no one wants that for a relative. The place could have had rainbows sprouting from its windows and it would still be, for me, a dark symbol of the grotesque unfairness that had swallowed my mom's life.

I approached, as I always did, with heavy steps, simultaneously wanting to see my mom because she was my mom, and not wanting to see her because what was left of her was barely my mom anymore. The place itself always gave me the jeebies. Just the smell of it was enough to tie my stomach in knots.

The guy on the desk waved me straight through as I came up. He'd been working there as long as I'd been going there and it occurred to me that I had probably never seen his legs, he was just a torso above a desk to me. It's strange the things your mind will wander to when you're trying to think about anything other than what you're doing. Various staff nodded to me as I walked through the pale green corridors on autopilot to Mom's room. The green color is supposed to be soothing but I've always found it nauseating. Like everything else in this place, it makes me feel sick.

I took a deep breath and pushed open the door to my mom's room. There was a low light on over her bed but Mom appeared to be asleep, or out of it - sometimes she needed drugs to sleep. She looked peaceful, which was probably the most I could hope for. I sat down next to her and took her hand, as I always did when I visited. If anyone asked, I would always say that it was to make her feel better, so that even if she couldn't hear or understand my words, the physical contact let her know that there was someone there, someone who cared. Truthfully, it was to comfort me. I needed to touch her, to feel that she was still there on some level.

When I was little and I had trouble sleeping, then she would sit with me holding my hand until I went to sleep. Even with my eyes closed and sleep closing in, I would still have her hand in mine, and I would feel safe because I knew she was there with me. Doing the same for her now was a comfort to me, but also a horrible reminder that, at too young an age, we had been robbed of that mother-daughter relationship. Even now, there were still days when I would have given anything to have her hold my hand at night, when the demons came.

"Hey, Mom."

She didn’t stir as I reached over and brushed the hair from her forehead. For the next while, I chattered in a low voice about nonsense, the sort of thing people say to a loved one in a place like this, hoping that the sound of their voice is all that's really necessary, before getting on to recent events.

"So, some shit's been happening."

I paused - even with Mom in this condition, I wasn't sure how to begin. "I have to say sorry. To you. For ever thinking that... for thinking there was something wrong with you. I guess you must have thought it, too - and the doctors sure as hell did - but..." I found I was crying again. "There was nothing wrong with you, Mom. There was nothing wrong with you. You weren't hearing voices. Or, at least, you were hearing voices but they were real. They were voices from Mount Olympus calling you to save the world. And I know that actually sounds crazier than just having voices in your head but it's true. You were the only one who could hear them but they were real."

I shook my head bitterly.

"If I'd believed you at the time, if I'd only known what I know now..." But there wasn't an end to the sentence. It was what it was. You can't change the past. "I met the guys who did it to you. They work for Dad. Which figures. Guess he found another way to screw us. I mean... They didn't mean to hurt you - the guys. That's not what they were setting out to do. They were the voices and they drove you crazy by accident, trying to get in touch with you. Not that I'm making excuses for them. I'm not. Fuck them all. Fuck the lot of them." I looked up at my mom's impassive face. "I... I slept with them, Mom. I mean, not all of them. Two out of three. I guess I would have gone for all three if the opportunity had... Doesn't matter. I wanted you to know. I didn't know - when I slept with them - what they had done to you. Although, I did know they worked for Dad so maybe I should have known better. I thought they were... Doesn't matter what I thought. I just didn't want you not to know what I did. But I'm never going to see them again. Actually, I probably will see them because they'll try to track me down. But I won't... You know. They're dead to me. I'll never forgive them for what they did to you. What they did to us."

It's selfish, I know, but right at that moment I would have given pretty much anything for Mom to wake up and tell me that she understood and it was okay and she completely forgave me for screwing the men who had driven her out of her mind. But that was never going to happen. I would just have to live with the guilt.

"Cat?"

I nearly jumped out of my skin, and for one heartbreaking moment, I wondered if it was my mom who had spoken, with the voice of a man. I turned and saw Remi at the door.

“Hey, kitten! I thought you were on vacation. You shouldn't be back for weeks yet."

I nodded. That was the lie the guys had implanted in Remi's mind when they blanked his memory of all the Greek god stuff that was going down. They had done it on my instructions, to protect Remi from being involved, and it had seemed a good idea at the time. It had only been a few days ago. How quickly things can change.

"Yeah," I stammered - I lie easily to strangers but lying to Remi is like lying to myself. "I wasn't feeling it so I changed my plans. I'm flying out again in the morning to someplace else. But as long as I was here for one night, I couldn't not..."

I indicated Mom, and Remi nodded, understanding instantly.

"Sure. You got the money for all this travel?”

I grinned my best grifter's grin. "I made arrangements."

"We should vacation together more. How come the first one was a bust?"

Until all this Dolos business, I had told Remi everything, he was the only person in the world I trusted. Keeping something from him hurt me almost physically but it also left me without a confidant when I wanted - needed - advice.

"Remi," I tried to shape my words into something I could say without getting him involved, "I did something dumb."

"Who is he?"

"What makes you think it's a guy?"

Remi frowned. "You back on girls?"

"No." That had been a summer of casual experimentation - fun, but not repeated. "I mean, why do you assume it has to be a lover at all?"

Remi raised his hands. "I know you. You're not a jerk magnet, Cat. You're a jerk-seeking missile. In a room full of decent guys, you will locate the asshole every time."

"Bullshit," I replied. "I've been out with lots of nice guys, too."

"There's been some," Remi admitted. "And when you do hook up with a nice guy, you turn asshole yourself to make up the deficit."

"What do you mean 'turn asshole'?"

"I mean, you do everything you can to sabotage the relationship so it doesn't ever become a 'relationship'. You make a point of picking the wrong guy, and if you pick up the right one by accident, then you make damn sure that you're the wrong girl."

"This time it wasn't my fault."

Remi pulled a wan, sympathetic smile. "I guess it had to happen sometime."

"What?"

"You got your heart broken."

"I did not!"

Mom stirred in her sleep and it occurred to me that perhaps this was neither the time nor the place for this conversation.

"Doesn't matter."

"Of course it does."

"It doesn't."

"If it matters to you then it matters to me."

I shook my head, trying to stop the tears and failing. "I let her down."

"Your mom?"

"I..." I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell him that I had slept with the men who had driven her mad. He'd probably get me an adjoining room in the institution. "Can you come and sit with us?"

Remi unquestioningly joined me next to Mom. Mom liked Remi, she remembered who he was most of the time and was glad that I had found someone in the world who I cared about and trusted - someone who could do all the things she had not been around to do. When the three of us were here together, I liked to make believe in my head that we were a real family, and that one day Mom would get out and we would all be together, and everything would be perfect. The crushing weight of the knowledge that that would never actually happen weighed down on me now as never before, squeezing fresh tears from me.

Remi held me close and whispered in my ear. "You don't have to tell me, but I'm here, Cat. I'm always here."

For an hour or so, we sat, the three of us, in comparative silence, comfortable in each other's presence. The strangest family that could be conceived, but the only family I had ever wanted. Eventually, I made an excuse about my flight leaving and Remi and I walked out together.

"Thanks for coming to see her while I'm away."

"Of course I come. Mostly during the day."

"Well, I'm glad you were here tonight."

"I wish you could tell me what was bothering you.”

I nodded sadly. “I wish I could, too."

"You really can’t?” he pressed, his brows knitting with concern.

"Not this time."

"I might be able to help."

"You have helped, Remi, more than you can know.”

We hugged it out, and a short while later, I was heading out the way I’d come.

That night could have crushed me. That whole damn day could have crushed me. I had lost the men I was starting to love, I had been betrayed by those I cared about, I had inadvertently betrayed my mom through my ignorant intimacy with her worst enemies, I had been stabbed and I had been unable to share any of it with my beloved brother. And yet, somehow, that hour spent with Remi and my mom had galvanized me. And I was pretty sure someone was trying to kill me because they didn't want me to save the human race.

Well, fuck them.

Their attempts just meant that I was getting to them, and I was now more intent on completing the tasks than ever.

Saving the human race is an oddly abstract thing - it's hard to care about “the human race”. But put a couple of faces to that race and everything changes. I was going to save mankind because I was going to save my family. And I was going to save mankind as a massive “screw you” to whichever pathetic excuse for a god was trying to stop me. Call yourself a god? You can't kill one girl. And I was going to save mankind because it would allow me to ascend Olympus one more time and tell those gods what I thought of them. Particularly one. I had been quietly grateful that Dolos had not been there on my first visit, well, next time, he had better be there, because I had some things to say to him. I didn't know how or by what means, but I was going to find a way to hurt him like he hurt me. I was going to make the god of tricksters wish he had never been born - or however it works with gods.

The first step to all that was the six tasks of Zeus. Admittedly, that was likely to be more difficult – or, at least, more dangerous - without the guys to help me, but I had done most of the work and all of the thinking on the first two. How hard could it be?

Then it occurred to me that it would, in fact, be very hard, because I didn't have one essential ingredient. In my haste to get out of the apartment, I had left the damn scroll behind. I didn't even know what the next task was.

Son of a bitch.