Having sworn that I was never going to see the guys again, the last place I wanted to be in the wee hours was in the elevator, shooting up towards the top of the tower block in which my father lived. The red-suited attendant smiled at me pleasantly.

"Late night?"

"End of a long day." It was now four in the morning and I hadn't been to bed yet. On the other hand, I'd spent eleven hours of the day in a hospital bed, so that presumably counted as sleep.

The thought made me touch my side where I could still feel the line of stitches beneath my clothes. I had felt the occasional twinge when I had been in with my mom, when Remi had hugged me and squeezed too hard, but other than that, I hadn’t even noticed the injury that had almost killed me less than twenty-four hours earlier. They might not be gods but, clearly, the guys had used their magic on me while I was unconscious and it was some pretty good shit.

Once I got upstairs, I made my way along the plush corridor to the door. Then, I stooped to my knees, reached into my pocket and got out a roll of cloth in which I kept my lock pick tools.

Picking locks is one of those skills that is useful for a grifter, or, indeed, any career criminal to have, even if you have no intention of “robbing” anyone, per se. Personally, I never go anywhere without them; you never know what's going to happen. Cracking a card lock is a little tougher than the old-fashioned sort - and lacks the romance, I feel - but it's a very useful skill to have, particularly around hotels.

There was a risk, of course, that there might be a burglar alarm on the door, but then again; why? You had to be an ambitious and confident burglar to target the apartment on the top floor of a block this size, and you'd have to be very lucky to get this far. An apartment as inaccessible as this one was likely to be pretty light on security.

The lock clicked open and I held my breath for a few moments, waiting for alarms or flashing lights or something. Of course, if there was an alarm then it was probably silent so I would just have to chance it and trust to my own luck. Gently, I pushed the door open and peered in. Would the guys be asleep? Would they even be in? They might be out searching for me. Perhaps I should have asked the attendant in the elevator but it was too late now.

The vast lounge room spilled out before me, silent in the night and lit by the moonlight that came in through the vast windowed wall. There was not a sound to be heard but a look to my right told me that the guys were probably in residence as their shoes were scattered carelessly on the floor. Well, I wasn't planning to stop for long.

Truth be told, if I had woken them up and asked for the scroll, then they would probably have given it to me. I wasn't sure exactly what power I had over them, but being Dolos's daughter did seem to make me the boss on some level. They were happy to tell me what to do but powerless if I said “no”. It wasn't a fear of not being able to get the scroll that had driven me to breaking and entering, it was a fear of seeing them. I didn't want to think about them or what they had done. I didn't want to think about what I had done with them before I found out the truth. Above all, I didn't want to be tested. My loyalty was to my mom, but that loyalty could get scrambled when I was around the guys.

Into the room I crept, closing the door behind me, careful not to make a sound. On tiptoes I padded across the floor to the coffee table where I had left the scroll. It was still there, though it looked like it had moved.

Had the guys been reading ahead?

It didn't matter, I picked up the scroll, shoved it into my coat pocket, and turned back towards the door.

The lights came on and I started around to see the three guys standing there, staring at me. However much I hated myself for doing it, my first reaction was to take a good long look at them. Alexei wore jogging pants, Christoph pajama bottoms and Nico just a pair of tight shorts that I forced myself not to stare at too closely. None of them wore anything over their torsos and I could not quite stop my eyes from roaming briefly over the landscape of hard male flesh on display.

"Silent alarm?" I asked.

Alexei shrugged, his muscles moving enticingly beneath his skin. "Of sorts. Magic. Nothing you could have done about it."

"Hardly seems fair," I muttered.

"Perhaps not."

"How does it work?” I asked, curious in spite of myself.

Alexei nodded to the ornately framed picture of my father, above the mantelpiece, and I nearly jumped out of my skin as it waved to me.

"There're a few pictures about the place that can do it," said Alexei. "And they can talk to each other. There's one in each of our rooms, so if someone breaks in, the pictures yell at us until we wake up."

"Mine's a picture of a cow," confided Nico. "It has a Spanish accent, for some reason."

"Dolos got the idea after reading Harry Potter," Christoph added.

"My father - the ancient Greek god of trickery and deceit - reads Harry Potter?"

"Big fan."

As always, it was the normal stuff that ended up seeming the most surreal.

"Well, it was deeply unpleasant seeing you all, but I'm afraid I have to leave."

I strode towards the door with a fake, tight smile. Admiring them was no betrayal of my promise to my mom, but stopping any longer was out of the question.

"Please don't leave." Alexei held out a hand. "At least give us a chance to explain."

"Explain?!" I don't think I knew how much I had been holding my temper in check, until then. "You destroyed my mother's mind. You robbed her of her life. You cost me a mother and a childhood. And you want to explain? You want me to sit here and listen while you explain? What the hell do you think you can say that would justify that?"

Part of me wanted a good answer. Part of me wanted Alexei to be able to explain it all so well that, at the end, I would just say; “Well, that makes sense. I forgive you.” I wanted to like them without feeling guilty. I wanted to go back to how things had been before I found out what they had done. I wanted to be happy with these guys. I wanted not to feel like the worst daughter in the world for thinking all that.

Not that it mattered, because one look at the guys told me that Alexei wasn't about to say anything of the sort. They all looked like I felt, red-eyed, pale-faced, sick and tired.

Alexei shook his head. "I can't justify it. What we did to your mom is unforgivable."

"We didn't have a choice," ventured Nico.

"You always have a choice," I snapped back. But was it true? How did it work with the minions of gods?

"Quiet, Nico," Alexei admonished him, but gently. "We're not trying to make excuses or pass the buck. What happened is on us and we're not asking for forgiveness."

"You're not going to get it."

“Please, Cat. Don't leave." Christoph didn't say much but what he said was always to the point.

"Give me one good reason."

"You're in danger."

That was hard to deny but I wasn't that easy. "And I hope you all feel crappy about putting me in a position where I have to face it alone."

"You said you'd let me explain," said Alexei.

"No, I didn't."

"Will you? I can tell you what happened," said Alexei. "The truth."

"And you think that will convince me to stay?"

He shook his head. "No. But you've been lied to all your life and you deserve to know."

If I was pulling a grift, that is exactly what I would say to manipulate a person. But I'm pretty good at spotting when people are playing me, and I wasn't getting that feeling now. Although these guys were the minions of, basically, the god of grifters, they themselves were as guileless as newborn babies. They weren't good liars. However much it sounded like manipulation, Alexei was sincere.

Which didn't change a damn thing. "How about I tell you what happened instead?” I asked softly.

Alexei frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I saw my mom tonight."

It would be hard to put a description to the expression that went across the men's faces but they all had the same reaction. One thing we had in common; they didn't like to think about what they had done, either. They had the decency to feel guilty and ashamed.

"How was she?" asked Nico - the sweetest guy in the world and the most likely to say the wrong thing at every opportunity.

"She was the same as she has been every time I've gone to see her for the last fifteen years," I said, the words grating through my gritted teeth. "Slightly worse than the time before. Do you have any idea what that's like? For fifteen years, I have been going along praying for any improvement, however small. And every single time, I have my hopes dashed. These days, she only knows who I am sporadically. And every time she looks at me and doesn't know who I am, I die a little inside. Remi and I have to work every day to keep up with her medical bills. We take on jobs we shouldn't, take risks we shouldn't. And when we struggle, you can't even imagine how shitty, how small, how useless, how helpless I feel because I can't help her. You want the truth about what happened? That's the truth. Not some bullshit about gods and tasks and saving humanity. This is an actual human. You guys have gotten so caught up in the fate of the race that you've forgotten that race is made up of a bunch of individuals."

I would have liked to have taken more satisfaction in making them look as broken as I felt, but one of the hard truths you learn about life is that misery can't be passed on, it can only be shared. If anything, all I had done was make myself feel more angry - what right did they have to feel upset about my mom? Their emotions felt like a violation.

"You're right," said Alexei, finally. "And if there was anything we could do, then we would." Again, I believed in his sincerity. "But we can't change the past. It's the future we have to think about. Ensuring that there is one."

A hot flush of anger burned through me.

"What did you come back here for?"

The scroll was poking out of my pocket.

"Aside from being a demi-god," Alexei went on, "one of the things that made you suitable for the tasks was the fact that you actually care."

"Also, one of the reasons we all liked you," added Nico, once again finding the most inappropriate thing to say.

"Even when you don't want to," put in Christoph, "you can't help caring. It's who you are."

It wasn't Christoph's forthrightness that made me stay. It wasn't Nico's endearingly ill-thought-out words or even Alexei's sincerity and honesty. It was my father. What the guys had done had ruined my life and destroyed my mother, and I hated it. But they had been following the orders of my father. He was the one at fault here, no one else. He was the one at whom I should be leveling my hatred. I wasn't sure entirely what the rules were, but I had a strong hunch that what the guys showed my father was not mere loyalty - they had no choice but to obey. It was what they were created for. I could hate what they did, but hating them was not fair.

Which was not to say that I forgave them. It would have been the fair thing to do, but fairness had never been a factor in my life and I didn't feel inclined to be fair to other people. I couldn't let it go that easily. I couldn't trust them, I couldn't love them, but right now, I did need them.

"You're right, too," I said in a low, reluctant voice. “I don't want you in my life in any way but it's not all about me. And while I think I could solve Zeus's tasks without you, it has become evident that I may struggle to survive without you. And I plan to survive so I can meet my father, and force his head up his own asshole."

"Everyone should have a goal in life," said Christoph, sardonically.

"Things can't be like they were before," I continued. "This is just business."

They all nodded.

"We work together, but no touching."

More nodding.

"And once this is over, then you never darken my door again."

"If that's the way it has to be," said Alexei, his expression both pained and solemn, "then that's how it will be."

"Fine." And as I said it, the light within me that each of them had kindled in his own way, died, along with a giant chunk of my heart.