The night continued, as did the dancing, but my recollections of it were not worth relating as they became less focused and more fragmentary. I wasn't sure what time we left but recalled the guys taking it in turns to half-carry me through the streets as my feet refused to walk in a straight line.

Sunlight streaming like a rainbow through the multi-colored skylight above my bed woke me in the morning. The problem with a skylight is that it can't have curtains because they would just hang straight down, although, that wasn't my primary concern that morning. My head felt as though someone was inside it with a sledgehammer slowly demolishing my skull from within. Johnnie Walker Blue is good to drink but leaves you with one hell of a hangover.

Through the pounding, the dry mouth, and the fact that my eyeballs felt like red-hot billiard balls, I began to wonder how I had gotten here. Obviously the guys had brought me back to the apartment and to my room, but had I had the wherewithal to put myself to bed? I lifted the covers and peered down at myself to find I was wearing my onesie, which had been folded up under my pillow. It seemed very unlikely I could have undressed myself and put that on last night. By rights, I should have woken up fully clothed and face down on the bed. Or possibly the floor.

So the guys had undressed me, redressed me, and put me to bed. I now noticed a glass of water on the side table - from which I gulped gratefully - and a bucket by the side of the bed. It was not just that they had refrained from taking advantage of me last night, which would have been easy given my drunkenness and the heat of the dance, but there was something indescribably sweet about them putting out a bucket in case I needed to hurl - which, thankfully, I had not. That was not something you did for the piece of ass you were banging, it was something you did for someone you cared about.

I didn't like this train of thought and was glad to hear the discreet tap at the door, enabling me to think about something else.

"Come in!”

Nico's head appeared around the door, looking adorably apologetic. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No. Come in."

He smiled with relief and entered, carrying a tray. "I've been checking every half hour or so. Didn't want to wake you. You needed your sleep."

"I needed to be able to hold my liquor," I said ruefully. "You seem fine."

Nico shrugged. "Human effigy. There's no point in a god building a servant that gets incapacitated by every little thing, so we don't get hangovers anywhere near as bad as you. Don't get sick much, either."

"You're lucky."

Nico shrugged. "I suppose. But you do need the lows in life to experience the highs. Anyway," he placed the tray onto my lap, "I'm told this is the best hangover cure there is."

There was a glass of water and another of orange juice - freshly squeezed - cut up honeydew and a bowl of oatmeal. I wouldn't say that it was the most spectacular breakfast I had ever had, and I couldn't speak to its properties as a hangover cure, but I was floored to realize that this was the first time in my life that a man had brought me breakfast in bed. I thought back to what Remi had said about me always picking the wrong guy - the jerk. Perhaps he had a point. Now there were three nice guys in my life, who made me breakfast in bed, who didn't take advantage when I was drunk, and who would put a bucket beside me, just in case.

They were also three guys who had destroyed my mom's mind. The horrid dichotomy returned to tear me in two once more. I wanted to hate them, but how could I after how they had treated me? I liked them, but how could I after what they had done to my mom? But of course, it was only partly right to say what they had done to my mom; they had been the instruments of Dolos, and I did not know how much choice they had had. And however badly they had gone about getting in touch with Mom, they had been trying to save mankind.

I decided to shelve these thoughts for now. There was perhaps no good answer to them and if I did not complete Zeus's tasks, then I only had a few months of existence left anyway - no point in spending that time in an agony of indecision. I had to work with the guys, and that would be easier to do if we all got on.

I took a sip of the orange juice. "That's good."

"Have some of the oatmeal, it'll help settle your stomach."

For someone who had never experienced a real hangover, Nico knew his stuff. My tummy had been churning since I had woken, but as I ate my bowl of oatmeal, it began to calm and I started to feel a bit more human. Nico watched solicitously as I ate, and I couldn't help grinning.

"Last night was fun. You're a great dancer."

He waved away the praise. "I enjoy it. You've got some moves yourself."

I laughed into my oatmeal. "Sure. Not graceful ones. But 'moves'."

"Well, you looked pretty good to me." There was a slight catch in his voice as he spoke, and I saw in his eyes the heat of the night before. "I'm glad I got to dance with you."

Did he know that he was the only one of the three I hadn't slept with? Boy, that really didn't make me sound good.

"I'm glad, too. I hope we get to dance again sometime."

Nico nodded, his eyes going dark as they trailed over my mouth. "I don't feel like you've seen my best moves yet."

The subtext was killing me, and it occurred to me that if he wanted me even half as much as I wanted him, then last night must have been all the harder. I had been vulnerable. More than that; when I'm drunk, I get a bit flirty and a bit handsy. It would have been so easy for him to make a move and I would have been right there with him. But Nico - and the others, too - had known that it was not something I would have done when I was sober, and so they were respectful. They had been gentlemen.

I needed to focus on the tasks. When I got to the end of this crazy road, then... Well, then we would see.

Thinking about the tasks gave me a sudden, horrible thought. "What happened to the sapphire?"

Nico raised the napkin that sat on the tray to reveal the gem underneath. "I thought you'd like to be the one to 'send it on high to the mountain above'."

"It had to be a sacrifice to Zeus," I said, recalling the text of the task. "How do I do that? I mean, we don't have time for another trip to Mount Olympus."

"No need for that," said Nico, his lips hitching into a half-smile. "Pick up the jewel in your right hand and hold it up above your head."

I did so.

"Now say 'I pledge my fealty to all-powerful Zeus, highest of the Olympian gods'."

"I pledge my fealty to all-powerful Zeus, highest of the Olympian gods'."

"'And ask humbly that he accept this offering, worthless though it is, and unworthy though I am, as my sacrifice to his greatness'."

I rolled my eyes, privately wondering if there was any further way I could abase myself to suck up to Zeus and generally make him feel big by making myself seem small, but I repeated Nico's words.

"And ask humbly that he accept this offering, worthless though it is, and unworthy though I am, as my sacrifice to his greatness."

I felt a tingling in my palm, as if I was holding hundreds of tiny insects. Looking up, I saw the sapphire grow even brighter than before, then a swift breeze blew across my hand and the gem seemed to be blown away like sand in the wind, dissolving and vanishing before my astonished eyes.

I looked at Nico.

"He accepted it?" There was still part of me that worried the jewel we had selected might not live up to Zeus's standards of “best and brightest”.

"Looks like it. You want to check the scroll?"

Whether because of the breakfast or the excitement of the moment, my hangover seemed to have vanished as Nico and I scampered through the apartment to the lounge, where Alexei and Christoph were seated, drinking coffee.

"Oh, you're up?" said Alexei as I entered. "How's the head?”

"Where's the scroll?" I asked hastily.

Christoph handed it to me.

“She offered the sapphire to Zeus?" asked Alexei.

Nico nodded. "All good, I think.”

He seemed confident but I wouldn't believe it until I'd seen a new task on the scroll. As it had before, the old task vanished in a plume of smoke as I stared and a new one scrawled across the paper to take its place.

"It worked."

I dropped the scroll before even looking at the new task and hugged the guys, forgetting myself in the euphoria of the moment. Another one down, another one we had solved together.

In the next moment, I got control of myself and returned to business. Hugging them was relatively harmless but the thoughts and unwanted emotions a hug seemed to bring up in me were anything but.

"Next task," I said, all business as I grabbed the scroll up again and unfurled it. I frowned.

"What is it?" asked Alexei.

"Convince a siren to give you her song," I read.

The guys' blank faces were a mirror of my own.

"That's a tough one," said Nico, finally.

“Yeah. You’re not kidding,” I said, blowing out a sigh of frustration. I don’t know what I’d expected…maybe a softball once in a while? But these clearly weren’t going to get any easier. “I'm going to grab a shower and get dressed. Maybe something will come to me."

Besides, I needed a break from the relentless sex appeal and testosterone. I was trying hard not to sweat it and not to show the guys any vulnerability that they could use as an excuse to cozy up to me. I knew I was sending some mixed messages, but every time I tried just to be nice and friendly, it turned into flirting - faults on both sides. I had to try and be hard, not to give them any sort of an opening. And not to give myself one, either.

In the shower, as I tried a few of the more creative settings, I let the latest task play through my head. The problem was that “siren” was not a term open to a great deal of interpretation. In the first task, I had been able to take the word “Queen” in a different fashion to that intended by Zeus, but “siren” was a bit more cut and dried. I might be able to get him the siren off a police car but I had a hunch Zeus wouldn't accept that since the scroll had clearly stated “her” song. An inanimate object hardly qualified. Because, the last thing I needed was the po-po on my tail and breaking into a cop car seemed like a terrible idea.

A siren was a mythical sea creature that lured sailors to their doom with their beautiful song. At least, I assumed they were mythical - once you accepted the existence of ancient gods you had to open your mind a bit - but whether they were mythical or not, they didn't hang about Manhattan.

After showering and getting dressed, still with no ideas, I told the guys I was going out for a walk and a coffee to help me think. Nico immediately said he could make coffee better than any shop, Alexei pointed out the danger I was in and Christoph just frowned. They all had good points, but I needed to think clearly and that was difficult with them around. My thoughts kept going in the wrong direction.

Very wrong.

I needed some time alone and, after some cajoling, I finally got them to agree to walk me to a coffee shop and hang at a book store across the street so I could get a little alone time. An hour later, I found myself staring into the foamy surface of a latte, at a loss.

The siren problem still refused to resolve, possibly because, even without the guys around, clearing my head was next to impossible. A person tasked with saving the world shouldn't also have to deal with a mother in the hospital slowly retreating from the real world and a father making an unexpected return into her life. You need a clear head to save the world.

When this was over - assuming it ended my way - I would visit my mom in the hospital and say goodbye, which would likely mean nothing to her. Then I would return to Mount Olympus to confront my father. I could not predict how that confrontation would turn out, but it seemed best to prepare for the worst. At least, I had a plan for that.

As the thought passed through my mind, a bus stopped outside and I stared at the advertisement emblazoned across its side “CONEY ISLAND MERMAID PARADE!”

A small smile crossed my lips.

Eureka.