Chapter 4 - Bee
I’ve heard mortals say they can’t live without love . . . that’s not true. They can’t live without oxygen.
~ Mac, the ferocious
My impeccable, super-sonic, goddess hearing picked up the murmured conversation between my potential and a little old lady hunched over before him. Their words echoed like a voice might do through a microphone amp.
“I have a date tonight, and if there’s one thing my momma taught me that stuck, it was not to keep a lady waiting.”
I froze, my entire world reduced to those four little words, ‘I have a date.’ I didn’t want to care, but gods, I did.
“He has a date?” I whisper hissed.
Mac seemed to have frozen in place, too, a flicker of fear flashing in the bright, violet pools of her eyes before disappearing, her determined mask back in place.
“Just keep it cool, lady-lust, it’s just a date. And you don’t want him, anyway. He's bad news, the permanent kind, remember?”
I rubbed my chest that was now aching for an entirely different reason. The pain from the arrow long since faded, but a pang of envy pushed into my chest and sat there like a heavy lump of cement. Jealousy was such an ugly, painful emotion. I didn’t even know the man! I didn’t want to know the man! Yet, I wanted to tear this unknown date’s hair from her head, then gouge out her eyes and wear them from a necklace.
“He has a date,” I whispered again.
As swiftly as the sting of envy arrived, it disappeared under the heat of anger.
“He has a date!” I snapped, my anger now directed at Mac, and only because she was close enough to be caught up in my tornado of fury.
“Now, now, that’s a good thing. You don’t want any entanglements with a potential, right?”
“Of course not,” I spat indignantly.
“Then let it go,” Mac said soothingly. “Let, it, go . . . let it go, let it go.” She softly sang the celebrated song from Frozen.
“Let it go,” I echoed her words, watching as my potential sauntered off down the street. It seemed the further away he got, the easier it was to focus on what was really important here: not falling in freaking love!
Mac grabbed the key from my fingers.
“Let it go, and let’s go check out the bachelorette pad Eros hooked us up with.”
After snatching the paper with the address from my other hand, Mac began skipping off in the opposite direction of my potential. With one last regretful glance at the mortal who swaggered like a rock star, I turned away and followed my friend.
“Holy shibblets, are you sure this is the right address?” I murmured, following Mac inside the rundown apartment.
I had a ton of more effective curse words on the tip of my tongue, but Mac had I had an ongoing bet to curb the cursing. My mother had been the one to point out how out of control our tasteless foul language had become. She said a real woman doesn’t need to curse to get her point across, and Mac and I took her statement for what it was . . . a challenge. In an attempt to reduce the profanity, we decided the first to swear would be the loser, and our competitive nature saw us stop cursing, cold turkey. So now, five years later, I stuck to the watered down version of what I really wanted to say. The front door before me had a lock which had clearly been busted and hung loosely off the door, and the scent of cat pee filled the sticky floored foyer. Mac glanced around with a puzzled frown.
“Where’s the doorman?”
A male figure jumped down the three visible stairs to our right, a black hoodie covering part of his face, long, shaggy, unwashed hair covering the other half. He looked young, maybe sixteen, seventeen tops, but his baby soft pale skin and fine bone structure made him look even younger. He was tall, but lean, almost on the emaciated side. Black skinny jeans only emphasized his thin physic; chunky biker boots made his feet look enormous. He was the epitome of gothic fashion and pulled it off like a seasoned professional. Having jumped to the floor directly in front of me, Goth Boy glanced my way and leaned in far too close, clearly uncaring of my personal space of which I was fiercely protective. Then, he sniffed me. I raised a brow and caught Mac’s startled gaze as she watched the bubble invader with sharp eyes that promised blood and death. Yep, definitely Hades’ girl.
“Did you just, sniff me?” I asked, not flinching or retreating. Always hold your ground, it was one of the first things I learned about battling an opponent. The gods were obsessed with battle, and most children learned at an early age how to defend themselves. Even with my muted powers I could squish the spindly mortal with my little finger. Suddenly the emo garbed man waved his long, slender fingers about in front of my face.
“I see you,” he said in a sing-song voice.
“Oh man,” Mac groaned from the other side of the small foyer. “I hate it when someone outclasses my crazy!”
Said crazy turned his confused gaze to my strikingly beautiful yet fearsome friend, then backed away from her, fear so pungent it made my nose wrinkle with distaste. Tripping over a loose tile, Goth Boy turned and ran out the damaged door, banging through it with such ferocity I could now understand how the lock might have been broken in the first place.
“He was obviously won over by your sparkling personality,” I said dryly.
“Let me see that address,” Mac snapped, grabbing the paper out of my hand.
Checking that we definitely had the right apartment building, we spent a few minutes cursing in our fluent non-curse language with words like ‘effing’ and ‘douche-nozzle’ at the out-of-order elevator before taking the narrow staircase. We could have traced, but without my bow and my powers weakened, I wasn’t sure of my limitations. I’d eventually have to experiment to see what I could and couldn’t do, but for now, we were doing it the old-fashioned way, with Mac spitting out a stinging verbal assault that made me smile. She was struggling not to drop the ‘F’ bomb right now. We were going on five years without a single curse word, and the first one to cave and let loose a filthy word would owe the other ten years’ worth of pedicures, and I hated touching other people’s feet, even Mac’s.
Floor eight, apartment thirteen ‘A’. We stood at the door to the apartment, trying to figure out what the rusty colored spray pattern across its front might be.
“Blood,” Mac said with a firm nod, trying to pass me the key.
“I think it’s poop . . . you open it,” I whispered, already wondering what creepy crawlies might live in the cave beyond. Even an immortal had her hard limits, and spiders and cockroaches were mine. I shoved her hand and the key away.
“Hell no, it’s yours, and you owe me for hooking you up with Thanatos.”
“Oh hell no, you might have intended to hook me up with Thanatos, but you were the one who actually bagged and tagged him, and I let that slide because he was hot has Hades and I would have done the exact same thing.”
“Barf,” Mac whispered. “Please don’t use that analogy, it makes my stomach curl.”
“And it was over a century ago, so it no longer counts.”
“Of course it counts. IOUs are forever!”
I sighed as the fight quickly drained out of my body. While my powers were low, my energy was a little deflated. I needed a hot bath and a nap. Perhaps the room on the other side was as opulent as one such as I deserved. My father had set this up and he was a freaking god, and I was a freaking goddess. Of course the room beyond would be extravagant and beautiful. Snatching the key from Mac, I promptly unlocked the door and kicked it open with my Converse covered foot.
“Oh my gods, this must be a mistake. Call your father,” Mac was quick to say.
My mouth was gaping as I dared to take a small step into the apartment. The sparsely furnished room before me was tiny, with yellowed walls, worn grey carpet with more than a few suspicious stains upon it, and a musty smell that made me sneeze. With a sniffle, I took another step. I was standing just inside a living area that had no windows, the room so small I felt a little claustrophobic. A faded brown couch sat in front of a small TV table which had a dangerous lean to one side. To the left the area led to a small kitchenette that had been built in the eighties, with a yellow and brown backsplash, yellow countertop, and rusted stove. It all appeared to be clean, thank the gods for small mercies. A tiny window above the sink gave promise of a view to the building next door. Daring to venture further into this depressing cesspit, I cautiously wandered through the living room and down a narrow corridor. Off to one side of the short, narrow hallway was a windowless bedroom, again small, with a stained single mattress lying on the floor in the center. The musty smell that permeated from the entire apartment now clung to my opalescent skin, making me shoot out another sneeze. Turning around, I came face to face with the doorway to the bathroom and shuddered. Like the rest of the apartment, it was tiny. There was a toilet in a nasty yellow shade that may have once been white tucked tight into one corner. Regardless of my immortality and powers, I still needed the throne room, and this one made me want to cry. There was no way my behind was touching that bacteria bowl. I was thankful for my leg strength because there was some serious squatting in my future. Not to break the common theme of ‘small,’ the shower was tiny with a torn and discolored curtain separating it from the rest of the obnoxiously small space. And that was it, my home.
With every intention of collapsing into a miserable heap in my best friend's waiting arms, I spun around, a sob waiting to tumble off my lips, but Mac was not there. Glancing down the corridor to the teeny tiny living room beyond, I found my BFF still standing outside the doorway, her face frozen in horror.
“I think it’s safe to come in,” I murmured. “I mean, it’s small.” I sniffled. “It’s old.” My voice wavered, and I sneezed, again. “It smells funky, but there are no spiders.”
When Mac’s horrified gaze finally found mine, she seemed to shake off her frozen stupor. She pushed her shoulders back, and her face morphed into one of determination, her eyes narrow, and her lips tightened. She looked like a defiant angel, and it was this strength that boosted me when I needed that little extra push.
“I’ll fix this. I’ll book a hotel suite, nothing less than the penthouse, five stars . . . no six! I can fix this.” She leveled me with a resolute gaze. “Mac’s got this.” Her gaze then wandered to something beside me and her brow furrowed. “And you,” she demanded. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, stop checking out my girls’ lady lumps!”
And there was the icing on the cake, we had a ghost.