Chapter Seven

The panic attacks had been the worst in sixth grade, right after Dad left for the last time. I was having them so frequently that the doctors wanted to put me on medication for it—anxiety meds to counter whatever was causing me to panic so often, so severely.

Enter my therapist and a whole lot of breathing exercises, meditation, and mantras. The therapist I saw for a year, hated for a year, who gave me the tools I needed to deal with the fear of being left behind. Recognizing and acknowledging it lessened the panic attacks to virtually zero. Even considering recent events.

"I thought that might help but I never expected you to knock yourself out. Training you is going to take a significantly larger effort than we anticipated." His goading was ignored. Consciousness regained, I gently pushed myself up into a seated position. My knees must have given out right after I cracked my skull against the mirror. I rubbed the back of my head and frowned. Can't say I've ever knocked myself out before.

The lamia lapped up the juice from his fingers as he stood and retreated into the kitchen, saying over his shoulder, "Didn't know you were so strong, did you. If you're done being panicked for no reason, I wasn't finished. I'm Jasper, friendly neighborhood lamia, here for all your comfort needs and cooking."

I almost laughed; Jasper was far from comforting. Luckily he had disappeared into the kitchen and missed the choked guffaw I stopped in my throat; otherwise he might try to offer me another bleeding fruit.

"I'm not hungry, thanks," I called sarcastically to Jasper. Then I couldn't stop myself from asking, "What are you going to do with it? The fruit, I mean."

One hand busy massaging my head, I used the free one to search. There had to be another way out, a secret passage or hidden door, I just had to find it. I tipped back each book on the nearest shelf in turn, upsetting the dust that lay peacefully on the wood planks. Nothing. My free hand ran along the wallpaper, searching for a tear or hinge or cold spot.

"The pomegranate? I'm going to dig its insides out and serve it to you on a silver platter," came Jasper's deadpan reply, followed by a bark of genuine laughter that didn't belong in a monster's mouth. "You sure you don't want any? Pomegranates are a fall fruit where you come from, you know."

I did not; I'd never eaten a pomegranate before. Mom was never big on fruits. We ate a lot of macaroni and cheese and pizza—so I could identify a pineapple when it was covered in grease and cheese, but not so much a pomegranate. Yet the orange and red fruit was oddly familiar. "How did you know aroma therapy would make the panic attack stop?"

Jasper took too long coming up with an answer. I didn't know if he didn't have one or chose to ignore me. Either way my curiosity wasn't strong enough to ask again.

Using both hands to strengthen the search, I opened drawers in the tables only to find more dust. No clues in the bookshelves or the tables or the dust; I rushed to the nearest painting—a dark city, the yellow-gold specks of paint depicting lights shining out into the night air—and gingerly lifted the corner of the gilded frame away from the wall, enough to peek behind it.

Nothing but wallpaper.

Jasper's voice startled me and I dropped the painting, which thudded against the wall, chiding me for touching it in the first place. "Regrettable, really." Was the pomegranate regrettable? "He should have managed this better."

"What do you mean?" I asked, scanning the room for anywhere else that a hidden door might hide, knowing I wouldn't find anything.

"Come in here so I can stop yelling at you and I'll tell you," Jasper called, sounding very much like my mother. I mentally vowed to continue the search when I had more information and walked over to the kitchen doorway.

Assuming that I really was safe from his hunger for children, I slid into one of the stools across the kitchen island from Jasper. From my vantage point the juice oozed over Jasper's fingers like blood when he scooped the contents of the fruit into a bowl and dropped the husk—peel?—into the sink before washing his hands.

Once finished with his task, the older man turned to me. "Hades should have brought you here the day you were born, but he never listens to me, especially when I'm right. He thought he knew better, thought the system was working. And now, having gone through this several times before," he muttered, more to himself, "He's gone and left all the nitty-gritty details to me, the bastard."

"I bet you're better at details than Hector is anyway," I offered, playing nice.

Jasper huffed but did not seem displeased. "I won't disagree that he has a certain brusqueness that is immediately off-putting and he usually answers questions with more questions. I on the other hand only want to help." The man's head bobbed as he bolstered himself before the self-important grin slid into a frown. He said, more to himself than me, "Honestly, he should have called Hermes in for this; he's the god of delivering unfavorable news, for crying out loud. But unfortunately for all of us, most of the gods are sequestered in Olympus until we can get this mess sorted out. "

I would never be ready for more ridiculous stories but I waited obediently for Jasper to continue.

"Hector, also called Hades, came into his throne fifty years ago. Before that, he was about as human as you are—which is to say that he wasn't as mortal as he thought. Bu here's how it happened: the Nectar of the Gods was stolen and without it they are dying slow excruciating deaths. Think of it like all the pleasantness of drowning forever in maple syrup or becoming paralyzed one blood vessel at a time. When the Old Hades passed down his mantle to Hector—and by that I mean he kicked the proverbial bucket and went on to the great golden wheat field in the sky—he was sent home into the River Styx and the New Hades was born in his stead. All very exciting stuff, had to be there. So Hades is chivalrously trying to stop impending war and restore the Nectar.

"But wait, there's more: because of the missing immortality cocktail, tensions between Olympus and Hades are higher than they've ever been, not even the most trustworthy gods are reliable. And should we succumb to war, you're going to help us."

I held up my hand, palm facing Jasper, and stopped him. "You expect me to believe that gods are real, the ones from Greek myth, the ones who are infinitely old, and that they are dying?" I groaned. Please forgive me while I smash my head into a wall. I'm as crazy as you are, Jasper, don't mind me.

"Yes. And that the Fates prophesized when the Nectar disappeared that a Fury would come to Hades for war and bring victory in her wake. So Hades began his search for this exceptional Fury. You, the universal You, the Furies, are a secret weapon. Sort of. The Fates didn't bother to say what exactly you are supposed to do."

"I guess that's helpful. Maybe I could speak to the Fates, ask a few questions of my own." The words forcefully punctuated the air between us. I locked my jaw against more word vomit, just in case. Save it for the Fates.

Jasper shook his head. "Hades has nothing on the Fates; you'd need six oracles and a year to understand the meaning of their prophecy-riddles and by then it would be too late."

So not only was I a monster that I'd never heard of before today, I was also decidedly not special; just Hector's last resort, the final hope of a Fury who was some kind of secret weapon from the Fates.

I'd never run from a challenge, even if I knew I couldn't win, but this felt like a little too much.

The joke was decidedly on me.

"Hey Jasper, you know what? I'm out," I said as I stood. "This isn't the kind of after-school special I want to be part of. Nobody even bothered to explain to me what a Fury is or does and I think I'll pass. Please open the portal so that I can go home now."

Jasper opened his mouth but something finally clicked in my brain: the right question. Not where am I but what am I. Forget that Hector hadn't volunteered the information; I never bothered to ask.

I needed to know more. Gods, Furies, Fate, war, everything Jasper told me was carefully filed away for later use. Then I remembered something Hector said. Jasper was animatedly reciting all of the reasons why I couldn't go home but I tabled the discussion momentarily.

"You said there were others before me? Other Furies?"

Jasper stopped mid-sentence and looked cautiously at me, a shadow across his face. He paused, carefully choosing his next words. "That would be correct." He spoke slowly, cautiously. "You are the third—and hopefully the last."

"What happened to the other two?" I demanded. "What happened to the first two Furies, Jasper?"

"For one reason or another, they didn't make it," he responded shortly, not deigning to elaborate.

I was right where I started in the first place: in a kitchen in a strange world with more questions than answers and a healthy dose of fear that I ignored.

Fine, let's talk about something else. "Tell me about Furies."

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A/N: Hi, lovelies! Are you enjoying Furious so far? Let me know! Comments, votes, DMs welcome!