As each day ended, she felt that her quest to get to know the hetairoi was progressing. Super fast with Cleo, strong-minded Bryony, Tassos the manticore, always ready for a practical joke, and quiet Petra. Much slower with Ezios, and prickly, austere, distant Ava the eagle, and wild Rastus the cockatrice. They were a family, and they were slowly letting her in; she felt less like a visitor and more like, oh, a great-aunt.
At the end of the week, she came to breakfast while it was still dark outside, hearing the sound of laughter. It sounded like the teasing was aimed at Cleo.
“ . . .not another one!” Bryony rolled her eyes.
“What?” Cleo said, shrugging. “What do you mean, another one? There is no one like Ariadne. For one thing, she’s traveled a lot—”
“Another new best friend? How many best friends do you have?” Iliana asked.
Cleo turned bright red. “I can’t just dump one because I make a new one! Besides, Ariadne is different—she wants to settle here on the island.”
“She came off that yacht,” Bryony said, crossing her arms. A tattoo of a lotus with crossed knives below it rippled on her strong forearm. “That, right there, makes me suspicious.”
“But not all of them work for Medusa,” Cleo said. “I mean, some of them work for her, but only in the sense that they work on the yacht. They aren’t Medusa’s personal people. Ariadne’s a cook, but she said she hates living in a crowded city. And she collects Marvel comics! She loves the same superheroes I do!”
“Oh, well, this one loves the same superheroes, that’s different,” Tassos drawled, but not meanly.
“You should meet Ariadne. You’d like her, too,” Cleo exclaimed earnestly. “Since today is my free day, and the weather is supposed to be perfect, she’s making us a picnic, and we’re going scuba diving. She wants to see the coral up close.”
Mateo looked down the table at her. “Stay away from the yacht. Kyrios’s orders.”
“I know that.” It was Cleo’s turn to roll her eyes.
Bryony turned to Jen. “Ms. Jen, if you ever get tired of that jacket, I want it.”
“No, I call first dibs,” Tassos said.
Jen laughed, shaking the fringes along her sleeves, which now reminded her of her phoenix wings. “I suspect I’ll be wearing it until it falls into pieces.”
With that, breakfast ended, and those on duty went to work out.
With a flip of her hand, Cleo jumped over the wall, shifted mid-air, flickered just enough between dimensions to turn invisible to the human eye, and flew off. Jen followed the rest to the training ground.
After lunch she went down to the clinic to see if she could help—and to see Nikos. She found the place packed, and ended up being recruited to restock bandages. She never even saw Nikos, who was busy fixing up a bunch of shifters who’d apparently been in a bad knife fight.
They look more like they were worked over by an expert, but they aren’t talking, he said mind to mind, between patients.
Did Medusa’s people attack them? She thought back.
No one’s saying anything. Oh, here’s another one. And she felt his focus turn away.
As the shadows began to lengthen, she was let go so that she’d be able to eat before she shifted. She walked up toward the hall, thinking wistfully that they were getting very intimate for two people who couldn’t even kiss.
He flew up to the hall and joined her for the last stretch. “Did anyone say what happened to those shifters?” she asked.
No. Which troubles me, he answered. But at least now they are asleep in the nursing annex, and the few less badly wounded are on their way back down to the harbor.
So it ended up being a good day.
Well, as good as she could get when her nights were spent as a bird.
They parted outside the hall, Nikos waiting on
the broad terrace outside the hall as various people came up to him with messages and questions—some able to converse by mind, and others waiting till he shifted to human.
Jen went into the hall, and when Ezios and Calix made space for her at a table, happiness flooded her heart. She loved the natural way everyone had adjusted to her and Nikos eating at odd times, just to accommodate their enforced shifts.
The conversation was general during dinner. As usual, she was as ravenous as someone half her age. She’d polished off fher braised chicken and was just spooning up the last of her lemon soup when that bees-walking-over-her skin sensation warned her that she was about to become a phoenix for the night.