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I still have that warm, things-will-turn-out feeling when Daisy and I look into the lens for the last shot of the day.
“That’s it,” Julien says. “Daisy, Artemis, you were wonderful.”
“She knows,” I answer.
We all laugh again.
That’s when I hear the buzzing.
My phone, in my purse, on a side table at the side of the room. I go there with two assistants at my side, one of them holding a robe.
I get my phone out and answer without looking at the screen. “Hello?”
There’s a loud sniff on the other end of the line. Calliope, crying. “Artemis? Can you come home? Something happened.”
8
APOLLO
“Betrayal,” Delphi sings, strumming a loud, cheery chord on her guitar. “Like pulling down the temple and stealing all the sac-ri-fices, asking for replacements with their overflowing hands?—”
“Wow.” I hold up a hand to shield myself from whatever this song is and move past her into my office. Overcoat off. Phone on desk. I hit some keys on my keyboard. The screen lights up.
Delphi follows me, picking out a complicated melody that sounds like a burbling stream. “How quickly they forget,” she sings. “The songs and prayers and heavy prices?—”
“Delphi.”
“Paid to honor an absent god?—”
“I’m not absent. I’m sitting right in front of you.”
“You’re not a god.” She strums even faster, pacing in front of my desk and glaring at me. “You’ve just forgotten?—”
“I didn’t forget about you.”
“You got engaged!” A final, random strum, and Delphi slaps her hand on the front of her guitar. “Or you were secretly engaged and never told me! And then you just told the entire world! Before me! Your boss!”
“You’re not my boss.”
“I am one hundred percent your boss. I do your schedule.”
It’s five seconds into the morning, and I cannot be dragged into this discussion. I already want to throw myself into the nearest vehicle—I’ll steal it if I have to—and drive back to that place on Park Avenue. I don’t know why Daisy’s having photos taken there, and I don’t have the energy to care. I just want to be with Artemis.
And not because I have a terrible sense of foreboding. Because I don’t want an episode to whiplash over to her and kill her. There’s no telling how fucked this could get.
I rub my hands over my face, drop them on the desk, and look Delphi in the eye.
“Fine. You’re my boss.”
“Awesome,” she sings. “Then I want a raise.”
“You can have a raise.”
Delphi plays a mysterious tune. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never been better.”
The tune gets more mysterious. “Stop bullshitting me,” Delphi sings.
