Jake, Son Of Zeus 26 Chapter Twenty-Five

Jake was happy to see that Zeus hadn't felt the need to travel incognito this time. His natural form was much more intimidating, matching Hephaestus in height, though not in width. Zeus looked strong, but he had obviously spent more time playing golf recently than working at the forge. Hephaestus made an impact when he first appeared, but when confronted with Zeus's regal power, the aura of a man who was accustomed to being obeyed and to subduing (or destroying) without hesitation those who disobeyed, Hephaestus looked more than a little intimidated. Jake was suddenly glad that Zeus's anger had never been directed at him. Grateful as he was to see his father now, he would've rather faced death itself than this planet of a deity with an angry face.

Zeus's short black curls stuck to his scalp with sweat. He had a small scar beside his mouth, a mark about which Jake had wondered, but never asked. Zeus reached out one of his pianist's hands (Jake remembered thinking when he was a child that his dad's hands were the size of the universe, though he had rarely seen Zeus in this form. Strange that now, when everything else seemed smaller than it had when he was young, his dad's hands seemed not to have changed.) and shook hands with Hephaestus.

"Nice to see you," Zeus said. "Ardalus showed me the s.h.i.+eld you made him for Christmas last year. It's a remarkable piece of work."

"Thanks," Hephaestus said.

"So you're here hanging out with my son?" He said it with a smile, but a paternal fury showed through.

"Zeus, I—"

Jake coughed, and Zeus glanced at him. "I took his hammer," Jake said, twisting the cold bottle in his hands.

Zeus's expression went from anger to amazement to my-child-is-d.a.m.ned-idiot to understanding. "The Fates told you to?" he asked. Jake nodded.

"G.o.d, Jake," Hephaestus said in awe. "You don't want to get mixed up with the Fates. Might as well feed your toes to pigeons. It's safer, less painful, and a lot more fun." He chuckled, then glanced nervously at Zeus.

"I really didn't mean anything by it," Jake said. "I'm trying to get a trial before the Council to—"

Hephaestus cut him off. "The Council? Might as well add eleven more appendages to the pigeon feed. What are you trying to do?"

Zeus answered before he could. "Be mortalized."

Hephaestus's eyes widened and darted from Zeus and Jake and back. Jake said, "The Fates told me I had to commit a crime and be sentenced by the Council to be excommunicated from the immortal world."

Zeus stared at him. "That's risky. The Council isn't the friendliest bunch. Imagine the characters from Kafka's Trial experiencing heroin withdrawals."

"You knew that the Council could make me mortal?"

"Yeah, but I thought it was bad enough you were talking about making a deal with the Fates. I wouldn't send my goldfish to the Council, let alone my kid." Zeus was still looking at him, worry deepening the lines in his face. "Don't agree to this, okay? Give me some time to see if there's something I can do."

"Dad, I—"

"Lily needs her father, complete, with all of his limbs, and present, not wandering through the labyrinth or chiseling Rushmore-sized busts of the Council forever."

Jake sighed and nodded his agreement, trying not to think of whatever it was he had signed in the Fates' living room.

"I'm sorry about this, Hephaestus," Zeus said. "But I hope that we can keep the Council out of this."

"Of course. Let me know if I can do anything to help." Hephaestus shook hands with E. E. and Jake. While he stood and straightened his clothes and lifted the hammer onto his shoulder to prepare to leave, E. E. stood and whispered something quickly to Zeus.

"Just a second," Zeus said to Hephaestus, who turned with a hopeful expression. He listened the rest of E. E.'s message, after which E. E. stepped away and sat down hard on the couch. Jake couldn't imagine what was going through his mind. There were two G.o.ds in his apartment, and he was daft enough to interfere, to whisper messages to the thunderbolt-holder, the chief G.o.d, who until a few months ago, he didn't even believe existed. E. E. had to be cursing the day he met Jake at Paolo's Creamery, and Jake couldn't blame him.

"We're having a picnic next weekend," said Zeus, cheerily. "Just me and Hera and some of the kids. Frisbee, maybe a little baseball. Would you like to come?"

Hephaestus did a very poor job of concealing his excitement as he accepted, said goodbye, and vanished.

"Are you okay?" Zeus asked. Jake nodded, but Zeus leaned close to him and looked him over anyway, turning Jake's head from side to side as though to confirm that he wasn't bleeding from his ears. "So," he continued, turning to E E., "Hephaestus saw me as a father figure?"

"Yeah," E. E. said, downing the rest of his wine cooler. He didn't look up.

Zeus shook his head in a slow, sad way. "Hera did everything she could to keep him away from me. We argued a lot back then. And Hephaestus never—but I should've—" Zeus shook his head again. "Maybe I can make it up to him."

Something Zeus had said clicked into focus. "You're having a picnic with Hera?" Jake asked.

"Yeah. You want to come?"

"No. No, thanks." Jake thought of Hera's message that she'd found a lovely girl for him and shuddered. "I just…I mean, that's unusual."

Zeus gave a half-grin. "We've been getting along wonderfully ever since we split up. She was always so jealous, and I, well, I was never a good husband. Now that she has no reason to be jealous, and I don't have to pretend to be faithful to her, we have a great time."

Jake couldn't imagine Rachel wanting to hang out now that they were apart. He had an image of sitting with her on their pale blue picnic blanket, listening to her discuss her new boyfriend, trying to find something to say that didn't let on how much the thought of her touching another man made him want to rip out his eyes so he would have something to stuff in his ears.

He shuddered and finished off his wine cooler, too. Jake said, "Thanks for coming. You were very…diplomatic."

"It's good not to tick off guys with giant hammers."

"I'll try to remember that."

Zeus made sure again that he was okay and that E. E. was too, then he vanished, leaving the living room empty of overlarge, immortal men.

E. E. took a deep breath, and Jake noticed that his hands were shaking. They sat for a long time there, where they had been sleeping, ages ago.

"I think I'm going to be moving out," Jake said.

E. E. raised his head long enough to look Jake in the eye and nod, then he let his body fall over on the couch. He closed his eyes and lay there. Jake didn't know when he finally fell asleep.

Jake was awake for a long time, looking at the hammer mark in the carpet, just feet from E. E., thinking about Hephaestus and Zeus and Hera and E. E. and Rachel, wis.h.i.+ng the same wish he'd been wis.h.i.+ng over and over again from the day Rachel told him to leave:

Let things go back to the way they were.

Let me have my life back.