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Apollo was hurriedly packing a bag. Clean shirt, underwear, socks. Toothbrush, deodorant, razor. His hand hovered over the packet of condoms – you never knew did you? – in they went. Keys, phone, wallet. Guitar on his back. Ready. He clattered down the front door steps and out into the street, where a taxi was already waiting to take him to the airport. He made it just in time for check-in. Only when the plane had taken off, climbing the clear California sky, did he have time to reflect on what he was hurrying towards. In a few hours this plane would deposit him in Washington, and then it was an easy drive to his father’s house in Mount Olympus. He looked out of the window, flying toward the rising sun, and wondered what had prompted his stepmother to call a family gathering at such short notice.
By the time Apollo swung his hired car onto Cypress Avenue, most of the family was already there. He could see Ares’ battered pick-up parked in the drive, next to Hermes’ sleek silver Audi. He could hear Aphrodite’s laughter coming from indoors as he picked up his overnight bag from the passenger seat and slammed the car door. He heard the reassuring rumble of his father’s voice. Home. Amphitrite was the first to notice his arrival. He was trying to slip in quietly by the kitchen door, but Poseidon’s wife descended in a whoosh of perfume and airborne kisses, crying ‘Darling, you’re here!’, which brought out the complete set of his aunts and sisters to welcome him. Hera first, who was both his aunt and his father’s wife, whom he knew so well that he had long ago short-handed her into ‘mother’. She turned around from the kitchen range long enough to smile at him and say, ‘I’ve put you in the guest room on the second, with Ares and Hermes. Is that alright?’ Apollo nodded, it was all fine by him. Hera’s older sister Hestia said nothing, just squeezed his hand, weakly benevolent through the haze of whatever tranquillizer the doctor had last prescribed. Apollo’s twin sister Artemis came in to give him a short, happy embrace, and for a moment he was almost tearfully glad to be holding his lost half, his equal and his better, both like and unalike. Next Athena appeared, looking faintly disdainful of the emotional outpour going on around her, planting a cool kiss on his cheek. ‘Welcome.’ She was the only one of them to have turned out reasonably human, and Apollo suspected she rather despised the rest of them for not getting a grip. Aphrodite was the last of his sisters to arrive in the kitchen, making an entrance, as usual. She had dressed down for the family weekend, but the tight jeans and sloppy top she wore did nothing to temper her sensuality. As one of the very few males impervious to her charms, Apollo always rather admired Aphrodite’s technique. It was so blatant, but it worked. Her sinuous grace and actressy smile did nothing for him, though. It was her son he had to watch out for. An apparent teenager much too knowing for his age, Eros’s tricks had tripped him up before now. He’d be around somewhere, tagging after Ares or Zeus, trying to prick them with that ridiculous set of arrows he still carried. Fleeing his sister’s overfamiliar clutches, Apollo went to find the rest of his family. In the living room he clapped Ares on the shoulder, hugged Hermes and accepted a drink from Dionysos. He tried to ask his father, whom he found in an edgy discussion with Poseidon on the stairs, what this family meeting was all about, but Zeus would tell him nothing except a gruff, ‘Good to see you, son.’
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‘Empty? It’s too damn full.’
Hermes looked angry. ‘You’re not taking this seriously.’
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