Page 66 of Hercules

“Reks’s fandom. They call themselves The Flock, but lately I’ve been replacing that with other choice F words.” And then another of the tearful little bursts. “They refuse to accept that Reks found a woman who actually makes him happy. They’re convinced I’m just using him to get ahead, and I’ll cheat the first chance I get. And of course, misery loves its company…”

“So the press is already on their side.”

The empathy in Lo’s voice, a natural flow considering this fresh batch of news, also seemed to buff a few edges from Natasha’s mood. Still her sigh was thick before she muttered, “Sheep will be sheep.”

“And flocks will fly into hurricanes.”

A tiny laugh was the last thing Lo expected from her boss, though it was a far cry from Nat’s usual pink champagne of laughter. This was more like bad airplane vodka in a lonely little bottle, which had Lo grimacing before Nat’s quiet reply.

“Funny. That’s exactly what Reks said.”

“Oh.” Another infusion of surprise, though she rushed to cover it beneath Herc’s ongoing monitoring. “So, you…uhhh…already spoke with him?”

“He’s the one who talked me out of ordering a yakuza hit on you as soon as we land.”

The woman was only half-kidding; Lois was as sure of it as the wad of barbed wire gaining new traction in her throat. If she could only blame the tangle on a simple bout of trauma, it might not hurt as much. But the other half of her fear was silly; she had to believe that too. Even if Nat did suspect the truth about her background—highly unlikely, since the woman had only asked about it once, when she was high as a kite—there’d be nothing to discover. Lo had destroyed all the evidence five years ago, not daring to defy Okan’s deathbed plea. At the time, she could hardly believe it herself. The woman who’d forced her to keep up her native language and had dragged her to Little Tokyo for every Shinto festival of the year was the same person who’d clutched her in a death grip and ordered her to destroy the evidence of it all, including their life in Japan.

You have to keep it all in your heart now, my sweet Yamaneko. Don’t give them the evidence to end your life, as well. Promise me!

She almost thanked Herc for taking another step closer, jarring her from the agonizing memory. Not that things were peachy-peaceful with the current situation, even after mentally cropping out his creeper glare. Nat’s pause was prominent, communicating her expectation for a reply—but for the first time in a long time, Lo’s inspiration bank pinged on empty. She, the one with a comeback for everything, was muted by memories. Frozen by the flashbacks she’d banished from her brainwaves less than twenty-four hours ago. All back with a vengeance…

The invader she beat back long enough to get out a semblance of a reply.

“Okay.” Semblance was right. Did she actually sound no older than fifteen again, or was her mind messing with her worse than she thought? But she had to pull her business together. Nat wasn’t burning the goodwill of the FAA, as well as the zeroes in her bank account, just to harp at her and then vague through a yakuza-themed barb. Something else was up. “So, what’s the actual plan?”

Holeee shit.

As the query left her mouth, a new dread stabbed her mind.

What if Nat’s feed had included a message from the Beverly Hills Police? Or the FBI? About the dead body in the foyer of her mansion?

And—possibly—the other corpse on top of her crashed chandelier?

But Apollo promised he’d handle the woman. More precisely, to save her—not an impossibility, considering the famous scope of the god’s powers—with plans of interrogating her about the forces behind the mission to seize Natasha.

Seize her…or worse.

The thought was unavoidable, colliding with images of what the girl goon had already done to the poor worker from the chinchilla breeder. The biya had switched out her falmouth canister for a large load of bullets and not hesitated to take some advance target practice on a complete stranger. With that kind of initiative, what had her superiors—whoever the hell they were—ordered her to do with Nat?

Lo shivered. She was rewarmed only by the knowledge that Natasha was nearly an ocean away now. The woman could be an infuriating piece of work but didn’t deserve a bullet in her brain because of her douchebag demigod of a boyfriend. Especially now, as she sighed like the world’s swooniest love song was on repeat in her head.

“The plan?” And then reiterated Lo’s query with wispy wonder. “Well, thanks to my amazing man, it’s not changing…much.”

Lois’s stress was apparently ready for an echo too—though it had to be owed to Nat’s one-eighty take on their conversation, right? Not the woman’s half-giggling emphasis on her final word…

But who did that paint as the real dumbshit here?

Of course it was the giggle. Dropped right there on purpose—meaning Lo was being called to the conversational throne with her matching mien in hand.

“Hmmm,” she teased, even using the moment to tilt a see-now-everything’s-okay glance back in Herc’s direction. Besides wasn’t it a good thing for them to know what was going on with Natasha now, if Rizon-in-the-Reks’s-costume was going to be involved? “That does sound promising.”

“Right?” A new giggle, softer but longer, as if Nat was covering the sound to be considerate of other travelers. “Lo, he wants to take me to an onsen.” She didn’t let her naughty rasp rest through much of a pause. “You know what I mean, right? One of those inns up in the mountains with the naturally fed hot springs and bathing suits optional?”

This time, Lo couldn’t help her own small laugh. Was this really her namaste-and-kandi girl boss, with the side-boob-and-tofu selfies, tittering about a naked hot tub vacation with her free spirit boyfriend? If she needed any proof that she was living in an alternate existence right now, this was it on a golden platter.

“Well, hai,” she joked back in the language-appropriate affirmative. “I’ve heard of them, for sure.” And might have even gone to a few in her early years, though some memories had faded whether she liked it or not. Sorry, Mom. I’m trying…

Luckily Nat was on an eager roll about the new subject. “Okay, so…get this. Reks is going to take me to his favorite one, except…” A new, giddier gasp. “It’s not on a hill. It’s totally underground.”