be.” I stared at my license. “April eighth, it says here. That can’t be right. I was born on the seventh day of the seventh month. Of course, the months were different back then. Let’s see, the month of Gamelion? But that was in the wintertime—”
“How do gods celebrate, anyway?” Frank mused. “Are you seventeen now? Or four thousand and seventeen? Do you eat cake?”
He sounded hopeful about that last part, as if imagining a monstrous gold-frosted confection with seventeen Roman candles on the top.
I tried to calculate my correct day of birth. The effort made my head pound. Even when I’d had a godly memory, I hated keeping track of dates: the old lunar calendar, the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar, leap year, daylight savings time. Ugh. Couldn’t we just call every day Apolloday and be done with it?
Yet Zeus had definitely assigned me a new birthdate: April 8. Why? Seven was my sacred number. The date 4/8 had no sevens. The sum wasn’t even divisible by seven. Why would Zeus mark my birthday as four days from now?
I stopped in my tracks, as if my own legs had turned into a marble pedestal. In my dream, Caligula had insisted that his pandai finish their work by the time the blood moon rose in five days. If what I observed had happened last night…that meant there were only four days left from today, which would make doomsday April 8, Lester’s birthday.
“What is it?” Frank asked. “Why is your face gray?”
“I—I think my father left me a warning,” I said. “Or perhaps a threat? And Terminus just pointed it out to me.”
“How can your birthday be a threat?”
“I’m mortal now. Birthdays are always a threat.” I fought down a wave of anxiety. I wanted to turn and run, but there was nowhere to go—only forward into New Rome, to gather more unwelcome information about my impending doom.
“Lead on, Frank Zhang,” I said halfheartedly, slipping my license back in my wallet. “Perhaps Tyson and Ella will have some answers.”
New Rome…the likeliest city on earth to find Olympian gods lurking in disguise. (Followed closely by New York, then Cozumel during spring break. Don’t judge us.)
When I was a god, I would often hover invisibly over the red-tiled rooftops, or walk the streets in mortal form, enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of our imperial heyday.
It was not the same as ancient Rome, of course. They’d made quite a few improvements. No slavery, for one thing. Better personal hygiene, for another. Gone was the Subura—the jam-packed slum quarter with its firetrap apartments.
Nor was New Rome a sad theme-park imitation, like a mock Eiffel Tower in the middle of Las Vegas. It was a living city where modern and ancient mixed freely. Walking through the Forum, I heard conversations in a dozen languages, Latin among them. A band of musicians held a jam session with lyres, guitars, and a washboard. Children played in the fountains while adults sat nearby under trellises shaded with grape vines. Lares drifted here and there, becoming more visible in the long afternoon shadows. All manner of people mingled and chatted—one-headed, two-headed, even dog-headed cynocephali who grinned and panted and barked to make their points.
This was a smaller, kinder, much-improved Rome—the Rome we always thought mortals were capable of but never achieved. And, yes, of course we gods came here for nostalgia, to relive those wonderful centuries when mortals worshipped us freely across the empire, perfuming the air with burnt sacrifices.
That may sound pathetic to you—like an oldies concert cruise, pandering to over-the-hill fans of washed-up bands. But what can I say? Nostalgia is one ailment immortality can’t cure.
As we approached the Senate House, I began to see vestiges of the recent battle. Cracks in the dome glistened with silver adhesive. The walls of some buildings had been hastily replastered. As with the camp, the city streets seemed less crowded than I remembered, and every so often—when a cynocephalus barked, or a blacksmith’s hammer clanged against a piece of armor—the people nearby flinched at the noise, as if wondering whether they should seek shelter.
This was a traumatized city, trying very hard to get back to normal. And based on what I’d seen in my dreams, New Rome was about to be re-traumatized in just a few days.
“How many people did you lose?” I asked Frank.
I was afraid to hear numbers, but I felt compelled to ask.
Frank glanced around us, checking if anyone else was in earshot. We were heading up