and I knocked on the door.
“You have three seconds to go away or I’ll kill you, Barbie,” a raspy voice called from the other side. My eyes widened as I looked at Cronus, who was hiding off to the side. He made a motion for me to keep going. How the hell did this woman know I looked like a Barbie? A very natural looking and cool surfer Barbie, body positive with a big brain, obviously.
“I have news about your father,” I blurted out.
Cronus face-palmed and I grinned because it was a funny thing to see a thousands-year-old god do.
The next thing I knew, the door yanked open and two hands were around my shoulders.
“What did you say?” a beautiful black-haired woman in her thirties asked me.
“Let us inside and I’ll tell you.” I grinned, hoping my straight white teeth would get me in the door. This Insta smile was worth 10k likes. It should buy me ten seconds with a grumpy witch.
“Us?” She growled and looked to the left.
Busted.
“Cronus,” she seethed, and the hands on my shoulders suddenly turned vise-like.
“Oww. Human here,” I screeched.
Cronus ran forward and shoved the both of us inside, slamming the door behind him. “Narida! Greetings. It’s been so long.”
Her eyes glowed red for the slightest second and she released me, pointing her finger at him. A fine red … magic? … crawled from her finger and across the air like slow lightning, making its way right to Cronus.
He didn’t look fazed, probably because he knew it wouldn’t kill him … but it might kill me.
“Hey! Hey! Whoa there. Let’s talk.” I jumped in front of the red magic beam.
I was in a witch’s house in Greece, wearing a Calvin Klein bikini. No big deal.
“So, I’m human, and I’m tethered to this guy. We can’t go more than five feet from each other or it hurts. So if you hurt him, it might kill me, and I don’t want to die.”
She looked between the two of us, as if she could see something between us. Then she burst out laughing. “He owes you a life debt?” she asked incredulously.
Yeah. Kinda. I guess. “He totally does. So yeah. Please don’t hurt us. We need your help.”
She sucked the red magic back into her finger and took a long sniff. “You don’t smell human,” she told me.
These magical people needed to get out more. Seriously.
“I probably need a shower, but the point is, he needs a weapon or the gods that hate him, and there are a lot, will kill us. I’m only twenty-one, I still have to do stuff.”
Get to one million Insta followers, buy a mansion on the beach, have sex with a god—ya know, important stuff. And I wouldn’t forget my vow to stop whaling and save the dolphins, because that shit mattered too. Suffice it to say, I still had a lot of life left to live.
“He killed my father, slept with my sister, and left in the middle of the night!” she growled at me.
Cronus opened his mouth to speak but I shoved my hand in his face, palm out. I knew the sister thing would come up. This guy was clueless.
“I know! He’s a total dick. The father thing was an accident. Your pops was in the way of the person Cronus really wanted to kill. But he totally should have left your sister flowers or something.”
The witch crossed her arms and looked at me. “There’s nothing either of you could give me that I need. I have money, power, and love.” She jutted her chin out and all my hopes of using that gold bar to woo her were dashed.
“I’ll give you a blood offering,” Cronus said, low and steady, behind me. “And I’ll leave a little note for your sister next time, to make it all better.”
The witch’s mouth popped open. “Was that sarcasm? Gods don’t do sarcasm.”
I grinned. “I taught him that.”
“Do we have a deal or not?” Cronus growled.
Testy, testy.
“A willing blood offering from the Titan of time itself? You’ve got a deal.” The crone grinned.
Whoa. That was easy. Which definitely meant that his blood probably did very bad things when mixed with this witch’s magic.
Future Maisey’s problem.
“How long will this weapon take?” I asked, hopping from foot to foot as nerves got the best of me. “There are two insanely hot, completely psycho gods chasing us…” Speaking of … why the hell were they not banging down the door right now? They hadn’t been that far