Rise of the Blood by Lucienne Diver Page A

failing. It felt thin, frail, too cool, as if it could barely sustain itself, let alone actual life. I remembered Apollo speaking to the West Wind back in San Francisco. I wondered which wind spirit might rule the roost on Mount Parnassus and whether it might be prevailed upon to pump up the volume. I’d have to ask Apollo when he wasn’t too busy turning into a tree.
    The thought was like a slap in the face. I had to get it together. People were counting on me—my cousin to fill out her wedding party, Apollo to solve a mystery. Apollo —now there was someone with problems.
    Breathing…yeah, I had this. No problem.
    I tried again and managed to breathe a little deeper this time, taking in maybe enough oxygen to get to my next breath.
    “Totally,” I lied to Nick.
    Fake it ’til you make it , Pappous had always said.
    I grabbed my luggage from the back of the limo like the others, and Viggo held us back until the important people in the other limo were swept in ahead of us.
    We were met inside by two women in hot pink suits and even brighter smiles. Their skirts stopped right above the knees. Their smiles stretched from ear to ear. Tina’s friend Junessa, and her other boss, besides Lenny Rialto, Althea Fielding. The three had become thick as thieves after Junie had recruited Tina to sell Eterné, sort of like Avon or Mary Kay but focused on eternal youth and beauty, just like the name implied. Both women were wearing Eterné’s signature color—fuschia—and were bedecked with sample bags they handed out to the wedding guests as we arrived.
    Junie squealed when she saw me and swallowed me up in a backbreaking Amazonian hug. Actual Amazons were mythical, so far as I knew. So, no, the female warriors hadn’t had breasts removed to better aim their bows. But if they had existed, Junie would have fit right in. She was wearing ballet flats right now, but even so she was nearly six feet tall, all of it lean muscle. Her gorgeous cherry-wood skin glowed with health and her dark hair shone under the overhead lobby lights. I thwapped her on the back and coughed to signal my surrender, and she let me go.
    “Sorry. I forget you’re not a hugger. You look fantastic!” she said, pulling back to study me more critically. “Except—” She wet her finger and scrubbed at the drool stains at the corner of my mouth. I jerked away, and Armani laughed.
    “I’ve been wanting to do that myself.”
    “Why didn’t you?” Junie asked.
    “I didn’t want to lose a hand.”
    Junie grinned at him. “Oh, she’s more bark than bite.”
    “Really?” Althea cut in, handing her last bag to Yiayia as she sailed by. “Don’t you remember the time in that bar where the good ol’ boy wouldn’t take no for an answer and Tori almost made him eat his arm?”
    “You brute,” Nick said, proudly.
    “Oh, we have some stories to tell,” Althea promised mischievously. “Catch us later.”
    “It’s a date,” he said.
    “No, it isn’t,” I said sourly, waving good-bye to them as I pushed Nick toward check-in.
    “Jealous?” he teased.
    I snorted, only because I couldn’t honestly tell him he was wrong. Junie and Althea got more than their share of attention—not the least of which from my brother, who’d tried to score with them ever since Tina had brought them around. As far as I knew, it was still girls two, Spiro zip.
    Where Junie was tall and muscular, Althea was smaller and coltish with one of those natural size-zero bodies…maybe size two, tops. She could wear spaghetti straps without worrying about completely unnecessary bra straps. In other words, she was sleek like a model. She had big brown doe eyes, wheat-gold hair pulled back into a complicated braid and perfect sun-bronzed skin. No freckles, no wrinkles. It was enough to make me an eensy bit interested in what was in the little pink sample bags they’d handed out.
    “So, what’s the story there?” Nick asked as we waited our turn, jerking his head to indicate