The Tower of Nero

wounded leg.
Deprived of commercials, she sat back and watched the blur of landscape out the window—the East River, then Queens, zipping by at a speed that mortal commuters could only dream of…which, to be fair, was anything above ten miles an hour. Anger steered, completely blind, as Wasp occasionally called out course corrections. “Left. Brake. Left. No, the other left!”
“So cool,” Meg said. “I love this cab.”
I frowned. “Have you taken the Gray Sisters’ cab often?”
My tone was the same as one might say You enjoy homework?
“It was a special treat,” Meg said. “When Lu decided I’d trained really well, we’d go for rides.”
I tried to wrap my mind around the concept of this mode of transportation as a treat. Truly, the emperor’s household was a twisted, evil place.
“The girl has taste!” Wasp cried. “We are the best way around the New York area! Don’t trust those ride-sharing services! Most of them are run by unlicensed harpies.”
“Harpies!” Tempest howled.
“Stealing our business!” Anger agreed.
I had a momentary vision of our friend Ella behind the wheel of a car. It made me almost glad to be in this taxi. Almost.
“We’ve upgraded our service, too!” Tempest boasted.
I forced myself to focus on her eye sockets. “How?”
“You can use our app!” she said. “You don’t have to summon us with gold coins anymore!”
She pointed to a sign on the Plexiglas partition. Apparently, I could now link my favorite magic weapon to their cab and pay via virtual drachma using something called GRAY RYYD.
I shuddered to think what the Arrow of Dodona might do if I allowed it to make online purchases. If I ever got back to Olympus, I’d find my accounts frozen and my palace in foreclosure because the arrow had bought every known copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio.
“Cash is fine,” I said.
Wasp grumbled to Anger, “You and your predictions. I told you the app was a stupid idea.”
“Stopping for Apollo was stupider,” she muttered back. “That was your prediction.”
“You’re both stupid!” snapped Tempest. “That’s my prediction!”
The reasons for my long-standing dislike of the Gray Sisters were starting to come back to me. It wasn’t just that they were ugly, rude, gross, and smelled of grave rot. Or that the three of them shared one eye, one tooth, and zero social skills.
It wasn’t even the awful job they did hiding their celebrity crushes. In ancient Greek days, they’d had a crush on me, which was uncomfortable, but at least understandable. Then—if you can believe it—they got over me. For the past few centuries they’d been in the Ganymede Fan Club. Their Instagod posts about how hot he was got so annoying, I finally had to leave a snarky comment. You know that meme with the honey bear and the caption honey, he gay? Yes, I created that. And in Ganymede’s case, it was hardly news.
These days they’d decided to have a collective crush on Deimos, the god of fear, which just made no romantic sense to me. Sure, he’s buff, and he has nice eyes, but…
Wait. What was I talking about again?
Oh, right. The biggest friction between the Gray Sisters and me was professional jealousy.
I was a god of prophecy. The Gray Sisters told the future, too, but they weren’t under my corporate umbrella. They paid me no tribute, no royalties, nothing. They got their wisdom from…Actually, I didn’t know. Rumor had it they were born of the primal sea gods, created from swirls of foam and scum, so they knew little bits of wisdom and prophecy that got swept up in the tides. Whatever the case, I didn’t like them poaching my territory, and for some inexplicable reason, they didn’t like me back.
Their predictions…Hold on. I did a mental rewind. “Did you say something about predicting you would pick me up?”
“Ha!” Tempest said. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”
Anger cackled. “As if we would share that bit of doggerel we have for you—”
“Shut up, Anger!” Wasp slapped her sister. “He didn’t ask yet!”
Meg perked up. “You have a dog for Apollo?”
I cursed under my breath. I saw where this conversation was going. The Three Sisters loved to play coy with their auguries. They liked to make their passengers beg and plead to find out what they knew about the future. But really, the old gray dingbats were dying to share.
In the past, every time I’d agreed to listen to their so-called prophetic poetry, it turned out to be a prediction of what I would have for lunch, or an expert opinion about which Olympian god I most resembled. (Hint: It was never Apollo.) Then they would pester me for a critique and ask if I would share their poetry with my literary agent. Ugh.
I wasn’t sure what tidbits they might have for me this time, but I was not going to give them the satisfaction of asking. I already had enough actual prophetic verse to worry about.
“Doggerel,” I explained for Meg’s sake, “means a few irregular lines of poetry. With these three, that’s redundant, since everything they do is irregular.”
“We won’t tell you, then!” Wasp threatened.
“We will never tell!” Anger agreed.
“I didn’t ask,” I said blandly.
“I want to hear about the dog,” Meg said.
“No, you don’t,” I assured her.
Outside, Queens blurred into the Long Island suburbs. In the front seat, the Gray Sisters practically quivered with eagerness to spill what they knew.
“Very important words!” Wasp said. “But you’ll never hear them!”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“You can’t make us!” Tempest said. “Even though your fate depends on it!”
A hint of doubt crept into my cranium. Was it possible—? No, surely not. If I fell for their tricks, I’d most likely get the Gray Sisters’ hot take on which facial products were perfect for my skin undertones.
“Not buying it,” I said.
“Not selling!” Wasp shrieked. “Too important, these lines! We would only tell you if you threatened us with terrible things!”
“I will not resort to threatening you—”
“He’s threatening us!” Tempest flailed. She slammed Wasp on the back so hard the communal eyeball popped right out of her socket.