My Date From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy, #2)

Hipster decoder ring and other godly toys (Part 3)

The song switched tempos. Still fast, but somehow easier for me to follow. "Okay, Fee. Start from the top and explain how trying to follow this DDR wannabe is gonna bring back my memory?"

Festos stretched out his bad leg. "Your brain is really plastic and changeable. It rewires itself with use. Dancing is one of the best ways to rebuild cognitive reserve—basically, how your brain deals with damage. The memory spell, in this case, is the damage."

He paused to type in a command, amping up the speed of the routine. "See," Festos continued, monitoring my somewhat pathetic progress, "dancing integrates a bunch of brain functions at once. Because of your goddess side, in minutes rather than years, I can hopefully improve your memory function to a point where the new pathways in your brain will override the memory spell. Rewire you back to full functionality." He frowned. "The science isn't the problem, it's the magic of the spell that might throw off results."

I wiped some sweat off my neck with my left shoulder. My hair was plastered to my head and my purple sweater was a bit stinky. Given how, in the past, Kai had always seemed to show up in time to catch me at my worst, maybe this is what it would take for the universe to send him back to me.

Festos broke into my thoughts. "True confessions time." His eyes remained focused on his computer monitor, keys rapidly typing adjustments to the dance program, "what's he like these days?"

I startled because he couldn't have been talking about Kai, could he? "Who?"

Festos gave an exaggerated swoon.

Oh. He was.

"He's absolutely maddening."

"Still?"

I laughed, missing a step.

"Talk and dance, honeybunch."

I nailed a couple more steps before speaking. "You want to kill him one second and then he does something to make you all melty."

Festos sighed. "Yeah. Surprised it gets to you, though."

I sank into my thoughts of Kai, while still managing to stick with the program. I flushed, my stomach flip-flopping in remembrance. "An amaaazing kisser."

The dance program stopped. Suddenly and without warning. I practically flew off the machine in my crazy jumping state as my body tried to catch up with my brain and process that there were no more steps. My head snapped forward violently, still attached to the machine.

I fumbled, straightened, and turned to stare at Festos with a "WTF?" look because that had so been deliberate.

I took a hurried step back at the look of death he sent me. "Did I miss something?"

"He kissed you?" he asked, coldly.

"Yeah. That's what got me in this mess? Magical kiss that awakens the goddess but sends serious interference with the memory spell?"

"Oh. You mean Kyrillos," Festos said, relaxing. "What did you think, getting involved with him? He's a douche."

I blinked, startled. "Come again?"

"He's been nailing everything in sight for years. Ever since he broke up with you. You know. When you were still Persephone 1.0."

I shook my head, carefully unhooking myself. "Got your facts very wrong, honeybunch. I broke up with Kai. Couple months ago. On behalf of my Persephone self. He most certainly has never dumped me."

I must have sounded less than positive about that fact because Festos singsonged, "But you don't re-mem-ber."

I ignored the taunt. "He never mentioned a break up. Though he never not mentioned a break up either. It's highly complicated."

"Yawn with two 'n's. Tuning out," Festos said, shutting down the program.

"Who were you talking about, then?" I asked.

He actually blushed.

"That means it is all kinds of juicy." I thought about it. There were very few guys in my life. So if he didn't mean Zeus or Kai ...

"Theo?" I squealed.

"Prometheus," he corrected, blushing furiously.

"You have a crush on Theo. Prometheus. Why haven't you made a move on him?"

His embarrassed look was replaced by an angry scowl. "Yeah, right." He flicked his hand toward his lame foot in a "look at it" gesture. "I get all the hot deities this way."

"I don't think it's the foot so much as the being so bitchy you could choke on it," I pointed out sweetly. I bopped over to him and tapped his monitor. "Let's find Theo. He'll be online."

Festos shook his head violently. "No! You think you and Kyrillos are complicated? That's nothing on Prometheus and me."

"Why?"

"You know how he was chained to a rock for giving mankind fire?"

I shuddered. "Yeah. The whole having his liver eaten by an eagle. Opposite of funtime ..." Something dawned on me. "Whoa! You made the chain?"

Festos looked away sheepishly. "And chained him up. Both, as I pointed out many, many times, subcontracting under duress from Zeus. A fact which Prometheus refuses to take into account. Absolument rebuffed all attempts at a second date."

"Honey, that's effed up."

"Five ways to Sunday," he agreed.

"But nothing we can't overcome." I headed toward the kitchen and rooted through a couple of cupboards before finding a glass. "My best friend deserves to be happy, and if the depth of your blush is relative to the amount of your crush, all signs point to good thing. The guys at school have certainly never done anything for him. So let's figure this out. Get it?"

"Got it," he agreed.

"Good." I poured myself some cold tap water, which I knocked back with only the teensiest of hesitations. No. Couldn't let Zeus and his preferred method of drugging ruin basic hydration for me. "But first you gotta run that dance program again. It didn't bring back anything."

I washed the glass out and set it on the counter. "Or better yet, maybe we could just find a nice dark room with a comfy couch to lay down on. Someone could wave a watch over me or do a little magic thingamajig and we'll release the memories that way. 'Cause I'm telling you, that dancing was exhausting."

Festos looked around, then beckoned me close.

"Why so cloak and dagger?" I asked, coming toward him.

He held up a finger, indicating I should wait, and then tapped a key on his keyboard. Greek folk music began to play from invisible inset speakers. Loudly. I guess to cover whatever top secret bomb he was about to drop.

"That music is gonna lose you your hipster decoder ring," I said.

Festos grinned. "Exactly. No one wants to listen to this stuff."

"Because it's bad. Also, there's the whole feeling like you gotta put on a toga to partake."

I got his "you're clearly an idiot" look again. "That's Romans. Greeks wore Chitons. And no Greek has worn those in about two thousand years. A woman might wear an embroidered kontogouni but—"

I cut him off. "Theo is going to love you." They could be Greek cultural police together.

"Here's the thing," he continued in a low voice, "the reason we're trying a more scientific-based solution to your problem is that the witch who cast your spell is M.I.A."

"I got that sense from Theo. Don't need the bad music and the hush hush."

"Yeah," Festos said, "we do. You know that fact and I know that fact because of my vested interest in Prometheus' well-being. But Zeus and Hades believe she's is in hiding and that only Prometheus knows her whereabouts. So a little just-in-case paranoia is called for here."

"Fair enough. But can't we find someone else?"

Festos looked at me like I was slow. "There is no one else who can undo a magic spell. Which means that you, honeybunch, are screwed."