~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Tea Party With A Goddess

{Kiara}

Piper kept looking around like she expected an ambush. She had said she'd seen this park in the blade of her knife, but she wouldn't elaborate. Kiara guessed she was afraid to. After all, the last time Piper had tried to interpret a vision from her knife, Percy and Jason had almost killed each other in Kansas.

   Hazel also seemed preoccupied. Maybe she was taking in their surroundings, or maybe she was worrying about her brother. In less than four days, unless they found him and freed him, Nico would be dead.

   Kiara felt that deadline weighing on her, too. Nico was her only sibling other than Hazel, and probably the only person who exactly understood her. Sure, Hazel was kind and loving, but Kiara had a deeper connection with Nico.

   She was so deep in thought, she might have kept walking around the park forever, but Piper grabbed her arm.

   "There." She pointed across the harbor. A hundred yards out, a shimmering white figure floated on the water.

   At first, Kiara went pale, thinking it was a ghost, but it definitely wasn't one. It was glowing, and it was moving more smoothly than a ghost would, making a straight line toward them. As it got closer, Kiara could tell it was the figure of a woman.

   "The ghost," Annabeth said.

   "That's not a ghost," Kiara said. "No kind of spirit glows that brightly."

   As if in a trance, Piper walked across the street toward the edge of the seawall, narrowly avoiding a horse-drawn carriage.

   "Piper!" Annabeth called.

   "We'd better follow her," Hazel said.

   By the time Annabeth, Kiara and Hazel caught up to her, the ghostly apparition was only a few yards away.

   Piper glared at it like the sight offended her. "It is her," she grumbled.

   Kiara squinted at the spirit, but it blazed too brightly to make out details. Then the apparition floated up the seawall and stopped in front of them. The glow faded.

   Kiara took a sharp breath. The woman was breathtakingly beautiful and strangely familiar. Her face was hard to describe. Her features seemed to shift from those of one glamorous movie star to another.

   But one think Kiara could make out was that she looked like Piper. They had the same brown skin, same chocolate hair. And the woman's eyes sparkled playfully like Piper's— sometimes green or blue or amber. Her hair changed from long and straight to short curls.

   The woman was dressed like a Southern belle, just as Jason had described. Her gown had a low-cut bodice of pink silk and a three-tiered hoop skirt with white scalloped lace. She wore tall white silk gloves, and held a feathered pink-and-white fan to her chest.

   Everything about her seemed calculated to make Kiara feel inadequate: the easy grace with which she wore her dress, the perfect yet understated makeup, the way she radiated feminine charm that no man—or woman—could possibly resist.

   Kiara realized that her jealousy was (mostly) irrational. The woman was making her feel this way. She recognized this woman, even though her face changed by the second, becoming more and more beautiful.

   "Aphrodite," Annabeth said.

   "Venus?" Hazel asked in amazement.

   "Venus," Kiara said.

   "Mom," Piper said, with no enthusiasm.

   "Girls!" The goddess spread her arms like she wanted a group hug.