Later that evening, after checking on the box in the top of his closet, Jake realized that E. E. had been right. He needed information. He would start with Zeus, who wouldn't be willing to tell him anything about becoming mortal. But maybe Jake could trick some clue out of his father. Jake just needed some idea about what to do next.
Once Lily and E. E. were both asleep, Jake grabbed a handful of M&M's from the dish on the counter and proceeded to pace.
After half an hour, there were no M&M's left in the apartment, and he was even more convinced that his father would be no help whatsoever. Every scenario he saw in his head ended in Zeus slamming the front door on his way out. But Jake needed answers. "And where do you go for answers?" he asked aloud. "That's right. The internet."
Jake went to his room, switched on his laptop, and while he waited for it to boot, he thought that surely, surely he was not the first person to want to be free of the immortal world.
He opened his web browser, typed www.google.com, typed "how to become mortal," and got a few million hits, including websites on the differences between venial and mortal sins and a website on cough syrup, but nothing looked helpful.
Zeus came to see his granddaughter on Sunday afternoon, and even though he showed up unannounced as usual and in the guise of a member of a barbershop quartet, Jake was happy to see him. He was going to find out something about becoming mortal. Because if Zeus didn't give him information he could use, he would have to find answers elsewhere, and he had no idea where else to look.
"I read something interesting about you on the internet last night," Jake said, once Zeus had said his hellos and grabbed a Dr. Pepper from the refrigerator.
Zeus looked a little squeamish. "You can't believe anything you read on the internet. Bunch of lonely geeks sitting around telling lies."
"You were nursed by a goat?"
The squeamish look intensified. "I was a kid. I didn't know what I was doing. And that goat kept me from being eaten. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her."
"Where can I find the Fates?" Jake asked. After a lot of thought, he decided that the best strategy would just be to spring the question on his father. Maybe he would at least be able to tell something from his reaction.
Zeus fell off his chair and started choking.
Damn.
When Zeus was back on his feet, breathing somewhat normally again, he said, "Pardon me if I sound a little like E. E. here, but dude, that is so not a good idea."
"Why not? Can't you take me, or put in a good word for me? I read somewhere that they're your daughters."
"That's a dirty lie."
"So?"
Zeus looked at him, and Jake had never seen his father looking so unsettled. "I suppose you want the truth?" he asked, hedging.
"Yes, please." Want the truth? Of course. Expect it? Not even a little.
"The Fates are immortal, eternal, and powerful. Gods don't mess with them. Even I am a shaved poodle in comparison to the Fates. They're women, Jake." He stopped, as though he had just unraveled a mystery.
Jake couldn't imagine what this could mean. His father, seducer of hundreds throughout the centuries, was afraid of the Fates because they were women? "Yeah," Jake said with a cough. "I read that they're women. But what—"
"Women are freakishly powerful creatures," Zeus explained. "The Fates are women magnified and injected with super-proteins and buried in Miracle-Gro. Don't expect them to want to sit around and discuss football. Usually they just snip your thread if you get too chatty."
"I've heard that actually."
"'Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife,' Jake," Zeus cautioned.
"You're quoting the Bible now?"
"Those guys knew what they were talking about. Jezebel, Bathsheba, Esther, Delilah…."
"Esther was okay," Jake muttered.
"'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' or annoyed or interrupted while she's weaving."
"Dad! I don't need proverbs right now, entertaining as it is to hear you moralizing. I need help." Part of Jake wanted to say it out loud, that he needed help because he needed Rachel, but this was something Zeus knew already, and Jake couldn't keep repeating it. It scratched the inside of his throat. "I need…I need help."
"You need to meet this girl that works in the coffeehouse on Cypress St. Hera's friend. She's perfect for you—she's very funny, in a repressed sort of way." Jake glared, and Zeus continued, "Fine. You're on the right track. I've never heard of anyone wanting to give up immortality, or," he sniffed, "disassociate oneself from godlike company, but if anyone knows how, the Fates do."
"That's not my first choice, though. Do you know anyone a little less temperamental I could ask about this?"
"No."
"Can you tell me how to find them?"
"No."
"Come on, Dad. I need help here."
Zeus hesitated, straightening his handlebar mustache. "There's a party tonight at Ares's apartment in Mexico City," he said. "I'll take you."
"Well…that sounds great, but what does that have to do with—"
"Pete will be there. You can ask him."
"Pete the record-keeper?"
"Yeah."
Jake could see how eager Zeus was for the conversation to end, so he said, "Thanks," and tried to think of something else to say to shoot the sound-sucking bats from the air between them.
"See you at eleven," Zeus said eventually. Then he stood, hugged Lily goodbye, and left the apartment. But he closed the door gently.
"What do you wear to a party with the gods?" Jake called from inside his closet late that evening.
"Do you remember me saying I'd backslap you if you ever asked me a fashion question again?" E. E. called back from the living room.
"No. I do remember you saying something about pulling my hair and stealing my lipstick."
"You need a gay friend."
Jake picked a shirt and a pair of pants and went to the living room. "Do you think this would work?"
"Do you think I care?" E. E. said, not looking up. "I don't know why you're trying to change things anyway. To be a part of the immortal world seems amazing. I'd give anything—"
"To be a pawn of the gods?" Jake interrupted. "To be surrounded by the immortal world and not to have any power of your own? To be thrown around and manipulated and pestered to death? You bet. Sign me up."
"Yeah, you whine a lot, but what's the worst you've had to deal with? A siren in a library. Big deal. And she didn't—"
"I lost my wife. I'd take a thousand sirens and a million ticked off brownies if it meant I could keep her."
E. E. was silent for a moment, but he sucked at it. He tried to make his tone jovial, and he put on his psychology voice, which had a hint of an Austrian accent, "From vhence came all this 'ostility?"
Jake tried to stop being angry with him, which was much harder than pretending to, which he did immediately, smiling and returning his own voice to a normal volume. He folded the clothes over the top of the recliner. The inside of his stomach felt acidic with frustration and fury. But E. E. didn't mean anything by his meanness. He just had no mouth control.
And there was more to his "hostility" than that. There were years and years of suspicion and panic and trying to choose between glancing behind him and not wanting to know if something was there. He breathed in until he couldn't force more air into his lungs.
Jake sat down and focused on his hands. "I didn't mind until I was older, you know. My mom never minded. She knew it was all because of me, but she…she was great. The pixies in her tulips didn't bother her. She left plates of milk out on the kitchen floor at night, in case anything in our house got thirsty. We would even have one of her centaur friends over for dinner whenever we could afford it. My life was magical, and I didn't even know it. I got a little irritated from time to time, when my model train disappeared or because I could never have friends over. Trickets and wribbles don't understand when you tell them to keep out of sight. But…it was so great, you know? There was this unexpectedness about living in that house. I think people who have a house full of animals, not just a cat and a dog, but birds and a rabbit and a hedgehog and a hamster and a snake and a few fish and a house goat also, might understand better than anyone. It's a kind of chaos that doesn't leave much room for anything else." He stopped talking at some point and fell into memories of her, his impossible, amazing mother.
"I'm sorry," E. E. said.
Jake looked up. "Oh. No, don't worry about it. You're right. It's been great, but a house-full-of-pets kind of great. It's exciting until something births kittens in the middle of your bed."
E. E. gave a short laugh.
"I think they killed her," Jake said, then had to resist the impulse to put his hand over his mouth. He'd never said that aloud, never even formed the words in his head because it didn't matter if it was true. He had no way of knowing, no way of changing anything. He felt sick that he'd even said it.
"They…why?" E. E. was staring back at him, and Jake was suddenly aware that he was talking to a former counselor. Something in E. E.'s posture or composed expression, the way he didn't talk a lot about himself but always seemed to pull buckets of words from Jake. The way Jake knew that if he just kept talking long enough, all of the problems would be in words, and words were solvable.
"I didn't mean…" Jake paused. "Someone would have found her. She would have had friends and family checking in on her. But the monsters were the only ones there when she collapsed. They didn't help her, and they had long since scared away everyone else. And she was young. My mother was young, still in her early forties. She didn't smoke or drink much, and when she remembered to eat, it was all health food. Hippie stuff like flaxseed and wheat germ."
E. E. listened to him babble, but Jake had stopped even glancing in his direction.
"How does a woman like that have a heart attack walking across her living room?" Jake asked. "How—"
"Sometimes things like that just happen, Jake," E. E. said.
"No," he said, shaking his head so hard that he couldn't see E. E. or the apartment walls around them. "Things like that don't just happen, not when they happen to someone who's yours. Things can just happen to other people, but to a young, healthy woman in contact with the immortal world, they don't." Jake stopped, surprised by the tears in his eyes. Had he ever cried for her? He couldn't remember. "It doesn't matter. There's nothing I could, nothing I could have done, anyway."
E. E. started to speak, then paused. He seemed to choose words carefully. "You're determined, then? You're going to go to the Fates? You're going to mortalize yourself?"
��If I can."
E. E. nodded. "I hope you can."
Jake had to force a smile, but he felt a tense rope along his spine slacken. Someone supported him. Someone knew all the horribleness of Jake's life, and someone was rooting him on. His own personal cheerleader.
"Me, too," Jake said. And Zeus's familiar knock echoed through the room.