So she did have clothes, then? Good to know.
I nodded. “Fine by me. Something tells me we don’t have the same style, anyway.”
Aphrodite smiled and got up. “I agree,” she said, sauntering out of the door. “Oh, and Helen? Just in case you had any ideas, I have the power to make life quite tricky for you. Look in the mirror, and you’ll see what I mean.” Her laughter floated down the stairs as she made her way up to the attic.
Why did I need to look in the mirror? Did I have something in my teeth? I turned around to face my mirror, and…
I gasped. My brown curls had disappeared. A fluorescent-green mop of hair sat on my scalp in stiff spikes. It was the sort of hair that stopped traffic.
I poked at my head to make sure. Yep, I definitely had several inches of stiff green hair attached to my scalp.
WHAT. THE. HECK?
Where was my actual hair?!
I felt sick with anger. There was no way I was setting foot out of this room, let alone starting a new school, until my hair was back to normal.
“Daaaaaaaad!” I screamed at the top of my voice. He was in my room in an instant.
“Helen, please use your indoor voice. You’re not in the playground now,” he said. Then he looked up at my hair, and his eyebrows nearly shot off his face. “I don’t think that’s, um, suitable for school, Helen.” If my hair shocked Dad, then it must have looked bad. I mean, he’s seen it all. Literally.
“Then get her,” I yelled, pointing upstairs to where Aphrodite had disappeared, “to change it back!”
“I may be able to help, darling,” Dad said. His hand reached tentatively to stroke the top of my head. “Right. It really is rather spiky—”
“Dad! Not helping!” I said through gritted teeth.
“Sorry! I’ll try to bring it back. Helen, remind me. You had curly brown hair that sort of did … this,” he said, waving his hands in an imaginary halo around my head.
He was absolutely useless. “Just get HER to fix it!”
“Aphrodite, come down here, please. You know the rules about using your powers outside of Mount Olympus,” he said. Like she had taken the last chip off my plate, and not given me the hair of a tropical bird.
“Helen was curious about my powers, so I gave her a little taste. It was a bit of fun, Father,” she said. Aphrodite clicked her fingers once again.
I rushed to the mirror and patted my head. Finally! My hair was back to normal. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I’d never been so happy to see my ordinary frizzy curls. I even ran my fingers through it, just to make sure it was all there.
I slammed my bedroom door shut. “How is this my life?” I muttered under my breath.
Would I have to deal with this all the time? Having a super gorgeous, self-absorbed big sister was bad enough. But Aphrodite could turn me into a neon-green toilet brush with a click of her fingers!
This whole immortal-family-with-powers thing?
It wasn’t going to be an easy ride.
TWO
I came out of the shower as a delicious smell wafted up the stairs from the kitchen. I wandered towards the stairs in my dressing gown and heard Dad’s voice downstairs. And the voice of a woman I didn’t recognize. Please tell me I don’t have any other surprise half-sisters moving in? Aphrodite is enough for a lifetime.
Dad opened the kitchen door. “Come down for dinner, Helen. There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” he said.
I walked down the stairs and into the warm kitchen, rich with the smell of onion and herbs. It was the first time I’d seen anyone using the kitchen since we moved in, apart from boiling the kettle and Aphrodite blitzing her green smoothies.
A small woman with silver-streaked brown hair stood at the kitchen sink, draining cooked spaghetti in a colander. When she turned around, I noticed she looked older than Dad. Unlikely to be one of his children, then, but you could never tell with the gods. They can do what they like with their appearance, after all.
“You must be Helen! I’ve heard so much about you,” the woman said, and bundled me into her arms for a hug. Even though her head only reached my neck, she had quite the grip on me. Her warmth and smile reminded me of Grandma Thomas.
“Helen, this is Maria. She’s going to be our housekeeper, taking care of things while I’m at work,” Dad said.
“That means you,” Maria said, letting me go finally. “It’s vital that you have another half-mortal in the house. Someone you can talk to.”
“Um, are you my sister too?” I asked.
Maria laughed. “Not quite. I’m a child of your Aunty Demeter, so I suppose that makes us cousins. I’ll take you through my family tree over a cup of tea, one day. But now it’s time to eat.”
I began to lay the table for three, but Dad stopped me. “I won’t be eating tonight, Helen. I rarely do,” he said. “But I’ll stay with you over dinner. We need to have a chat.”
I sat down at the table while Maria plated up the food and cleared the kitchen.
“I see that Aphrodite introduced herself,” Dad began.
“Yeah.” The less said about that, the better. “What’s a half-lifer?” I asked.
Maria gasped like I’d said a terrible word. Dad clenched his jaw, and I swear that his eyes flashed yellow for a split second.
I broke the silence. “It’s something that Aphrodite mentioned a couple of times. Is it bad?”
Dad sighed. “It’s a term that ignorant immortals sometimes use to describe half-mortals. I’ll have a word with Aphrodite about that.”
Even my half-sister needed a separate word to describe what I was – that’s how big of a gulf there was between us. We were already knocking this whole sister thing out of the park.
“Anyway. I imagine you have many questions. But before you ask them, I want to—”
“Let me guess. Lay down some ground rules?” I said.
“Well, yes, Helen. I’m afraid I do have some rules. But they are less to do with your curfew, and more to do with the somewhat, ahem, unique issues our family face,” he said. “You’ve already been told this, but I can’t stress it enough – it is absolutely vital to keep our true identity hidden from all mortals.”
Boy, I didn’t realize how good I had it with Grandma Thomas. Her only rules were not to wear shoes in the house or leave an empty plate.
“I’m obvs not going to tell anyone that you’re a god and I’m half-mortal, Dad, it sounds totally ridiculous,” I said between mouthfuls of spaghetti. “Everyone in this new school would think I’m a compulsive liar.”
“That’s good to know. But you need to understand this rule isn’t in place to prevent embarrassment. It’s a binding contract, one that all immortal beings enter into when they leave Mount Olympus. It’s a condition of living here on earth.”
Dad propped both his elbows on the table. “As you know, I am the head of the gods. But there are beings more powerful than me in Mount Olympus, and we must abide by their rules. It’s for the good of all involved … though not everyone in this family agrees.”
Hmm, I wonder who that could be? Something told me that Aphrodite and rules don’t mix.