Page 19

Joey

Curious now, I turned my head so I could see Callum. He was still leaning against the tabletop, one elbow now resting to the side, while his other hand played with my hair. Even after the crazy night we’d had, he looked remarkably calm.

In the old tales, outgoing, auburn-haired Cassandra and her quiet, dark-haired twin brother, Helenus, were both born royals of Troy, but as neither were directly in line for the throne, they became a priest and priestess in a temple dedicated to Apollo. After a time, they both promised Apollo favors in return for a divine gift.

Apollo agreed and gifted them both the power of prophecy.

Helenus abided by his promise. Cassandra, however, did not.

Furious, but unable to reverse the gift he’d already given to Cassandra, Apollo cursed her so that no-one would believe anything she predicted.

I rolled my head back so I could stare at the stars as Callum told the story. I knew a little about the Greek epics, but it had been years since I’d read them. Something told me this was going to differ from what I’d read in those old children’s books.

Around the same time, the royal Greek brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaus, married Clytemnestra and Helen, respectively.

One of Cassandra’s other brothers, Paris, saw Helen and fell madly in love with her. Cassandra advised him that if he went to Helen and brought her back to Troy, their beloved city would be destroyed.

Of course, with Apollo’s curse upon her, Paris didn’t believe her prophecy, and he went off, and either kidnapped Helen or they eloped. No-one is really sure now which was true. Either way, Menelaus lost his shit and decided to attack Troy to get Helen back. Agamemnon agreed wholeheartedly to help his brother, and left his wife, Clytemnestra, at home with their four children.

Thus started the decade-long siege of Troy.

As I listened to his story, I imagined the stars dancing in the sky to provide the visuals to Callum’s words, and then grinned at Callum’s turn of phrase. Lost his shit , indeed. In the stars, I saw Troy and Helen running away from Menelaus, who, when he realized what had happened, began throwing things at walls in a fit of rage. The way Callum was talking, the fall of Troy was basically the result of one hell of a temper tantrum.

In some stories, Cassandra’s twin brother, Helenus, was eventually captured by Odysseus and was forced to tell him how Menelaus and Agamemnon could capture Troy. Regardless, they sent in the Trojan horse, and just as Cassandra prophesied, the Greek soldiers hiding within it emerged and opened the gates to Troy. The Greek army slaughtered all but a select few and burned Troy to the ground.

Cassandra herself was spared from death to become Agamemnon’s slave mistress, and she bore him twin boys, Teledamus and Pelops.

When Agamemnon returned home with Cassandra and his infant twins, it was said that his furious wife, Clytemnestra, convinced her lover, Aegisthus, to murder them all.

But that wasn’t entirely the case.

As Callum teased this twist of the commonly known stories of the fall of Troy, I watched a shooting star track across the night sky, before fizzing out somewhere to the right of us. It almost felt like the gods of ancient times were blessing Callum for relaying this tale to me

In our family, it is believed that with his foresight, Helenus knew what was going to happen, and went in to save Cassandra and her twins. He was able to get Teledamus and Pelops to safety, but could not save Cassandra.

To honor his sister’s memory, he raised his nephews alongside his own son, Cestrinus.

Aw, that was nice of the brother.

Through all of this, Apollo kept a close eye on Helenus, Cassandra, and their children.

Whether it was through Apollo’s machinations or that the curse had simply run its course, Apollo’s curse on Cassandra died with her, but her powers didn’t.

Teledamus and Pelops inherited their mother’s prophetic powers, as did Cestrinus from Helenus.

For whatever purpose, Apollo allowed these inheritances, but after what had happened with the downfall of Troy, he was cautious. When each son was born, Apollo manipulated each child’s inherited powers to keep only a portion of their parent’s own.

Because Helenus honored his promise to Apollo, he was deemed trustworthy, so his son, Cestrinus, was gifted the power of present clairvoyance, believed by all because what was spoken was easily proven.

Cassandra was deemed untrustworthy, because she broke her vow to Apollo, so her power was split between her two sons, neither of whom would ever be able to claim automatic belief by their peers, like Cestrinus would be able to.

Teledamus was gifted the power of future clairvoyance, where his power would be deemed untrustworthy until it could be proven otherwise. Pelops was gifted the power of past clairvoyance, where his power would struggle to be taken seriously as the events of his visions would have already taken place.

These three boys were the beginnings of clairvoyance as we know it today and is how the powers have been passed down in George’s family and mine.

Wait.

I sat up, struggling with the blanket still wrapped around me. “Are you telling me that your powers came from Apollo? The Apollo?”

Still completely at ease, Callum shrugged. “Is it really so hard to believe? Millions of people believe far crazier things these days. We got our abilities from somewhere. Why not from Apollo?”

Wiping my hands down my face, I stared at him and thought about what he’d said. He had a fair point in saying that weirder things were believed every single day. But if I believed this, then I had to believe in other things. Other myths... “Holy fuck, Santa is real.”

Callum’s eyebrows rose. “Okay, the fact that you made that leap of logic so quickly, terrifies and arouses me in equal measure.”

Huffing out a laugh, and, choosing for the sake of my own sanity, to ignore the fact that Callum had inadvertently admitted that Santa Claus was actually out there somewhere, I waved his words off. “Never mind. Just trying to… take it all in, I guess.” I dragged my fingers through my hair and leaned on the picnic tabletop with my elbows as I thought about everything he’d just said and slotted it all in with everything I’d been told over the past couple of days. Then frowned. “What sort of powers are there?”

“Inside or outside the family lines?”

To stop my brain from imploding, I pinched the bridge of my nose, then waved my hands in the air, making the blanket flap around. “I don’t know, Callum! Either! Both!”

He chuckled. “Officially, there are five distinct ability categories all up: mental or telepathic, elemental, flight, mimicry, and other. What George, Mam, and I do all fall under the mental or telepathic ability category.” He cocked his head and scratched his chin. “Well, technically, all the powers that stemmed from Cassandra and Helenus are what make up the mental and telepathic category.”

“Okay, got it. You’re all children of Apollo,” I said blandly, rolling my eyes as I rose from my seat and stomped past him, only to hear him laugh. “I’m not going to get into the other categories now, because if I do, my brain will melt out of my ears.”

His laughter got louder.

“Screw you, Callum! I’m doing my best here,” I whined as I came to a stop in front of him and thumped him on the chest. “This is a lot to take in!”

His laughter drifted away as he stood up and wrapped me in his arms, his blanket draping over mine. One of his hands held the back of my head and tucked it in against his neck.

I gloated a little when I felt him flinch away from my cold nose. Served him right for info-dumping on me like this. He’d had years to take all this information in. I’d had days .

Breathing in his delicious scent forced my system to calm down and relax, so I burrowed in. After a few minutes, I pulled back and continued asking questions, but in a much less emotional way, and in more of an analytical way. “Tell me what sort of powers fall into the Apollo abilities. Like, what’s something that’s in the past family line, what’s something in the present family line, and what’s something in the future family line?” I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing that George falls in the future family line, right?”

“Yup.” Callum nodded. “George has precognition, meaning he can see into the future. His side of the family can see the future, but not manipulate it. His direct line has always been particularly powerful, because he can have visions without touching his target. Other lines need to be touching the subject of their vision to get an accurate read.”

“You said not manipulate . Is there a branch in his family that can manipulate the future?” I asked, not just a little wigged out by this thought.

He tipped his head to the side. “Not anymore. There used to be, a long, long time ago, but things started getting really messy only a few generations in, and it resulted in wars and famine in different regions. From what our records tell us, it seems that an incredibly clever and powerful young woman saw what her parents, siblings, and extended family were doing with their ability, and was horrified enough to do something about it. She manipulated the future just enough that everyone that had the power died within about a year, herself included. Some family historians have speculated that Apollo helped her in her endeavor, mostly because she was still so young when it all happened and the immense power and effort it would have taken to accomplish what she did was far greater than anything the families had seen before or since.”

I blinked. “That is both incredibly comforting and frighteningly disturbing.”

Dipping his head to acknowledge me, he shrugged. “Her name lives on even now, although, like most myths and legends, her actual history’s been bastardized and largely lost.” Callum sighed as if pained. “You know of the three Fates? One young, one middle-aged, one elderly? Altogether, they spin the thread of life of every living being.”

I nodded. The Fates were common in popular culture and had been for eons.

“Collectively, they’re known as the Moirai. Originally, though, there was only one: Moira. That was her name, and she’s why we have the popular myth of the Fates today. She sacrificed her life and the lives of all those in her family for the benefit of the world, and her true history has been lost to the annals of history, now spoken only in whispers by family historians.”

Looking up at the stars above us, I let out an unhappy sigh as I snuggled into him a little more. “That’s so sad.”

“That’s life.” Callum hugged me tightly before loosening his grip to run his hands up and down my back. “I’ll tell you more about her one day. Her life was brief, but it was extraordinary.”

“I’d like that.”

“Getting back to your original question, Mam and I largely fall in the past family line. Our ability is psychometry, the power to read past information from a person or an object. Other branches of our direct line deal with memory and dream reading, and to a lesser extent, memory manipulation.”

Slowly nodding, I said, “That makes sense, although I have to admit that the idea that memories can be manipulated by someone else creeps me out.”

“Why? Hypnotists and some therapists do it all the time. Even our own brains can mess with our memories without our direct influence if they’re traumatic enough. I agree that used in the wrong way, things can get very messy, but used in the right way and for the right purposes, that power could do a lot of good.”

Frowning, I took a deep breath and held it. I wasn’t sure if I wholly agreed with Callum, but I could see where his argument came from. My concern was how could you be sure that the memory manipulator was doing it for the right reasons? It was going to have to be something I’d think about later. “That leaves the present family line. Based on what you’ve just told me about the past and future family lines, I’m assuming there’s reading and manipulation here, too.”

Callum hummed in agreement. “The present family line has the biggest spread of unique abilities. Empathy, telepathy, scrying, boosting, dream walking, shielding… even telekinesis falls into this category.” He chuckled. “I have a theory that the line is so widespread in variety because it all comes from the Helenus line. Apollo trusted him, so allowed his direct line more scope than the others.”

“Yeah, based on what you’ve told me, that does make a lot of sense.” I snickered. “Apollo really held a grudge, didn’t he?”

Humming again, he nodded, his head rubbing against my forehead. “He did let it go. Eventually. Took a few hundred years, though.”

“Yeah, cause who can hold on to a grudge for that long, right?” I grinned into his neck. “Immortal beings. They’d get so bored if they didn’t let go of their old grudges so they could have space to put new ones.”

Callum laughed. “Can’t say that I disagree.”

Minutes went by as we stood there holding each other while I let his family stories sink in. They were all so fascinating, and some of it was so close to what we knew of the old Greek myths and legends it was unnerving.

Then a thought occurred to me that made me a little confused. “Wait. If you’re related to only one of the three family lines, then shouldn’t you only have one power? Past, present, or future?”

I felt the corners of Callum’s lips twitch in the beginnings of a grin. “Why do you ask?”

Chewing my bottom lip, I pulled back from him and started pacing again, ignoring the look of amusement on his face. “George made a big deal earlier about family powers mixing . Something about it being catastrophic in the wrong hands?”

Shuffling to a stop, I looked at Callum in confusion, only for him to nod in encouragement, so I went back to pacing. “If everything you’ve just said is true, and what George said earlier is right, then you should only have one power. You’ve said that you have psychometry and classified that as a past family power. But both you and Erin also have telepathy, and you listed that as a present family power. How can you and Erin have both? And you can see our future. How is that possible?”