27. Medusa

T he furies didn't appear until I'd screamed myself out. They finally appeared next to me and wrapped me in a giant hug. It was great being with my sisters among all this beautiful nature. Cas had really claimed a spectacular place for his home. I was really going to need to take more time to explore his village.

"Athena wasn't wrong. It sucks. Furies are creatures of Fate. We're almost like distant cousins."

"At least I figured out how to portal because I needed to get away."

"True. I'm pretty sure she let you get mad at her on purpose to get you to portal. You should be able to do it again now. The rest of your training is going to have to take place when we do girl's night. We can't teach you to sniff out evil when you're surrounded by amazing people."

"Mean things to stupid boys," I nodded.

"We should get back. Everyone else is planning how to take down the Coalition. You're going to have to portal. We'll taxi your boyfriends but not you."

I stuck my tongue out at Alecto and flipped her off for good measure. She pretended to catch it and put it in her pocket.

"Love you. Now think about how much you want to be with your mates and do it."

Yeah, I had been making it way more complicated than I needed to. I just needed to want to be somewhere, and I went. I thought about how amazing my mates were and how much I wanted to be with them and there I was. I mean, I ended up in a closet, but close enough.

Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera were laughing when I came out.

"Aim is a bit harder. Eventually, you'll be able to land in their laps. You know how everyone was into public pooping back in the day? When we were first turned, we were figuring our shit out. We were trying to punish this noble and ended up in a public toilet. We were so fucking startled because we weren't expecting to end up there, we accidentally trapped everyone in their own worst nightmare while they were trying to take a shit. It got really fucking messy until we could figure out who deserved it and who didn't to turn it off. I ruined my favorite sandals," Alecto said.

"Gross," Pax said.

"Whatever you're picturing, it was worse. Anyway, a closet is nothing and you've got stalls now."

"Men piss in groups," Benji said. "It's kind of weird. You walk up to the urinal on the wall and just whip your cock out. Sometimes, there's that one dude who takes the urinal right next to you, even though the rest of them are free like it's some kind of power pissing move. Like, what are you supposed to do in that situation? Measure your dicks? Piss harder to show dominance? Maybe I should get a PhD in social work like Cas so I can talk to those guys and get to the bottom of it. I could publish a paper on it and get it peer reviewed."

"You can't talk about that in therapy, Benji," Cas said.

"Why not? It's a real problem and maybe I can cure it."

"Um, because it's not a big problem in terms of why someone might go to therapy."

"We don't need to be worrying about men's behavior at the urinals, though someone should probably look into that. We've started something here and we need to finish it while we have them looking like fools," Kat said.

"Well, we've got math no one understands and a mystery woman who is somehow connected to the government. Anyone know how to put that together?" Pax asked.

I looked over. Athena tried to teach us this once in her temple. No one got it. She said I was the closest. I'd been so mad at her for so long, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed being her priestess until Poseidon crashed her temple.

She was never the warmest of gods and some of her rules weren't all that enjoyable, but she was never one of those gods that wanted us at her temples leaving offerings and we got nothing. Athena always showed up to teach us things, and she'd bring her heroes around for us to meet. They were big celebrities back then.

But I wasn't ready to forgive her yet.

"I still don't get that fucking math," I grumped.

"No, but you came the closest by far than anyone I've ever tried to teach it to."

"I have an idea, but it's crazy and I don't know if it will work. It's also hinging on Benji's mystery woman, all four furies being subtle, and all the gods in our arsenal," I said.

Athena just beamed at me.

" That is why you were always my favorite."

Why did that even feel good? I was still mad at her. I'd deal with that later.

"Well, Benji needs to handle the mystery woman since she's been following him. We can be subtle, but you still need to learn. Which means we need a bar and all your girlfriends to do mean things to stupid boys after you tell us what the plan is."

"There's a bar in town, but you aren't going to find much in the way of bad people. You're going to want to go to the one two towns over," Cas said. "We go there when we're feeling a little feral and want a bar fight."

"Ooh, can we get in a bar fight?" Calamity asked.

"I don't see why not," Kat said. "Just let Medusa do her fury thing first. We're either going to get kicked out or have to make a quick getaway if they call the cops. No throwing anything supernatural unless it's subtle and they can't tell."

"Phbbt. This isn't my first bar fight."

Calamity looked pretty antsy to get to the bar and start hitting people. I wasn't going to tell her how to heal from the Coalition.

I pulled them in to tell them my plan. It was crazy, and I didn't know if it would work. We had good minds here and some powerful supernaturals.

If anyone could pull this off, it was us.