"Yes," I whispered. A bit of a lie. I was still shaking.

He inspected my neck, palpating the skin around it. "What happened?"

Zeus said, "Down in the weights room one of the ops tried to hold Isis. But we convinced him she was nobody. Wouldn't you say, Isis?"

"I think it was made clear, yes," I said.

"He tried to hold you?" Thor said.

"So I threatened to shoot them both," Zeus said, like it was nothing.

"Through my skull," I added. "A two-for-one." I felt proud of myself for speaking of it so casually. I felt Odin's eyes on me. "It was most delightful," I added, not even looking at him.

"It was stupid. Mess with the bull, you get the horns." Zeus was quoting some movie I couldn't place at the moment. I wondered if he meant it for the guy he'd kicked in the face, like that guy was stupid to have messed with him, or if he meant that for me.

"Zeus, you need medical attention," Thor said to him sternly.

"Let's put down some distance first," Zeus said.

Thor turned to me then, and he put out his hand, palm up. I rested my hand in his and he closed his fingers around mine, and just held my hand there in the back seat.

Such a simple gesture, but at that moment, it meant everything, and I felt linked to him. I knew I was an outsider-Zeus had made that clear, but Thor let me in a little, right then and there.

Chapter Three.

The guys drove through the night, taking turns, stopping once for burgers for Zeus, and once for medical supplies. We switched off seats after that. I was allowed to ride in front, and Thor got in back with Zeus and dug a bullet out his arm-right in the back seat. When I figured out what was happening back there, I was horrified. "Odin!" I said, tipping my head at the back seat. You could see the weariness in Odin's eyes; he was too tired to be driving.

"Don't worry, he's a doctor."

"A doctor?" I said.

"That's right," Odin said. "What's so weird about that?"

"You just don't see that many bank robber-doctors," I mumbled. Plus, he seemed to be the least responsible of the three of them. The others were all into keeping him in line, it seemed.

These guys didn't add up. Thor a doctor. What was Odin? Zeus?

There was some gutter dog in Zeus, that's for sure. I didn't know if I'd ever get over the feeling of his gun at my forehead. Or the way he stalked that guy, then delivered that weirdly vicious kick. I would've just as easily killed you. I would've done it in a heartbeat-don't you ever doubt it.

I'd heard the darkness in Zeus's words. But not necessarily the truth. Or was I fooling myself?

Zeus was a force, like a storm: frightening and magnificent to behold, with a charged power churning inside. Maybe I should've been angry at him for being all, would've just as easily killed you, but you don't get mad at a storm for blowing things over.

Or ripping up flowers.

I asked about the room service waiter and the man in the workout room. What if they recognized me and put them together with the bank job?

The guys thought that was funny. "These operatives don't give a fuck about any bank. It's under their radar. Banks are not their concern."

"Then what is their concern?" I asked. "Who are they? Why are they after you?"

Zeus said, "One more question like that and you're on the side of the road, deal or no deal."

"We actually have two deals now, I believe," I said.

"Two?"

"That's right," I said. Zeus was none too pleased to hear about the price I'd demanded for my messenger services. But the exchanges really did help put me on a peer level with the god pack, as least in a limited way.

At around two in the morning, we crashed in a roadside motel in Missouri, just outside Kansas City. Thor and I bunked in one room and Odin and Zeus in another, and sex was definitely not in the air-we were all dead on our feet. Thor didn't even wash up. He just collapsed on our king-sized bed. I brushed my teeth using my finger and Thor's toothpaste, and then I, too, collapsed, stretched out next to Thor under the cool, clean sheets.

I woke up in the early hours with Thor snuggled up to me, whispering something. Was he trying to wake me up?

"Thor?"

Thor whispered some more, a stream of nonsense. A bad dream, I realized. I couldn't make out most of the words. I got a lot of no's and don'ts, and out-of-context phrases like don't leave Venus. His sleeping face was a mask of pain.

Don't leave Venus? Was he having a bad dream about interplanetary travel? Dreaming of a movie?

"It's okay," I whispered. "You're okay."

He squirmed and turned onto his back. I waited, but he said no more.

For all the guns and domination and violence, I had the sense, watching Thor sleep, that he had a little Peter Pan in him. All three of them did, really. They were running, these guys, but I couldn't shake the feeling that they'd been abandoned, too. Lost, bereft.

More. A hole was in them-that was my sense.

My badass Peter Pans.

I touched Thor's hair. I liked the notion that maybe I'd calmed him in his nightmare. Like I'd helped.

These guys scared me a little, but they also galvanized me.

Here I was in a shitty motel with a headache and no toothbrush, lying next to a doctor turned bank robber who was also a sex maniac who carried a gun, and a fugitive on some scary wanted list. And I was feeling slightly sore from fucking him and another guy, emotionally exhausted from almost being killed. And I was opting to stay. It seemed like something only a twisted person would do, but there it was. I wanted to stay.

I felt like I was home. Like I could finally breathe.

My mind floated back to my sisters. Would they have slept? I'd brought up the topic of contacting them on the road last night.

Later, Zeus had said.

Thor flopped back over onto this other side, but I still couldn't sleep. I wandered into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My hair-now there was something to freak out about. I looked like an insane, redheaded Dutch boy. Maybe I was turning sociopathic.

Some time later I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to the scent of coffee and the sounds of Thor packing stuff up. He'd slicked down his curls and had donned a brown sports jacket and jeans and boots, a get-up that made him look more like a movie director than yesterday's slick businessman. When I commented on his new look, he pulled out mirrored aviator glasses and put them on, which made him look downright dashing.

"You have as many looks as a Ken doll," I teased.

He came to the bed and put his hands on either side of me, and leaned down close still wearing the sunglasses. No more smiling. "But I believe I have one look a Ken doll never has," he said.

My belly tightened. "I do believe I saw that look yesterday."

He stayed looming over me, all dressed up and spiffy compared to my scantily clad self. I liked lying under him like that.

Goosebumps rode my skin as he touched my throat, drew a finger down the center of my chest. "Do you know what Odin said about you?"

"What?" Energy stirred on my skin wherever his finger touched. He drew it down, down toward my belly.

"Odin says a frisson of vulnerability turns you on. I'm inclined to agree."

"Oh, yeah? Is Odin a psychoanalyst from Vienna now?"

"Let's just say Odin has your number. Odin has everybody's number." Thor stood. "Unfortunately, we have to go. We have a lot to do."

So we were all business then. I got up and put on my shabby bank teller outfit.

We took a cab to downtown Kansas City. Luckily, our first stop was an upscale department store where I picked out a trio of lovely sundresses and some awesome tops and pants, the sorts of things Isis might wear. And then we went to a beauty salon on what Thor termed "the rock 'n roll side of town" for new hair.

I took the chair in front of a purple-haired stylist who curled her heavily pierced lip in horror as she inspected my knife-chopped locks. "It was definitely a hasty job," I said "But I want a big change anyway. Can we make it short and pink?"

"Hold on," Thor said. "Pink?" He shook his head.

"She should have the style she chooses," the stylist snapped. "You want pink? Pink would be gorgeous on you."

"But if she looks too radical or out of the ordinary," Thor said, "she could lose the very important position she currently has. She might cease to be effective in her profession. Which has a public interaction component."

"He's right," I said. "How about jet black?"

Thor shook his head.

"Dark brown," I said.

This, too, Thor vetoed.

"What?" I protested.

"Come here."

"One minute," I said to the stylist. I took off the plastic poncho she'd put on me and followed Thor out onto the sidewalk, glaring at his back the whole way to the corner of the building.

"You can't have your hair short and dark."

"Why? It'll look totally natural."

He took off his sunglasses and eyed me straight on. "No go."

"Why not? It's blonde or nothing? Is that the deal here?"

"You can't have it dark. You have to trust me." The gravity in his voice suggested a world of pain, of trouble.

Slowly things assembled themselves in the back of my mind...the hole, the rules. And the way I fit in, at least with Thor and Odin, almost like there was a place for me.

The sense of a ghost.

"Because that's how she had it," I whispered.

He cocked his head, as though confused, but I suspected he understood.

And then it came to me. Don't leave Venus...or rather, don't leave, Venus.

"Venus," I added.

He set a hand on the wall to the side of my head, and then he set his other hand on the other side, caging me in. "None of us told you that," he said accusingly.

"You told me! You said it in your sleep. Don't leave, Venus, you said." It hadn't been about planets. Venus was the girl.

His gaze remained keen.

"Is it that hard to put together that a girl came down this road with you guys before? Your rules? The undercurrents? It's pretty clear."

He pondered this, then straightened up. "Congratulations. Now you know why you can't make it brown."

I had the strange feeling I'd betrayed him by analyzing his sleep talk. It made me feel a little bad. "Sorry," I said.

He put his hand around the back of his neck and stared up at the sky. I waited, noticing he had freckles across his nose, so light they were almost translucent.

What in the world had happened to Venus?

"Tell me," I said.

He took his hand from his neck and looked at me then, lashes pale in the morning sun, contrasting with the rich blue of his eyes. I said nothing more. Thor was the sensitive one, the communicative one, the one who got out of line most easily. I felt like if I gave him space, he'd fill it with information.

And then he did.

"She's the reason you can't stay," he said.

"But I want to stay." I couldn't believe I'd said it, but I had. "I don't want to go back."

He squinted into the sunlight; I suspected the squint was more to cover up happiness than to protect his eyes. "You don't know what you're saying. You don't know what this is."