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your bed and suddenly you can’t protect yourself?
    A few moments later she had a fork from the kitchen. The
knives were too reflective; she left them in the drawer. But a good fork in the
eye could still hurt a demon, right?
    Jaime had no idea what could hurt a demon. Maybe she would wake up the god for help. But only if she had to.
    She made her way back to the bed, carrying her treasure.
She’d seen the pain that telling the beginning of his story had brought the
god, so she’d leave the majority of her questions for information that only he
could provide. The rest, well, the internet was a wonderful thing. She pulled
up a search engine and started typing, fingers flying across the touch screen
of her tablet. Light padding sounds filled the room as she worked, no louder
than her own heartbeat to her ears.
    Some of what she read disturbed her. She learned that
Dionysus was indeed a god that attracted women, and gave them freedom in a
world where they had no rights and no vote (while the ancient Athenians
invented democracy, it was for male citizens only). He gave them the chance to
live amongst each other as sisters and sometimes lovers, to write, paint, be
spiritual, commune with nature, and take pleasure where they saw fit. Sounds
a bit like undergrad, Jaime thought, smiling in memory of drunken
late-night painting sessions with her friends. She thought of Liv with her
riotous brown curls hanging out the studio window, catcalling to undergrad boys
asking them if they’d like to model nude.
    Jaime’s brow furrowed as she kept reading. The pit of her
stomach turned cold.
    The maenads, Dionysus’ hordes of female followers, were
often driven to madness, running through the woods for hours until their feet
were bloody, chasing down a stag and tearing it to pieces, eating the meat raw
with their hands. The articles she found referenced further atrocities, and the
word cannibalism appeared more than once.
    How could she reconcile that with the man who lay beside
her? He had shown her kindness and respect, and made it clear that anything
they did together was her own choice. She’d felt a piece of the madness in her
own heart, but he had told her how to counteract it by simply closing her eyes.
The wildness she’d experienced was wholly freeing and pleasing, not dangerous.
Was it? These were just stories. Stories and myths, which were always
exaggerated. Right?
    He hadn’t finished the story about Agathe. What had happened
to her? What had happened to him in the past two thousand years as a
slave to the djinn’s bottle? Had it changed him, made him more cautious and
empathetic than the impetuous young god in the stories?
    She didn’t know. She hoped so, but she couldn’t be sure.
    Jaime didn’t sleep until the sun began to rise.

Chapter Three
     
    A loud thud startled Jaime awake. She shot up in bed and the
tablet hit the ground beside her. She grabbed at the fork still by her hand and
held it out in front of her like a sword.
    The room was bright with sunlight—it had to be close to
noon. Dionysus stood in the doorway wearing his own bellbottoms and one of
Keith’s green button-up shirts. It didn’t suit him, but the tangled curls and
scruff on his face definitely did. A warmth rushed over her and straight to her
pussy. Her body, at least, had forgotten the previous night’s fears. Her mind
raced, knowing that something was wrong, but as she held eye-contact with him,
her inhibitions melted away. She wanted him, bad.
    He was carrying a plate of breakfast. The dish was piled
high with pancakes and blueberries. Jaime inhaled the scent of bacon. Yum.
    He cooks, too? Can I keep him?
    The god had a puzzled frown on his face. “How did you get
that?” he asked. He stared at Jaime holding the fork, then down at his plate,
then back up at Jaime. His mouth opened, then closed. He looked up at Jaime
again. Or, rather, at her hand brandishing the fork. Dionysus held a matching
fork in his own hand. “Do you have magic