Uber Is For Goddesses Too

I didn’t trust myself to teleport, but I needed to speak with my lawyers, maybe even some new ones. I had less than thirty hours to figure out if I could pay off the debt that the current owners of the community center owed. It wasn’t a matter of the cash; I could have a satyr in the bank by morning. The real question was how to do it in a way that pissed that rich fool off the most.

My brow furrowed as I glanced around. Where are the taxis? You’d think that they would be all over the place in this area, but alas, that wasn’t the case. Odd as frack. Ugh, it was time for an Uber. I quickly put a request to get me to my office downtown. I’d need a conference call at the minimum. 

I might have been known as the peaceful goddess, but I tended to internalize my rage until it got to the point of explosions and not the fun kind. Cities would burn, like the Chicago fire of eighteen seventy-one or the great fire of London in the sixteen hundreds. Why was I so mad at this man? 

Because he was destroying families, and that was a crime against the natural order of things. The home was sacred and should be protected against greed and hoarding. As a result of being alive for so long, I had money. I also didn’t spend a lot of my wealth. Well, it was time to change that. 

The Uber pulled up, and I slipped in. “So the financial district, eh?” the driver asked.

I nodded and flashed him a smile. “Yes. One of my investments has a bidder that I need to crush into dust,” I said with a cheery smile. 

“Oookay,” the driver said, dragging out the start of the word. He turned up the radio, clearly thinking he’d picked up someone cray-cray. He pulled out onto the road as I pulled out my phone again. After sending several texts, I Googled this Warren Davids.

He owned property around the city and was a real estate mogul, local builder, specializing in turning neighborhoods into unaffordable, decadent playgrounds. His preferred method was to rip out old generational homes and then put a department store in their place. He owned several dozen apartment buildings with poor reviews. 

I snorted at one review: The heater froze in winter. Left the door unlocked to the utility room and refused for four months to come to clean out the bird’s nest that moved in a month later. Almost died from Salmonella from trying to clean the bird’s nest in my kitchen.

Well, Warren Davids seemed to value money above all other things. I wondered if I should send Hermes over for a bit of a visit. Oh, that was an idea. Send the God of Thieves to reduce the surplus wealth that he has. Shame it’s so hard to exchange stolen goods these days. Even fifty years ago, I could have popped over to another city and offloaded the ill-begotten gains. Now, everything could be tracked within seconds. 

The Uber slipped onto the freeway, heading deeper into town. I glanced up at the sign and frowned. “Driver, why are we getting on nighty-three south?”

“Multi-car pileup on the northbound. Nighty-five to nighty will be a lot faster,” the driver said. 

I narrowed my eyes. “Alright, I guess,” I said. It was still mighty sus, but it was Boston, and traffic was a way of life here. The detour would add at least half an hour to the trip, but at least it would give my attorneys more time to set up the meeting and do some initial research.   

Let’s see here, what does this call of debt actually say? Ten million bought from the bank, called due by close of business on the seventh. Ah, while due at the close of business, where the debtors lived. I am pretty sure this is Eastern Standard Time, not Universal Coordinated Time, no matter what Davids wished. My eyebrow rose. Was this debt even legal? This seems like it was an early payment charge plus some kind of interest charge. 

My ire grew as I read through the confusing contract. This was a trap loan, almost one of those payday loans that put folks in a loop of debt, siphoning their pay into the loan shark’s pockets. But that was a rant for another day. Stay focused, Hestia. 

Being mad wouldn’t solve anything, and I was unsure why this mortal had managed to enrage me so completely. Could it be related to my nightmares of late? I needed to center myself. Fire was amazing, but only when it was under control. Too much fire and everything around you is in danger of being destroyed. I’d done that before, and it left me alone for far too long.

After tucking the contract back into my purse, I closed my eyes and rested my hands on my knees. To find my center, one did not use a tootsie-roll pop, and I need a lot more than three licks to reach it. I swore I heard a goddess laughing at me, and I snapped my head to the side. She wasn’t there, but damn it, I knew that thought was something she’d tease me for. 

I closed my eyes again and looked within my emotions. Why was I angry? What was the source of my rage? Maybe it was being around my family again for the first time in thousands of years. Memories returned when you were reminded of them and those could mess with your head, shoving things at you that you thought you’d taken care of. Then, when you threw normal moral nonsense on top of it, you ended up with a pissed-off fire goddess.

I felt the car change lanes, my head moving with the beats of the songs on the radio. My thoughts were interrupted when the driver said, “Here we are. Leave me a review.” 

I blinked a few times and looked around. “Thanks for the drop-off,” I said before leaving a hundred on the seat and slipping out. I entered the building, smiling at the guards. I was very underdressed for this meeting, but one of them just nodded at me as I headed to the lift. I stepped in and several women entered behind me. They looked at me as if I were a peasant and they were wondering how I had gotten in here.

“Did you know about Darth Vader’s unknown wife?” I asked.

“What?” snapped a blonde woman. 

“Yep, his wife Elle,” I said with a gin.

“Elle who?” growled the woman.

“Elle Vader…”

“Elle Va…” the blonde repeated as the other two with her snickered. The woman rolled her eyes as the doors opened. The trio of women stepped out, leaving me alone for a few more floors. A man in a thousand-dollar suit entered and looked down upon me as he hit the already lit button for the same floor I was going to. 

“Are you lost, miss?” the suit asked. 

I giggled, shaking my head. “Nope.”

“You look lost. Perhaps you are in the wrong building?” 

“The law offices of Smith, Smith, Smith, and Hermes are here, right?”

“Yes, I am one of their lawyers,” said the man as he pulled on his overly expensive jacket. 

“Then, nope, I’m in the right place,” I said with a warm smile. 

“Our clients tend to be…more upper class.”

I held up my finger. “Ah, I’d be careful. Judging someone by their looks is a classic blunder.”

The man snorted. “Lady, we won’t even look at you unless your bank account is in the nine figures. Folks with that kind of money don’t shop at Ross.”

“What? Is my tag showing?” I asked, twisting to look at my reflection. Yep, the tag from Ross was there. “Oh, don’t worry about it.”

The man crossed his arms, glaring at me as the doors opened. The man quickly moved to the front desk and, in a harsh voice, spoke to the receptionist, “Get security up here. A street urchin somehow slipped past the guards.”

“Pardon, Mr. Lake?” the nicely dressed woman asked. 

“That woman who stepped out of the elevator with me, she needs to be removed,” Lake snapped.

“Are you talking about Lady Hestia?” the receptionist asked.

“Lady Hestia? Wait, you know that riff-raff?” Lake demanded.

The receptionist snorted. “She’s our top client.”

Lake folded his arms. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any clients that dress like that.”

“Yes, we do. In fact, if it wasn’t for her, Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith wouldn’t have had the money to start the firm,” informed the receptionist. 

“Afternoon, Jane. Is Johan ready?” I asked.

Jane pressed the button to open the door to the senior offices. My stride didn’t change as Lake sputtered. “Yes, the senior members have been tearing apart that contract.”

“Very good,” I said.

“What?” snapped Lake. “Why are you letting that woman in?”

“She owns the building,” Jane said as the door closed.