All I did know was that I’d taken waaaaayyyy more after the human side of things than the divine, to a completely unfair degree considering the nifty gifts that other demigods had gotten. I wasn’t a brilliant warrior like Achilles, off to cover himself in glory in the Trojan War. I wasn’t a supernatural strong man like Heracles, determined to prove himself to his divine father and join the ranks of the gods. I wasn’t a famed monster-killer like Perseus, battling gorgons and assorted other terrors. I was just Cassie, a clumsy, occasionally clairvoyant, mostly clueless nobody and I couldn’t do this!

I shouldn’t have to do this!

A sudden rush of anger overtook the fear, causing me to throw off the blanket and stumble out of bed. And then to stumble again because I was dizzy as hell. I grabbed Gertie’s bedpost and held on while the room swirled violently around me. I stared back at it resentfully, at the rush of brown and mauve and brilliant, yellow sunlight, and wished, not for the first time, that my mother was here so I could yell at her.

But somebody else yelled instead.

“Get off! Get off with ye! Rotten beasts!”

It was coming from the street outside, so I staggered drunkenly over to the window and threw up the sash. And discovered the local pie man on the street down below, in a fresh white apron and soft cap, on his way to a nearby park. My mood lifted immediately.

He wasn’t one of those highly dubious streetside sellers who had populated the Victorian age, with “meat” that could be anything from unwanted off cuts, many also old or diseased, to… well, whatever stray was handy. No, this one owned a respectable shop a few streets over, where I’d eaten a couple of times. And just took his extras to the local park to sell to the Saturday crowds for a little extra cash.

Unfortunately, today he’d come along at the same time as another entrepreneur: the neighborhood cat meat seller.

That wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The guy in the blue apron and beat-up stovepipe didn’t actually carve up any kitties, at least not that he admitted to. He sold meat for cats, and dogs, as well. It was horse meat, from some of the thousands of dray horses that died in the city every year, and was colored a bilious green or a sickly blue so that it couldn’t be resold for human consumption. It substituted for the commercially produced pet food that no one had invented yet.

And the kitties knew it.