I SLIDE THE KNIFE beneath his skin. It races up his palm, slicing open the flesh. The wound forms a clean line of red and then splits.

Ezra yelps, wrenching his hand away from me. His blood spills onto the white tile floor, forming a small river in the space between them.

Marisol screams. Dahlia's eyes roll back in her head. She slips out of her chair, her body slamming into the floor. I did not anticipate either of them reacting so dramatically—Ezra, sure, I was half-expecting him to black out himself, but Marisol and Dahlia are women. They should be tougher than this.

"You'd think Dahlia was a man the way she fainted at the sight of blood," I joke to Marisol.

"Don't say that to her." Marisol looks at me, hard and cold. Her eyes shift to Ezra's bloody arm and Dahlia blacked out on the floor, deciding which she'd rather do—see if he has self-healing powers or help her friend. After a moment she sighs and kneels at Dahlia's side, pressing two fingers against her throat, then moving her feet and lifting them up above her body.

"Are you trying to lift her?" I ask. "Do you need help?"

"No, you're supposed to lift their legs like this when someone passes out," she explains. "To help get the blood flowing or whatever. I learned it when I got CPR-certified for extra credit in health class."

"YOU GUYS!" Ezra yells, flailing his bloody hand about. "It's working!"

I grab hold of his hand and inspect it. Sure enough, his wound has already started to heal itself. The blood-flow has stopped, and the skin has started to stitch itself together again.

"Holy shit," Marisol says. "Hoooooooly shit."

By the time she's said those four words, the wound has completely closed itself off, leaving nothing to show it was there other than the drops of blood on his palm, and the river of the stuff on the floor.

"I'm gonna go viral," Ezra says, with tears in his eyes. "I'm gonna be rich."

"I know your mom had to have told you something about your dad," I tell him. "Tell me everything she told you, even the littlest details."

"Who gives a shit about my daddy issues? I'm gonna be rich!"

"Your dad was a god, Ezra. Don't you want to know which one?"

And if it could have been Apollo. And if his mom could have been Evadne. And if he might be the one I have to kill.

"Fine." He sinks into his chair, grinning from ear-to-ear and marveling at his hand. "She told me I have his eyes, and his smile. And that she met him on vacation—in Greece, God, it should have been obvious. But, Antigone, riddle me this: how did a devout Texan Catholic end up banging a Greek god? I mean, props to my mamma for that."

Ezra's eyes, green as so many things—green as the ocean, green as wine-grapes, green as the sky before a thunderstorm, green as the plague. And his smile, always so mischievous, always a step ahead, the smile of a thief and a trickster, the smile of a lover, the smile of a battle-drunk soldier, the smile of someone who knows too much. He could be the son of so many gods.

His appearance—and the appearance of his father, if we had more of a description than having Ezra's eyes and smile—would give little concrete away about his parentage. I took mostly after my father's go-to appearance, so I'm a bad example, but most demigods look little-to-nothing like their godly parent. Gods can change their appearance so often, it's difficult to nail down what one looks like. They can even change their gender at will—for all we know, Ezra could be the son of a typically-female goddess that decided to present as a male in order to seduce his mother.

Even with his interests and personality, figuring out which god he's the son of would be difficult. Apollo could make sense as his father, but so could so many others—Aphrodite, or Demeter, or Hermes, for example.

Except if Ezra is Apollo and Evadne's child, that wouldn't explain Marisol's psychic abilities, or Dahlia's, for that matter. And the answer being so obvious wouldn't explain why I was left to my own devices to figure it out.

"Marisol, do you think that there's any possibility—any at all—that one or both of your parents might not be your biological parent, and that you might be a half-god as well?" I ask.

"Fuck her!" says Ezra. "I wanna be alone in this fame."

"Why are you asking again?" she crosses her arms over her chest. "I've already told you the answer. Unless there's something you know that you're not telling us."

"I was thinking that maybe that's how you all survived the crash. I mean, don't you think it's a little odd, that you three were the only survivors? It would explain it—I think. And maybe explain how you're a little bit psychic."

"Cut me, then." Marisol extends her hand. "Let's see if I have superpowers."

"Please clean the knife off, first," Ezra orders. "Or get a different one. Let's not spread any diseases."

I hand the knife to him to clean off, and he places it in the sink, returning a moment later with a different one with a gleaming metal blade. I take it, hold it in my hands, and then sharply drive it into Marisol's flesh, splitting her palm open. She lets out a string of profanities as she wobbles on her feet, her skin paling. Ezra attaches himself to her side to hold her up.

"I can't look," she says, shutting her eyes. "Is it working? Antigone, tell me if it's working. God, it fucking HURTS."

Just then, Dahlia wakes up. She takes one look at Ezra's healed-over hand, another at Marisol's, all bloody, and is out cold again.

"Jesus fuck," Marisol swears.

Her hand twitches, the skin slowly stitching itself back together.

"It's working," I tell her. "You can heal yourself."

She opens her eyes, pulling her palm up to her face. I move behind her, so that I can watch as well. The wound completely heals itself, leaving nothing but blood and a small white scar to prove it was ever there.

Marisol throws her arms around me, jumping up and down and spinning me around, yelling in an incomprehensible mix of Greek, English, and what must be gibberish. She freezes, all the excitement falling from her face.

"My parents have been lying to me," she mumbles. "All these years they've been lying to me."

"They thought that it was what was best for you," I assure her. "They weren't trying to be malicious."

"How do you know that?"

"And maybe they thought they were telling you the truth," I offer. "The gods can be... tricky. Maybe one of them masqueraded as your father to lay with your mother. Maybe neither of them had any idea."

"Somehow the idea of that is even worse."

"I'm sorry," I say. "Ezra, go get me another knife."

"Why do you need another knife?" he asks.

"So we can test this on Dahlia."

"I'm not letting you stab her without her consent," Marisol says.

"And do you think she would consent to it? No? Exactly. That's why we need to do it while she's unconscious."

"That's exactly why we shouldn't do it!" Marisol insists.

"Yeah, Antigone, that isn't fair," Ezra agrees.

I nod, and clean the blood off the knife I already have with my shirt. "You're right, you're right."

Marisol nods. "Damn right I am."

And then I take the knife and dig it into Dahlia's hand—just the tip, just the smallest of cuts. She wakes up screaming. Marisol starts screaming, and so does Ezra. Dahlia clutches at her hand.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Dahlia yells, her eyes unfocused. "YOU JUST FUCKING STABBED ME, DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK, I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS?!?!"

"Calm down," I tell her. "Look at it."

The wound, being so small, has already completely healed itself.

"Did I hallucinate that?" Dahlia whispers.

"Leave her alone." Marisol shoves past me and leans in front of Dahlia. "What's your name, bro?"

"Dahlia Boivin-Rot."

"Where are you?"

"My house."

"Who's the president?"

"Lord, don't make me say it."

Marisol sighs. "She's all right!"

"Drink this." Ezra gives Dahlia a glass of water. "Slowly."

She takes a sip. "So what the fuck did I miss?"

"All of us are part-god," Marisol replies. "Even you. Are you feeling better?"

I'm no closer to figuring out which one of them is fully a god. None of them bled ichor, the golden blood of the gods. But would they technically even be a god yet? Or would they not even become one until after Apollo is dead?

Dahlia rubs her temple. "I need some weed."