I gave her a little parade wave—the sort of gesture I used to give my worshippers when they came to grovel at my altar. To me, the message was clear enough: I see you, puny mortal; now run along. The gods are talking.

The woman did not take the hint. She strolled forward and planted herself in front of us. She wasn’t particularly large, but something about her proportions seemed off. Her shoulders were too wide for her head. Her chest and belly protruded in a lumpy mass, as if she’d stuffed a sack of mangos down the front of her dress. With her spindly arms and legs, she reminded me of some sort of giant beetle. If she ever tipped over, I doubted she could easily get back up.

“Oh, my!” She gripped her purse with both hands. “Aren’t you children cute!”

Her lipstick and eye shadow were both a violent shade of purple. I wondered if she were getting enough oxygen to her brain.

“Madam,” I said, “we are not children.” I could have added that I was over four thousand years old, and Calypso was even older, but I decided not to get into that. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a suitcase to repair and my friend is in dire need of a pair of pants.”

I tried to step around her. She blocked my path.

“You can’t go yet, dear! We haven’t welcomed you to Indiana!” From her purse, she drew a smartphone. The screen glowed as if a call were already in progress.

“It’s him, all right,” she said into the phone. “Everybody, come on over. Apollo is here!”

My lungs shriveled in my chest.

In the old days, I would have expected to be recognized as soon as I arrived in a town. Of course the locals would rush to welcome me. They would sing and dance and throw flowers. They would immediately begin constructing a new temple.

But as Lester Papadopoulos, I did not warrant such treatment. I looked nothing like my former glorious self. The idea that the Indianans might recognize me despite my tangled hair, acne, and flab was both insulting and terrifying. What if they erected a statue of me in my present form—a giant golden Lester in the center of their city? The other gods would never let me hear the end of it!

“Madam,” I said, “I’m afraid you have mistaken me—”

“Don’t be modest!” The woman tossed her phone and purse aside. She grabbed my forearm with the strength of a weightlifter. “Our master will be delighted to have you in custody. And please call me Nanette.”

Calypso charged. Either she wished to defend me (unlikely), or she was not a fan of the name Nanette. She punched the woman in the face.

This by itself did not surprise me. Having lost her immortal powers, Calypso was in the process of trying to master other skills. So far, she’d failed at swords, polearms, shurikens, whips, and improvisational comedy. (I sympathized with her frustration.) Today, she’d decided to try fisticuffs.

What surprised me was the loud CRACK her fist made against Nanette’s face—the sound of finger bones breaking.

“Ow!” Calypso stumbled away, clutching her hand.

Nanette’s head slid backward. She released me to try to grab her own face, but it was too late. Her head toppled off her shoulders. It clanged against the pavement and rolled sideways, the eyes still blinking, the purple lips twitching. Its base was smooth stainless steel. Attached to it were ragged strips of duct tape stuck with hair and bobby pins.

“Holy Hephaestus!” Leo ran to Calypso’s side. “Lady, you broke my girlfriend’s hand with your face. What are you, an automaton?”

“No, dear,” said decapitated Nanette. Her muffled voice didn’t come from the stainless-steel head on the sidewalk. It emanated from somewhere inside her dress. Just above her collar, where her neck used to be, an outcropping of fine blond hair was tangled with bobby pins. “And I must say, hitting me wasn’t very polite.”

Belatedly, I realized the metal head had been a disguise. Just as satyrs covered their hooves with human shoes, this creature passed for mortal by pretending to have a human face. Its voice came from its gut area, which meant…

My knees trembled.

“A blemmyae,” I said.

Nanette chuckled. Her bulging midsection writhed under the honeysuckle cloth. She ripped open her blouse—something a polite Midwesterner would never think of doing—and revealed her true face.

Where a woman’s brassiere would have been, two enormous bulging eyes blinked at me. From her sternum protruded a large shiny nose. Across her abdomen curled a hideous mouth—glistening orange lips, teeth like a spread of blank white playing cards.

“Yes, dear,” spoke the face. “And I’m arresting you in the name of the Triumvirate!”