Sorry for the delay, and here is Part III.  Parts I and II are here and here, respectively.  Since this one is pretty short, I might post Part IV later tonight.  Also, since not all of these are obvious in terms of timeline, this one takes place the morning immediately following Part II, which is a couple of days after Part I.

The knock on Jack’s door woke him up and he immediately regretted continuing to allow Thursday nights to happen to him, as he did every Friday morning.  Thursdays had been happening to him for several years now, since before he was legal to drink, and he had expected to build up a tolerance eventually, but there was no sign of such a thing.  It probably had something to do with Thor’s insistence on having them be strictly Bring Your Own Alcohol, which usually ended with divine-strength mead from the Norse, sake from the Japanese, and beer from the Egyptians, among others.  Dionysus had brought wine exactly once before being strictly barred from ever doing so again—possibly because it had almost landed Jack in the hospital after a glass of the stuff, more likely because there had been a lot of wounded pride going around among the gods.

Jack had the door half-way open before it occurred to him that he wasn’t precisely presentable for company, dressed in a pair of pajama pants and an undershirt and looking distinctly hungover.  He also hadn’t slept well, even worse than recently, his dreams full of snatches of strange languages and foreign places, faces familiar and unknown.  He probably looked exhausted.

“Jack,” Marcus said jovially, then paused to look Jack over in surprise. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Hm? Mm, yeah,” Jack said, doing his best to mitigate the wince trying to crawl onto his face at the volume of Marcus’ voice.  Marcus doesn’t look reassured, so Jack must look worse than he had thought.  “I, uh.  I have pushy friends.  Thursdays are poker night.”  ‘Gambling night’ would have been more accurate, but it would take a lot of explaining if Jack got into some of the more archaic games that ended up happening in his apartment.  There had been a lot of demands for dice games last night, which meant that there was even more drinking than usual.

‘Pushy’ was also an insufficient descriptor, if Jack was going to be honest. Thursdays were more like a home invasion than a party, but he’d learned to roll with it.

“Ah,” Marcus said, in the tone of someone who wanted to seem understanding. “Well, I’m sorry to get you up so early, but I need to get to work and my wife wanted me to ask you if you would be interested in coming over for dinner tonight.”

Jack stared at him for a moment.  “Dinner.”

“Yes,” Marcus said with a smile.  “She and I think it would be good to connect with some more…normal people.”

“Normal.”  Jack couldn’t tell if he was offended on his own behalf or on that of the city. Normalcy was overrated, that had always been his sound opinion.

“Not that your friend from yesterday wasn’t charming,” Marcus hurried to say, as if concerned that Jack would be defensive.  “But.”  He laughed self-consciously, that strange high titter of worry about what another person thought—Jack could admit that he wasn’t at his most empathetic while hungover, and even while stone-sober he suffered from a critical lack of it.  One would have imagined that it would have made him a bad candidate for a divine therapist.  “Well, it’s a strange city, isn’t it?”

“Strange.”  Jack, realizing that he had turned into a broken record and wondering where his silver tongue had wandered off to, shook himself.  It seemed to reorder something in his brain and he said, “I mean, it’s definitely interesting, but I grew up here, so.  What do you mean?”

“Well,” Marcus said, seeming to consider his words carefully.  “My daughter came home gushing about the art teacher at the elementary school.”  Jack blinked at him, feeling as though he deserved a round of applause for not shutting his door in the man’s face.  “He makes all the children call him by his first name,” Marcus said. “And she said his name was Apollo?”

“Yeah,” Jack said flatly.  “His sister Artemis runs the track team through the ground five months a year and the cross-country team the rest of the time.  She also trains the women’s archery team.  He teaches art at the high school, too, in the mornings.”

Marcus grinned at him, a nervous baring of teeth.  “And let me guess, Ares is the football coach?”

Jack laughed and the sound ricocheted through his temples, hot and sharp. “Are you crazy?  No one lets him anywhere near the sports teams.”  He shook his head.  “Look, just…let it go.  That’s the best advice I can give you, is to just let it go.  You’ll either get used to being here, or you’ll move out. But there are plenty of people like you here—you know, normal, people who stay out of most of it.”

“Like you?” Marcus asked, and he sounded almost desperate for confirmation.

Jack pressed his lips together to hold back another laugh, but opted not to answer the question.  “I don’t think I’ll be able to come to dinner tonight,” he said instead, trying to make himself sound apologetic.  “I promised a friend I’d help her with something.”  Kali counted as a friend, for a certain stretched definition, and he had been meaning to call her to check up on the Ishtar situation.  Maybe he would invite her back to his apartment and watch Marcus squirm as her four lovely hands flashed.  No, that would be cruel.  Funny, though.  Anansi would think it was a good story.  Jack shook himself out of his thoughts.  “Sorry.”

“Any other advice for coping with a city full of…”  Marcus waved a hand, the familiar twitch of someone unwilling to describe what they were seeing.  “Crazy people?”

“We’re not crazy,” Jack said, and now he’d decided.  He was going to be offended on his own behalf and on the city’s, because he had never seen any reason not to have the best of all possible worlds.  This was why he didn’t like dealing with newcomers.  “And yeah, I’ve got a couple other bits of advice. But in return I’m going to need you to promise me something.”

“Of course.”

Jack leaned forward and spoke sharply.  “Don’t wake me up on Friday mornings.  Clear?”

Marcus looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected Jack to actually express his irritation at the situation.  “Uh. All right.”

Jack rocked back onto his heels and flashed what he knew was his most charming smile.  “Great. First, stuff happens here, and no one will appreciate you kicking up a fuss, myself included.  Second, don’t agree to any deals unless you know the person offering it to you, so what you just did there with me should be a learning experience for you.  Third, keep your kids out of the woods unattended.  Everything else is common sense.  Have a nice day.”  And he allowed himself to shut the door conclusively in Marcus’ face.

It was remarkably good for his headache.