Lore

“That’ll work,” Castor said. “Thank you.”

Miles smiled. “It’ll at least give them a chance to regroup. What’s the best way to get them the address?”

“Van?” Castor prompted.

The other young man sat stiff-backed, gaze fixed on the light seeping through the bay window’s pale curtains. “I can text them the address.”

Lore sighed. “Are you really up for this, Miles?”

“I am,” Miles said.

“You have to promise to bail if something—anything—seems strange about it,” Lore said.

“Everything is strange about your world,” he reminded her. “But I’ll be careful.”

“Fine,” Van said, rising.

“Fine,” Miles said, doing the same.

“That’s our plan, then,” Lore told them.

“We still don’t know where to find the Odysseides,” Castor reminded her, bracing his hands on his knees.

“I do,” Lore said. “Or I can at least make an educated guess.” She glanced at the grandfather clock. “I’m going to take a shower and close my eyes for a few minutes, so I’m not completely dead on my feet. Let’s aim to leave no later than five, before sunset.”

“Do I have to wait that long?” Miles asked.

“Are you really in that big of a hurry to get yourself killed?” Van said. He picked up his phone. “I’m just going to tell the asset to change the meet to tomorrow—”

“No,” Miles said. “Discussion over. Lore is going to lead everyone to where the Odysseides are, so that you can approach them about a truce to trap Wrath and get information about the poem. Castor is going to play defense against Wrath. Athena is going to play offense. And I’m going to do this meet and get whatever information the asset has because you have no other option.”

All of that depended, of course, on the occupants of Lore’s house not killing one another first.

Van’s lips parted and he stared at Miles, just a moment more, before he busied himself with his phone.

“When did we decide I’m defense?” Castor asked at the same time Athena said, “There shall be no play in my offensive—”

Lore left the others and went upstairs, shutting the door to her bedroom behind her. She set an alarm and crawled into bed.

She lay atop the covers, listening as the sound of the voices below faded to a dull murmur. After a few moments more, her heavy eyelids slid shut.

Iro’s face appeared there, emerging from the darkness of her memory. That last glimpse Lore had had of her, smiling in encouragement.

Oblivious to the monster in their midst.

LORE WOKE TO THE frantic beep of her phone’s alarm, lurching out of a heavy, dreamless black. She squinted at the time on the phone—a quarter past four o’clock in the afternoon—and immediately regretted having ever slept. Her muscles felt stiff over her bones, and no amount of stretching helped.

After changing into a clean pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, Lore stepped out into the hallway, listening for the voices of the others. But the town house was silent.

One last moment of peace, she thought, taking a steadying breath.

Even if things went right for them with Heartkeeper, nothing would ever be the same for Lore. Once the Odysseides knew she was alive, there would be no respite for her. After tonight, she might not be able to stay in the city, let alone the town house. There would be no safe place for her here.

Lore took one last look around, gripping the smooth banister. She was about to continue down the stairs when a movement in Gil’s master bedroom caught her eye.

Van stood studying something on Gil’s dresser—an old silver figurine of a tortoise that Gil had cherished despite its objective hideousness.

Lore didn’t remember crossing the distance between them, only that she was suddenly there, pulling it from his fingers. “That’s not yours.”

With care, she returned it to its rightful spot beside an old wooden box and a photo of her, Gil, and Miles taken shortly after Gil had offered Miles the empty third-floor bedroom after striking up a conversation with him at a coffee shop. Gil and Miles had been cut from the same fun-loving, all-too-trusting cloth, and despite her early suspicions, their game nights and endless teasing over dinner had made the house feel warm and safe in a way Lore wasn’t sure she’d ever experienced.

Lore looked around the room. Before Gil had died, she’d come in here hundreds of times, whether to harass him to take his medicine, to help him get in and out of bed on the days when age robbed his body of strength, or just to bring up tea or a board game to distract herself from the shadows of her own mind. He called her “darling,” a word Lore was fairly certain no one else, not even her parents, would have used to describe her.

Though Lore had never met either of her grandfathers—they had both died years before she was born—she had loved the idea of them, the fantasy she had created using her parents’ stories. But she had loved the real Gil, as exasperating and obstinate as he could be. She had only meant to stay with him for a few months, until his broken leg and arm had healed and she’d saved enough money to start over, but like the city itself, she couldn’t bring herself to leave him. He had been gentle, brilliant, and had the unfailing ability to make her laugh. He had pierced through all her defenses.

And now, to her shame, the space felt dark and stale. His collection of canes, each with a different carved animal head, hadn’t even made it into the closet with the rest of his things, and his shelves of academic books were coated in a thick layer of dust. As much as she’d tried to keep the brownstone exactly as Gil had left it, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to step inside his room in months.

“This house isn’t what I would have imagined for you,” he said. “The style is very . . .”

“I would recommend not finishing that sentence,” Lore said.

“I was going to say grand,” he said, gesturing to the ornate dark oak furniture set around him, all inlaid with bone and finely carved flowers and vines. “How in the world did you end up working for him?”

Lore turned, her jaw set and her heart hammering. “Figure it out, if you want to know so badly.”

His voice caught her in the doorway. “I was always jealous of you, you know.”