Lore

Lore hopped down from the last steps, giving him a sideways glance. “Are you positive you’re up for doing the meet? It’s not too late to back out.”

“Yes!” he said, then lowered his voice. “Yes, I’m fine. And contrary to Evander’s opinion, I will continue to be fine.”

“Don’t let Van get to you,” Lore told him. “He’s right about one thing, though. It’s only going to get more dangerous from here. You have nothing to prove—not to him or to me.”

“I know,” Miles said. “I won’t get in your way.”

She shook her head, her throat tight. “That’s not what I mean. After tonight, I need you to leave. Go visit your parents. Take a trip. Just get out of the city. Promise me.”

“I’ll promise you one thing,” Miles said. “And that’s a new broom. Okay, two things, because we need a new mop. And, actually, you’re going to need a new rod in your closet.”

“Anything else?” she asked, pained.

“I promise I’ll check in with you,” he said. “If you start sharing your location with me again.”

She pulled a face. “I don’t like feeling like I’m being watched.”

Miles picked that old argument right back up again. “It’s a safety thing—wait, what are you looking for?”

“This, actually.” Lore retrieved an unused shaggy mop head and a container of feathered yellow duster sleeves. “Have you seen that old box of rags Gil refused to let me throw out?”

“Yeah, it’s over here. . . .”

Miles pulled Lore’s phone out of her back pocket as he followed her upstairs. “Password? I’m setting up the location sharing.”

She sent him an annoyed look, but told him. Upstairs, he handed it back to her and watched, alongside Castor and Athena, as Lore slid one of the dories’ ends into a yellow feather duster and fixed the mop head to the other.

“Are we— What is that?” Van asked as he came down from upstairs.

Lore held up the dory, sweeping a hand down beside it. “Ingenuity. We good to go?”

Athena held one of the duster sleeves up to her nose and smelled it, then touched her tongue to it. Her face twisted in disgust. “What creature was this shorn from?”

“A Big Bird,” Lore told her seriously.

“Are we . . . pretending to be a cleaning crew?” Castor guessed.

“Do you think a bucket would help sell it better?” Lore asked. She bent to tie several rags around one end of his dory.

Athena held out the other weapon to Van, but he shook his head. The goddess visibly bristled at the rejection.

“I’m off,” Miles told the others. “I’ll see you guys in a few hours.”

Van moved to block his path to the front door.

“Don’t screw this up,” Van warned. “I need to keep this asset.”

“Get out of my way,” Miles said, shouldering past him. He looked back at Lore one last time and said, “Don’t forget to text.”

“I won’t,” Lore said. “Be careful.”

“Take a cab,” Van told him.

“And pay in cash,” Miles finished. “Yeah, amazingly enough, I grasped the concept the first time you explained it to me.”

He lifted a hand in farewell, stepping outside and shutting the door behind him.

“So where is this place?” Castor asked her.

“Broadway and Thirty-Sixth Street,” Lore said. “Let’s go.”

But as they made their way to the street and hailed the first cab, she suddenly looked back at the town house, just in case it would be for the last time.

THE ODYSSEIDES OWNED ONE property in Manhattan large enough for the entire bloodline to use for meetings during the Agon. It had been a recent acquisition, purchased during the first year Lore had lived with them. The only question left was whether or not they might have sold it in the meantime.

She had her answer as soon as her and Athena’s cab stopped at Thirty-Seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, and she caught a glimpse of the building a block south.

Lore and Athena carefully slid their weapons off their laps in the backseat, ignoring the way the cabdriver stared in the rearview mirror. Athena cast her gaze around, searching for threats as they walked to the neighboring building. Castor and Van’s cab pulled up behind them.

The Odysseides property, Baron Hall, had another name within the family: Ithaka House. The landmark building had been created in the ancient style, both of its gray sandstone faces decorated with Corinthian columns. In its last life, it had been a bank. Now, in the years between the Agon, it was rented out as a grand event space as a cover for its true owners.

Parked beside its Sixth Avenue entrance was a large bus with blacked-out windows. A tent had been erected to connect the door of the bus to the entrance, but Lore could see the light inside shifting as people were hurried through. The bus rocked as it was loaded.

Castor came up alongside her, keeping his back to the wall.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“They’re moving something?” she guessed. “Or evacuating?”

Van approached them. “What do you know about the building?”

“There are two entrances, one on Sixth Avenue and the other on Thirty-Sixth. A few small windows on the facade,” Lore said. “It’s a converted bank, so it was built with security in mind—there’s one large central hall and smaller lounges off that, including a vault they were planning to convert to a safe room.”

“Is there a way to see inside the building without exposing ourselves?” Athena asked. “We must assess before Evander approaches the entrance.”

“There’s a large glass dome that looks down into the hall, but they would be stupid not to cover it,” Lore said. “And I’m sure they have hunters up there to keep an eye on things.”

Van slipped his sleek leather backpack off his shoulder and dug through it until he retrieved a small case. He popped the clasp on it.

Inside was a black device, shaped like a bird and no bigger than the size of Lore’s fist. Leaving it in place, he retrieved his phone, entered the longest password Lore had ever seen, and pulled up an unfamiliar app. He scrolled through the images of a prosthetic hand and selected one, which changed the shape of his grip. Then he opened another. After tapping a few more buttons, the mechanical bird whirred to life and lifted out of its case.