Lore

Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t “Want to get a bite to eat at Martha’s?”

Lore hesitated. What she wanted was to go home, shower, and sleep for the next six days, until this disgusting hunt reached another end and the next seven-year cycle began. But Miles had a steadying effect on her.

“Sure,” she said with forced nonchalance. It still felt like there was lightning beneath her skin. “Sounds good to me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re definitely paying this time.”

“Am I?” she said, letting herself drift back into their comfortable rhythm. “Or am I going to flutter these lashes and get our meal on the house?”

“When, in your entire life,” Miles began, genuinely curious, “has that ever worked for you?”

“Excuse you,” Lore said. “I am adorably persuasive.”

She fluttered them now, but her face ached from the hits she had taken, and the swelling likely didn’t help much, either.

Miles opened his mouth to say something else, but changed his mind.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, glancing up at the cloudy sky. “Should we go before we get the shower that only one of us needs?”

The air dripped with humidity and was scented with the bagged garbage piled up for collection the next morning. A taxi blazed by, kicking up a wave of gutter water. It had been raining on and off for days, and Lore knew there was more to come.

“I’m wearing a perfume of the finest lo mein and BO,” Lore said. “There’s no accounting for taste with you.”

That, of course, wasn’t true at all. Miles treated his body like a piece of art, letting it speak for him—his moods, his interests, and the people he carried in his heart. His skin was colored by an array of tattoos, from gorgeous florals and vines that wrapped around his torso, to modern art faces he’d designed himself, to mountains, eyes, and bands of shapes only he knew the meaning of. Lore had always loved the simple hangul tattoos on his neck best because of the story behind them. The phrase was something his grandmother used to say to him when he called her and his parents at home in Florida on Sundays: I love you more with every sunrise. When he’d shown them to her, she’d chided him for yet another tattoo, licking her finger and pretending to try to wipe them away with her finger, but she’d glowed with pride the rest of the night.

They walked to the Canal Street subway station to take the A train up to 125th Street. Lore was halfway down the stairs when she heard the approaching train and felt the telltale gust of air whip through the station. She ran, sliding her MetroCard out of her back pocket and through the reader. Miles, never ready, let out a strangled sound and fumbled with his wallet.

“Wait, no—ack—” Miles swiped his card again, getting an error message.

It was half past three o’clock in the morning, but subway service slowed in the off-hours, leaving the car full. She caught the closing door with her forearm just as Miles all but dove through.

He smacked her shoulder as the train lurched forward.

“Martha’s,” she said. “Hungry.”

“Taxi,” he said. “Easy.”

“Money,” she said. “Wasteful.”

The car emptied at Columbus Circle, freeing the seats in front of them. Miles sat down and immediately pulled out his phone. Lore took a deep breath, rubbing a hand against her forehead. With her body still, there was only the chaos of her thoughts.

He’s looking for something, and I don’t know if it’s you.

Lore had been unsettled by seeing the hunters in the city. She’d known to be afraid of Aristos Kadmou—or whoever he was as a god—finding her. She would be even more careful now and leave the city later that day, steering clear of the fighting and of him. Of all of them.

But the overriding feeling in her wasn’t terror. Lore knew she could hide because she had successfully done it these last three years. Instead, there was a restlessness in her body she couldn’t purge, an unwelcome tightness in her chest every time her mind conjured Castor’s face.

Alive, she thought, still feeling strangely dazed at the thought.

Miles made a noise of dismay beside her. Lore glanced over just as he closed one of his dating apps.

“What happened to the guy you went out with on Friday?” Lore asked, welcoming the distraction. “I thought he had potential. Nick?”

“Noah,” Miles said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, as if for strength. “I went back to his apartment and met all four of his hamsters.”

Lore turned to him. “No.”

“He named them after his favorite First Ladies,” Miles continued, sounding pained. “Jackie had a pillbox hat made out of felt and nail polish. He made me feed them. With tiny strips of lettuce. Lettuce, Lore. Lettuce.”

“Please stop saying lettuce,” Lore said. “You could take a break from dating, you know.”

“You could try,” he pointed out. He shifted a little in his seat. “I’ve never asked you this before, because I didn’t want to pry.”

“But . . . ?” she filled in.

“But,” he began. “It’s just that one guy, and the way you reacted to him . . .”

Her hand tightened around her backpack strap.

“How was I supposed to act when he came at me like that?” Lore asked. “He deserved to have his face rearranged. Maybe he’ll think twice about doing that to girls.”

“Oh, no, he definitely deserved it,” Miles said quickly. “He probably deserved at least another solid thirty seconds of it. I was actually talking about the other one.”

“The other one,” she repeated. Her heart gave a hard kick.

“The guy who looked like he’d been molded out of every single one of my boyhood fantasies,” Miles clarified helpfully.

Castor’s voice was warm in her mind. You still fight like a Fury.

“What about him?” Lore asked.

“You seemed to know him,” Miles said.

“I don’t,” she said sharply. Not anymore.

To stop any other questions, she leaned her head against Miles’s shoulder, letting the rocking of the train soothe her until she was able to take her first deep breath of the night.

The train barreled on to 125th Street, falling into its usual rhythm of jerking starts and stops in each station. But she was too afraid to close her eyes on the chance Castor’s face, bright and hopeful, would be there to lead her into the memories of the world she’d left behind.