Lore

Miles looked genuinely shocked. “All of them? Everyone in his family?”

“All of them,” Lore confirmed. “The Purge of the Heraklides remains as gnarly as ever.”

“And yet totally in character for that bloodline’s brutal nature,” Van noted. “They celebrated all of their ancestor’s worst traits. It’s amazing they survived as long as they did.”

“He’s had a long run as a new god,” Castor noted. “I suppose it helps he no longer has a bloodline to punish him for being a kin killer.”

“On top of that, he’s been the least enterprising new Dionysus we’ve seen, meaning we can’t try tracing him through business affairs,” Van said. “No vineyards, no new mind-altering substances, no cults, religious or otherwise . . . I can’t predict how he’ll react to us, but we need to be prepared for anything. Don’t forget his power can induce a feeling of intoxication and frenzy. He’s been known to cast illusions in hunters’ minds in order to escape.”

“Do you have a picture of him, Van?” Lore asked. “I’ve never seen one.”

While the Kadmides program loaded on the burner, Van turned to his real cellphone and, after a moment, pulled up a grainy photo from an old newspaper clipping. It showed a man with one hand tucked into the vest beneath his old-fashioned suit. His round face was half-hidden beneath a magnificent mustache as he posed, stone-faced, between two bowling lanes.

“Is that a man or a mustachioed pug in a suit?” Miles asked carefully.

To Lore’s surprise—and even, it appeared, Van’s—Van let out a sharp bark of laughter. He recovered quickly, pressing his lips together as if to completely erase the smile.

“There have been rumors he was an architect,” Van said. “I’ve also heard he lived here, in the city, but there’s nothing left to substantiate that. As I said, we know next to nothing.”

“Well, we do know one other thing,” Miles said. “He’s standing in the Frick.”

Lore had been so focused on trying to study the man’s face she’d barely paid attention to the room around him. “The what-now?”

“The Frick Collection,” Miles repeated. His eyes went wide and his face lit up with delight as he took in Van’s look of surprise. “You didn’t know? Really?”

“Clever,” Athena said. “Once again, the mortal’s knowledge of this city far outstrips what the rest of you bring.”

“How can you be sure?” Van asked, his tone sharp.

“The bowling alley—those arches, the distinct honeycomb ceiling,” Miles said, trying not to crow. Van truly looked at a loss as he zoomed in on the ceiling. “That’s the Frick. It used to be an old mansion belonging to a Mr. Frick who used his endless stacks of sweet, sweet industrialist money to buy art. They turned it into a museum after his death. The bowling alley is in the basement. I would bet money on it, and if it’s true the Reveler was an architect, it wouldn’t surprise me if he worked on it.”

“How the hell do you know all of this?” Lore asked.

“You would know it, too, if you had come with me when I asked if you wanted to go last month,” Miles said pointedly. “I get free tickets through my internship, remember? You said, and I quote, ‘Real New Yorkers don’t play tourist.’”

“That sounds nothing like me,” Lore said indignantly.

“That sounds exactly like you,” Castor said. “It’s like your whole thing about how ‘authentic’ New Yorkers don’t get their bagels toasted.”

Lore was aghast. “Only monsters toast their bagels.”

“This means nothing,” Van cut in. “Just because he was photographed there over a hundred years ago does not make the information relevant to us today.”

“It is all relevant,” Athena said. “For it is very near to where the Awakening took place, and familiar to him.”

“Which would make it feel like a safe place to hide,” Lore finished. “He might not still be there, but it’s worth investigating.”

“Oh, I didn’t even tell you the best part,” Miles said, pausing for dramatic effect.

Lore gave him a look. He smiled.

“It closed two weeks ago for renovations,” he finished. “The museum won’t reopen until January.”

“Well, damn,” Lore said. “I think we should start searching there.”

“Agreed,” Miles said.

“I’m still going to check the Kadmides’ program,” Van said flatly. “We can’t bet on one hunch.”

“Good,” Castor began. “And while you do that . . .” He carefully released his hold on Iro. “She should come to in a few minutes.”

He turned toward Lore, eyebrows raised. Lore pressed the towel to her wounded shoulder and, just to make Castor feel better, allowed him to help her down the hall, toward the miserable-looking employee bathroom.

“Make it fast,” Van called after them. “We’ve got ten minutes before we need to move.”

Only, Lore thought, if Wrath doesn’t find us first.

LORE HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN what it felt like to be looked after by another person.

She had taken care of Gil for years, and had grown used to playing that role. The strangeness of being looked after—the reluctance she felt—reminded her of something Gil had told her three years ago, on the night they’d met.

Lore had walked day and night after leaving the Odysseides’ estate, trying to reach Marseille and start begging for enough money to travel back to the United States and set up a new life. Once there, her forged papers would at least give her some choices about school and starting over. Gil, then eighty-seven, had been mugged on the outskirts of the city, and she had found him beaten half to death with a broken arm and leg. He’d been hoarse from calling out for help that hadn’t come.

Lore had been outraged, and despite her own fear and exhaustion, she had carried Gil on her back to the nearest hospital and felt compelled to stay there with him, not wanting the vulnerable man to be alone. She pretended to be his granddaughter to sign him in, and she listened as he told her about himself—how he was an unmarried professor from New York City, and he had known this would be his last trip abroad. By the time the doctor had stitched up Gil’s wounds, and tended to the cut on her own face, the idea was fully formed in Lore’s mind.