“You don’t have to be the one to confront Martin, you know. I could go instead.”
Paul laughed. “No offense, Moonshine, but you’d piss off Martin so fast he’d have you impaled on that spear of his before you even mentioned Hades’ name.”
“I don’t like sitting back and watching you take the risk.”
“You don’t have to lead every fight. Remember they called you She Who Brings Up the Rear.”
“Huh. One of my stupider epithets.”
“No, I like it. It reminds me you’ve got my back.”
“Philippe should go in. Martin’s his father. Or Dash—he can run away faster.”
“Except that Martin hates his son, remember? And you know how distractible Dash is—he’s liable to completely lose track of what he’s supposed to be grilling Martin about. I’m the God of Poetry—I’ll know how to get him to admit to his role in Hades’ murder, and then I’ll demand that he stop targeting other gods. And if he refuses—well, then I’m glad I’ve got you in my corner.”
His words were confident, but Selene noticed the sheen on his brow.
“I don’t like it.” She rested her hand on her twin’s. His obvious shock at her affection made her ashamed. “You don’t seem yourself. You’re still having those visions?”
For once, he was the one who pulled away. “I’m fine,” he assured her. But he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
With all the bouncing around, Selene felt like she’d been tortured for days, but they’d only been at sea for five minutes when the Governors Island dock came into view.
A former Coast Guard installation abandoned in the 1990s, the island now served as a park and historic monument. In the summer, ferries dropped off passengers from Brooklyn and Manhattan. The desperate city dwellers could escape the heat and overcrowding on one of the small island’s famous hammocks or wander through its diversity of avant-garde (and often inscrutable) art installations. But this close to Christmas, Selene and her companions would have the island to themselves—except, of course, for the bloodthirsty god hidden somewhere on its shores.
They bypassed the main dock and headed for the less populated eastern side of the island. Dash throttled down the engine, and Philippe threw the anchor overboard. Quietly, so as not to alert any sentries, they clambered out of the boat and waded onto the shore. Selene heaved a few breaths of the cold, salty air to settle her roiling stomach.
Dash, as the God of Travelers, took point. He led them up a small rise and into an open quadrangle surrounded by stately brick buildings in the federal style, part of the old Coast Guard facilities.
“Now we’re going to need to stay together, and out of the castle’s line of sight, all right, everyone?” he said. “Like little ducks in a row. Otherwise, our dear Man-Slayer might wonder why half the pantheon’s coming to visit. Not known for his hospitality, after all. We need a secret approach that will hide someone as impressively broad as our sweet Smith here.” He turned to Flint. “Map, please?”
Flint’s thick brows lowered at Dash’s teasing, but he pulled out his enormous tablet smartphone and brought up a bird’s-eye view of the island. On its northwestern tip stood Castle Williams, a large, circular brick fort constructed in the early 1800s. Over the years it had served as a barracks, a prison, and eventually, a community center for the Coast Guard. Now it was just a tourist attraction—a curious relic from a time when New York City thought itself vulnerable to attack from the sea. But according to Philippe, it just so happened to have a double life as the God of War’s winter pied-à-terre.
“Between us and the castle are a slew of military buildings,” Flint rumbled. “Most are laid out along a pretty wide road in the castle’s direct line of sight. But there’s also this—” He pointed to a moat surrounding a large star-shaped building in the middle of the island. “Fort Jay. That’s our way across.”
“If my father’s sentries are stationed on the walls of the fort, we’ll be seen,” Philippe observed.
“How many sentries does he usually have?” Selene asked.
Philippe shrugged. “No idea. I don’t visit much. And he isn’t usually running a cult. So your guess is as good as mine.”
His calm only increased Selene’s unease. “You’re sending my twin into danger because you’re too chicken to face your own father. You should at least know what he’s up against!”
Dash chuckled. “There she goes—turning supernova over nothing.”
“Nothing? I’m trusting Paul’s life to a plan you came up with. I’m beginning to think that was a terrible idea.”
Paul, his face pale, offered a weak, “It’s fine—” but Flint interrupted him.
“The Huntress is right to be cautious.” He turned disapproving eyes on Dash. “We’ve all seen you lie, cheat, steal, and trick your way through the centuries.” Dash gave an indignant huff, but the Smith’s attention had already turned to Selene. He held her gaze, his dark eyes serious. “Paul’s the best choice for this. And the plan will work. I’ll make sure of it.”
Selene wasn’t sure why, but she trusted Flint. As an Athanatos with few preternatural powers left, he would avoid unnecessary risks. But it was more than that. He exuded a gravity that tempered Dash’s insouciance. A strength that allayed her worries about Paul’s emotional vulnerability. He might be weak in the face of his wife’s wiles, but since he’d joined their mission, he’d shown a tenacious determination to make things right.
She gave him a solemn nod. “Fine. But from here on out, we go armed.”
She withdrew the pieces of her golden bow and screwed the limbs together. Flint watched her appreciatively; he had, after all, made the weapon for her. She braced the bottom limb between her legs and bent the metal easily to attach the string. The bow looked both graceful and deadly, like Selene herself. She’d lost her quiver to the flying man, but she slipped her three new gold arrows and a few wooden ones through her belt.
Flint, his hands occupied with his tablet and crutches, left his hammer slung across his back, its massive cylindrical head resting against his shoulder blades. Paul readied his own silver bow. Dash patted the sides of his coat, clearly checking his pistols. Flint glanced up at his stepson. “Come on, you too. You never know when it could come in handy.”
Philippe glared at him. “It’s so gauche.”
Flint raised a single bushy brow. Philippe sighed and reached into his own stylish shoulder bag. Out came the most absurd bow Selene had ever seen. Only a foot and a half long, made of myrtle wood carved with doves. A child’s toy. She couldn’t help a barely stifled chortle, enjoying the deepening flush on Philippe’s cheeks.
“Flint, surely you could’ve made your stepson something a little less … laughable.”
He shot her a warning look. “I don’t make new divine weapons, I told you. Only copies. Repairs. That’s the bow he had when he was on Olympus, so that’s what he’s got now. Another bow wouldn’t have the same power.”
“Power? That thing couldn’t send an arrow more than ten feet!”
Philippe scowled at her and withdrew his matching quiver of diminutive darts. “It works just fine, thank you.”
Dash clapped him on the back. “Don’t let big bad Selene scare you, boy. For all her posing as a feminist, to her it’s still all a competition about shaft size.”
Before Selene could retort, her twin silenced them all with a curt wave of his hand. “Please! I’ll feel much better about all of this if you stop bitching at each other.”
Chastened, Selene tilted her head at Dash. “Let’s do this.”
In return, Dash gestured grandly for Flint to take the lead. “Go on, big man. You take us in.”
Selene assigned herself the task of sweeping the rear in case of a surprise attack. They headed through the complex of buildings, then tramped up a low rise to the edge of the moat surrounding Fort Jay. Flint limped down a set of snowy stairs on his crutches and the others followed him into the empty moat without a word. Selene jumped off the moat’s lip
, twisted in midair to land a foot against the opposite wall, and hopped lightly to the ground twelve feet below. Philippe smirked at her acrobatics.
“I’m not showing off,” she insisted in an angry whisper. “Just stretching my legs a little after that boat ride.”
“Ah.”
With Paul’s admonition in mind, she tried to sound conciliatory. “So is there anything you can tell me about your father?”
He gave a shrug. “Haven’t seen him in a very long time.” He slowed his pace to fall behind the others and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “But last time I did … well, he was perfectly willing to give me a slap or two if I didn’t agree with everything he said. He knows Papa wouldn’t let him get away with more than that. I mean, fucking my mother—that Papa will allow. But hurting me? That’s where he draws the line.”
“You call Flint ‘Papa.’”
“Oui.”
“But he’s not … I mean … I thought he hated his wife’s bastard children.”
“He used to. That story about my sister Harmonia and the cursed necklace—I hope it’s not true but … well, the memory’s a bit fuzzy. But ever since the Diaspora, he’s treated me with more love and care than my real father ever did. His own kids are gone—weak hemitheoi long forgotten. And his assistants—remember the Cyclops, the metal Automatones? All dead. He adopted me in their stead.”
“You don’t seem to have a lot in common,” she observed.
He shot her a hurt glance. “You mean because he’s brawny and plain and très straight and I’m slender and pretty and a bit fey?”
“Well …” She was admittedly surprised that Flint liked anyone at all.
“He likes to think I need his protection.”
“But you don’t.”
“No. He’s the one growing old and gray, weaker year by year. I’m feeling magnificent. But I like having Papa watch my back. Besides, he’s about the only one of us who doesn’t judge people entirely on their outward appearances.”
“I don’t judge people—”
He gave a short laugh. “True! You’ve already decided about people before you see them—no real judging needed. If he’s a man, he’s an enemy. If she’s a woman, she either needs your help or deserves your disdain. Isn’t that about right?”
“Now who’s judging? You don’t know me at all.”
“But I know people. You know how to hunt them. I know how to love them.” He looked at her pointedly, his challenge clear. “You think choosing to be alone makes you so strong. But I see a woman shaped by men’s perceptions of her, whether she realizes it or not.”
“Is this your way of saying I should be nicer to Theo?” she bristled.
“No, I’m saying you should be nicer to Papa. You could learn a lot from him about making choices for yourself.”
Selene opened her mouth for an angry protest, but ahead of them, Flint raised a warning hand for silence.
She followed the others out of the moat and down the hill. They crouched in the snow behind a dilapidated wooden library. Just across the road loomed Castle Williams.
Paul’s usually expressive face had frozen into a careful mask. “I’m ready,” he said with a smile that Selene immediately saw through. Something was bothering her twin—something beyond the obvious danger of walking into the Man-Slayer’s den unarmed. She handed him a small metal dog whistle. It would emit a shrill note beyond the edge of human hearing—but not hers. “Use it the second you think you’re in danger,” she said sternly.
“Martin usually has transmission scanners set up at the entrances of his forts,” Flint warned. “So we can’t put a camera on Paul. But this will at least let us see something.” From his bag, he withdrew a three-inch-long metal sculpture in the shape of a sea serpent. Its tail narrowed to a small antenna. A black glass lens covered its single bulbous eye. Perfect tiny scales lined the cylindrical sides. “If we can get this over the wall of the castle, we’ll be able to see the courtyard. Once Paul enters the fort itself, however, he’s on his own.”
He held out a hand to Selene. “Arrow.” She passed him a wooden shaft. Flint pressed a button on the serpent-camera’s back and a row of tiny legs emerged to grasp on to the arrow. Then he turned his tablet phone toward Selene to show her a photo of her target: the three-story circular castle of mottled brownstone. Two beefy soldiers in white and gray winter camouflage guarded the massive double door banded with ornate iron hinges.
“Not too bad, see?” Dash observed. “I could take them down with my guns alone.”
Selene peered closer, looking for weapons. She couldn’t see any, but they probably carried concealed guns. “We still need to be careful. I’m sure the flying man’s around somewhere.”
Flint pointed to one of the narrow brick towers on either side of the circular building. “This is where the arrow should land. You’ve got to shoot just far enough to make it over the outer wall and up to the roof. There’s a cupola on the tower, so you’ve only got about two feet to stick the arrow, otherwise it’ll smack off the side and fall into the courtyard. That’ll blow our whole plan. You think you can do that without looking?”
In response, she took the arrow back and raised her bow, barely hesitating before sending the shaft through the air, a black blur against a sky pewter with light pollution.
After a moment, Flint pulled up a new window on his tablet phone. With a few taps, he brought the video feed into view. He gave her a brief glance of approval then turned it to show everyone. They had a perfect view of the castle’s interior: a snowy circular courtyard surrounded by three stories of cement and cloudy glass. Two more guards stood before the inner doors that gave entrance to the building itself.
Flint gave Paul a curt nod. Time for action.
Paul handed his bow and quiver to Selene. “Keep these safe until I get back, okay?”
“This doesn’t feel right, Sunbeam.” She stared at the gleaming silver in her hands. He hadn’t let her hold his weapon since they were children. “You should be armed.”
“You fight, I talk. Two halves of the same whole.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek. She let him. Then he patted the pocket of his coat to check for the whistle and headed toward the castle.
Flint strung a second camera on a flexible rod around the corner of the building. He split the screen on his phone so they could watch Paul walk toward the front entrance of the fort.
The older guard took a step forward. “Sorry, sir, the island’s closed to visitors today. I’m not sure how you got here, but—”
“Tell Martin that Phoebus is here.”
The guard gave him a skeptical frown.
“Trust me, he’ll let me in,” Paul insisted. “Go ahead. Ask him.” The older guard looked at his companion, who raised his coat cuff to his mouth and spoke into a concealed microphone. After a moment, they unbolted the doors and waved Paul through into the fort’s shadowed entrance corridor.
“So far, so good,” Philippe observed.
On the feed from Selene’s arrow, they watched Paul enter the courtyard. The second set of guards had already opened the interior door for him.
Flint nodded, satisfied. “Now we wait.” He sounded confident. But as Selene watched Paul enter the fort and disappear from view, she couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever make it back out.
Chapter 19
LONG-CLOAKED MARSHAL OF THE STARS
The modern Rose Earth and Space Center loomed beside the nineteenth-century American Museum of Natural History like an alien spaceship sent back in time. From his position on West Eighty-first Street, Theo could see straight through the six-story glass cube to the glowing white sphere of the planetarium. The entire building served as an orrery, a representation of the solar system. The planetarium’s sphere represented the sun, and models of the other planets hung in orbit around it. As he and Ruth drew closer, he could make out families streaming through the building, lining up for the last planetarium show of the day, and tromping down the Cosmic Pathway that spiral
ed from the sun to the ground, tracing the evolution of the universe from Big Bang to the present along the way.
Theo and Ruth entered the museum at the Earth and Space Center’s lower level. The museum was about to close, and most of the researchers had already gone home for the day, but Minh Loi stood waiting for them with arms crossed. She looked neat and professional, her long gray-streaked hair pulled back in a loose chignon. The welts on her face had faded to a light yellow, and her eyes snapped clear and sharp. Yet she seemed a woman suffering beneath a great weight that no one else could see. Selene and I were supposed to lift that burden from her, Theo thought. Instead, it looks like we made it all the heavier.
“I don’t know whether to thank you or report you,” Minh said without a hint of humor.
“How about I say ‘you’re welcome’ and ‘I’m sorry’ so you don’t have to decide?” Theo offered. “If it makes you feel better, the plan was never … amputation. It just sort of turned out that way.” He could feel Ruth’s eyes on him and prayed she would focus on one mystery at a time. Selene’s vigilantism was not something Ruth would understand.
Minh just stared at him a moment longer before saying, “I should never have asked Selene DiSilva for help.”
“Her methods can be”—he thought of the constellation myths—“punitive. But I’m not here on behalf of Selene. I’m helping the cops solve the mystery of the Charging Bull murder.”
She didn’t believe him at first, but with a little cajoling and a lot of begging, she finally agreed to answer their questions.
To Theo’s disappointment, the walls of Minh’s office contained no elegant star charts or brilliant photos of colorful nebulae. Nothing to satisfy the science fiction nerd in him, only spreadsheets of numbers and a whiteboard covered in equations. The only thing he found interesting was a picture of the Mayan zodiac that she must have gotten from Gabi as part of their joint astronomy project.
Ruth had transferred Theo’s photos of the crime scene to her own phone, along with a summary of their haruspicy findings. She handed the phone to Minh. “We think the liver might be a star chart, and the animals at the murder site represent five constellations. But we don’t know why.”
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