“Death was easy. Just like eating, drinking, breathing, our heart continuing to beat without fail for a lifetime, when it came to dying, our bodies know just what to do. Beingreborn, though, goes against every natural instinct we have. It was…excruciating.” An understatement, but there was no word that could properly explain how it felt to have your soul forced into a shape it was never meant to hold. Like being beaten, broken, stripped, torn, flayed, burned alive, everything all at once. “And here I am,” I said, gesturing to myself as a whole. “Still here.”
Ulysses reached across the table and took my hand, seemingly without thought, without a single moment’s hesitation. I knew without asking that he saw the deeper pain I had spent millennia trying to keep buried. He trulysawme, and he only wanted to make me feel better, even as we both knew that nothing was so easy. All the same, he squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back. It was such a simple act of kindness, freely given, and it was enough to steal the air from my lungs. When was the last time someone had shown me a speck of compassion?
Too soon, he let go, and I almost reached for him. Ulysses wiped at his eyes, quietly devastated. “And I thought my backstory was sad.”
I was greedy to know all there was to know about him, every little tidbit. Where he grew up, his favorite color, the name of every childhood friend—but especially his trauma, because I could see it there behind his eyes, the way that he absorbed my tale without flinching, without apology or platitudes, and I knew he was no stranger to pain. But I knew his story was not something I could demand he share. That wasn’t why I’d told him mine. He would share when he was ready.
So, instead of pressing for more, I turned my attention back to the map between us. “So… what kind of snacks will we have on this stakeout?”
He gave a watery laugh. “Doritos,” he said, his smile grateful. “Definitely Doritos.”
I kept making assumptions about this man, and time and time again, he’d proven me wrong. And for the first time, I wondered about the real reason I’d felt compelled to follow him that first night. Had I truly believed him a threat? Or had there been something more about him, something tender and curious and so fuckingbeautifulthat had drawn me in.
Chapter 11
Ulysses
Bythefourthnightof having detected nothing, visually or by scent, I was starting to get discouraged. “This sucks,” I griped, my feet kicked up on the dashboard of the not-at-all-suspicious silver 2018 Ford F-150 Rue had acquired, licking salty cheese powder from my fingertips. The chips I’d bought were doing nothing to fill the ache I felt, the hollow slowly carving its way into my belly, the start of a sinful craving. “Why didn’t you tell me we would be sitting in silence night after night? The least you could do is play a game of cards with me.”
“Spying isn’t always glamorous, you know,” Rue told me, watching me from the corner of his eye, lips twitching in amusement. “Hardly ever, in fact. The whole point is to do it discreetly, quietly. It involves a lot of waiting. If it’s exciting, that probably means you’re doing it wrong.”
I dropped my head back onto the headrest and muttered, “Then I must be an expert by now, because this isn’t excitingat all.”
Rue’s chuckle gave me a soft sense of satisfaction. The god was usually so serious that when he let one of his hard-earned laughs free, it felt like a great accomplishment.
Sighing dramatically, I peeked across the truck’s interior at him, biting back a smile. “I spy with my little eye…”
“No,” he said simply.
“Oh, come on, indulge me,” I teased, and when he caved (which I knew he would), I began again. “I spy with my little eye…”
“A lamppost,” he said.
My jaw popped open. “How did you—” I crossed my arms over my chest and did my best not to pout. “You don’t knowwhichlamppost.”
“That one,” he said, pointing at exactly the right one.
I glared at him. “Noooo,” I lied. “It was… that one,” I said, pointing at a different one entirely, and he hit me with a look that said he was on to me. I guess that was what I got for trying to play a simple child’s game with the god of spying. Nothing got past him.
Grumbling, I pulled my feet off the dash and grabbed my bag from the floor. “I think we should split up,” I said, feeling dejected and bored out of my skull. “We can cover twice as much area that way. And I’ll be able to smell better out of the car.” Though I had to admit, I wasn’t hating being in the truck with Rue. He was surprisingly good company, even with the lack of entertainment. I pushed the door open, moving to hop out. “You stay here at the strip club, and I’ll walk up and down a few blocks toward the lake.”
A fist gripped my jacket, though, and dragged me back into the truck. “No.”
I tugged at my jacket to no avail, thoroughly trapped. “What do you mean no?”
He arched a thick auburn eyebrow at me, leaning all the way across my lap to pull the door closed. “I mean, no, you’re not going anywhere. We stick together.”
I scoffed. “Do I get to know why?”
A muscle in Rue’s jaw ticked, his nostrils flaring in a huff as he glared out the windshield. But he said nothing—behind whatever macho reason he had was a bunch of bullshit. He knew I was right, but he was too alpha to admit it.
Nodding decisively, I gave my jacket another sharp yank until I was free. “Alright, then we’re in agreement—we’ll split up. And hey, we finally have an excuse to use these walkies I bought!” I opened the glove box and pulled out the two walkie-talkies, fresh out of the package. I tossed one at him, and when his hands were busy catching it, I shoved the door open a second time and hopped down onto the pavement.
I could tell he still wanted to argue with me, so I held my radio up to my mouth and pressed the button to talk. “Testing, testing… Ruadan sucks at I Spy.”
He rolled his eyes, so I took that as permission and closed the door, practically skipping down the sidewalk as I gratefully stretched my cramped muscles, breathing in fresh air that hadn’t been recycled through our lungs for the past four hours.
As I passed a red mailbox on the corner, I was about to call him over the radio to play one last round of I Spy, but before I could push the button, his voice erupted from the device. “The mailbox,” he said. Anything else he might’ve said was cut off as he took his finger off the button, but when I whipped around to glare at him again, I could see his head tipped back in laughter. How did he do that?!
