“Thank you.”
“Daddy’s pancakes are bad.”
Sidney glances at Erath, who has the expression of a man being publicly eviscerated by a five-year-old and who has absolutely no defense to mount. The corner of Sidney’s mouth twitches. He presses his lips together and looks away before it can become a thing, but the twitch was there, and Erath saw it, and Sidney saw Erath see it, and something in the air between them shifts. Not a lot. Not enough to call a thaw. Just enough to remind both of them that the thing that existed before the kitchen, the ease, the banter, the chemistry of a man who doesn’t give deference and a god who is charmed by the absence of it, hasn’t been destroyed. It’s been interrupted. It’s been complicated and frightened and set back, but it’s still there, underneath the awkwardness and the guilt and the careful distance, waiting.
“Eat your pancakes,” Sidney says to Penny.
She does. She eats them with the enthusiastic, single-minded focus of a child who has apparently been subsisting on whatever culinary atrocities the lord of the underworld has been inflicting on her, and Sidney watches her eat and doesn’t look at Erath and doesn’t think about the press of lips against his palm and doesn’t think about the word wife and doesn’t think about the word irrevocably.
Chapter 12
The pretty blond human he’s been linked to by his well-meaning five-year-old daughter is not currently Erath’s biggest concern.
This says a lot about the kind of day he’s having.
He crosses the underworld with a purpose that feels better than the aimless circling of the past few days. He has problems. Multiple, overlapping, urgent problems. But problems are things he can work, things he can strategize around, and strategy is a language he’s fluent in. It’s the other thing, the human-shaped thing in his kitchen looking at him with zero deference and an eyebrow raised, that doesn’t have a strategy. That doesn’t have a language at all. That just sits in his chest and takes up space and gets larger every time he looks at it.
He finds Vivi at the northern arch, where a soul has gotten itself tangled in a vine that spirals up the stone and refuses to let go. The soul is wailing. The vine is pulsing. Vivi is standing with her arms crossed, looking at both of them with the expression of a woman who has been dealing with this for approximately too long and has run out of professional sympathy.
“I need information,” Erath says.
Vivi turns to him with visible relief. “Thank god. If I have to listen to this one for another ten minutes I’m going to climb in there myself.” She steps away from the arch and the wailing continues behind her, muffled and persistent. “What kind of information?”
“The Hargrove Coven.”
Vivi’s expression shifts from relief to the focus she wears when the work gets serious. She walks with him, away from the arch, along the bank of the river where the light is steadier and the air is quieter, and she gives him what she has.
The Coven has been busy. Mathilde Hargrove arrived in the underworld recently. Her husband, Jayson Voss, came through not long before that. Both are in the river. Mathilde’s daughters are both still living. Annabeth is running the Coven now, as far as Vivi can tell, trying to hold together an institution that was designed to be held together by someone scarier than she is. And Angelica is still alive.
Erath’s jaw clenches at the name. He feels it happen and can’t stop it. Whatever he’d felt for Angelica has been replaced so thoroughly by the last week that the old feeling has become archaeological, a thing he studies from a distance and doesn’t want back. But the name still carries the weight of the blade, the betrayal, the silence after, and the weight is not love and it’s not grief. It’s the cold fury of a man whose trust was used as a weapon against him.
“Still alive,” Vivi confirms, watching his jaw with the careful attention of someone who has learned to read the weather in his face. “And still powerful. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s in Annabeth’s ear.”
“What about Newt?”
“Newt Hargrove? He’s not on the radar. He’s still living, still in the Old City. Left the Coven after Mathilde’s death. As faras I can tell he has no contact with them.” Vivi’s tone suggests she’s been thorough about confirming this. “One of the demons is with him. Malik, I think. They’re… cohabiting.” The word is carefully chosen.
“That’s the second demon I’ve lost in as many months,” Erath says.
“Dimitri is also on the surface in what appears to be a voluntary arrangement with a Templar. You’re running out of demons.”
“They’re not pets, Vivi.”
“No, they’re subordinates who have decided they’d rather live with humans than work for you, which is arguably worse.” She pauses. Looks at him. “Speaking of humans. How’s yours?”
Erath gives her a look that could frost the river and doesn’t answer.
He leaves the underworld. Surfaces in Central. The daylight is thin, overcast, and the city has the gray quality of a morning that hasn’t decided what it wants to be yet.
He walks to August’s apartment, a second-floor unit in a building that’s nicer than Sidney’s but not by much, and knocks.
August opens the door in a t-shirt and sweatpants and bare feet, dark hair uncombed, tattoos visible from wrist to collar. He looks surprised to see Erath standing in his hallway, which is fair. Erath has never come to his apartment before. Their interactions happen in the underworld, at the river, in the formal spaces where their roles are defined. This is domestic. This is August’s kitchen and August’s couch and August’s life, and Erath is standing in it uninvited.
“Sir,” August says, recovering quickly. He always does. “Why didn’t you just summon me?”
“Because I needed to tell you something first, and I’d rather do it face to face.” Erath pauses. “Your best friend is currently in the underworld. Alive. Playing house with my daughter.”
August’s face goes through a rapid succession of expressions. Confusion. Alarm. More confusion. Then something that’s not quite fear but is adjacent to it, the alarm of someone who cares about a person and has just been told that person is somewhere they should not be able to survive.
