Page 19 of Icarus

Icarus shrugged. Hopefully his part in this would be over soon, but this guy didn’t need to know that.

Helios took a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. Then he glanced up at the doorknob and back at Icarus.

“You’re the only person I can see that’s not . . . him. It’s presumptuous to assume we’ll like each other and kind of weird to demand that we be friends. If you have to be here and I have to be here, can you at least talk to me sometimes?”

“Are you blackmailing me?” Icarus asked softly.

Helios pressed his fingers into his eyes. “No, fuck. My dad is keeping me here alone for an entire year until I turn eighteen. Whatever your price is, I’ll do it. Not telling the cops, not telling him—I’ll even help you out with security or something. But I can’t just sit here in the silence like this. Not for a year.”

He pulled his hands down from his face.

“I’ve waited every night to hear you come in,” Helios admitted. “You’re good at your job, you didn’t fuck up or anything. I was just waiting. You’re an opportunity that I couldn’t miss.”

Icarus climbed to his feet and reached for the door again.

“Do you want me to call the police?”

Helios laughed. “I’m his son. Where else would they put me but where I belong?”

Icarus took a breath and closed his eyes. Loneliness he could understand.

“I’ll be back.”

“When?” Helios asked.

“When I need to,” Icarus replied. He was not going to give this complete stranger information about his schedule. He turned the knob and Helios stood, backing away so he could open the door.

Icarus looked up at him for a moment, then opened one side of his jacket so Helios could see the top of the sculpture poking out of the inside pocket.

“It belongs to a museum. It was probably smuggled here. I’m returning it.”

Helios nodded silently and moved farther away from him.

“I’ll see you later . . .?”

Icarus bit his lip. His name caught behind his teeth.

“Nothing you need to know,” he said instead.

Helios smirked. “I’ll see you later, Nothing.”

Burr

Icarus slid across the hallway to the back door of the house, then squeezed himself back through the crack.

When he glanced behind him, Helios was still there. Backlit by the storeroom fluorescent, watching him.

Domini nostri, Iesu Christi.

Icarus closed the door. Reinstalled the hinges and walked back home.

Wrath

The farther he got from the mansion, the more irritated he became. No offense to Helios and his situation, but Icarus really didn’t need this sort of pressure right now. If his dad had listened to him in the first place, he wouldn’t even be in this position.

Icarus had never done anything that would make it reasonable for Angus to mistrust his instincts. He didn’t deserve being ignored. It would never feel good to leave Helios hanging knowing the parameters of his . . . imprisonment. They could figure out a way to get child services involved and then take a long break.

Icarus didn’t creep into his house. He walked in and closed the door hard. He strode down the main hall past his bedroom and the storage room and headed straight for his father’s workshop.