7

7

Stay Out Of My Way

It’s like the hush crawls out of the video and hangs over the people here, too, as we collectively wait and watch, breathless with curiosity, no one daring to so much as cough. Who will he pick?

Another bolt of lightning flashes down, this time striking outside the temple, at the top of the steps between the two pillars of the main entrance. The noise makes several people scream. Out of nowhere, a man appears where the lightning struck, visibly disoriented.

Zeus’ voice booms again. “Samuel Sebina.”

I stare at the phone. Zeus’ chosen mortal has to be even taller and more muscled than Boone, with ebony skin and short black hair. He seems too stunned to do more than look around. As fast as he appeared, he’s gone. Who knows where?

Another cry goes up. “Hera!” someone shouts. “Hera is choosing.”

Heads remain bowed over phones as people watch.

“I am Hera, goddess of marriage, women, and the stars of the heavens.” From a nearby phone, I catch a sultry voice you might think belonged to Aphrodite emanating from one of her own temples somewhere else in the world. “I choose…”

I don’t hear the rest because to my right, Chance is pushing his way in my direction. Trepidation floods my body in an itchy wave. More embarrassment, retribution, or calling Felix’s attention to the fact I left my post earlier—all are strong possibilities of what happens if he finds me. Time to get out of here.

I scoot sideways into a narrow alley between buildings. When I glance back, Chance is craning his neck. Yeah. He’s definitely looking for me. It takes a few evasive maneuvers, but I finally round the corner and nearly collide with a broad male chest.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Boone exclaims in an overly jovial voice. “Slow down, Lyra-Loo—” He cuts off the nickname he gave me as kids so abruptly it’s jarring.

Oh gods. He knows. About Chance. About my crush. Everything.

Not that I’m surprised.

“You were humming again,” he points out with a grin. “I thought Felix trained that out of you.”

I put a hand over my mouth like I can pull those sounds back inside. Humming was a habit as a young pledge. I hadn’t even noticed I was doing it. It’s been a while since my training days, though, so I guess it’s back.

“Sorry,” I mutter and inch around him.

He moves, blocking the way. “Where are you going in such a rush?”

I’m pretty sure, in the history of our entire acquaintance, he’s never cared enough to ask me that. I shuffle back and force myself to look him in the eyes. Deep-brown eyes. I always liked his eyes.

And I could just bawl. Years of waiting for him to pay more attention to me, and he chooses today. The one time I don’t want it. I glance back but don’t see Chance. Yet.

“Nowhere,” I say.

I step. Boone steps, blocking me again.

“Excuse me.” I step again.

He blocks again.

“What?” I snap.

He blinks at me, probably because I never snap at him. Then a mottled flush creeps up his face, and he runs a hand around the back of his neck.

Oh…no. He doesn’t want to actually talk about it, does he? I’d really, really, really rather not. Especially not here or now.

An odd light enters his eyes, and he opens his mouth only to close it again. Sure enough. “Lyra—”

A loud murmur rises from the crowds in the streets on either end of the alley.

“I don’t want to miss this.” I manage to dodge around him, catching him on the hop for once.

“Wait.” He grabs my arm and swings me back around, reminding me of another man who did that to me tonight. I’m beginning to feel a bit like a rag doll, and about to say as much, but Boone is close enough I can smell the scent of the generic soap the den supplies in the bathrooms. I still for a moment, then shake my head. I have got to get out of here before Chance catches up and makes this all worse. I look pointedly at his hand.

He follows my gaze, then lets go abruptly. “Listen. I… Fuck… I’m sorry. Chance is an ass. If I’d been there, I would have done something about it.”

This is just getting worse by the second. I don’t need him feeling sorry for me. And that’s what this is.

“It’s fine, Boone,” I say. “I handled it.”

“I heard.” He grimaces again. “You’re sure—”

“Yeah. Not a big deal. It’s not your problem anyway.” This time when I go around him, he doesn’t stop me.

I get far enough that I think he’s actually going to let me go, but instead he’s suddenly beside me, not stopping me but walking with me. “You’re not trying to watch.” A statement, not a question. His voice is rife with curiosity now. “So, where are you going?”

I shoot him a sideways look. “I don’t need your pity friendship, Boone. I’m fine. Really.”

“This isn’t pity.” He offers a lopsided smile tinged with remorse.

I wish I didn’t know better. It’s not his fault.

“I thought we were cool,” he says.

Right. Normally, I’d shoot some chipper sarcasm his way. I just don’t have it in me. So I try a different tack and tell him the truth. “I’m going back to the den.”

“You’re going back now?” Doubt laces his voice as he looks over at the crowd we’re leaving behind. “What about the festival? The gods are choosing.”

“I’ll see the highlight reel later.” As long as Zeus isn’t king again, I really don’t care about the results. Hermes would be nice for the Order, though.

I gesture back toward the temple. “Felix won’t like both of us missing this. The upper bosses said we all had to be present to honor Hermes.”

He turns serious. “Chance isn’t easy to hide from for long. I’ll walk you back.”

I should have known he’d figure it out. “Don’t you want to watch?”

That cocky grin gets me every time. He holds up a cell phone. “Got that covered. The view from where we were sucked anyway.”

Sticking to me like a burr, Boone keeps one eye on me and one on the phone, reporting the gods’ selections as we make our way through near-empty city streets. The way we go, the fastest way, takes us past Atlas Tower.

Lifestyles of the uber wealthy and questionably powerful. Despite all the riches the condos in that skyscraper contain, it’s off-limits to all pledges. The inhabitants have enough time, money, and spite to make sure intruders meet grisly ends if they get caught. Also, everyone knows Hades owns the penthouse.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I wonder if he’s there.

Why am I thinking about him right now? He’s the least of my worries. I live with an asshole named Chance, and as much as I’m ducking him tonight, I know it’s only a matter of time before he takes a wrecking ball to my life.

I toss another quick glance at Boone and let out a long sigh. As awful as it was before, I’m certain having a secret crush on a guy will feel infinitely less painful than one your nemesis can taunt you with.

When we get to a chain-link fence blocking off the entrance to tunnels that lead under the city streets, Boone unlocks the gate, locking it again behind us. Just inside the tunnel entrance, hidden behind stacks of garbage, we pull out rubber boots. It’s the pledges’ jobs to make sure the various entry points to our underground den stay stocked with these and flashlights.

I straighten from putting on a pair when Boone says, “Looks like another is about to go. I think it’s Artemis.”

I wrinkle my nose. If they stay true to pecking order, they’ve already selected the first ten mortals. That went fast. After Artemis, only one god will be left who still needs to select. I sigh again. I thought I’d get more time before everyone returned.

I grab a flashlight and start walking down into the graffiti-covered cement passageway.

Boone holds the phone out as we keep going so we can both see.

With no flourish or fanfare, one of Artemis’ famous golden arrows shoots out of nowhere to jam into the ground on the screen, and a mortal appears in a poof of smoke.

There’s a stir among the crowd, and Boone murmurs, “Well, would you look at that. Artemis picked a man.”

“Huh,” I say and keep sloshing through ankle-deep water, tossing only a quick glance at the screen to see a leanly athletic guy with light-beige skin and dark hair blink back at the camera.

Historically, the goddess favors women exclusively.

Boone just shrugs without breaking stride.

With practiced ease, we reach our destination—a solid-looking wall covered in a heroic depiction of Hermes, with his helm tucked under one arm and the Talaria, his winged sandals, on his feet. Graffiti, of course, to blend in with all the other art down here.

I pause to swing my flashlight both ways, checking that we weren’t followed but only catching the glow of a rat’s eyes before I douse the light. Boone switches off the phone, too. In the pitch-black darkness, I press my palm to the cement wall, feeling for the crypticodes I know are there—small, hidden, raised bumps, a system of letters that are imperceptible to the mortal eye, but we thieves know how to find them and can read them by touch. A way to leave directions for one another—which buildings to avoid, where there are holes in surveillance camera coverage, and so forth.

I don’t bother to read this one, since I know what it says. But at the end of the letters is the button, also hidden from sight, that I depress, triggering a thick cement door to swing open on a gust of breeze. We swiftly step inside before it closes just as fast. Every year or two, a new pledge doesn’t move quick enough, and it’s a bloody mess—one that is my lot to clean up—and a true shame.

As soon as the door seals shut behind us, the secret, god-made chambers that make up our den are immediately illuminated by lanterns blazing with a blue fire that never dies. Fire, it is said, that Hermes gifted the Order to light our dens all over the world.

Boone turns the phone back on.

“You get a signal down here?” I ask.

“I stole Felix’s wifi password.” He sets it on the floor as we both stop to take off the boots.

When I’m done, I put mine and the flashlight on the shelves available for all the pledges to use as we come and go. Boone’s still struggling with his, and I study his downbent head. He didn’t have to help me play keep-away with Chance.

He glances at the phone. “Looks like Hermes made his choice.”

I swallow before asking, “A thief?”

Boone squints at the screen, then shakes his head. “Zai Aridam?”

I pause at that. “Where have I heard that name before?”

He flips the phone around to show me, and sure enough, that name is scrolling across the image, and it finally clicks why it’s familiar. In the last Crucible, a hundred years ago, a man named Mathias Aridam was Zeus’ pick. He never returned. Actually, not a single mortal returned from that one. But their families were all blessed beyond measure.

Aridam. That family took their blessing and moved away from anyone who knew them. This can’t be a coincidence, can it?

“That’s all of them,” Boone says. “I hope they each return home at the end.”

He’s likely in the minority there, as we were still enjoying the result of so many blessings bestowed when no one returned from the last Crucible. I don’t say that out loud.

“Ready?” Boone gets to his feet.

I take a deep breath. “Sure. Why not?”

My stomach sinks when it looks like he’s about to answer my absolutely rhetorical question, but a shock of screams bursts from the phone’s speakers and we both glance down.

“What the—” We stare at the screen.

“Merciful hells,” I mutter.

Zeus’ temple now has a massive, billowing column of red flame out front, pouring black smoke into the skies. Only one god would use that as an entrance.

Hades.

I bet he was scoping out the temple earlier just for this. Of course that would be my luck. The one time I’ve gone anywhere near that forsaken place in all my life, I run into him.

“What is he up to now?” I mutter, ignoring the questioning glance Boone shoots me.

“Greetings, living mortals.” Hades’ voice doesn’t boom. It flows. My stomach clenches in stark recognition of that distinctive fathomless slide of a voice.

“As you all know, I have lost a dear one recently—my lovely Persephone.”

I squeeze my eyes shut at that.

Persephone. His darkly, obsessively beloved queen—Persephone.

His dead queen.

I shiver.

“In her honor…I, too, shall choose a champion,” he announces.

Holy shit. Hades doesn’t participate in the Crucible. Technically, he’s not even part of the major Olympians. Here in the Overworld, rumor has it that because he’s already King of the Underworld, the others in this pantheon don’t want to give him even more power, so he’s not allowed to become King of the Gods in Olympus as well.

A heave of murmurs rips through the crowds around the temple loud enough that the live feed picks it up.

And the mortal he picks. To be chosen by the god of death…yikes. I don’t care exactly what it is the gods have those people doing as champions—but that particular mortal is going to be so screwed.

Hades offers the crowds a slow smile. “And I shall choose…”

Suddenly, thick black smoke swirls around my feet, filling the chamber, and an immediate, knowing dread tries to tear a hole in my stomach. I jerk my head up to stare at Boone, who stares back with dawning horror widening his eyes. “Lyra?”

Oh my gods. “You’ve got to be—”

The smoke envelops me completely, and my vision goes black. Only for a second. It’s like I slow blinked, and when it comes back, I am not in the den, watching all this happen on a tiny screen.

Instead, I’m standing at the entrance to the Temple of Zeus in a dissipating cloud of black smoke that smells of fire and brimstone, with Hades by my side.

With the worst timing ever, that bastard pulled me here mid-sentence, and my mouth finishes what I was in the middle of saying. “—shitting me.”

The two words drop into the stunned silence that has taken over the temple and all of San Francisco. Probably the entire fucking world.

Hades smiles directly at me—cunning and supremely satisfied, as if I couldn’t have thrilled him more with those crass words. Then he wraps his hand around mine, lifting both, and faces the crowds. “Lyra Keres!”