Mab was napping in the kitchen. Evie knelt by her, resting her hand on the dog’s head. “Look after him, ’kay?” Mab’s tail thumped the floor. Her dark eyes were liquid and earnest.
The Prairie Schooner had been Hopes Fort’s only motel since the fifties. These days, it was owned by Carlos and Gracie Alvarez. Evie had gone to school with their sons.
“Hi, Mr. Alvarez,” she said to the family patriarch, who sat behind the counter. It didn’t matter that she was all grown up now; he’d always be Mr. Alvarez. He was a middle-aged man with paunch and thinning hair. He hadn’t changed at all in the last ten years. She seemed to remember that his sons, Stu and Harry, were living in Pueblo now.
“Well, Evie Walker, hello.” He stood and offered a friendly handshake, which she bore amiably. “What brings you back to town? You need a room?”
“No, I’m seeing my dad for Christmas.”
“Sure. Hey, I heard that he—I mean, if there’s anything—” He let the offer end with a shrug.
He’s not dead yet, she wanted to growl. Did everyone in town know? Were there signs up at the Safeway?
“Thanks. Actually, I have a question for you. Do you have a guy staying here? About this tall, dark hair, kind of tough looking.” Was Alex tough looking? She seemed to remember his frame being on the thin side. But capable. Handsome even? “Wears a big felt jacket. Also a woman, maybe in her thirties, elegant, well dressed. But they’re not together. Probably.” This wasn’t making sense.
He didn’t even have to stop and think. “Nope. I’ve only got three rooms filled right now, the usual holiday crowd. Relatives’ places are overflowing, so they come here. Two families with young kids and one older woman.”
“You haven’t had anyone like them in the last week or so?”
“No. ’Fraid not.”
No standoffish single guys, nothing unusual. Alex would certainly stand out, if he were staying here. “Right. Thanks. So—how’s business?”
He shrugged. “People don’t travel much these days. But we get by.”
“How are Stu and Harry?” Carlos Alvarez rambled on about them and their families—they had a rapidly growing collection of children, Evie gathered. She listened politely. If she hadn’t wanted to sit through the report, she shouldn’t have asked the question. Finally, she was able to work in, “Well, tell them I said hello.”
“I sure will. You tell your dad to take care of himself.”
If only she could.
She sat in her car for a while, watching the doors of the guest rooms lined up behind the main office. The motel was a one-story building. Red doors stood out against the white siding and the gray asphalt shingles. Except for new coats of paint, the place probably looked exactly as it had fifty years ago. Only two other cars were parked in the lot. Evie didn’t know what she was waiting for. She didn’t know where else to find Alex. Strangers in town stayed at the motel, right? She supposed she could go ask Johnny Brewster if the police had seen anything. Someone like Alex stood out in a place like Hopes Fort.
She put her car into reverse, looked out the back window for oncoming traffic, looked over her other shoulder, and started backing. When she checked the rearview mirror, a man stood behind the car.
Gasping, she pounded the brake. In the rearview mirror, she saw him jerk, like he’d been hit. She swore he hadn’t been there when she looked a second ago.
She shifted to park, hit the emergency brake for good measure, and rushed out of the car. “Are you okay?”
He was leaning on her trunk. Smoothing the sleeves of his shirt, he straightened, smiling a little, unflustered. He was younger than she first thought, in his early twenties. Short, thin, and baby-faced, he had curly brown hair, tousled around his ears.
He said, “I should watch where I’m going, huh?”
“I’m really sorry, I thought I looked, I didn’t see you there—”
“Hey, not a problem. No worries.” Flashing a brilliant smile, he touched her hand.
And she thought, how strong his hands were, how sure his touch, which felt like a spark racing up her arm, into her mind, and he was smiling for her.
“What’s your name?” he said. “I’m new here in town, and I’ve been wondering where’s a good place to get some dinner. Maybe you could show me.”
His words tingled. He didn’t let go of her hand. She shook her head. Another stranger in town. Looking for her.
“I don’t think . . .”
He looked away, his tanned face blushing a little, his smile turning sly. “I know it’s a little forward of me. But I’m a believer in fate, and it’s just possible that I showed up here, at this exact time, and you almost ran over me for a reason.”
He made such a prospect sound reasonable. Her mind fogged. He wasn’t speaking to her mind; he was speaking to another place, deep in her gut, making her want to melt.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she said, trying to clear away the dizziness that seemed to overtake her.
“Evie! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
She looked, and there stood Alex. He took her elbow and pulled her arm out of the stranger’s reach. In spite of herself, she leaned into his touch. He was solid, and didn’t send shocks along her nerves.
“Hold this,” Alex said, and tossed something at the stranger. It looked like a sprig of leaves, like part of a boutonniere.
Startled, the man caught it out of reflex. For a moment, he held it with both hands. Then he shouted, an indecipherable curse, and dropped it, scuttling away from it.
Alex shoved her to the car and climbed into the front seat, pulling her in with him.
“Hurry up and drive, please,” he said.
Numb and bewildered, she did. The tires squealed as she jerked forward, circled around the parking lot, and lurched into the street.
The stranger glared after her, rubbing his hands together like he was brushing dirt off them.
The Queen paced back and forth along the narrow aisle between the bed and dresser, arms crossed. Robin sat at the edge of the bed, melting an ice cube over each palm in turn.
He scowled, all his humor gone. “I thought it would be easy getting to the house through the girl. I usually do so well with them. But I didn’t know about him. Who did you say he is?”
“He was a slave. A Greek, one of Apollo’s. Detritus of history, lost in time somehow. He certainly doesn’t have any power. He’s nothing.”
She said the words and tried to believe them, but her mind reached. He may have been nothing in himself, but what had brought him here? Whom did he serve? Surely not any of her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. They were all dead. She’d have known if they were still alive.
“He has enough power to irritate me.” Robin scowled at the rash on his hands. “I hate them. I hate them both.”
How could someone who’d lived so long act like such a child? “Any mortal could know such a charm.”
“But if he used such a charm, then he knows who I am—what I am. He’s dangerous.”
“He’s guarding her. The Walker girl,” she said.
“Why?”
“He could want the house for himself.”
“Or the girl,” Robin said with a leer.
This should have been easy. Only two mortals in a simple house stood between her and the prize. Once she’d located the Storeroom, taking what she needed should have been easy. Three thousand years gone, and Zeus was still making life difficult for her. Leave it to him to plan so far ahead, placing obstacles for her to overcome. Maybe the Greek slave was part of that plan. Or maybe the man had his own agenda afoot. In either case, he was a nuisance.
“I’ll take care of him,” she said. “It will take only a moment. You stay and nurse your wounds.”
Robin glowered with a hint of ancient stories, of red caps and sharp teeth. “I’ll be ready for him next time. No one fools me twice.”
She pressed her lips into a mocking smile and opened the door.
The woman who stepped out
of the motel room was old, seventy or eighty, with white hair and soft, wrinkled skin. Dressed in a respectable skirt and blouse, she was tiny, but despite her short frame and thin bones, she managed to hold herself straight and walk with slow dignity as she crossed the parking lot to the motel office.
The proprietor sat behind the desk. He greeted her as the door opened. “Hi, Mrs. Basil. Is everything okay?”
“Hello, Mr. Alvarez. I’m not really sure.” Her wrinkles deepened in confusion, and she glanced over her shoulder, through the glass door to the parking lot. “I saw something rather disturbing on the street just now.” She checked, and the street itself wasn’t visible from the parking lot. She could tell him anything. “It may be nothing, but I thought I should tell someone.”
As she expected, Alvarez frowned, interested and concerned. “What is it?”
“There was a young woman, she had brown hair in a ponytail, a green army-looking jacket—”
“Evie Walker. She was just in here.”
“Yes, well, a man stopped her on the road just now.” She spoke carefully, as if she were trying very hard to remember and explain clearly, evoking sympathy for her age. “He pounded on the door, then got in the car. The poor girl looked frightened, and I think—I think he was holding a gun. Does that sort of thing happen here?”
Alvarez’s face paled. His hand was shaking when he picked up the phone. “I’ll call the police. I’ll call right now. Can you tell them what the man looked like?”
“Well, I think so. Oh, I hope she isn’t in danger.”
After he contacted the police, he handed the phone to her and she described the attacker in detail—short, slim, olive-skinned, in his early thirties, dark curling hair, wearing a navy blue felt coat. The police had the description and license plate number of Evie’s car on record from the checkpoint on the highway. Officer Brewster was sure they’d be found quickly, and he thanked Mrs. Basil very much for her help.
She insisted she was more than happy to be of service, and hoped the girl was safe.
Evie perched at the edge of her seat, leaning on the steering wheel while she drove. She didn’t know where she was going. Just away. Alex leaned against the passenger door and stared out the windshield.
After a mile, he said, “What’s your first question?”
She sat back and covered her mouth to keep from laughing. Or shrieking. When she realized she’d used the hand the stranger touched, she stared at it. The car hit a pothole. She was driving too fast and eased her foot off the gas pedal.
That guy at the motel had done something to her. Absently, she wiped her hand on her jeans.
“What was that you threw at him?” she said finally. “Rowan.”
“Rowan?”
“It’s a kind of tree,” he said.
“Yes, I know. Why did it hurt him like that?”
“Every magician has a weakness. Rowan is useful against that one’s brand of magic.”
“That one . . . who was he? Magic? What do you mean, ‘brand of magic’? What did he do to me? What do you mean, magic?”
“Slow down, one at a time.”
She swallowed and tried to keep her mind from tumbling. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He glanced at her. “You have?”
“You seem to know what’s going on. My father won’t tell me anything. I want to know what all that stuff is doing in my dad’s house. And why does everyone want it?” And why do I feel like this? Why is it speaking to me?
“It’s not that simple.”
“Who was that woman who came to the door yesterday? And who was that guy in the parking lot?”
“I’m not sure you would believe me—”
She slammed the brakes, cranking the wheel to skid to the side of the road. The tires complained, and belatedly she looked in the rearview mirror to see if anyone was about to plow into her. But this was Hopes Fort, and she was out of town already, surrounded by barren winter fields. Hers was the only car on the road.
“Who are you? Why did you save me? What did you save me from?”
Alex had one hand on the dash, the other on the back of his seat, and he pushed himself against the door, away from her. His brow was lined and anxious; his lips frowned.
“I think he’s working for Hera. He probably thought he could use you to get into the Storeroom. Here.” He reached his closed hand over to her. Tentative, she held her palm open, and he dropped a twig, a few inches long with rows of serrated oval leaves, bright green, into her hand. “You should keep it, in case he comes back.”
She rubbed the leaves between her thumb and finger. The stranger’s touch had been like a cord wrapping around her body. She would have followed him anywhere. Taken him into the house, anything. And how could a twig stop that?
“Hera? That woman? The one you talked to yesterday?”
“Hera, Queen of Olympus. Yes.”
“That’s crazy.”
He shrugged, unconcerned.
“So which god are you? Apollo?”
Laughing, he said, “I’m not nearly golden enough.”
She’d meant the question as a joke. “Then who are you?”
“Nothing. No one.” He looked away.
“But you understand. You know everything.”
His lips parted in a silent chuckle. “I ought to, after all this time. But I don’t.”
This was a very elaborate prank. What would any god—or goddess—be doing in Hopes Fort, of all places? Why would any basement in Hopes Fort serve as a Storeroom for ancient lyres and golden fleece? It didn’t make any sense. An old woman coming to her house looking for glass slippers didn’t make any sense.
The car had stalled. Evie shoved the sprig of rowan in her coat pocket, started the car again, and put her hands on the steering wheel. She wondered how she was going to kick Alex out of her car. But she couldn’t just leave him, after he’d saved her from . . . whatever he’d saved her from. And what god had that been? That was twice, now.
He seemed harmless enough. Or rather, he seemed harmless enough toward her. For the moment. But there was no mistaking, he was stalking her, following her.
Protecting her?
He finally broke the silence. “She’s looking for something in the Storeroom. That’s why she came to the house yesterday, that’s why she came after you today. You should try to find out what. If you want to know why she’s here, why these things are happening, that’s the key.”
“I don’t even know what all’s down there.”
“You could look.”
“It’s just a basement full of junk.”
He gave her a raised-eyebrow expression that clearly disbelieved her.
She tried again to make this sound rational. “The goddess Hera wants something from my father’s basement.”
“Obviously.”
“So, does that woman think she’s Hera, or is it just you who thinks she is?”
“You’re being willfully stubborn,” he said. “She is Hera. The goddess. Married to Zeus. Queen of Olympus.”
“And she wants something from my father’s basement.” This was starting to sound like an old comedy routine. “What does she want?”
“You won’t know until you have a look.”
“All right.” She could do that much. Just have a look around, see if something jumped out at her. Maybe this woman was a cousin nobody had told her about, and Evie would find her picture in a photo album. “But you’re coming with me. You said you know her—you might recognize something that I won’t.”
He didn’t argue, which made her wonder if this was a bad idea. She pulled back onto the highway and drove toward home. Her hands were sweaty on the plastic of the steering wheel.
He sat quietly, watching the road ahead. She tried to study him out of the corner of her eye, as if that would tell her what she needed to know about him.
“What are you looking for?” she said to break the silence. “You’ve been to see my dad before. He said he didn’t have anyth
ing for you.”
“Yes. At least he says there’s nothing.” He spoke with a tone of bitterness and frustration, like maybe he thought her father was lying.
“But what do you think is there? What do you want to find?”
He watched the yellow, wasted prairie scroll by the car window. He said, “I’m looking for something that will kill me.”
Henrich Vanderen crossed the Atlantic to escape Napoléon, and to escape being drafted into the army in Prussia. Europe had suddenly become a small place, nations sprawling everywhere. Difficult for a man to be alone in, and to find a place where he would not be bothered. He spent the journey in the ship’s hold, using as a pillow the one bag he brought with him, a sturdy leather satchel closed by a drawstring.
It felt a little like betrayal, leaving the land of his fathers, of countless fathers who had come before him, fading into history like ghosts. At the same time, those ghosts urged him on. He must find a safe, isolated place where he wouldn’t be bothered. The ghosts knew what was important, and they passed that knowledge to him. Find a safe place, dig in deep, and remember.
In America, he could lose himself, and no one would think him odd for wanting anonymity. People who needed to find him would. They always did. He traveled to the frontier of the new country, as far as Europeans had traveled in the wild land, and carved himself a farm in Ohio. His stumbling English, broken with a German accent, was not so out of place here. And while the forest had many eyes, which he felt watching him when he traveled, he did not feel the iron breath of armies and governments down his back. He could start a family without fear that it would be snatched from him when he closed his eyes.
He built a cabin, and under it he dug a cellar that became a new Storeroom, housing ancient lyres, golden fleece, and glass slippers.
One morning, he opened the door of his cabin and saw a man sitting cross-legged in front of his house. He was one of the natives, with sun-reddened skin, raven-black hair, and a broad face. He wore what looked like long gaiters made of leather, and a breastplate made of porcupine quills.
When Henrich appeared, the man opened his eyes, as if he’d been asleep, sitting with his back straight and legs tucked under him. He stood gracefully, without propping himself on his hands. His hair shimmered, and Henrich saw that it wasn’t simply that his hair was shining black. He’d braided raven feathers into a tail down his back.