She extends a hand and we shake. “The poison incident,” she says.
Oh. Someone had to rescue me from that, I guess. It makes sense that it was her. The next heartbeat forces worry into my veins and dread curls itself around my throat. I lived. Zeus brought me here, and I lived.
But what else is burning to the ground?
“Zeus,” I whisper, and he brings his golden eyes back to mine. The relief I saw there moments ago has been hollowed out. All of him has been hollowed out. I didn’t see it before because it was so bright. Because I wasn’t really awake. “What happened?”
He pushes my hair back from my face. His pulse ticks at the side of his neck. “We’re leaving within the hour, Carina.” Not a single glance in her direction. Not a one. “I’ll sign whatever you want.”
She moves around the room, checking equipment with a brisk silence that says we’re not done with this conversation.
“Where are we going to go?” I ask him. For a long, unsettling moment I’m not sure there’s anywhere to go. If his building is gone—
“Home,” he says. “We’re going home.”
3
Brigit
Zeus says nothing on the way home.
He bundles me into the car, clicking the seatbelt into place himself, and climbs in next to me.
And then...
Silence.
He’s so still that it makes each of my thoughts seem louder. For instance: where are we going? Where is home? I’ve never once heard him talk about a separate house. He owns a building the size of a city block.
Now he owns what I assume is a field of rubble the size of a city block. We don’t pass the whorehouse on the way to where we’re going. I have no idea what to look for. A glassed-in penthouse? The whorehouse in miniature?
The SUV comes to a stop in front of a brick building set back from the street. Most of the front lawn—if there was ever a lawn here—is covered in concrete tiles. A paved entrance, I think it’s called. A swoop of stone bordered by manicured grass. The shape of the building is all wrong for a house. It couldn’t have been a house in any of its past lives. It must have been—
“A theater,” Zeus says, like he’s read my mind. “It used to be called the Ephesus.”
“You live in a theater?”
“One of my residences. I own several properties around the city.”
I don’t buy that this is one of many indistinguishable properties—not entirely. Zeus might own the hospital, he might own half the city, but something about this place is different.
There’s no luggage to carry inside. No clothes or “get well soon” balloons from my very-short stay in the hospital. I’m the only cargo. He helps me down with a hand on mine and leads me distractedly to the front door, which opens before we’re finished climbing the steps.
His head of security, James, waits inside.
I hold my breath.
I knew what to expect at the whorehouse. Everyone did. I don’t know what to expect out of this place—or out of Zeus. It’s unsettling, seeing him so singularly. There were times he was alone in his office, yes, but never like this. He’s always at the center of a crowd.
James closes and locks the door behind us, and I get my first look at the lobby in what Zeus calls his actual home. Home, he said in the hospital.
It sounded like he meant it.
Could this be the place that Zeus really belongs?
The lobby has been left mostly intact, with original wood paneling and two ticket windows. Behind the windows coat racks have replaced the ticket counter and attendant shelves. No one can buy a ticket to the show anymore. A set of poster display cases opposite the ticket windows have been stripped of their posters. Instead, they have—
“Brigit. Come.”
There’s a set of intriguing double doors I’m forced to ignore for the time being. Zeus puts a hand on the small of my back and leads me up a wide, curving staircase. This would be mezzanine access if we were in a real theater.
It’s only the illusion of a theater.
At the top of the stairs, the floor opens onto a balcony, but there’s only one set of doors. Zeus pulls them open and gestures me in. Everything still and dark and...peaceful. It’s strange after the blinding glamour of the brothel.
“You’re very quiet,” I tell him, because I have to say something. How many nights did I watch him hold court at Olympus, and now he’s like this?
“I don’t… I don’t bring people here.”
My cheeks flush. I want to say something snappy and brave, but this doesn’t feel like the first night at the whorehouse. The stakes are so much higher now. So I say nothing and go where he leads me.
Which turns out to be a foyer with a plush rug and a three-legged table. Zeus reaches in his pocket for something—his wallet, decorated with my teeth marks. The wallet goes into the bowl. He kicks his shoes off into a narrow closet off to one side and holds the door open for me to do the same. It’s so particular and fussy that I have to swallow a laugh. The act of suppressing it hurts my back.
From the foyer, we step into a living room.
It is the most incredible living room I’ve ever seen. The ceiling is high and round. The original art—
He’s left the original art intact. It’s a springtime scene divided into panels framed in cream and gold, and the whole thing looks down over a sunny den writ large over the space. A set of armchairs rest by a fireplace with exposed brickwork. A giant sofa, big enough for even Zeus to sprawl out on, takes up one corner and faces a paneled wall that probably hides a television. Huge windows reach up toward the ceiling, and below those windows are rows of built-in bookshelves coming to waist height.
I have never once imagined Zeus reading a book. But the shelves are dotted here and there with cushions that make their function clear—to sit on them while you read. Round rugs in neutral colors form islands in a sea of hardwood. I would never, not in a thousand years, think to put all these things in here.
Zeus would. Clearly.
His shoulders let down as he crosses the room to the other side, then turns back to beckon me along with him. “The living room.” He gestures with one hand, then steps into a hallway. “Kitchen.” I get a glimpse of the kitchen through the interior doorway. Stainless steel. More hardwood cabinetry. I add cooking to the list of things I’ve never imagined Zeus doing. Past the kitchen there’s a bathroom, and then we turn another corner. This hall runs along the back of the theater, with big windows that look over a view of the city I’ve never seen.
From here, there’s no sign of the whorehouse.
“Bedroom,” he says, and for the very first time since I almost got blown up, there’s heat in his voice. Zeus pushes open double doors—a necessity, for a man his size—and goes in.
This room is nothing like the other bedroom—the whorehouse bedroom. Nothing. No black furniture, only the same polished hardwood I’ve seen in the rest of this house. A massive bed. Two bedside tables. One of the tables holds three books.
And the walls are covered in paintings.
They’re uniform in size, but otherwise the subjects are completely different. One is a beach scene—a single wooden chair, half-buried in sand. One is a portrait of a woman in profile, sitting in a window seat. Dark hair, pulled up into a bun on the top of her head. She has a book in her lap and an apple in one hand. “These are like the paintings in your closet.”