And his words called out to Kai through Seven Alpha when she died.

Three months ago.

Idols, gods, and muses. Was it possible?

The living room seemed darker. Whiskey fuzzed her nerves, and shadows spun laughing in the corners of her living room.

Couldn’t tell Jace, not yet, not after their fight on the mountain. She could not go to him without proof. Kai needed to learn the whole story first. Then, act.

Now, though, she needed sleep. If she could find it.

Kai walked to the stairs, almost climbed them, turned back, and tucked her purse under the couch.

Claude lay in bed. He breathed heavily through his nose, choked every few breaths from the weight of his neck and his chest. He’d spun the bedclothes around him into a cocoon. She wondered what butterfly might emerge, and decided not to wait and find out.

She prodded his shoulder until he snorted and flailed at her with one arm, an easy dodge. “Behold the great watchman, forever on guard against danger.”

He blinked sleep from his eyes. When he looked at her, though, his eyes held something else, something he could not blink out. She wondered if he would call it love. “You’re not danger.”

“Time for you to leave.”

“Other guests?”

“Me, myself, and I. Scoot. I’ll have a hard enough time explaining tonight to myself come morning without you around.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry for a lot of things.”

He stretched on the bed, a rigid rod, eyes screwed shut. When he opened them again they just looked tired. He sat up, and stood, and after a minute’s padding around the bedroom found his pants, shoes, and shirt. “My socks are here somewhere.”

“I’ll mail them to you.”

“There’s no need for this.”

“No. But I want you gone anyway.”

He pulled on his shoes without the socks, slid the shirt over his head, and walked downstairs. Heavy footsteps vibrated up and down the steps, through the floor.

She followed, and watched him fumble with the latch. “Thank you,” she said when he got the door open.

“I hope that helped,” he said. “I hope. We need to stop doing this to ourselves.”

“Thank you,” she repeated. Her voice was harder and less kind.

He shut the door and left. She waited until he wouldn’t hear to lock the door behind him, then limped back up the stairs to her room. Shutter-slat shadows striped the ceiling above her bed. She must have slept, but she remembered only those shadows fading as morning neared.

Chapter 27

27

Kai walked three circles around Makawe’s Rest in the pre-dawn mist, but saw no sign of Mako. Late night for him, then. New poets, perhaps, or a lover, maybe both. Eve would be furious either way.