Even a child’s blue eyes can grow cold. “You’re not objective about Apollo Mojave, but you still talk about them.”

“Not freely,” I answered. “Not even to you.”

His brows accused. “You’ve answered every question I’ve ever asked about Apollo. Have you been lying? Lying to me?”

“No, never, Bridger, never.” I stroked his fingers through the bars. “I’ve told you everything about Apollo, every fact, but I haven’t told you my opinions, what I think those facts mean. Even when you read Apollo’s Iliad, I never talked to you about what I think Apollo meant by it. I want you to put the pieces together for yourself, because I know if you do you’ll make a different picture than I would, a better one.”

“But you know more than me! If we have different conclusions I’m bound to be the one who’s wrong.” He grabbed my sleeve. “I trust you, Mycroft, or I would if only you’d tell me things. I want to know.” His free hand crept toward the plastic scabbard at his side. “Don’t make me make you.”

I felt glad that he had grown strong enough to threaten me. “Listen, Bridger,” I began again, “I realized a few years ago that I believe Jehovah is a God, and—let me finish,” I warned as I saw him part his lips to speak. “I don’t believe it because I’ve seen proof, or because I was actively convinced, it’s just that He acts so consistently like a God, and I’ve spent so long around people who believe He’s a God, Himself and others, that I absorbed it, the way if you spend too long with Mommadoll you start thinking of everyone as children. Jehovah will say something and I’ll think to myself, ‘Oh, He thinks that because He’s a God.’ It’s the truth to me now, the way I think, and I can’t stop thinking that way. It’s like how you can’t stop thinking that up is up, even though you know there’s no real up in Space, or how the army men can’t stop thinking that Stander-Y is the enemy even though there never was an enemy, and how I can’t stop being sure that what you’re going to do with your powers is the most important thing that’s ever happened to the human race, even though I don’t know what that thing will be.”

Bridger hid behind his eyelids. “Do you think I’m a god too?”

Now I hid behind mine. “You could be. I’ve been considering that possibility. Just because the twelve Olympians are hiding on their mountain it doesn’t mean that newborn gods can’t walk the Earth. Assuming there really are Olympians, that is. I don’t know, Bridger.” I squeezed his hands again, both of them, the best embrace that I could offer through the cage. “The one thing I’m sure of in this world is that I don’t know anything for certain, not what you are, not why, not any of this. All I can do is trust the Plan, and while I can’t understand its ends, I have to trust that they make sense to Someone.”