I have no plans to find her.”
“Someone has to find her,” the doctor insists.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” It’s a bizarre question to ask, but her voice is so familiar that I can’t let it go.
Her dark eyes meet mine. “The two of us haven’t technically met.”
Zeus pushes a hand through his hair. “Brigit, meet Carina Jain. Jain, obviously this is Brigit, but conscious.”
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