Discord's Apple

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.”