Discord's Apple

She exhaled a relieved breath. “Nothing, I just wanted to see”—if you’re all right—“if I could get you some coffee or something.”

“Come in so I can hear you.”

Carefully, she pushed open the door.

Her father was propped on a mound of pillows. His half-lidded gaze shifted slowly to track her progress. She found a chair in the corner and brought it near his bed.

“Can I bring you breakfast?” she said, whispering, as if her voice would rattle him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him eat anything.

“Not hungry. Appetite’s shot to hell.” He shook his head and shifted against the pillows. He wore a T-shirt and held the bed’s comforter flat across his waist. He looked as sick as Evie could have imagined him looking: pale to a shade of grayness, his voice muffled, his manner vacant. For a moment, she wished she’d stayed in L.A. Then he took a deep breath, gathering the energy to focus on her and speak clearly. “Is that Alex character gone?”

“Yeah.”

He frowned, an expression she remembered from her high school days.

“Don’t look at me like that, he didn’t stay the night or anything. He’s totally not my type.”

He chuckled, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. “Whatever you say.”

“I’ve been trying to find out who he is. He never has a straight answer. When I asked last night, he gave me a copy of the Aeneid and walked out.”

“The Aeneid? If he’s in there, do you know how old that would make him?”

He spoke as if there were nothing strange about it. She could tell him about Hera and he wouldn’t be surprised.

She did some quick math, back to when the Trojan War was thought to have taken place. “Thirty-two hundred years or so.”

“Hm. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that old.”

So—whom had he met that made a character from the Aeneid showing up seem not out of the ordinary?

She managed to convince herself that he wasn’t going to die in the next few moments. Sitting back in her chair, she looked around. The room was an amalgam: the furniture—the four-poster bed, oak dresser, beat-up vanity table—had been here in her grandparents’ time. The faded floral c

omforter had been her parents’ as long as she could remember, and his wallet and watch were sitting on the dresser, where he always kept them.

On the nightstand by the bed was a lamp with a half-dozen orange pill bottles clustered around its base. She wondered how many of them were painkillers. His breathing was slow, deep, like he was on the verge of falling asleep. Like he’d been drugged. She should go away and let him sleep.

She was about to stand when he spoke.

He took a long time, saying the words slowly and methodically; she waited motionless and patient. “When I was growing up here, I think my father went into the Storeroom once, to get something for someone who came to the door. Twelve-league boots. The guy was on a quest. I don’t remember what for anymore. In the last month, I’ve had a dozen people come asking for what belongs to them, and that doesn’t count the ones who’ve come who don’t have a right to anything. It’s like—the Storeroom is dispersing. Magic’s going back into the world.”

It was hard to believe in magic in a world where things like the Seattle bombing happened. Then again, maybe magic was the only way to stop things like Seattle happening.

“Dad—why did you put Mom’s papers in the Storeroom?”

“Wanted to save them,” he said. His eyes opened to slits, and a different self seemed to look out of them. “Do you know who that was, asking for the sword?”

She nodded, and he nodded back.

“Do you know what it means, if Merlin and Arthur have come back?”

She shook her head, but the movement changed. Again, she nodded, because somehow she knew. “The stories,” she said.

He winced, stiffening, clutching the edge of the comforter. “Joints,” he muttered. “Hip. Back. Everything.”

She almost reached for him. Her muscles flinched to do so. But there was nothing she could do. In another heartbeat, his face relaxed, and the spell went away.

“When Britain needs its King again,” he said. “He’ll come. Something’s going to happen, Evie.”