Discord's Apple

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. Sacrifice this one thing to save the whole. Tracker would have understood.

She stepped through the doorway. Discord’s apple lay heavy in her pocket.

Upstairs, Evie knelt on the floor of the kitchen and held Mab’s head in her hands. “Guard the Storeroom, all right? Good girl. Good Mab.” Evie rubbed Mab’s shoulders hard, as if that made up for abandoning her, and Mab looked up with eyes so shining and beseeching, she might have been crying.

Alex had been waiting for her in the kitchen. Silently, he followed her to the car.

They hadn’t driven far when he said, “You’re planning on just giving it to her? Did you actually bring it with you?”

She had to stop at the turn onto the highway. Ahead, great fissures zigzagged across the pavement, slabs of asphalt thrust up against one another, making the road impassable. The earthquake.

Evie pulled over and climbed out of the car. She hadn’t thought the quake was that strong. Not enough to turn a highway into confetti. Hopes Fort must have been right over the epicenter.

“I guess we walk,” she said.

“This is the work of the gods.” Alex murmured. “Poseidon, the Earth-shaker, could use his power to level entire cities, yet he’d leave neighboring settlements untouched. You lived in Los Angeles. Do you think a quake that did this to a road would have left your house standing?”

The Walker house was over eighty years old and not in the least bit retrofitted for quakes.

She started walking, cutting down the sloped bank off the shoulder and onto the naked field along the highway. Alex followed.

“So it was Hera,” she said, tromping over the old furrows cutting the earth.

“Or someone working for her.”

“How many people does she have?”

“At least four, including Robin. He’s the one from the parking lot the other day. I’m not sure how many others there are.”

You, Evie thought. He was the only one who knew anything about her. What did that say about him?

They walked for half an hour, Evie trying not to be self-conscious of Alex at her heels. He was watching, she realized, like a bodyguard: scanning in all directions, glancing over his shoulders in a regular circuit. Looking for danger. She almost felt safer. Except that he made her nervous, and she didn’t know what to say to him.

“Do you have a plan?” he said as they reached the first buildings of town, a gas station and a trailer park.

She ignored him, kept walking. Probably another ten minutes to reach the cemetery.

He persisted. “Do you think she’ll really just let him go?”

She hadn’t thought about it. The main solution burned in her mind, as the apple swung heavily in her pocket. What other choice did she have but to give it to Hera?

“Evie.”

She kept walking, hoping he might grow frustrated and leave.

“Evie!” He grabbed her arm.

Instead of stopping, she spun and jerked away, batting at his arm like he was a bug. “Leave me alone!”

She wanted to run, but he kept hold of her sleeve. She could only back away, while he followed like a fisherman playing his line.

“I want to help, but you can’t just walk up to her without a plan. You can’t trust her—you can’t trust any of them.”

“What do you suggest?” Her voice was cold.

If he let go, she would have run, and he must have known that because he didn’t let go.

“Find out if Frank’s guarded. Create a distraction to lure away Hera’s people. Then we can get him away from her. Without giving her the apple.”