Page 171 of Hades

I barely heard him. I was already in the service lane behind the booths, boots hitting dirt and crushed gravel, eyes cutting over everything at once. Boxes. Coolers. Trash bags. Extension cords. Tire tracks. A smear in the dust where someone had stumbled or been dragged. A crushed lavender bundle near the wheel of a vendor trailer. Lettie’s lavender. I bent, grabbed it, and the scent of her hit me hard enough to make my vision pulse red.

“Fuck.”

Ares stopped beside me. “Hades.”

I looked down the lane. Empty. No Lettie. No Zander. No damn air in my lungs. I ran past the trailers, past the generators, past the portable toilets and the delivery van parked crooked near the alley mouth. Tire marks cut through the dirt where a vehicle had pulled out fast. Not wild. Not panicked. Controlled. That made it worse. He hadn’t lost his nerve. He’d planned this.

I turned back toward the booth, and the crowd split before me because whatever they saw on my face reminded them they had a survival instinct. My blood was loud. Too loud. It roared over everything until the only things left were Lettie’s scream and the empty place where my hand should’ve found her.

Zander.

The polite bastard from every festival. The man her mother had trusted. The man she’d left the house to see.

I hit the booth like a storm. Claire stood near Rykard, crying, shaking, putting on the same broken-woman show she’d used to keep Lettie chained for years.

Rykard looked half dead and half ready to kill. Apollo had one hand locked around the arm of his chair, knuckles white. Zeus stood between the crowd and the table, face carved from stone.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Claire blinked at me. “What?”

I moved so fast, Ares caught my arm before I got both hands on her. “Where the fuck is he?”

“I don’t know!”

“Wrong answer.”

Her eyes flew wide. “I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me.” My voice didn’t sound human.

Zeus stepped into my line of sight. “Hades.”

“Move.”

“No.”

That one word hit like a chain around my throat. President. Brother. The only man in this town who could stand between me and murder and expect me to hear him. Barely. I pointed at Claire. “She knows.”

Claire sobbed. “I don’t. He comes to the festival, but I don’t know where he stays.”

“It’s Dakota,” Hermes said from behind me. Every head turned. Hermes held up his phone, eyes flat. “Got a hit off the plate number from a vendor. Dark gray SUV. Registered to Dakota Stone under a shell company. Coeus is digging.”

Claire went still. There it was. Recognition. Not of the name, maybe. Not all of it. But enough. I saw it. So did Zeus.

Rykard took one step toward her. “Dakota?”

Claire shook her head too fast. “No. No, he said...”

“He said what?” Zeus asked.

“He said his name was Zander.”

“Liar,” Apollo rasped.

Claire looked at him like she hated him for still existing. “That’s what he told me.”

I lunged again, and this time Zeus caught me with both hands planted on my chest. “Use your head.”