Page 108 of Icarus

While starting high up was safer, he still had to make it down to the ground floor to drop off the disc and get his gold. Icarus could hear the TV on the first floor and knew Helios was probably in his room sleeping one floor below him.

This was the white wing. There weren’t many valuable pieces here, so Icarus hadn’t spent much time in this area. He didn’t know the creaking of the floors or the best shadows. But he slid across the hallway anyway, slithering along the edge until he reached the first staircase.

The laugh track to Seinfeld was loud and disruptive and there wasn’t any human noise accompanying it, so Icarus couldn’t be sure where Mr. Black was, exactly. He could be in the kitchen near the living room just as easily as he could be on the couch, and Icarus didn’t like those odds.

Icarus took a silent steadying breath and sat down on the carpet as close to the wall as he could manage. Scooting down the stairs like a child would spread his weight distribution and lessen the likelihood of a sharp creak. It wasn’t dignified, but it was effective.

It took him three times as long, but he slipped down the first staircase on his bottom to the second floor, which was more familiar territory. Helios’s room was about forty yards away. He had to pass the blue wing and the mezzanine over the living room to get there. But at least he knew where to step.

Icarus slid against the wall, putting one foot in front of the other. He couldn’t press his back against it because of his gear. Even just the straps of the harness were making a hissing noise as they scraped the wallpaper.

His heart pounded in his chest as he slipped from the white wing to the blue wing.

“And don’t get up in the middle of the night. If you need water, you have to learn to anticipate your needs and get it before you go back to bed.”

The voice was loud and close. Icarus froze, covered his own mouth and nose, and checked the floor for his shadow.

Mr. Black slammed Helios’s door shut and stomped back down the stairs in the opposite direction of where Icarus was standing.

Icarus felt light-headed. He pressed his temple against the wall and waited for the footsteps to retreat. He stood there in the silence and dark until he heard Mr. Black guffawing at the television again.

Icarus stepped gingerly through the blue wing. He brushed a hand across Helios’s door as he passed it, brushed his lips against the wood.

Ariadne

The mezzanine was worse. It was a chaos of bright openness.

Since the moment Icarus had entered this house, he’d been in a labyrinth of slender halls and quiet rooms. He could hear the hush of electricity in the walls, the wind shaking the trees when he passed a window. His path was closed on all sides and he could keep track of every inch of it.

When the blue wing opened up into the mezzanine above the stairs, Icarus’s view was flooded with light.

The grand chandelier over the living room was at eye level, dazzling in its crystal brilliance—too small to obscure a body, but too big for the room. A decorative wood railing came up to Icarus’s waist. He needed to cross the mezzanine to get down the stairs to the foyer where the stand for the disc and storage room were. But this part of the house was dangerously close to the living room, separated only by a short hallway.

If Icarus was standing where he intended to place the disc and Mr. Black stayed on the couch, he wouldn’t be able to see Icarus. But he would absolutely be able to hear him if he did something awful—like drop it.

Icarus took a deep breath to calm his heart, then lay down on the floor.

Mr. Black was eating something; Icarus could hear it in his mouth as he laughed. The weight of the pack on Icarus’s back wasn’t silent, and he had to adjust for it. Icarus inched forward when the television was loudest, and that was irregular at best.

He could also see his own shadow stretching out to the edge of the mezzanine, and begged every god that would listen that there wasn’t a twin of it somewhere across the way. He couldn’t check from where he was.

By the time he was almost to the other side, sweat was making his neck itch and his hands slipped against the carpet. He paused and rested his cheek against the ground for a moment. There was a small tinkling sound, and a gasp.

“Great. Goddamn it.” Mr. Black pounded his fist against the table in frustration and Icarus startled. He listened as Helios’s father stood up from the couch and swept his hands over his clothing loudly.

“Fucking . . . paper towels.” He strode into the kitchen.

Icarus seized the moment and scrambled the rest of the way across the mezzanine and into the red wing. There, he waited on the stairs until Mr. Black returned from the kitchen and wiped up whatever mess he’d just made.

He listened, straining, until he heard the couch sag with Mr. Black’s weight. Then he sat back down on the red stairs and began crawling the way he did before.

To his dizzying relief, he managed to make it to the bottom silently.

Icarus froze and gave his eyes time to adjust to the darkness. The stand for the disc was still where Angus had left it.

Icarus slipped his backpack and harness off slowly and placed them on the stair next to him. He removed the disc he’d packed at the top and made sure he was holding it properly for a seamless deposit.

Just looking at it made sparks of anger come roaring back. Angus had always been more reckless than Icarus. He was a professional, of course, they both were, but Angus’s anger was too close to the surface. This place was hateful for him.