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Hours passed, and Tantalus was still scribbling away. Daphne knew that each of the letters Tantalus was laboring over would be taken by separate couriers and mailed from different post offices scattered up and down the coast. He was meticulous about disguising his location, and because of that, it had taken her nineteen years to track him down. She’d been obliged to follow the body of his only son back to Portugal, never once letting the corpse out of her sight no matter how many times she had to shape-shift. She knew that even Tantalus would surface long enough to put the ritual coin in his only son’s mouth, and she had been right.
Finally, she heard Tantalus put down his pen and stand. He called in the mortal porter to take the letters to the couriers. Then he poured himself a glass of something from the well-stocked bar. It took a moment for the scent to waft in to where she was standing, but she knew what he was drinking immediately. Bourbon. Not cognac, not expensive whiskey, but sweet bourbon straight out of Kentucky. He took a few sips, savoring the flavor, then stepped into his bedroom. He shut the door behind him and spoke.
“You should know, Daphne, that one of those letters was to the Myrmidon I have nested outside your daughter’s charming little house on Nantucket. If he doesn’t hear from me personally, she’s as good as dead.”
Daphne nearly moaned aloud. She knew Tantalus wasn’t lying about the Myrmidon. It had led a phalanx to attack Hector at Helen’s track meet. If that thing was watching Helen and not chasing Hector as she had assumed, Daphne knew she had no choice. She swallowed her heart and stepped out from her hiding place.
Tantalus stared at her like a starving man at a feast, his eyes skipping all over her face and body. Even though his gaze made her skin crawl, she tolerated it and focused instead on the small measure of bourbon she had smelled that remained in his glass. That was how he had known she was there.
“You smelled me, didn’t you?” she asked, her voice catching on the bitter lump in her throat.
“Yes,” he breathed desperately, almost apologetically. “Even after all these years, I still remember the smell of your hair.”
Daphne summoned a spark in the palm of her hand, just to warn him. “If you yell for your guards, I’ll kill you where you stand and take my chances of beating that letter back to my daughter.”
“And if you manage to beat my letter back to Nantucket, then what? Do you honestly think you can kill a five-thousand-year-old Myrmidon? One who fought beside Achilles himself?”
“Not alone,” Daphne responded coldly, shaking her head once. “But with your brothers and their children? It’s possible we could take the monster down together.”
“But not probable,” Tantalus said heavily. “And it would end up costing us both. You know Hector would be first into the fight, and first to die. And I wonder if you could stand to lose him again . . . He looks so much like Ajax. But I’m curious, does he feel the same?”
“You filthy-minded animal!” Daphne sparked and crackled, but eventually controlled herself.
This was his plan. Make her use up all her bolts on useless anger until she was left without a bargaining chip. That’s what had happened the night she had lost Ajax, but she was older and wiser now.
It took many times more energy to withhold a bolt to stun a target and not kill, but after years of practice, Daphne had managed to figure out that aspect of her modest power over lightning. She sent a small, baby-blue bolt across the room and put Tantalus on his knees.
“You have a Myrmidon, not a Scion, nested outside my daughter’s window. Why?” she asked calmly. When he didn’t answer, she crossed the room and touched him with her glowing hand. Tantalus sighed with pleasure, until she sent a charge through her fingertips.
“She’s protected . . . by the only living Heir to my House,” he huffed, his whole body twitching with electric pain. “Can’t allow more . . . Outcasts. Atlantis . . . too far away already.”
He still didn’t know about the Rogues, Daphne thought.
“The insect isn’t in any Scion House, and wouldn’t become an Outcast if it killed Helen and all the Deloses on Nantucket combined. Which, by the way, would save you a lot of trouble,” Daphne continued, amping up the voltage. “So why haven’t you ordered it to attack yet?”
“How could I . . . stop you . . . from killing me . . . if I had no collateral?” he huffed. Daphne cut off the current so he could speak clearly. “I want to rule Atlantis, not just survive to see it. I must become part of my House again to do that.”
His chest squeezed tight, and he rolled onto his back in pain. A moment later, Tantalus took a deep breath and smiled up into Daphne’s hypnotically beautiful face.
“I knew you’d find me someday and that you’d come to me.”
There was an insistent knock on the door, followed by a tense inquiry in Portuguese. Tantalus glanced at the door, and then up at Daphne. She shook her head to let him know to keep his mouth shut. Daphne didn’t understand Portuguese and she couldn’t risk letting Tantalus speak, even if his silence was the thing that would give her presence away. She heard the guard at the door hesitate, and then rush off, most likely to get reinforcements. She grabbed Tantalus by the shirt and bared her teeth at him.
“I will always be behind the door, under the bed, or around the next corner—waiting for my chance to kill you. It’s in my blood now,” she whispered viciously into his ear.
He understood her meaning and smiled. Daphne had taken an oath that was more binding than any human contract ever contrived. Someday she would have to kill him, or not killing him would kill her.
“You hate me that much?” he asked, almost awed that Daphne would tie her life to his, even if it was to the death. More guards arrived and began pounding on the door, but Tantalus took little notice of them.
“No. I loved Ajax that much, and I still do.” She noticed with pleasure how deeply it hurt Tantalus to hear her say that she still loved another more than him. “Now tell me, what do you want from Helen?”
“What you want, my love, my goddess, my future queen in Atlantis,” Tantalus chanted, helpless as he fell yet again under the spell of that Face. The guards began to knock down the steel-and-concrete-reinforced door, and Daphne was forced to back away from Tantalus.
“And what do I want?” she asked, her eyes darting over the two-foot-thick stone walls of the chamber, looking for an alternate escape route. There was none.
Daphne looked out the recessed casement behind her at the sheer drop to the ocean. She looked up, hoping to find a way up and over the parapet top of the citadel, but the overhang prevented her. She couldn’t fly like Helen could. She also couldn’t swim. Daphne was out of time, but she needed to hear what else Tantalus had to say before she jumped out the window and tried, somehow, not to drown. She glared at Tantalus and summoned the last of her sparks to threaten him into talking. He smiled up at her sadly, like he was more hurt to see that she was about to leave him than he was that she was threatening his life.
“I want Helen to succeed in the Underworld, and rid us all of the Furies,” he finally replied, gesturing to the plush prison that he was forced to live in as an Outcast. “She is my only hope.”
