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We don’t see much crime in the lower city, but it does exist. It’s a city, after all. Still, Hades rules with a firm and fair hand, and most people are all too happy to obey the rules. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen something like this. Maybe a few years back when the last Zeus sent his people over the river to cause problems. He, of course, claimed innocence when confronted, but we all knew it was him.
I step carefully over the glass. Nothing else seems to be disturbed, which is a relief. Or it would be if Matthew didn’t look like he was about to cry. I crouch down next to him. “Tell me what happened.”
“Alarms went off about thirty minutes ago. I was asleep, so it took me a few minutes to get down here to figure out what was going on.” He sniffles, and his hands shake where they hold the short broom. “Charon, they…” He looks to the door that leads up the narrow set of stairs to the greenhouse. I hadn’t realized it was cracked until now. “They destroyedeverything.”
Oh, fuck.
I don’t get a chance to respond, because Medusa walks through the front door. She’s a tall white woman with close-cropped blond hair, and nearly as many muscles as me. Despite the cool temperature, she’s wearing a T-shirt that leaves her arms exposed, revealing her scars and snake tattoos.
“Help him clean up, and keep watch.” I rise to my feet and head toward the door to the second floor. “I need to assess the damage.”
“Will do.” She carefully nudges Matthew away from the broken glass and divests him of the broom and bin in such a smooth move that he’s left blinking at her. Good. She’s got things well in hand.
As bad as I was worried it would be, it’s worse. The entire second floor of the building has been a greenhouse for generations. Now it’s just a mess. The narrow aisles between the plants are covered with shattered glass, dirt, torn stems, and trampled flowers. I make my way around as best I can and pause in front of the sitting room that I’m nearly one hundred percent sure was created solely for Hades.
It’s been entirely demolished.
The furniture is in pieces. They knocked over the bookshelf and took the time to rip several books to shreds. This wasn’t a robbery, but then I knew that before I even arrived. Hades wouldn’t have called me out of bed for something as simple as a robbery. No, this was a targeted attack.
Against Hades.
“Fuck.” I drag my hand through my hair. A year ago, I would’ve assumed that Zeus was behind this, but our current Zeus isn’t the type to pull some petty bullshit like this. Besides, he has bigger fish to fry.
Which is the problem. A year ago, the list of our enemies was long but finite. Now, the possibilities are endless. It may be one of the Thirteen, deciding to take advantage of the chaos to fuck with Hades. Or it may be some disgruntled citizen, either from the lower city or the upper city, who wasn’t ballsy enough to attempt murder, but wanted to cause pain all the same.
Or it might be the enemy everyone is worried about.
Not Minos. He’s watched too closely to pull something like this. But he works for someone, and we still haven’t been able to figure out who. Theoretically, the boundary that separates Olympus from the rest of the world should also separate us from our enemies…but the boundary is failing.
It’s possible people are slipping through. We can’t take anything for granted these days.
I go through the place as thoroughly as I can, but there’s nothing to find. Whoever caused all this destruction knew what they were about, and they left nothing to indicate their identity.
Eventually, exhaustion drags me down the stairs to where Medusa is waiting alone. The glass has long since been cleaned up, and she managed to find some wood from somewhere to nail to the doorframe to cover the space left by the broken glass.
“I made Matthew some tea and sent him to bed.”
I raise my brows at that. “I’m surprised he agreed to go to bed. He was pretty distraught.”
“Yeah.” She shrugs. “But he didn’t have much choice since I drugged him.”
“Medusa!”
“What? He wasn’t going to be able to relax. I helped.”
Her tendency to drug people seems to be a little habit she picked up from her girlfriend. I sigh. “Did he consent to being drugged?”
“Oh…well…” She blushes, her pale skin turning bright pink. “I helped?” She sounds significantly less sure of herself this time.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and fight down my frustration. “We talked about this. You can’t just drug people, even if it’s technically helpful.”
“Sorry.” She almost sounds like she means it. She turns to look at the cash register. “He had a couple hundred bucks in there, but they didn’t even bother to take it.”
I suspected as much, but hearing the confirmation makes my stomach sink. Robbery is never a good thing. But this is worse. “Someone wanted to make an example.”
“Example?” She frowns harder. “But they just smashed some shit.”
There are times when I forget that Medusa used to kill people for a living. This certainly isn’t one of them. “If they had hurt Matthew, that would be all the declaration of war. This is more insidious. This place is somewhere that Hades and Persephone, the rulers of the lower city, come to feel safe. By destroying this, they’re saying they can get to them. They’re saying that our leaders don’t have safe spaces.” I turned for the door, my mind already racing. There aren’t many places where Hades and Persephone visit with any regularity.
