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“When you said bring the lockpicks, I didn’t think this was what you meant!”
“Why, Grace,” Pan drawls, “what did you think I meant?”
Grace looks at him: meticulously tousled, grinning, a half-divine dare on his tongue. His eyes twinkle under the lights. He smells of crisp bills and hard steel—
—probably because they’re standing in front of a two-ton safe in the middle of a bank vault, surrounded by piles of money, with the security alarms blaring down at them.
Grace presses her forehead against the impossible lock and sighs. “We are definitely going to jail.”
3 HOURS EARLIER
An Idol sweeping through her door hardly startles Grace now, Hermes’ golden glow as familiar as Freddie’s footsteps padding into the kitchen, or her oddly-glazed mugs peppering the countertops. The distraction is nice, even. Something to fill the apartment up, now that it’s missing those footsteps and oddly-glazed mugs, the unshakable presence of Freddie.
“Grace!”
The voice comes on a low breeze—showoff—and Grace rolls her eyes, turning to face him. “Pan. What are you up to now?”
Pan chuckles and bows his head; he’s even made the effort to straighten his tie. It’s weirdly gentlemanly of him. “I require a favor of sorts. If you’re still willing to engage in such business, of course.”
And it’s not like Grace has anything else on her schedule—cleaning the apartment, hoping some of Calliope’s memories contain the secret to college-level calculus, missing Freddie—but it’s fun to make Pan work for it. She leans back against the counter, lets her lips curl into a smirk. “Depends what kind of favor. Does someone else’s love life need fixing up?”
“It’s a touch more active than that.”
“Oh, so this time I am roughing someone up? Setting something aflame?”
Pan laughs, a boisterous thing that shakes all the plants in the window, as if they might leap up to dance at the sound. “As sharp as ever, my dear Grace. But no. Truth be told, I’ve done much of the leg work myself. All I need is...someone honest.”
“I seem to remember someone telling me they’d never lied to me and never would.” Grace stares pointedly, but Pan only laughs again and offers his hand.
“There are, as I’ve said, some things you are better equipped to handle than I. But I promise you truthfully: this will be an adventure.”
Grace almost winces at that—adventure is a mace in a backpack, adventure is trying the new Korean place even though they’d picked an apartment half a block away from their favorite, adventure is rolling too many dice with too many sides. Adventure is Freddie’s thing. Always has been.
But then, Freddie’s thing had also been tempering the worst of Grace’s bad ideas.
“Okay,” Grace shrugs, moving from the counter to take Pan’s hand. “Sure. Adventure it is.”
Pan’s lips curve, and Grace swears she catches something soft and pleased before it disappears into that familiar smugness. “Fantastic. Hermes will pick us up in twenty minutes. Oh, and...be sure to bring your lockpicks.”
NOW
“We’re not going to jail,” Pan says, sounding almost offended. “And if we do, Hermes will simply break us out of it. But I do agree, I’m not built for running from the authorities, so if you could get those locks open...?”
Stupidly, Grace is on her knees attempting to break into a highly-secure safe containing millions of dollars instead of, oh, grabbing Pan by the collar and dragging him bodily through Hermes’ door. Maybe the Idols’ craziness is catching? Maybe this is some long-buried past lifetime of Calliope’s, a bank robber rearing his head for one last score? Maybe it’s Grace and her long history of poorly-thought-out decisions catching up to her.
“I can pick the locks on windows, Pan, I haven’t exactly practiced on multimillion dollar safes!”
“Well, you have to shoot for the moon, don’t you?”
“You’re not helping.” The lockpick skitters off one of the tumblers, and Grace curses. “Why did you bring me here anyway?”
“I told you.” Pan flips one of the coins in his pocket, fans through a stack of bills. “A little adventure. And it certainly doesn’t hurt the bank.”
“Pan," Grace growls. She doesn’t turn back to look at him, but she can feel the tug in her gut, the security alarms flickering into spotlights, the music swelling up around them. “Tell me the truth before we’re stuck singing our hearts out in a jail cell. Please.”
5 DAYS EARLIER
“And how is our dear Muse?” Pan asks lightly, looking over the rim of his teacup.
Hecate smiles. “You will visit her soon enough. See for yourself.”
“Ah, but you know how I treasure knowledge. Almost as much as you do.”
Hecate regards Pan carefully; fitting that the goddess of glamors, the one responsible for hiding so much of Pan, can see right through him. She sips at her tea, thinks for a moment, and then says, “She grieves for her friend. It has cast a cloud on her, but she will find her way through it, in time. You do not need to worry.”
“Me? Worry?” Pan clasps a hand to his chest, eyes wide. “I’d sooner become one of those terribly boring heroes. Cast aside all my devilishness for the chains of morality!”
Hecate only sips her tea, smiling. “Yes. It is written.”
NOW
“You were worried about me,” Grace says slowly, trying to wrap her head around it—the blaring alarms are not helping— “so you decided to cheer me up. By inviting me on a bank robbery?”
Pan clears his throat and backs away slowly, sliding toward the piles of cash as though he can hide behind them. Which he obviously can’t—not only are they not tall enough, but a thousand security lights are shining on them now, washing out every shadow and laying every line of emotion bare. “Eh—” he says, teetering his hand, “in a way. I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“You were so gloomy!” Pan bursts out, his eyes wide in his version of earnestness. “We only have room for one Apollo in our lives, dear Grace. And you have such a knack for mischief, it would be a waste to see that swallowed by something as dull as misery!”
The security alarms screech; guards start barking around the corner. Grace can barely hear them for the roar of incredulousness in her ears. She’s not even angry, really, just— “Why a bank robbery?”
“Ah. Well.” Pan’s cheeks flush, and his horns seem to curl into themselves even further. He adjusts his tie as though this , more than dragging Grace into a bank vault on false pretenses, more than being caught out on his feelings, is the most embarrassing thing he’s endured here. “I may have left out that the funds we are—ah, liberating—belong to a man named Jeff Bezos. I trust you know of him?”
Grace’s mind, already on overdrive, skids to a halt. Brain broken. She is standing in the middle of Jeff Bezos’ bank vault, trying to pick the lock on his safe with the twenty-dollar toolkit she’d bought at the cornerstore, because she and Freddie never wanted to ask the creepy super to unlock their door when they forgot their keys. “Why?” she manages to wheeze out.
Pan shrugs, the vulnerability spotlit on his face. “Your Freddie was—irritating,” he says, “but I suspect she’d approve of this. A little bad in service of the good, and all.”
Grace opens her mouth, but then the thought comes, fiercely: she would. She’d clean out Jeff fucking Bezos for all he was worth, and she’d only be annoyed that Pan had thought of it first. She’d be really annoyed that Pan thought of it first.
The wind goes out of her, leaving softness—a heady sort of laughter. Pan winces, smiles uncertainly.
“You’re ridiculous,” she says, and his smile grows sure and wicked.
“My dear Muse,” he replies, “ridiculousness is the best part of the adventure.”
The guards are pressing against the door, shouting over the alarms; Grace has a cornerstore lockpick in one hand and a god who cares about her in his own strange way in the other. And Grace is laughing for what feels like the first time since she felt Freddie’s soul go, and she’s about to steal millions of dollars from Jeff Bezos, and somehow this is her life.
Somehow this is her life.
“Okay,” she says. Twists the lockpick till she feels it open. “So let’s do this.”