𐌙/𐌍 Ᏽ𐌵𐌀𐌋𐌄 & 𐌕𐋅𐌄 Ᏽ𐌐𐌄𐌀𐌕 𐌌𐌙𐌕𐋅𐌔 ¹

Chapter 4

Four
ꕤ

We Burn A Metal Shroud

I dreamed Rachel Elizabeth Dare was throwing darts at my picture.

She was standing in her room ... Okay, back up. I have to explain that Rachel doesn't have a room. She has the top floor of her family's mansion, which is a renovated brownstone in Brooklyn. Her "room" is a huge loft with industrial lighting and floor-to-ceiling windows. It's about twice as big as my adoptive mom's apartment.

Some alt rock was blaring from her paint-covered Bose docking system. As far as I could tell, Rachel's only rule about music was that no two songs on her iPod could sound the same, and they all had to be strange.

She wore a kimono, and her hair was frizzy, like she'd been sleeping. Her bed was messed up. Sheets hung over a bunch of artist's easels. Dirty clothes and old energy bar wrappers were strewn around the floor, but when you've got a room that big, the mess doesn't look so bad. Out the windows you could see the entire nighttime skyline of Manhattan.

The picture she was attacking was a painting of me standing over the giant Antaeus. Rachel had painted it a couple of months ago. My expression in the picture was fierce-disturbing, even-so it was hard to tell if I was the good guy or the bad guy, but Rachel said I'd looked just like that after the battle.

"Demigods," Rachel muttered as she threw another dart at the canvas. "And their stupid quests."

Most of the darts bounced off, but a few stuck. One hung off my chin like a goatee.

Someone pounded on her bedroom door.

"Rachel!" a man shouted. "What in the world are you doing? Turn off that-"

Rachel scooped up her remote control and shut off the music. "Come in!"

Her dad walked in, scowling and blinking from the light. He had rust-colored hair a little darker than Rachel's. It was smushed on one side like he'd lost a fight with his pillow. His blue silk pajamas had "WD" monogrammed on the pocket. Seriously, who the fuck has monogrammed pajamas?

"What is going on?" he demanded. "It's three in the morning."

"Couldn't sleep," Rachel said.

On the painting, a dart fell off my face. Rachel hid the rest behind her back, but Mr. Dare noticed.

"So ... I take it your friend isn't coming to St. Thomas?" That's what Mr. Dare called me. Never (y/n). Just your friend. Or young man if he was talking to me, which he rarely did.

Rachel knit her eyebrows. "I don't know."

"We leave in the morning," her dad said. "If he hasn't made up his mind yet-"

"He's probably not coming," Rachel said miserably. "Happy?"

Mr. Dare put his hands behind his back. He paced the room with a stern expression. I imagined he did that in the boardroom of his land development company and made his employees nervous.

"Are you still having bad dreams?" he asked. "Headaches?"

Rachel threw her darts on the floor. "I should never have told you about that."

"I'm your father," he said. "I'm worried about you."

"Worried about the family's reputation," Rachel muttered.