Dreamless

where she is or what she’s doing?” Claire asked gently. Helen opened her mouth to argue and shut it again, knowing she wouldn’t win that point, either. But she still wished she knew where the hell Daphne was.
    Daphne held her breath and stayed very, very still. She’d managed to convince her lungs that they only needed a fraction of the air they were used to, but there wasn’t much she could do about her hammering heart. The man she had taken a blood oath to kill was in the next room. She had to find a way to calm herself, or all her sacrifice would be in vain.
    From her hiding place in his bedroom she could hear him in the adjoining study. He was at his desk, writing the legion of letters that he used to direct his cult, the Hundred Cousins. She could almost picture his once-chiseled face, his faded blond hair, and her teeth tingled with the thought of tearing him apart. After so many years, Daphne was just yards away from Tantalus, the Head of the House of Thebes and the murderer of her beloved husband, Ajax.
    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