It started with Boston.

I'd heard good things about it. I wish I could tell you it was because of that, like I'd wanted to check out the historic sites or the craft beer scene, but it wasn't. The truth was that I'd gone there randomly, because Annabeth had suggested it when I'd called Piper asking her where I should move. I would've IM'd Reyna, but she had been in the middle of a hunt, and since Hazel was younger than me, I hated relying on her for advice. Piper was good at advice, but I hadn't expected Annabeth to be there on the other side.

Something had definitely struck me in the chest. Why should I be jealous of two girls hanging out together without me? I don't know. It's not like the whole seven half bloods had gotten together and left me out. It was literally just Piper and Annabeth; Piper had just moved to Portland, Oregon after years of traveling the world, and Annabeth had come up from the Bay to help her move in.

But I had been jealous.

Anyway, Annabeth had told me I should go to Boston. I hadn't wanted to leave the East Coast, but I wanted to get out of New York. So, yeah, there. I moved to Boston. Got the tiniest apartment I could. Enrolled in a community college with some financial assistance from Chiron. Studied psychology, in aims to eventually become a grief counselor.

Will and I had just broken up, in the dead of Winter, when I'd turned on him for something stupid. Lashed out at him for something I didn't mean to - took my SAD out on him.

And Will had the understanding to know this, but it still made both of us realize in the heat of the moment that we weren't happy. That we'd never be.

Because even when I listened to what he told me; even when I did the healthy thing, I still wasn't happy. Like I said, something always called me elsewhere. It was like Allie and Lon in the notebook. I wanted Noah and the big white house - whatever that meant for me.

And that wasn't even taking into account the times when I didn't listen to what he told me. When it became clear that his style of healing would never get me past the first step phase.

Will knew it wasn't right to himself to keep watching me circle the drain when it was clear we weren't... soulmates.

Or whatever you called it. The Greek pantheon didn't believe in soulmates. Plato had the idea that we were born as two, then split by Zeus, but a classical age philosopher doesn't really count. The actual gods and spirits and monsters' views on true love ended with the idea of Eros' random arrows, which had no substance behind them. And besides, I fucking hated Eros. So there were no soulmates, and there was no point to Will and I.

I put on my eye cream.

My skincare routine was simple. No frills - certainly no colorful face masks or plush headbands. I didn't have the money for that. I focused on a cleanser, a moisturizer, and an eye cream.

I could never find the right shit, but the stuff I was using now had vitamin C and caffeine - compared to just hyaluronic acid in all my previous ones - so I was crossing my fingers. It was also a gift from Lou Ellen Blackstone, who'd begun to dabble in cosmetic making of both the magical and non magical variety over the past few years. I'd asked her not to give me the magical kind of eye cream until she'd become a master chemist. Cecil had used an early prototype for her magical moisturizer, and it had temporarily turned his skin to literal paper.

With my routine done, I ruffled my hair. I'd combed it after getting out of the shower, but once it'd dried a little, I usually shook it up a little. Gave it that tousled look. My vibe was stylish, edgy, goth but intelligent. But today, like lots of days, something was off. And it wasn't just that my dark eye circles had yet to go away.

I stared at myself in the mirror, willing myself to like how I looked. But my nose was crooked; the acne scars I hadn't been able to BHA-away pocked my face like craters of the moon. I was very easily toeing the line between cool-sad and junkie-sad.

My phone dinged, indicating my time was up. I couldn't be late to the market, so I shook my head, threw on a shirt and pants, and went on my way.

---

Hazel IM'd me while I was there. I was thankful for the distraction; nobody had come over to my stand in at least a half hour. Of course they didn't - who'd pick talking to someone who literally had the aura of rot around them, compared to a nice young lady with cool earrings and a floral dress?

That was my main rival here at Silverlake, two stands down and across the aisle. Sloane. She ran Baxter Street Findings, and had half of the variety of me, but twice the branding, which meant she was thrice as successful. Her entire stand was muted colors, stylized 70s flowers, and smiles. She had short brown hair in a bob and drank a green juice every single day.

I sipped my Big Gulp Mountain Dew. That was green juice too, right?

Anyway, Hazel IM'd me. At the table in the back of my stand, half hidden by rows of clothes, I could easily use Steve to speak back without the mist having to do any work.

"Bonjour," Hazel said. "You're at Silverlake, right?"

"Ciao," I replied. "I am, indeed."

"How is it going so far?"

"Same as it always is."

"Whatcha drinking?"

"Mountain Dew," I said. "With vanilla added."

She shivered. "I don't know how you drink that shit, nico. The Orange fanta with grape was even worse."

I smiled. "We can't all muster black coffee like you."

At this, my sister grinned, and I felt a deep surge of pride in my gut. Whatever I'd felt when I'd found out Piper and Annabeth were hanging out without me, it was the opposite whenever I talked to Hazel. She had grown her dark hair super long, making her look like a goddess as it fanned out in coils from beneath her copper-gold headband. Her white camisole popped on her dark skin, and- sorry.

I won't go on about how cute her outfit was. It was cute though. It fit her color season (dark autumn).

"You have to be so bored," she opined. She Iris messaged me at least half of my market days, and she said this nearly every time. Not dismissively, but sympathetically. "Can't you sew or something?"

"I told you, no," I said. "I already look intimidating. I can't look even less approachable."

"I don't think you look intimidating," she said, spritely.

"Hazel Noeline." I frowned at her. "You literally spent 70 years in the Fields of Asphodel. I could bring a serial killer to your door and you wouldn't be intimidated. You are desensitized."

She touched the necklace she wore on her decollage, sighing. "I prefer jaded."

Then, slowly, she moved her hand, and I had to restrain my snort. Her necklace was a jade.

Once she'd seen my reaction, she laughed at her own joke, and I couldn't help but join her.

Hazel's relationship with her gems had changed over time. When she'd first had her curse broken by Frank, she'd swore up and down she'd only use the gems for god-fearing reasons. That is to say, for auguries and sacrifices. She had had no plans to go full nouveau riche and drive around in a gold plated car. But I'd noticed, in the past 7 years, she slowly increased her summoning of them.

First, they'd gone from being expressly for Twelfth Legion purposes to being a gift - a gift and nothing more - to certain half bloods at Camp Jupiter who might need a pick me up. One time she'd given some daughter of Hecate a giant, soccer ball-sized ruby just because the girl was sad and a July baby.

Then, she started wearing them here and there. As jewelry and other accessories. She'd never said anything to me about it, but I was smart enough to accept it. If she wanted to be flashier, that was her right. But I worried about where it might be coming from.

Suddenly, there was arguing outside of the tent. I bent forward a little bit, but couldn't see from here, and didn't care enough to check. It sounded like Sloane and one of my other neighbors, Michael, who also happened to be her ex. How they'd ended up with opposing tents at the local flea, I don't know. I was a fly constantly just outside of spider webs.

"What's that?" Hazel asked.

I waved dismissively. "Hipsters arguing."

Sure enough, there was Michael's voice. "I just want space. Please, Sloane. I know we tried to be friends, but-"

"We can still try to be friends," Sloane replied. "We don't have to let go yet."

Hazel could hear it; she made an uncomfortable face. I did too, shifting in my seat.

"I can't be near you all the time," Michael retorted. "I'm either moving my stand to Alley B, or I'm not coming back to Silverlake. Please don't make me do the second. This is my main source of income."

"You're the one who followed me here," Sloane exclaimed. "We didn't have to stay friends. You're the one who wanted to. And now somehow I'm at fault for it."

"You're not at fault for anything," said Michael. "I just want to be able to move to Alley B without you getting upset."

Sloane began to respond, but then a voice said, "Excuse me? Can I buy this?"

I went hot with second-hand embarrassment. A customer had interrupted them. It made me realize how intently I'd been listening in; I blinked out of my daze, turning back to Hazel, who had been staring at me the entire time.

"Huh," Hazel said, awkwardly. "Well, how's LA?"

I shook my head, ignoring, now, first-hand embarrassment. "Same old, same old."

"Which beach did you go to last night?"

I froze.

I'd somehow forgotten, in the past two hours at the market, about the beach-side lemur last night.

"I went to Malibu," I said, slowly.

When I looked up at her, I saw I had not even remotely hid my anxiety enough. Her brow was furrowed; it was clear she could tell she'd scared me with the question, despite it being a normal one.

I knew I should tell her. I didn't want to, because it probably wasn't anything. I might've thought it was an omen, but a sane person like Hazel would rightfully dismiss it as just an anomaly. And if she did think it was an omen, she'd get worried and go investigating. I couldn't control her right to do so, as both a former praetor and a daughter of Pluto, but...

The lemur had come to me.

"Nico," Hazel said, slowly. "What happened?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Nico!" She exclaimed, and I glared at her, moving forward to block the steam with my chest.

No one had come running at her voice, so I slowly leaned back. The steam came spurting back out, and Hazel's face glared back up at me.

"Please don't lie to me," she said. "Don't... ne me mens pas."

She was teaching herself to be fluent in French. I searched my mind for the Italian equivalent of I can lie if I want to, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. So I just frowned vaguely in Italian at her.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I wasn't trying to lie. I just got interrupted on the way to the beach."

Hazel frowned. "What was it?"

Her big dark eyes were pleading, but I really wanted to keep it to myself. Because I felt like I barely had anything to keep to myself beside my angst - because I'd grown up a terminally private person, and some part of that still remained in me no matter how good at communication Will and I taught me to be.

But Will - and 14 year old nico - would have wanted me to tell her. It was Hazel, for fuck's sake. She wasn't exactly someone I didn't trust.

Before I could make my decision, there was a loud bang out in the alleyway, making somebody swear.

I snapped my head up. At this point in the day, there was hardly anybody left around, and some less desperate stands had even started to close up already. I could clearly hear Sloane's voice, charming and fried - "All good! Just knocked something over."

But her voice was also tight, as if she was trying to convince, from afar, the rest of the market to not come running. Not to convince the people that had already been near her. I heard someone grunting in pain, and I immediately knew something was wrong.

Call it my own ability to predict death, call it demigod intuition.

"Hazel, I gotta go," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Wha-"

Before she could answer, I sliced my hand through the steam.

I kept my sword with me at all times, leaning against my counter like an umbrella. Slowly, I stood, grabbing the sword and trying to prick my ears. If I was Frank, I could've shapeshifted into a big cat and figured everything out from afar. But as Nico, I could hear nothing, only feel tension in the air.

Slowly, I crept around the corner of the stand, my hand tight around my sword.

Sure enough, Sloane was there, finishing shoving something behind her table. Beyond her, the jacaranda-lined trail back into the main part of the market was empty, with the only other tents near us devoid of their vendors - including Michael. A strong feeling of dread hit me in the gut, the same way the lemur had made me feel the night before.

Because Sloane might've thought she'd hidden him, but I saw Michael's face before his corpse was shoved into the darkness.

I sucked in a sharp breath, and Sloane turned. Before she could spot me, I ducked back around the corner of my tent.

I'd seen death. I had been death incarnate. But that had not just been a dead person - that had looked like a torture victim, like he'd had his face straight eaten off.

Everything in me ached. He was barely 30, and he sold artisanal honey and wore a hoop in one of his ears. He was nice enough. He was just a guy.

What the fuck had happened?

I quickly scanned my memories of Sloane. She obviously had done something - she obviously was not mortal. How I hadn't figured that out earlier, I had no idea, but the more important question was what she was. An empousae in a disguise? A fury? Gods no - the furies liked me.

A harpy? Harpies were associated with quick, sudden disappearances... but not sudden murders.

Suddenly, I heard another thud. This time it really was Sloane dropping something - I heard it bounce, like a ball - but it knocked me out of my daze. I quickly turned the corner and got ready to fight, regardless of what the hell she was.

She was waiting for me.

We locked eyes, and she immediately turned away, returning to cleaning up her stand. She took a shirt off her rack, and I swore at her in my head, wondering how she could possibly think I was stupid enough to fall for that bluff.

I kept my eyes away from the direction of Michael's body, hidden inside her tent as I crept towards her.

I came to a stop right outside her stand. Everything inside was a world of muted pinks and earth tones. There was a shag carpet on the floor, and she had a full fucking cactus in the back. A miniature mirrorball hung from the peak of the tent, throwing light everywhere like Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour. And behind a rack, in the very back...

Sloane continued to ignore me, focusing on folding a vintage sweater.

My cheeks burned. I cleared my throat. "Excuse me."

She turned, her green eyes widening. For a moment, beyond all reason, she reminded me of Bianca, just because of the whole earth tone thing matching Bianca's olive green knit cap. I swallowed down the thought, as Sloane avoided my eyes once again - but spoke nonetheless.

"Hi!" she said. "We're... closing."

"What the fuck are you?"

Sloane gasped, and instantly my fears were confirmed. She knew I knew, and she dropped her act.

"Listen-" Her voice now sounded much less charming. "I know it looks bad. But you have to trust me, it isn't what you think."

She looked away as she spoke, which confused me. What was she - a gorgon? I'd never seen her wear sunglasses before.

"What are you?" I repeated. "What did you do to him?

Suddenly, voices came from nearby. The last neighboring vendors, a married couple. I was thankful they were alive, thankful they'd happened to both go somewhere and missed a murder.

Sloane gasped, then hissed in the direction of Michael's body. "Hide him better."

"What?" I hissed back.

Now, she met my gaze, though it was obvious it hurt her. Her green eyes nearly popped out of her head as she said, "A corpse is a corpse, regardless of the mist. Do you want the cops to be involved?"

She had a point. Snapping my head back, I could hear the married couple nearing us. So I quickly sheathed my sword, then ducked into the tent.

Sloane was able to pull part of the tent flap closed, covering half of it in shadows. I sped behind that final rack, grabbing Michael's body and dragging him into the shadows with me.

In the void that was the shadows, I was hidden. It was like wearing an invisibility cloak, complete with a shadowy layer over top that blocked my vision. Michael's head slumped onto my shoulder, and I felt sick.

Close up, I could feel his death. Could feel, clearly, that he had been stabbed - right in the face. This clarified that Sloane hadn't mauled him empousae style, but nothing else.

"Hi guys!" Sloane chirped as our neighbors walked by. "Get what you need?"

I calmed my breathing. She wouldn't look at me - she had killed her ex - she was not apparently monstrous. Perhaps a daughter of Nemesis - someone easily vengeful. That made the most sense, but I couldn't trace her inability look at me. I would say she was autistic, like Cecil Markowitz was, because I knew autistic people sometimes had difficulties making eye contact. But I'd seen her look at other people straight on - seen her talk about Troye Sivan, silk chiffon, and the golden days of tumblr - a million times.

At the end of the day, whatever she was didn't matter. What mattered was that she'd killed someone in cold blood. I could feel from Michael's death that he had been innocent.

He twitched again, and I felt what was left of his soul leave him.

Suddenly, the tent was cloaked in darkness.

I dropped Michael's body, lunging out of my shadows. Sloane had closed the flaps and turned on a tea light. When she turned and found me with my sword drawn, she looked surprised.

"Please-" she said. "Hear me out."

"You killed him," I said. "There's nothing to hear out."

I swung my sword towards her, but to my surprise, she jumped out of the way right in time. She moved supernaturally fast, like a Twilight vampire, or a hummingbird. Suddenly, she was on the other side of the tent.

"I'm a caladrius," she said. "I knew he was going to die. It was gonna be horrible - way worse than this. I was trying to save him."

A caladrius. It was a bird who could take sickness away from someone. It was Roman, but barely; it'd had more popularity in medieval times than anything. It made sense, with both her fast speed and her avian appearance - high, model-like cheekbones and a pert little nose. Before, I'd chalked that up to being near the best plastic surgeons in the country.

Sorry. I promise I'm not one of those people who are super mean to anybody who cares about their looks. I wouldn't be able to live in LA if I was.

"Hello?" Sloane snarled, and I blinked.

If she was half caladrius, then she might not be lying about seeing his future. But I still had a feeling it was an excuse. To justify killing him after they'd just had an argument. If she really wanted to mercy kill him, she would've done it a long time ago - and with poison, rather than a literal knife to the face.

"Half caladrius, I presume," I said, "Daughter of nemesis?"

Her mouth twisted down, and I could see I was right about the first point. Not the second.

"Aphrodite, bitch," she said, her voice fraught, and it all made sense. "And he fucking broke my heart."

I'd had my heart broken too, but it was no excuse.

Only a child of Aphrodite would be so upset about a relationship that they would act so quickly and passionately in revenge. Ares would make them suffer, and nemesis would play the long con. I swallowed, wondering if Michael had known she was a half-blood.

It reminded me why I didn't make friends in the mortal world.

"Listen," Sloane repeated. She lifted her hand from where she'd kept it, hovering near the tea light, and began to slowly walk towards me. I backed up, just to let her have her moment. "We can do this one of two ways - you can leave, and I'll take care of the body, or I can take care of your body, too."

"Caladrii don't just predict death," I breathed. "They take sickness on them and heal people."

"They only heal those that can be healed," Sloane replied, her voice sick with distaste. "Those who can be healed, they look upon, and take their sickness with them, before disposing of it from the sky. Those who are meant to die - they look away."

First, I wondered how she'd bore an entire relationship with this guy if he'd been fated to die this entire time. Had she not made eye contact with him once?

Second, I felt like I was gonna scream.

"You think I'm gonna fall for that?" I asked. "I'd think I'd know when I was meant to die, girl. I'm the fucking Son of Hades."

"I know who you are," she sneered. "You think I don't see you over there, looking all creepy and pretentious? That doesn't change what I know."

"I know death," I said. "I am death."

She crept closer to me, finally looking me in the eye. Which... scared me. I grabbed my sword and held it close.

Her eyes were a blazing sage when she said, "You just assume you know, because you probably have other death related powers. I know I know. It's the one thing I can do. Other than sell clothes better than you-"

She suddenly lunged towards me, and I twisted, slicing my sword straight out. It hit her instantly, shoving through her chest. Rage and embarrassment flooded me as I watched her eyes go wide.

Then she collapsed into dust.

For a moment, I stood there, looking down at her.

Dust.

Aphrodite might've given her her looks, but it was clear her soul was with the monsters.

I held a hand up to my mouth, then wiped away my sweat. One less person who killed for fun. A conviction for the honey seller - and, maybe, less unnecessary spirits in Charon's line later on, saved from the fate they would've gotten from an abusive temper.

My knees creaked as I walked back over to the clothing rack, behind which Michael was laying. I shoved it aside and grabbed his corpse, disappearing into the shadows.

---

If I'd known where he lived, maybe I would've found a way to tell him he had been killed. But that would beg the question of who had killed him.

Either way, I could not just drop his body off at his parents' house. I took him myself into the Hollywood Hills, preparing to bury him.

If I'd been twelve, I would've gathered skeletons to dig for me. But I no longer wanted to do that. To think I was so powerful that I could just rule over all the dead and have them be my man servants was absurd. I was not my father.

So I left Michael's pale corpse on the ground and shadow traveled again, to a hardware store near my house. Stole a shovel from their outside area, where they had no cameras. Came back, exhausted and sweating, and dug a grave. Buried him and gave him rites he most likely would not want. Greek rites, not Christian or Jewish ones, or neo-Pagan or whatever the fuck he might've been.

Then, on the chance he was Christian - he looked WASPy, so at the very least, there was a high chance he had been raised in the church - I said something I remembered people in Venice saying, many many years ago. not a rite, but at least a prayer.

L'eterno riposo dona loro, o Signore. E splenda su di loro la luce perpetua. Possano riposare in pace.

-

I was exhausted when I shadow traveled back to the edge of the flea market. Most people had already tore their tents down, but the married couple who'd almost seen Sloane's murder remained, talking to an organizer. When they saw me come wandering up to my tent, they all looked my way, and I swore in my head.

I pretended to have not seen them, immediately setting about taking down my tent. I'd gotten one peg in when a police officer came wandering over towards me.

"Excuse me, sir," he said. "This is your stand, right?"

I dropped a rope, trying to act normal. "That's right."

"Have you seen, uh-" he gestured towards the general direction of Michael and Sloane's stands. "Miss Calson and Mr. Kennedy? We've had it reported to us that they haven't been here for an hour."

"Oh, shit." I let my jaw drop, though internally, I was happy to hear Michael had an Irish last name - higher chances he was indeed Christian. "No, I haven't. I was just - taking a walk."

"You were taking a walk?"

I frowned. "I have panic attack disorder. So - I really needed to take a moment. I knew Sloane and Michael would make sure my stuff stayed safe."

The woman from the married couple, who were watching from afar, frowned at my mention of panic attack disorder. I was indeed mentally ill, so it wasn't completely a lie, and I was foolish enough to hope that might give me some sympathy. Then I realized they'd notice if none of my stuff was stolen.

The cop sighed, putting his hands on his hips. "Would you like to check if any of your stuff has been stolen?"

Irritation swirled up inside me, but I took him over to my tent. Told him nothing had been stolen, let them think that the couple had just disappeared. Then he mentioned there was blood in Sloane's tent, and I changed that to let them think that the couple had just been killed. Regardless of the logic, he seemed sussed out by the fact that I hadn't been robbed, but didn't say anything. After all, neither of them had been robbed either.

He wrote some shit down, then gave me a nod.

"And your name is?"

I lied. "Nicolas... D'Amico."

"Nicolas," he repeated. "Well, all right then. Have a good rest of the day."

I watched him go, letting my eyes darken once his back was to me. I had my name on file as one of the vendors, but only in signature form, and my handwriting was shit enough that it could be argued it did say D'Amico. But they also had my address on file, if they wanted to look deeper. And they would, once the other leads were gone.

I'd looked into what the mortals thought about half-blood events before - Percy, Annabeth, and Grover's first quest, the Battle of Manhattan, etc. I knew how these things went.

I kept my jaw clamped as I tore down my stand, knowing that I finally had an excuse to leave LA.

------

A/N: Spooky things are happening :0 the caladrius is obviously a real creature, and I was fascinated to learn about it while researching for this story; I've never fed my latent Greco-Roman chthonic mythology hyperfixation before now, so I'm excited to learn more :D

With love, Athena