OPHELIA STARED UP AT THE BUST OF PALLAS ATHENA that sat over Walden's front door. Perfectly sculpted ivory eyes seemed to bore into her soul as she stood alone, bare feet on old mahogany wooden floorboards, shivering. She hadn't remembered seeing it when they'd gotten to his apartment. Darkness surrounded her, so that only the goddess statue and her own pale skin stood out amidst the night.

They'd followed Walden to his apartment not far from the aquarium. They owed him a great deal, for Alex's shoes and a place to stay and providing dinner when they had little to pay. None of them had expected such kindness after leaving camp.

And yet, Ophelia found herself alone again, standing barefooted with little clothes before the mahogany door. She felt darkness there, and nothing more.

A chill filled the room. Bookshelves and plants faded until all she could focus on was the beating of her heart. Steadily increasing, she wished it would stop. Slow down.

Someone stalked these halls. Ophelia could sense it. She felt icy fingers trail along her neck and shoulders. She spun, grabbing for her dagger. But the Stygian iron knife had disappeared. And so had the grasping hands.

She couldn't breathe. Ophelia looked around. Her heart ached as it pounded. Where had Alex gone? She saw only a ripped leather couch, sparse books, and turning back to the entrance chamber door towering over her, that damned ivory bust of Pallas Athena.

Floorboards creaked. Ophelia couldn't move. Her mouth ran dry as her heart raced. Pounding, pounding ever faster she worried even the neighbors would hear. Ophelia spun around. She held out her hands. She called on the Mist.

Nothing came. Alex had gone. Kitty had gone. She stood alone, a pale ghost amidst a sea of dark and death. Ice filled her veins. She couldn't breathe. She drowned, drowned as ravens screamed above her. Ophelia reached for the bust of Athena. Her fingers, boney, couldn't reach the goddess.

Another creak, another tapping at the wood. Ophelia shook. But she turned, turned away from Pallas Athena until she found herself face to face with a monster twice her size. Skeletal, mummified, with scarlet blood dripping from his mouth, it said nothing.

She screamed.

Warm air filled her lungs as she opened her eyes. Heart still pounding against her rib cage, Ophelia rolled over off her cot of blankets on Walden's oak floors. She could breathe again. She closed her eyes.

Darkness had never scared her before. But that nightmare had paralyzed her. She focused on catching her breath.

Ophelia sat up. She wore shorts and a freshly cleaned orange Camp tee shirt. Walden hadn't restricted them from anything: they'd showered, eaten, washed clothing, even restocked on Cliff bars and a bit of ambrosia he had lying around for emergencies.

Alex lay fast asleep next to her. His blonde hair fell across his face, covering a few of the small scars he'd gotten over the years. Most people never noticed them. But she knew them. Two burns under his hairline from fighting on the Princess Andromeda, the scratch of a Harpy talon near his left ear. He also had a massive scar across his stomach, but Alex refused to talk about it. As Ophelia watched his chest rise and fall,she could see the end of it peeking out from his bunched up tee.

Kitty had a cot on the other side of the room. As Ophelia watched her, snuggling a pillow shaped like kelp, she wondered what sorts of dreams she had. Not much rattled Kitty. Sometimes, Ophelia envied her. To be sure of herself, of her worth, of who she was.

Fresh air. That's what she needed. Ophelia wanted to clear her head of whatever suffocating blackness had been in her nightmare.

It didn't take long to slip on shoes and socks. She stood in the center of the room. Closing her eyes, Ophelia concentrated on the night both outside and in. Instead of smothering, she felt her lungs expand.

With a quiet snap, space and shadow folded around her. Void souls and silent winds whipped through her hair and eyes and face as she shadow-traveled to the alley below. At home with the night, she took a deep breath. She closed her eyes.

Mist curled around her, invisible but tangible. Like a heavy fog, Ophelia could sense her body moving through it, following its ebbs and flows.

You make your family proud in the dark.

She tried and failed to suppress a tiny smile at Eris's words. Mist and shadow wreathed her head like a crown and cloak. Ophelia took another deep, electrifying breath.

You can save them. We believe in you.

On the edge of her mind she heard whispers, muffled screams. Ophelia flinched back. Listening to Eris opened herself up to the voices of the damned more than she liked. And if her nightmare meant anything, Baltimore straddled the divide between life and death more than she wanted.

Ophelia allowed the Mist and shadows to guide her. She shut off her brain, ignoring the sound of her steadily increasing beating heart and whispers of souls in the dark corners. It felt about two, maybe three AM. Ophelia could always tell. That was the Witching Hour, as her mother had taught her, when her powers reached their zenith.

In those hours darkest before dawn, when moon sank beneath corporate office buildings and museum towers, Ophelia's skin tingled. Something nearby, something close, it called to her. Not with words. Not with whispers and moans.

But definitely of the dark. Ophelia felt the Mist shift, fade, absorb into her in favor of cold, stagnant shadow. She approached the corner of a brick building. When she turned it, Ophelia stopped in her tracks.

A massive, open square paved with sienna red bricks at alternating angles stretched a hundred feet in diameter. A few trees grew in paved squares of mulch and soil. Their green leaves faded almost to grey in the dark except for one, lit by a tall black street lamp. But the confined trees hadn't stopped her.

Beyond the streetlamp, a large square platform with four stairs up housed a plinth upon which towered a throned statue. Partially bent towards his knees the stone figure bowed his head and gripped the throne-like chair statue tight. But even this magnificent artwork hadn't stopped Ophelia.

Sitting on the top step, head in a pose reminiscent of the statue, sat a hazy, semi translucent man. Not a man. Ophelia's breath caught in her throat. A ghost.

She heard her heart beating faster. No. What small breath she had managed to take faltered. Not her own heartbeat. But one pounding, pounding from the man beyond. Why would a ghost have a beating heart? How could it pound beyond the grave?

She peered closer. In his hand he clasped tightly a quill pen. His already shimmering hands had knuckles turning a paler white from the stress.

To her surprise, Ophelia felt no fear. Her mother held dominion over necromancy in combination with other gods of the Underworld. She wondered if she could speak with this one. What had brought it back? Who was he? Who did he serve? She took several steps into the square.

A cold air rushed past her. Several strands of her blonde hair caught in her mouth as some of the uncomfortable cold of her nightmare resurfaced. Ophelia stopped.

But he had noticed her. Sunken, deathless dark eyes met her. He wore old clothing, a white neckerchief tucked beneath a black waistcoat. Black hair had receded and begun to fall out except for his rather robust dark mustache. She wondered if alive he had ever been handsome. Death had certainly done nothing for him. He seemed a man who had seen and heard what no mortal should.

"You are not the lost Lenore," he said, any hope in his deathly expression disappearing. "And yet here you come tap, tapping upon my chamber door. Why? Why must you half blooded friends torment me each forever more."

Ophelia had no answer. His voice scratched from disuse and potentially too much tobacco and alcohol. If only her father could've seen her now. A man who claimed to seek out ghosts, gifted from Hecate with a daughter who actually could.

Speak with him.

"Who are you?" she ventured. Ophelia took a few more steps forward until she stood but four yards away. "Why are you here?"

"Speak your name, spawn of witches, child of the dark." The ghost cocked his head. "I knew your kind once. Students of the centaur, warrior for the Greeks. I lived there once upon a time. Before I met Virginia."

Ophelia paused. Nightmares. Baltimore. Lover of Virginia. The outfit, the massive forehead and matching mustache, the Gothic appearance. It clicked.

"You're Edgar Allan Poe? The son of Melinoë."

"Hush! Don't say her name so loud," he said. Poe ran a hand through his hair, agitated, standing off the ground, hazy around his body growing thicker.  "Indeed, I am."

Ophelia asked nothing else while the cold wind settled around them. Hecate had warned her about Melinoë. Goddess of nightmares, of madness, of ghosts. Not one to be trifled with, her mother had said.

She was right. Melinoë is unpredictable. Vicious. Her children, mad. But you may learn something from him.

Poe hadn't stopped glancing about. She watched his frantic movements, one hand on the hilt of her Stygian dagger. But he made no move to fight or even flee. He seemed stuck by his statue. She narrowed her eyes. Ophelia had thought the haze and shadows came from him, from Poe as a ghost of the Underworld. But as she watched him, she realized they didn't.

The shadow and smoke escaped from cracks radiating out in the concrete plinth upon which his statue rested. Ophelia took a deep breath. She'd seen cracks like those before. Energy filled her body as she stepped closer, allowing the power of the Underworld to enter her veins. Like a drug, it managed to calm and entice her at the same time. Ophelia grinned.

Poe sat against the top step, watching her closely. He'd stopped his insane chattering. Eyes widened, he gripped a handkerchief to his semi-translucent chest.

"I heard all things in the heavens and in the earth. I heard many things in hell," he said. "The Underworld churns, chaos in the shadows as waves upon an angry sea. Faltering, the Ghost Queen's grip. Beneath the surface, power shifts."

No one would argue this ghost, Edgar Allan Poe, wasn't insane. Most children of Melinoë ended up that way. Too close to the dead, too close to their mother's nightmares. But as she looked beyond and through his hunched form at the cracks in concrete spewing a slow but steady haze of shadows, she figured he spoke at least some truth through the madness.

"Thief in the night," Poe murmured. "He, she, the thief. In the night. The clock runs out." He glanced upwards. "And darkness and decay will hold dominion over all. The clock runs out."

A shock of cold terror ran down Ophelia's spine. His words, his sunken deathless eyes turned upwards towards the heavens ripped her out of whatever trance of safety she'd fallen into since standing amidst the escaping shadows of the Underworld.

In a snap, she disappeared from Edgar Allan Poe's unhappy limbo and appeared back in Walden's warm, dark living room. In the side window, dawn's first rays trickled in. As she fought to catch her breath, Alex began to stir.

"Hey," he said, voice heavy from sleep. He pushed himself up. Wiping the exhaustion from his eyes, he looked her over. "You're up early? Everything good?"

She opened her mouth. Then she stopped.

You can tell him some other time. Why now? Why, when he already carries such anger? He might not trust you anymore.

She shut her mouth. Ophelia forced herself to smile, settling down next to him on the floor. "Just out for a walk. You know I prefer the dark for that."

He smirked, ducking his head for a moment as he looked her over. Leaning in, she deflated as they kissed. She took in every moment like it would be the last. When they broke apart, his smile fell.

"I had another dream." He sighed. "Some part of the Labyrinth survived. And we needed to get moving."

Ophelia sighed. The quest. But she nodded, quickly agreeing. The sooner she got out of Baltimore, the better she would feel. Leave Poe and his mad chittering behind.