Apollo had been out chasing fire, as he'd been doing almost constantly for the past week.
On Monday, as he stalked a path outside Martin's empty apartment, he'd crashed headfirst into a woman on her bike, and the two of them had tumbled to the ground. She'd been apologetic - his leg was bleeding - and handed him her business card, which he hadn't looked at properly until after she'd biked away.
Her name was Alexandria. She worked as an archivist at New York Public Library.
Apollo knew a fucking omen when he saw it, though this one did feel a bit like Zeus was slapping him about the face with it.
For the rest of the week, images of libraries burning kept flashing across his mind, and scraps of poetry - some say the world will end in fire - and nightmares of suffocating in smoke. The wailing of sirens turned his stomach because he knew sirens, in Clio's case, would come too late, and this was a problem in New York, city of constant sirens.
Suddenly he'd known how this was ending but not where. Or when. Just how. So he tried to chase every engine, track every call, but the sheer number of them were overwhelming so he focused and focused on predicting it, rather than waiting for the worst news to come in.
Apollo spent a lot of his time on his penthouse balcony, using the height to try and get a direction, trying method after method, ancient and modern, to call forth signs of Clio. He'd visited many of the tallest buildings around, too, changing the angle he viewed the city that was hiding Clio from him, but it was harder to focus uninterrupted in those public spaces.
Five mornings ago his penthouse had been circled by a turkey vulture, its six foot wingspan darkening the sky as it turned and turned above his head. He followed it with his eyes, mapping its path, and then sped out to the hanger where he kept his helicopter, spent a frustrated few minutes filling out the forms for permission to fly over the city himself and then copied the bird's movements, eventually landing near where it had in Central Park.
Clio was obviously not in Central Park, and the fifth day without her ended in the same failures as all the days that came before. That had been the day Stutely has messaged him - he's hurting her and Apollo had put a fist through his wall. No shit he was hurting her. He was going to kill her. Apollo was going to lose Clio, again.
He hadn't replied to Stutely. He wasn't worth the wasted concentration.
The world no longer gave a shit about his power, just as so much of the world - this country especially - gave a shit about saving history. No, no, so many people here would prefer to see it destroyed where it could not be controlled. Re-written to suit their agenda rather than the truth. Re-told by anyone who had the power to retell it. So Clio would burn, and the world - the world that didn't fucking deserve her - would lose so much.
When Calliope spotted him, he was returning from a call out only a few blocks away. He'd heard the sirens from his balcony, he'd seen the fire engine pass on the street below, and he'd known already that if Clio was involved in that fire he'd get there too late - he needed to get there before the fire was reported if Clio was to stand a chance - but he'd run the three city blocks anyway. It was just a restaurant, though - no sign of anyone shackled in the basement.
He trudged back in the early morning light, felt Calliope before he saw her and for one beautiful second he thought it was Clio, somehow, but as he stepped into the lobby and met eyes with her his face fell. Oh. Calliope. Of course it wouldn't be Clio. He was letting hope blind him.
He hadn't told the Muses a thing about the fire. They didn't need to worry about what was coming if there was a way he could avert it. And he would avert it, or burn this whole city down with her.