Doesn’t matter where Hermes leaves the car. It’ll reappear when he needs it. If we walk back to where he parked, the streets will have switched their setup. It’ll be another arrangement of shops or a park. Or a plain old apartment building. At a first glance, the streets here are a maze of little logic. What I’d seen in the morning was a symptom of Honest, Honest?, though its influence is much more manageable in St. Michael’s and not as threatening as inside the city itself.

  Another manifestation of the singularity.

    “You know where the house is?” He asks me and I turn toward him, his dark eyes scrutinizing but playful. I wonder if he already knows. He probably does and I wonder how many hints he’s willing to offer today. Gods shouldn’t meddle.

  But gods are whimsical, so gods do.

    “In theory,” I say, opening the file to show him. “Maps are no good usually.”

  Usually the city eventually gives way. After it startles and pisses me off. You’d think I’d get used to it after all this time. Maybe I would if there was something to get used to. But the city, too, is whimsical.

    “We’ll find it.”

    “Right!” half of the harpies yell, fluttering around my head.

    “No, go left!” 

  I adjust my body again. The harpies contradict each other in their minuscular but sharp voices. They’d growl if it didn’t sound like sober irritability. Instead, they bare pearly teeth and chatter with faery anger.

  The buildings are shadowed over by the orange glow of the sky. Perpetual sunset. The eternal golden-hour. The stagnant light paused over massive clouds. Never truly night. Never truly day.

    “Okay,” I say and they stop and my brain puts itself together from mush. “Everyone decides, now!”

    “Left!” They scream.

  Zosi laughs and exchanges amused glances with Hermes.

  And left I go full of spirit and conviction. Under the suspended concrete bridge, my breath shakes with the force of the passing train. It whooshes and clanks and rattles the overlapping staircases. Metal scratches against the shrunken horizon and the hungry buildings swallow the light whole.

  At the crosswalk, we’re soaked in red. I lower my gaze. I don’t want to search faces anymore but they’re all looking up. Bags and coats hang from their fingers. I might know some of them. Seen them in passing somewhere. If they’re alone and lost and searching I can’t interrupt their stories. Familiarity will do that. Others might be philosophers, and as a rule, most philosophers have to steer clear of each other.

  Three vultures lined up and gliding above us - framed darkly by the bodies of skyscrapers. The harpies cower close to me. Broken rules. A reminder of power. Our heads turn, collectively taking in. Silence. Car engines humming and distant highways. Decaying, urban rumble.

    “Omen, omen,” they whisper painfully, “omen.”

  The light turns green and we’re stuck in between pedestrians as they crowd the intersection, brushing shoulders. Scrapping matches. On the other side of the street, we sit in a bus station with a jumbled-up name I can’t decipher. Sometimes, the city won't let you read. Nothing to be worried about. It happens to philosophers, too. I’m not a third-eye generation kid. I don’t let fear pool into my legs.

  I follow Hermes’ shiny, shiny sandals as he paces around and passers-by greet him ardently.

    “Let’s cut through that market over there,” Zosi suggests. “We’ll ask a vendor if need be. Do you have coins?”

    “Here," I say, and I dig through my coat pockets to give him a few. 

  We walk into a side street. Busy with outdoor tables and rising steam. Would-be spicy cooking. I can smell it if I imagine the aroma hard enough. It's busy with hanging signs and glitching, glaring red neon.

  An old woman cools her fruit stand with misted water. Zosi takes two rosy peaches and gives her one of the rectangular golden coins in exchange. An icon of a holy face pressed into it. Price of admission. Price of secrets.

 Allegiance.

 She examines it in the sun and points us toward an alley. Big raindrops darken our clothes as we near it. I look around and it’s sunny everywhere else. The patch of rain clouds only hangs over the house in question. Fleshy pink carnations grace the fences, streams of water flow down the tilted alleyway. 

  The ground is drowning.

  Climb a few wet steps and I knock. A balding middle-aged man opens up. His paleness is bruised and his eyes lacklustre. He doesn’t say anything and steps aside to let us in. We’re expected.

   “The medium’s already here,” I realize, glancing down at the rows of shoes in the entrance.

  At the end of the hall, I catch a glimpse of a young girl in a yellow dress carrying a silver tray. Must be the medium's assistant. She stops and waits outside the room. As we approach her, I notice the room’s devoid of furniture and toys and any sort of personality that might indicate it belongs to a little spirit boy. The only thing left in the room is his bed, which levitates off the wooden floor, a foot or so below his back. As if it'll catch him any moment now. But the boy is sluggishly suspended in mid-air. 

  His mother sits on bended knees near the doorway. Her praying beads tug at her fingers, floating in the air and struggling to escape, as if drawn to the boy's apparent magnetism. Strands of her hair beat and snake in the air as if blown by a breeze.

  The medium walks in through one of the walls. Waist-length, combed-back and braided hair, shadowy lashes and inky runes instead of eyebrows. Wearing long, long robes of swirling embroidery. They flow and ripple and underneath, her skin is darkened by the glistening lines of her tattoos. She’s a flame of summer now. But much like the city, the medium’s a chameleon shedding layers and she rarely wears the same face twice. She’s quite literally a medium, a space where the singularity dances. 

  Maybe it’s safer to hide yourself from the city in some way, if it works.

  An ensemble of others materializes with chattering enthusiasm.

    “Be considerate, little ones.” She has an odd voice. Hard to place, yet so familiar. Sounds like the iridescent light that speaks to recluses in desert caves. Plucked of tonality and permeated with purpose. Purpose. “Alright if my students watch?”

  The mother agrees with a short nod of her head and the students retreat into the walls. I look over the smooth beige surfaces, searching for eyes. But they’re invisible, if they are at all.