by Molly Ringle
His friends only gazed disconsolately at the rock formations. Niko didn’t even take the opportunity to tease Adrian like he ordinarily would.
“Someone does need to apply themselves to spying on Thanatos,” Niko said. “More than just the occasional look-in I’m giving them.” Nikolaos had been following Krystal and Landon—Quentin had supplied their names—and stealing opportunities while they slept to open their computers or go through the messages on their phones.
Landon was mostly staying in motels, moving around a lot, and Krystal was recuperating from her gunshot wound in a house in southeastern Washington that, they presumed, was owned by another member of Thanatos, or at least someone sympathetic to the cause who would hide her from the law and wouldn’t press her to go to a hospital. From the messages, Niko had a few names, or at least aliases, of other members, but definite information on the cult’s plans was still lacking. The cult members knew better than to be too specific in writing; they used vague wording and code phrases that Adrian and his friends couldn’t always work out.
“I want to crush them. Krystal and Landon.” Adrian pronounced the names with bitter enunciation. “We’ve let them lurk about long enough. I’m going to have them thrown in jail, and if they get out, I will kill them. Personally.”
“It’s interesting,” Niko said, “having you be farther on the wrong side of the law than me for a change.”
“You threw Quentin off a horse from a hundred meters up! Why won’t you let me do the same to her hired thugs?”
Niko turned his face away, the muscles in his cheek hardening.
“Ade,” Zoe beseeched.
“You wouldn’t like it, killing anyone,” Niko said, his gaze upon the dark spaces between columns. “Not even those people. I’d rather I hadn’t set that precedent.”
“Besides, we’ve been over it,” Zoe added. “The longer we watch them, the more we learn about what they’re up to. If we swoop in on them, they’ll know we’ve been spying. And if we take out Landon and Krystal—whether by killing them or by having them arrested or by grabbing them and bringing them here for questioning—then we lose our two best leads into Thanatos. We can’t track anyone else so easily, even when we have names and mobile numbers.”
“So, what, we wait until they attack another innocent family?” Adrian said.
Niko glanced at him. “I’ve seen no signs of an upcoming attack. I would tell you if I had.”
“Would you? You seem content to tell us things only when it pleases you.”
Niko’s eyes grew colder.
Zoe closed her hand around Adrian’s arm, hard. “That’s enough. Bloody hell, wouldn’t Thanatos love this? Fighting amongst ourselves? Stop it already.”
Adrian said nothing, but flattened his lips in semi-apology at Niko.
Niko accepted it with a lift of his chin. “At least they’re doing the same. Squabbling with each other over what to do next. Meanwhile, Landon’s going mad with fear.”
“Does he know you’re spying on him?” Adrian asked. “Or do you mean he’s only fretting about being caught?”
“Oh…” Niko swiped a water drop off a column. “I’d say he knows.”
Chapter Six
Landon poured the bourbon into the plastic motel cup and chugged it.
“Merry Christmas,” he said out loud to whomever might be listening, though he was alone in the motel room. Or so it appeared. “Wait till I’m passed out before you kill me, all right? Thanks.”
Talking to nobody. Great. He was losing his mind. Ongoing terror could do that to you, it seemed.
At first he thought it was his imagination that he was being stalked. If the immortals could follow him that easily, they’d simply kill him, or seize him as a hostage, right? But when he awoke some mornings, he could swear his phone or computer was a few inches off from where he had left it, and that the power level was a bit lower than it should be. And when he went to check the recently accessed files in a fit of paranoia, he found the history wiped clean—which he hadn’t done, at least not that he remembered. Maybe the computer did that automatically sometimes? Side effect of some harmless update?
He slept with his grandmother’s little gray notebook tucked under his pillow, so at least no one should easily be able to get that. But if anyone actually was sneaking around his motel room, he wasn’t going to be able to sleep anymore anyway.
Lately he had been hiding out in a motel in Boise, a city he’d never been in before, so no one should look for him there. Theoretically. The terse coded emails and equally terse phone calls Landon had been getting from the Thanatos members around the globe hadn’t exactly been helping. Most didn’t like the idea of being subject to a new leader, younger than themselves, whom they’d never met. They tended to disagree on what steps should be taken next to pursue the unnaturals. And they didn’t care for the uncertainty of what had befallen Betty Quentin. One even hinted that Landon might have done away with her himself to gain control of the group.
“I would never want to be in control!” Landon shouted.
“Well, of course, you could resign if that’s how you feel,” the man had said smoothly. His name was Erick Tracy. He was a British guy who lived in Australia now, and who was, to judge from their few conversations so far, basically an asshole. “In any case,” Tracy had added during their phone call, “I suspect you’ll feel more chipper after you’ve heard my ideas at the meeting.”
Tracy was taking the lead in organizing the upcoming meeting and therefore was acting like the group’s leader, even though he wasn’t. But new ideas, super, might as well hear them.
From what Landon’s grandmother had told him, and what Google turned up too, Erick Tracy was an academic who taught a mix of subjects: criminal justice, atmospheric sciences, and the overlapping territory of science and law. His students loved him, to judge from the numerous teaching awards listed on his professional contact pages. He also traveled a lot and had been involved in student work/study-abroad programs between various countries.
“And the ladies have to look out around him,” Quentin had remarked.
Landon believed that. In the few online photos he had seen, Tracy was a handsome man with a sexy-librarian-adventurer thing going on. He was in his fifties, but appeared to be one of those guys who could make graying hair, glasses, and tweed jackets look hot. And in three of the five photos he had his arm around young, pretty women, probably his adoring students. Ick.
Tracy was the one who had flown over to New Zealand last month to look for Adrian Watts—and had completely failed, Landon would like to note. At least Landon had come a few feet away from throwing Adrian into a fire. Failing at that was neither something he was proud of nor ashamed of. He couldn’t help shuddering at the idea of killing someone with his own hands, even someone who was partly a monster. But at least he’d been on the right trail.
As to whether Adrian was in fact dead, no one knew. That made Landon nervous. They hadn’t ascertained what happened to Adrian after that night. If these people were honestly as hard to kill as the Decrees warned, well, Adrian might have survived and now he’d be furious, which was a scary thought. Wasn’t any better if he was dead, though. Then his immortal friends would be furious. Landon was on their hit list no matter what. Thanatos was his only hope of safety.
What with the holidays, they’d been unable to schedule the council meeting until two days after Christmas. Christmas was today, not that Landon was doing anything for it. Indeed, he’d never known a lonelier, more awful Christmas, and that was saying something.
Landon’s father had died of a heart attack three years ago, which of course had been traumatizing even though Landon had never been close to him. He hadn’t been much closer to his mother. She and Landon hadn’t talked in months. Possibly she didn’t even know he had left Massachusetts. He had changed his phone number without telling her, because chances were excellent the police would be looking for him back home. The immortals had probably found out who he was and
would be trying to cause legal trouble for him. An anonymous tip would do it, same kind of thing he and his grandmother had placed to mess with Adrian.
So yes, the menace from the immortals hadn’t diminished at all; in fact, it kept piling up, like a thunderhead. His grandmother had made Thanatos sound so glorious, a noble adventure in scholarship and international intrigue. Instead it was turning out more like being the victim in a horror movie.
Two nights ago Landon had left a note on top of his computer: Is my grandmother alive or dead? He’d written it in red ink and laid the pen across the note, with a large space left below for an answer.
I’m being paranoid, he thought before retiring to his motel bed. It was hours before he could fall asleep.
But when he woke up and dashed across to his computer, like a little kid looking for evidence of a visit from some evil Santa, he reeled back instantly upon seeing the note.
The pen lay beside the computer now, and DEAD was printed neatly across the lower half of the page, with Have a nice day written in smaller letters below it.
He’d been so terrified he couldn’t eat. He’d moved to a different motel, and phoned Jim Farnell, the nearest Thanatos representative, the guy in southeastern Washington who was housing Krystal. Landon spilled the story to him: the stalking, the note. “You’ve got to help me,” he begged.
Jim was a retired Army man, and knew some younger sniper types who would ask no questions if assigned a surveillance-and-possibly-lethal-assault job. They sounded like Krystal that way, Landon thought. Indeed, the young man with the reddish-blond crew cut who showed up a couple of hours later at his motel did remind Landon a bit of Krystal. Especially when he assembled his weapons with a fond gleam in his eyes—tranquilizer gun, stun gun, and thick handgun. The idea was to knock the immortal intruder out with those, then transport him elsewhere to incinerate him.
Landon fell asleep while the sniper stayed up all night in a hiding place under the sheet-draped luggage rack in the room. But no one showed up.
The sniper went home to sleep for the day, and returned for one more night’s vigilance. Still no immortals turned up. Jim Farnell let the sniper go home for Christmas, and told Landon to calm down and wait for the Thanatos meeting. “It’s only one more night, son,” Jim said over the phone. “You’ll be fine. You’ve probably been sleepwalking, is my guess. That would explain the note.”
“It wasn’t my handwriting!”
“Writing in your sleep, though, it’d look different. Understandable. You’ve been under a lot of stress. Think about it: if these fiends could get you that easily, wouldn’t they have just ended you by now?”
Such was a Thanatos member’s way of being reassuring, Landon supposed.
He sloshed another inch or two of bourbon into the plastic cup, swigged it, and fell on his back on the motel bed. The ceiling swirled dreamily. “Just kill me in my sleep, ‘kay?” he murmured. “Don’t do stuff to scare me. Just don’t anymore.”
Chapter Seven
Adrian was determined to provide Sophie with a good Christmas before he left, or at least as decent a Christmas as he could give her under the circumstances. Her grandmother was here, which helped. But since Sophie wasn’t comfortable around Adrian, learning what else she wanted meant going through intermediaries. He’d asked Tabitha, who reported back that Sophie seemed only concerned about making Liam happy. Liam missed his video games—he spent a lot of free hours borrowing everyone else’s phones and playing whatever game apps they had on them—so Adrian sent out Niko and Zoe to obtain electronics. Food pleased Liam too, as it did for most rapidly growing twelve-year-olds. So Freya and Tab took on the task of planning and bringing down a Christmas feast for the group, sourced from Greek towns nearby.
Thus on Christmas morning, Sophie, Liam, and their grandmother came out of the bedchamber to find their immortal hosts laying out plates of bacon, eggs, fresh fruit, pastries, and hot chocolate in the fields. The souls of Terry, Isabel, Rhea, Sophie’s Grandpop, and other friends lingered near, smiling. Liam pounced on the bacon. Grammy kissed Niko’s cheek when he brought her a cup of chocolate. Sophie finally smiled too—a weak smile compared to the blissful grins Adrian had once been privileged enough to receive, but it gave him hope. She sat on the grass with the rest, and ate some eggs and fruit. She kept her gaze lowered while the others chatted around her. Adrian was quiet too, across the circle from her, pulling apart a mandarin orange on his plastic plate.
They exchanged gifts after breakfast. He and the other immortals had insisted they needed nothing. Nonetheless, Zoe weaseled over to Adrian and thrust a squishy paper-wrapped bundle into his hands. He unwrapped it to find two T-shirts and two long-sleeved button-downs, all new and in a variety of subdued dark colors.
“Your shirts are all getting quite worn out and impossible,” she said. “Plus it’s so exciting being able to pick out colors for people!” After all, she’d been born blind, and hadn’t been able to see until eating the fruit of immortality a couple of months ago.
Adrian hugged her. “Cheers, Z. They’re great. And um, here.” He took a tiny box from the paper bag he’d brought along, and handed it to her.
She opened it and lifted out the silver ear cuff. “It’s gorgeous! Ooh, it’s got a moon.”
“Moon and a sun and those wavy lines that looked like water—I don’t know, it made me think of you. Since you were complaining that becoming immortal made your earring holes heal up, and you can only wear that type now…”
Zoe kissed him on the cheek. “I love it. Here, I’m putting it on.”
A few paces away, Liam was on his knees opening a large box and hauling out its contents: a game system, monitor, and meters of cables.
“And,” Niko was explaining to him, “I’ve finally fetched a generator for the Underworld the way I did for Ade’s trailer, so you can run the thing as soon as we hook up the wiring.”
Liam kept up a stream of excited comments as he pawed through the game boxes. Tab and Grammy sat near him, grinning, and Sophie watched with a soft smile. She absently stroked the sleeve of the black cashmere sweater she wore, a present Tab had just given her. Adrian tightened his fingers on the paper bag, which still held his gift for Sophie. Would he dare give it to her?
Then, to his surprise, she approached. She glanced into his eyes for a second, then dropped her gaze. “I have something for you,” she said. “It’s over here, by the orchard.”
“Oh. Great.” He tried to sound friendly and relaxed.
He followed her to the orchard, away from the chattering group—quite aware that several of their friends watched them walk off together, with a mix of curiosity, hope, and pity in their eyes. She tapped the flashlight app on her phone and lit their way with it as the glow of the souls dwindled behind them. Adrian added the beam of his key-ring light. He said nothing as they walked. What could he say? Enjoying your Christmas in the land of the dead? Fun and different, right?
Between the pomegranate orchard and the river lay the large expanse where Persephone’s gardens had once grown. It had been overtaken by plants and trees that, as far as Adrian could recall, had always lived in the Underworld, along with some garden plants gone feral—willows, ashes, ivies, wildflowers, herbs, and others, all with leaves in shades of gray, white, or black, with occasional bursts of color in the flowers.
But the flashlights’ beams landed upon one knee-high tree sporting slender shiny green leaves. Sophie stopped beside it. Small red flowers peeked from the foliage. The earth around its trunk was freshly turned over and tamped down, and showed a dark circle where the tree had been watered.
“It’s this,” Sophie said.
Adrian crouched by the tree and stroked a leaf between thumb and finger. “It’s pretty. Looks familiar; what is it?”
“It’s a titoki tree. I had this idea you might miss home when you’re down here, so I asked Zoe what plants were in your garden in Wellington. She said she remembered a titoki tree, because her house had one too. So I ha
d her find one for me at a nursery. I thought, since it’s native to New Zealand, there’s probably never been one planted down here, so…maybe it’ll do something cool, magic-wise. I don’t know. At least you could have it to remind you of home.”
She sounded so somber. Adrian’s throat swelled and he blinked against tears. “It’s perfect,” he said. “I love it. Thank you.” And he couldn’t even kiss or hug her in gratitude. Not with yesterday’s reaction. “I’d…been meaning to try new plants down here, the way we used to,” he added, “but hadn’t got around to it. Really, it’s such a good idea. Thanks.”
Her lips stretched in an expression that was almost a smile. “Good.” She reached down to pick a dry stem off the little tree.
The gift was perfect, and so very Persephone. It boosted his hopes that she might yet recover and take joy in the Underworld—and in him.
Then again, she could easily have thought of this gift and arranged it with Zoe a couple of weeks ago. Before.
Letting himself hope was self-destructive. Action only, for a while yet. He rose and took out the one small box that remained in the paper bag. He handed it to her, though reluctance almost pulled his arm back. Ugh, jewelry, what had he been thinking? So cold and inorganic compared to her gift; such a typical symbol of men trying to buy and possess women. Not at all the message he intended, but she might take it that way.
As she took the box, he said, “Don’t open it now. You can wait till later, after I’m gone.”
Her eyes lifted to him, guarded. “Gone?”
“Well, I should visit my dad, for starters.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course you should.”
He folded up the paper bag till it was just a hard little square between his hands. “After that, well, someone has to apply themselves to seeing what Thanatos is up to, so I thought I’d track them down, find out what I can. Stop them if possible. I’d still come back here sometimes, but it might be a while. It could be days or weeks that you…wouldn’t see me. I’m not sure yet how it’ll go.”