by Molly Ringle
Hermes came to her; she sensed him without lifting her head. His hand came to rest upon her back.
“It’s stupid of me.” She sniffled. “They already died five years ago.”
“Nonsense. Of course it’s sad. I feel it too, see?” He took her hand so their skin touched, and indeed a gentle sadness flowed from him—though seemingly without the pain she was experiencing. Naturally it would be different for her, their daughter.
“I just need time to get used to it,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be very good company tonight. Sorry. You don’t have to stay, if…you know.”
His brows drew together. “You think I’d leave just because you don’t want sex? What on earth have you heard about me? Oh, all right, there may be something to that rumor. But I can make exceptions for you.” He settled into the grass, pulled her onto his lap, and wrapped his arms around her. Kerberos lay beside them and licked their knees lazily.
She rested her head on Hermes’ chest. Gradually her pain eased down to something more like his gentle sadness. “I do love you, you know.”
She had never said it before. She had worried it would scare him off, or perhaps that he wouldn’t believe her. But today it felt right and honest.
He kissed the top of her head. “I know,” he said. “And as you must be able to sense, I do love you.”
He also hadn’t said it, aside from acknowledging it that first day of their affair when she had asked.
She smiled now, her face tucked low where he couldn’t see. “Well. I won’t expect your personality to change or anything. For you to stop being a liar and a thief and all that.”
“Appreciated. But you know, it’s funny. When it comes to you, I have this strange desire to give you everything and steal nothing.”
She wriggled into a more comfortable fit on his lap. “Even tell the truth?”
“Sometimes even that.”
“Now I feel powerful indeed.”
“You should, you vixen.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sophie’s eyes sprang open. It was still dark outside. The orange nightlight in the Airstream’s bathroom cast a soft light on the curved ceiling of the trailer. Tab snored from her sleeping bag on the floor. Outside chirped the perpetual nighttime orchestra of spirit-world insects and forest animals. The wind sighed, and Terry’s voice rumbled something low, answered by Isabel’s. They had been enjoying staying outside all night between the trailers, tied to their vines.
Sophie held perfectly still to avoid disturbing the dream-memory she had just inhabited. She breathed deep and closed her eyes again. Persephone’s soul—her own soul—had flown into its new body, a memory that brought with it a flood of fresh air. She had skipped over this life before in her rush to uncover Persephone’s, but now she pulled it toward her like an unopened book and lifted its front cover. Even before she could recall anything specific about who or where she was, she sensed the joy of a new beginning. Slipping into the skin of the young life felt like the first day after winter when spring finally arrives and the warm air smells of green leaves and blossoms.
So where was she, and who?
Sophie scooted the memories ahead to get past those hazy years of infancy and toddlerhood. There was a warm beach. A brilliant blue sea. Delicious grapes and olives and fish. Heavy sacred stones perched upon one another. A language somewhat similar to the proto-ancient Greek of Persephone’s lifetime. The Mediterranean again, then. Her soul hadn’t flown far, as if desiring to stay close to her friends and family. Surely all souls carried such desires, but maybe in the case of Persephone and Hades, the Underworld granted their wishes a little more.
“Galateia,” her mother was calling to her five-year-old self, as she romped through a field of sky-blue flowers. “Galateia, time to eat, come back!”
Galateia. Sophie lay still, smiling, basking in the long-ago sun.
She dozed again and let her memories unspool several years. Galateia lived in a village near the sea. She had brothers, older and younger, and over-worked parents—farmers and shepherds, like everyone, or at least everyone who wasn’t a fisherman. She’d begun to get the idea that she lived on Sicily, although they called it something else back then; and so far no one who flitted through her life struck Sophie as being Adrian’s soul.
Sophie awoke to find the rising sun lighting up the window blinds. She stepped over Tab to get into the bathroom, then layered a sweatshirt over her long-underwear PJs, picked up her phone, and slipped out the trailer’s door.
She said good morning to her parents, and sat on the metal steps. After admiring the yellows and pinks of the sunrise for a minute, she texted Adrian.
My name is Galateia. And you are?
She gazed at the blue sea in the direction she estimated Sicily to be, through the rippling transparency of the souls streaming toward the Underworld. She breathed in the immaculately fresh, cold air, and thought how gorgeous it was around here, and how she ought to get up early more often to appreciate the morning light.
His answer buzzed back in a minute or two: Akis. Very very glad to meet you indeed.
***
“Hey.” Zoe caught up to Tabitha as their small group tromped toward another ancient sacred site, this one in Turkey.
Tab flicked her blonde hair out of her face and smiled. “Hey, chica. What’s up?”
Zoe stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. “I got to the breakup the other day. Dionysos and Hekate. Just, I don’t know, I felt like I should say ‘sorry it didn’t work out’ or something.”
“What for? It’s okay. These things happen. Anyway, we already guessed it, right?” Tab glanced down at the city in the valley, a mass of brick-red roofs and off-white walls. “I remembered it the other day too.” She threw Zoe a wicked grin. “So that’s why you and Niko are being so weird around each other.”
“Lord.” Zoe pressed a palm against her cheek, as if she could force down the blush that way. “The winks, the naughty looks…”
“Wow. Sounds like he’s got quite the special interest in you. Well, that’s messy, isn’t it.”
I love you, sweet Hekate. Special interest indeed. “Quite,” Zoe said. “So um, have you heard of the term ‘biromantic’?”
“No, but I’m guessing it’s like bisexual. Only with just romance, not sex?”
“Basically. I was doing some Googling, because, well. I mean, I still don’t think I’m anything but gay in terms of sexual orientation. But with these memories and stuff, these feelings…maybe I’m biromantic? I don’t know. I feel like I’m letting down the queer community by saying that.”
“Don’t feel like that. Anything goes, man. Whatever turns your crank. Biromantic. Huh.” Tab gazed ahead, where Sophie, Liam, and Freya were walking. “I don’t know if I have that. Which is weird, because I do have plenty of memories of messing around with all kinds of people.”
“But falling in love?”
“Hmm, yeah, there it was almost always women. So I’m, what, fem-romantic?”
“’Gynoromantic’ was I believe what Wikipedia told me.”
“Whereas with you, okay, you feel romantically toward women, but also toward…Niko?” Tab’s voice hit higher pitch on the name, as if it hardly seemed believable. Zoe shared the disbelief, actually.
She spread one hand helplessly in the air. “Kind of? It’s the memories. Or I thought it was, but lately I’m sympathetic toward him, with all he’s doing for us, and…it’s confusing.”
“You know he’s not just a guy but an old guy. Like, sixty or seventy or something.”
“And a criminal. Yes. It’s…yeah, this is all mental. Believe me, I know.”
“Just promise me you two aren’t going to run off to Vegas and get hitched on a whim. That never ends well.”
“Can’t see either of us consenting to that.” She glanced at Tab. “So. Ariadne, speaking of memories. That seems promising. I mean, that relationship made it all the way into mythology.”
Tab glanced toward the ci
ty again. The cold wind spread her long hair around her face. “Yeah, it did. I haven’t unpacked all that yet, but…feels like there’s kind of a lot there.”
“I can barely remember anything about her myself, yet. I suppose—hey, can you track her?”
Tab nodded, though still didn’t look at Zoe. “North of here somewhere. Long ways off, hard to say where. If I get time one of these days, I may go check that out.”
Zoe smiled softly. A remnant of jealousy whispered to life in her heart, then quietly died. In its place grew the gracious wish that Tab should be happy and loved. “Yeah. You should.”
***
An hour later, back in the Underworld, Zoe tracked down Niko and found him weaving a willow-and-ivy rope in the orchard. Its top end was tied to a pomegranate branch overhead while he braided the vines together. She thumped herself down against the tree’s trunk with a sigh. “Five for five.”
“Both Sophie and Liam could switch realms?” he asked.
“At every single one of the sites so far. And my parents could do it at the two sites I tried with them, after just a little practice. Goddess, we’re screwed.”
“But only if people know what to reach for, and have the right leaves and the Underworld gold. Not much of that out there, I’d wager. To my recollection, we only ended up handing out twelve of the golden tickets. I expect most of them are either lost or in museums now. If Tracy has managed to find one, that’s fairly amazing.”
“True. But still possible.” She rubbed her eyes. “Argh, what kills me is it’s my fault.”
“Yours? I don’t quite see that, Miss Drama Queen.”
“When I was Hekate, I was the one who identified all these sites and encouraged the mortals to use them. And what good did it do? We all died out anyway—except Rhea—and all it’s done is leave Thanatos heaps of nice glorious entrance gates.”
“But only twelve potential keys to open them with. Since you’re the one who can do the magic, perhaps you can think of a way to seal the gates.”
“They’re natural intersections of power. I can’t do much about that. It’s like trying to make the moon rise elsewhere. The most I could do is put up a block to stop or confuse people for a few hours, but it’d wear off, as spells do.”
“Well, let’s just hope Thanatos keeps up their trend of being so incredibly inept that they fail. That, at least, is likely.” He kept braiding, his hands swift.
He still looked weary and bitter. She considered telling him her “biromantic” theory to perk him up, but foresaw only ironic teasing as the result. Best not.
Still, there were different ways to go at the subject and momentarily cheer him. She got up and sauntered closer. “For instance, as to spells wearing off…”
He paused in his rope-braiding to look at her.
She gathered and released a burst of magic within, aimed only at herself. Its warmth spread through her, and softened Niko in her eyes into someone that lured her body closer to his. Placing a palm against his cheek, she settled a kiss on his lips. He responded with delicacy—at first. Then his arm was around her waist and he was dipping her horizontal to the ground like they were in some old movie.
“Mmm.” He broke the several-second-long kiss, still holding her in the absurd position. “Knew you couldn’t resist the memories forever.”
Her desire was already receding, but at least laughter replaced it.
She writhed free and fell to her hands and knees, then stood and dusted off her jeans. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed that you neglected to ever tell me about the years and years of sex.”
He studied her, tip of his tongue still tasting his lips. “I enjoy leaving little surprises for people. So that had something to do with a spell, just now?”
“Yeah, I can give myself aphrodisiac magic and make anyone attractive. But it wears off super-fast because of our powers.”
“Couldn’t you dose yourself over and over? For, say, however long it takes?”
She snorted. “Lovely. No, come on. That’s—for one thing, that takes a lot of concentration. I couldn’t do that and…that at the same time. It’d be like trying to tap-dance and cook a meal simultaneously. For another, doing it under a spell doesn’t count. You wouldn’t want it that way, would you?”
“Hmm. Then are you saying you couldn’t transform me into a woman either?”
“I might be able to, but your body would throw it off in minutes. And it would likely hurt throughout. Think of all the organs being changed.”
He rolled his fingers against the dangling rope, still studying her. “We’ll find a way around this, you and I. One of these centuries.”
“Stranger things have happened.” She knocked her elbow against his, and started to walk away.
“Zoe,” he said, and she stopped to look back. “Adrian’s capitulated on the pomegranate. Your vote?”
She sighed. “I suppose I do too, then. If you aren’t going to kill them, convert them. Or something like that.”
“All right. Oh, and you have magic to make someone tell the truth, yes?”
“Yeah, but it’s the kind of thing I should only do with their permission, or to save lives, or else it might rebound on me. But I guess if used on Landon it could count as saving lives.”
“If it does rebound, what happens? You have to tell the truth for a while? Is that so different from how you already are?”
“Oh, Goddess.” She smiled wryly. “I suppose we’ll find out.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Landon had been a prisoner for three days, by his rough count of when they brought meals and what they said to each other about daily activities. They rarely said anything to him so far, as if he were an animal they had to take care of. Psychological tactic, probably. Make him feel less human; break him down. It was starting to work, though his main reason for feeling afraid was the possibility that they might yet do something far worse to him than ignoring him.
He’d gripped the bars of his cage, stared at the barred ceiling, and knew with fair certainty he couldn’t break out. His only chance would be making a dash for it when they unlocked the gate to switch his camp toilet or bring him food, which they did a couple of times a day. But they’d raise the alarm instantly if he busted out like that, and he’d get tackled, probably beaten up, and maybe outright killed before he could find and destroy the tree of immortality—whichever it might be.
Even if he had leisure to wander around freely and examine every tree, it could take days to decide which was the right one. Just on his march to the cage, Landon had glimpsed hundreds of trees, which was probably only a fraction of the total number of trees down here, and all he knew about the magic one was that it was some kind of fruit tree. Then even if he found it, how was he supposed to destroy it? He didn’t have an axe or a flamethrower or even a box of matches. Maybe these immortals could rip up a tree with their bare hands, roots and all, but Landon sure couldn’t.
It was probably pointless to contemplate how to destroy the tree anyway, since surely he was marked for death now, and Thanatos’ grand objective shouldn’t matter to him anymore. But he kept desperately picturing some miracle in which he did kill the tree and escape, and became a hero to Thanatos, and thereafter was protected by them for the rest of his life in some secret apartment in Paris as repayment for the service he’d done the world. He at least hoped Tracy and Krystal and the rest might succeed in their invasion, rescue him, and hide him somewhere more comfortable than this cell. Tracy was surely making new plans now, and it was perhaps a blessing that Landon didn’t know what they were. That way he couldn’t betray his team, and maybe his team would yet save him.
The knife-wielding ghost guarding him today was Sophie’s mother Isabel. Even though she’d been one of the victims of the worst crime he’d ever collaborated in, Landon liked her best of his guards, because she didn’t glare at him or insult him. She just stood quiet and alert, like a security guard.
Now Nikolaos and Zoe walked int
o view between the stalagmites. Landon’s skin went clammy. Did the torture begin today?
“Thanks, Isabel,” Niko said. “You can go.”
“Fetch us if you need us.” She held out the knife toward him.
With a tug Niko yanked the knife off her immaterial hand. The bindings fell away, some scraps falling to the ground. Landon had seen it done several times now, and still didn’t quite understand how it worked, this tying things to ghosts. Isabel drifted away down the dark path.
Landon stayed where he was, sitting against the back wall.
Niko unlocked the door. “We’re going for a walk today. Exercise, so I’m told, is one of your rights as a prisoner.” He walked over swinging a bungee cord, pulled Landon up by the arm, spun him, and lashed his wrists together behind his back.
“We’re actually observing the Geneva Conventions?” Landon asked.
“We know your side never does.” Zoe stood at the cage door with arms folded. “But yeah, we do, more or less.”
Which meant no torture, Landon thought as they brought him out onto the path. Or at least, more or less no torture. How comforting.
Niko walked ahead. Zoe pushed Landon’s coat sleeve up so she could grip his wrist directly, as if he might try to escape by wriggling out of his shirt. Not likely. His legs were stiff from lack of use, and he was tired all over.
But during the walk through the fields, he limbered up a bit, enough to start feeling halfway human again. Even Zoe’s tight grip felt almost reassuring, like it was helping hold him upright.
“So, Osborne, is it?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“That’s your real name?”
“Yes. I don’t have an alias, though I’m sure some of them do.”
“That one running the show.” Niko glanced back. “Tweed-suit man. Tracy? Is that an alias?”
“I’m not sure. I only know him as Erick Tracy. How’d you get his name?”
“Your emails. Your cell. Remember how I got into those?” Niko shot him a smile that Landon might have called flirtatious under other circumstances.