by Jasmine Walt
“Yeah...” Plutus breathed. “Shadow...Assassin.”
Hades' expression was grim and he was absolutely pissed off, and rightfully so.
“All right then,” he said, raising his voice. “It's now confirmed. You are not to go the Surface. I forbid it.”
Plutus put a hand over his over his eyes. “Dad, I'm all right. I had a bodyguard with me the entire time, and she killed the Shadow Assassin.”
“Yes, and nearly eradicated herself in the process,” Hades said.
“She's good,” Plutus reiterated. “I trust her. And she protected me.”
“Me?” I asked, my voice squeaking. Did we experience two different falls? I’d barely gotten out of it almost-alive this time. What if the Shadow Assassins were more prepared next time? What if they found a more fool-proof way of killing me? Or Plutus?
There were so many unanswered questions, and so many of the answers were possible, I didn't want to think about it. “I didn't do anything,” I said.
He shook his head in answer. “You got the Shadow Assassin,” he said. “You saved my life as much as your own.”
I turned my gaze onto him, but he wasn't saying anything or looking at me. I laid back in time to see Persephone appear in the doorway. She was standing next to Tisiphone, her arms crossed and her frown only slightly taking away from her beauty. Based on her angry expression, she wasn't impressed with my performance.
Neither was I.
I had nearly died today, for really, the second time in only a few days. If the attacks kept getting more frequent and more dangerous, my odds of going back to the Surface were getting slimmer and slimmer.
Damn. I was way in over my head.
The only way out of this was to find out who was trying to kill Plutus. I glanced back at him, feeling that bit of spark of attraction in my gut. Yes, I had a crush on him, but I wanted to protect him for other reasons too. I wanted to test myself, to accomplish the impossible.
You can do it, Callie.
“All right,” I said weakly. “I'll accompany him while he's on the Surface.”
Hades, who had been watching me intently the entire time, gave a slow nod of approval. Persephone threw her hands up and left the room.
I couldn't help feeling like I was going further and further down the rabbit hole.
Plutus finally turned his head back to me, a look of concern crossing his handsome features. I tried to reassure him with the best smile I could manage but it was pretty weak.
I'll protect you.
10
My next few weeks in the Underworld were filled with interrogations and interviews. I talked to nearly everyone in the Underworld—the Royal family, the entire guard, the servants, the immigration officers, everyone I could think of. Initially, I spent more time talking to each person, then when I wasn’t getting anywhere, I shortened the interviews. Some people made themselves readily available but others claimed to be so busy that I had to schedule the meeting days or weeks in advance. Apparently when you’re dead, you work yourself to death.
Tisiphone stayed with me for all of those interrogations. Though she did get a bit annoying, she shadowed me the entire time, offering up advice. Even when I was exhausted, she was like a slave driver making me work. And work. And work.
We talked. I got to know her and she got to know me. She told me about her past, all forty-seven centuries of her life, most of them spent with Barnabas. She'd briefly touch on her life with Barnabas and then clam up, like she didn't want to talk about it. I didn't pressure her knowing how deeply death can effect a person. I understood her grief.
Plutus and I maintained an awkward friendship. I conducted my investigation when he was in the palace. Whenever he left the grounds, to perform his godly duties or otherwise, I went.
Plutus was one moody fellow. For every winning smile, I got ten mood swings in return. He’d brood and withdraw proving to be a complete enigma. The emotional walls he built were impossible to break down.
That didn’t mean my attraction to him was waning. In fact, the opposite was true. The more time we spent together, the more I wanted to get closer and closer to him. Not only was he a Greek God, I liked him. Really liked him.
Not that a relationship between the two of us was possible. He was a god; I was a mere mortal. And I knew I’d never like him enough to give up my life on The Surface for a life in The Underworld.
I had fallen for him. Tisiphone was right. She’d picked up on it even before I admitted my feelings to myself. I threw myself at my work, determined to get rid of those fizzy, sizzly feelings.
Eyes on the prize, right?
But forgetting my feelings for Plutus was a tall order. Because of the nature of the case, my mind was constantly on Plutus, what he was doing, how he spent his time, who wanted to see him dead. I’d often have to sit down with him and discuss his life, possible suspects, and everything else under the sun. Our conversations lasted hours over cups of coffee at the local Livin’ La Vida Mocha Cafe, which was across the street from the training facility where I kept my gun skills up to speed and also did daily workouts.
At night, usually after dinner, I went to my room to compile any new information I had gathered. My room looked like it belonged to a stalker, someone who was obsessed.
And, if I was completely honest with myself, I was.
Just like when I’d been a detective on The Surface.
I hung up every picture I printed from my tablet. Photos and profiles filled every wall surface. I used string to connect them and The Underworld version of PostIt notes to paste new ideas on motives and timing.
I met with Hades on a weekly basis, and if he was disappointed in my lack of progress, he didn’t show it. When I’d review with him everything I’d come across, he’d listen to me grasping at straws. I wasn’t getting anywhere and we both knew it. He had to be increasingly worried about his son’s safety, but he didn’t let on.
“I have faith in you, Callie,” he would say.
I wish I had faith in myself.
The Underworld was just as complex as The Surface, nothing was quite seemed. Relationships were complicated and since I hadn’t been able to make any friends, unless I counted Tisiphone, I didn’t have a set of objective ears to bounce my ideas off of.
Plutus was a very divisive figure to the people of the Underworld. Everyone who appeared to be around my age thought he was a decent fellow. Especially the girls who thought he was cute and mysterious. The dash of sadness only added to his draw. The older people thought he was a drain on their resources. The judgmental set thought that he deserved what was coming to him, because they thought that his blindness and limp caused him to do his job poorly, even though Zeus had made him that way.
Persephone saw her son as mistake.
Between Tisiphone's promptings and my own observations and conclusions, I built a sequence of events of the assassination attempt that took Barnabas’ life. As far as I could tell, it had happened like this:
The last time anyone ate in the dining hall before Barnabas’ death was on September 19. Two days before his death. On that night, Hades, his three judges and a few of his closest friends had eaten and departed the room around 9:30 that night. Plutus hadn’t been present. Instead he’d eaten in the courtyard with Cerberus because he and Hades had argued earlier in the day.
After dinner, the staff had cleared the tables, finishing in about fifteen minutes. Of course, between then and the dinner on the 21st, there had been people zipping in and out of the dining hall, vacuuming, cleaning, or passing through. But there hadn’t been any CCTV footage of anyone coming in there.
Daedalus didn’t like me asking questions but I had to find out why there were no security cameras.
“There’s no security cameras?”
“No.”
“Nowhere in the House of Hades?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We ne'er needed one before. They’re gods, for Pete’s sake.”
&
nbsp; I ordered him to install security cameras all over the house immediately. I would have pegged his lack of attention to such an important detail as suspicious, but Hades had assured me that it had been his own idea—for the longest time, he didn’t trust modern technology.
I’d interviewed the entire kitchen staff and no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. I’d inspected the kitchens for anything out of the ordinary and come up empty. There was the possibility that Plutus’ food was contaminated before it arrived but finding out the whens and wheres of that was going to be one heck of a challenge. Regardless of who added the poison to the food, the culprit had to have known which plate was Plutus’. Which meant that either someone was lying or something happened that no one saw.
Food preparation began three hours before dinner service on the 21st.
At approximately 6:38pm, Hades, Plutus, Persephone, Zeus, Hera, Demeter, and the rest of the Olympian Gods sat down for dinner, along with a few select immortals, including Tisiphone. I had a list of everyone in attendance, but not everyone had a motive. Because Hades forbade me to interview the Olympians, I couldn't talk to them directly. I wasn’t sure that any of them had a motive, though.
While I wanted to get as much information as I could, they intimidated the hell out of me. They had their squabbles, yet nothing that suggested they wanted to kill the son of the Lord of the Underworld. Meeting Aphrodite, Apollo, and Asclepius had taught me that.
At around 7pm, the food was served. Barnabas had literally just set down Plutus’ food when he collapsed upon the ground. Tisiphone, who was there as a guest, ran over and held Barnabas as he died in her arms. He was dead by 7:08pm.
At exactly 7:15pm, while the house was in an uproar over the death Barnabas, a Shadow Assassin burst from the northeast corner of the dining hall and ran a sword right through Plutus’ heart. When the gods and goddesses turned on the attacker, the body disintegrated. That was because, Hades explained, they had used an older corpse in the spell.
That was it. No other evidence to suggest who or what tried to kill Plutus.
I was at a loss. I honestly didn’t know what direction to go in next.
As a damn good detective, it was a feeling that made me very uncomfortable. And pissed.
I needed a break from the investigation. A change of scenery.
At Hades’ suggestion, I made arrangements to go see my father in Elysium. It’s a big to-do in the Underworld. It took two weeks from the day I submitted an application to obtain a visa and diplomatic immunity for my visit to the Elysium Fields. As Ra had said when I first arrived here, you had to go through a bunch of procedures to ensure that you weren’t a lost soul, or wouldn’t lose your way and become one.
That was a problem here: if you went where you weren’t supposed to be without taking the proper precautions, you could wind up as a ghost. Or be stuck in a place like Tartarus, which was worse than any nightmare. Not even Plutus had visited Tartarus, because it was like a black hole that could suck you in if you weren’t careful.
Thankfully, Dad hadn’t ended up there.
That was how I wound up on a ferry on my own with Charon, the otherworldly ferryman who brought me to the palace in the first place. It was my first day off since I arrived and I was enjoying a mental break from the case.
After Hades paid my fare to Charon (a generous amount, it seemed, based upon Charon’s reaction when he counted it), he wouldn’t stop talking to me.
“How’s your little investigation goin’?” he sniggered. He cut a skinny figure, reminding me somewhat of a pirate. He had a single pole to push us along, much like the gondolas you’d see in Venice.
I sat on the other side of the boat, as far away from him as I could. I didn’t like him.
“Fine,” I answered, keeping my answer short and curt.
He didn’t take a hint. “Oh really?” he cackled. “Bah, I doubt it. You’re just like all the other insufferable mortals that I ferry 'cross the Underworld. Pathetic. Full of dreams and never achieving them.”
“Yes, really,” I told him. I crossed my arms and turned away. I could have wasted my breath arguing with him that he was wrong, that mortals weren’t pathetic. However, I figured that Charon had met a lot more people than me, and if that was his opinion, my argument wouldn’t change it.
It was hard to hold my tongue though, especially when he continued pressing me.
“Have you found out who’s trying to off our little prince?” he taunted.
“Not yet. I’m close though.”
“You’re lying, mortal,” he growled. Then he chuckled unkindly. “No matter. I doubt you’ll figure out who’s trying to get rid of that little weasel, Plutus. He’ll get what he deserves.”
Plutus wasn’t very popular, especially among those who could remember a time before him. By the looks of it, Charon had been around much longer than Plutus.
Even though I’d already interrogated him, I decided to ask a new question. “What does he deserve?” I prompted
Charon peered back at me and gave me a toothy grin. “Do you know what happens when gods die, little mortal?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “You see, when mortals die, they go to the Underworld, an Afterlife where they can rest for an eternity. Rest in peace or what have you. But not gods. When gods die, they evaporate, straight into thin air. Kaputz. There’s no Afterlife for them, because even though they’re mortal when you kill them, they don't have a soul. They simply cease to exist. And it scares every so-called immortal god because there’s nothing for them beyond what they already have. Just non-existence. That’s what Plutus deserves. Nothing.”
Hades had briefly mentioned it to me, but this was deeper than I had ever imagined it. Why had everyone skirted around this topic when I had interviewed them? Perhaps it was a sense of their own mortality. Maybe that was why Hades was so interested in saving his son while Plutus himself seemed almost ambivalent to it.
I was agnostic when I was alive. Obviously, being in the Underworld made me realize that there were people upstairs, or downstairs depending on your perspective, even if they had their heads up their asses. Still, I had always wanted to believe that there was an Afterlife for me to see my dad in, so I guess I had wanted to believe in something. It seemed strange to me that gods had to be almost atheist, even unto themselves.
“We’re here,” Charon grunted.
I looked around. A thick, dreary fog surrounded us. My hopes fell. I thought Elysium was supposed to be paradise. In fact, the fog was so thick, I was surprised Charon knew where we were going.
“Doesn’t look like Elysium,” I said suspiciously.
Charon cackled ominously and I glared at him. The boat knocked against something, jarring it to a halt. I gave a surprised cry.
“Look again, mortal.”
I did, and I saw the mist blow away, like clouds on a summer day. I gasped at the phenomenon, and was even more shocked when I saw beautiful rolling fields. It was something out of a fairy tale, one of the happily ever after ones. It was beautiful. My breath caught in my throat.
Purple and blue butterflies lazily floated around. Wisps of flower petals blew by. The entire landscape was a verdant green grass that seemed to stretch forever.
Groups of people were scattered about the field, glowing with good health. They were dressed in simple robes, and they were talking with each other. They all looked happy.
Elysium Fields, where the good went when they died.
Our boat was flush against a pier, bobbing lazily. Charon hobbled over to the side of the boat and tied us to a wooden pole.
“You have one hour,” he croaked. “Then visitin’ time is over. And you wouldn’t want to be stuck in Elysium, Callista.”
An hour. Doubt flickered in the back of my mind. With so many people around, how was I going to find my father in time?
I shouldn’t have worried. As soon I set foot onto the field, the group of people parted, showing one lone figure standing there, his arms open. I ran toward him, eager
to feel his arms around me.
“Dad!” I exclaimed, burying my face into his shoulder like I did when I was a little girl. I had almost forgotten his smell, the feel of his chest again my cheek.
“Hey, Callie.”
Just Callie. I didn’t need to tell him not to call me Callista, and I didn’t feel like there was some sort of ulterior motive to him talking to me. I started crying.
I’m not a crier. Even when Ben left, I stared at the door with wide eyes for a long time before going out for a run. That was how I dealt with strong emotions that made me want to cry. I thought about something else, did something else.
Dad didn’t say anything. He just held me. A huge wave of different emotions washed over me. The combination of seeing him for the first time in such a long time, the stress of the case, and the overwhelming feeling that I was alone was overwhelming. I didn’t realize that I needed a good cry like this until it had started.
I managed to stop crying before too long. I only had an hour with my dad. I didn’t want to spend it bawling my eyes out. I didn’t want to leave us with memories of me crying. I took a deep breath, pulled back, and looked up at him.
“How are you, Dad?”
He smiled, shining with that strange, beautiful glow that everyone in Elysium had. I felt pretty dingy compared to all of them.
We sat down among the tall grasses and talked, father and daughter. I was young when he died, so it was surreal having the chance to catch up with him. It was like watching a home movie, except I could talk to the movie. Dad was here. I was talking to him.
I had taken after him. I wasn’t much shorter than his height of 6'4”, and I had his eyes and his chin. It was strange. I didn't realize that I had forgotten his face.
I wanted to freeze frame this memory and keep it as a memento when I needed some inspiration.
“You haven’t mentioned a boyfriend or anything,” Dad said at one point during our conversation.
I initially thought of Ben, then Plutus flashed through my mind. There’s a reason for that, I wanted to tell him.